Judging Mr Obama's policies in the Middle East

Now is an opportune time to assess Mr Obama's policies in the Middle East.

First, let me give credit where credit is due. Undoubtedly, the world is a better place without Osama bin Laden, Moammar Qaddafi, and Hosni Mubarak in positions of power. To the extent that President Obama was responsible for the removal of these tyrants, he deserves credit. Obviously, he deserves a lot of credit for launching the Special Forces raid that killed bin Laden. But it is just as obvious that George Bush and Dick Cheney also deserve substantial credit for bin Laden's demise, since it was they who led the invasion of Afghanistan and created the platform from which Mr Obama was able to launch his strike against bin Laden. It is less clear how much credit Mr Obama deserves for the elimination of Qadddafi and Mubarak. It would seem that the Libyan and Egyption peoples deserve the lion's share of the credit here, although, now that Qaddafi and Mubarak have departed from the scene, there is absolutely no guarantee that the new regimes that assume power in those countries will be any better, either for the Libyan and Egyption peoples themselves, or for US interests.

Another major feature of Mr Obama's Middle East policy is apparently: withdrawal. Giving in to Shiite radicals (led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr) in southern Iraq, Mr Obama has agreed to withdraw all US troops from Iraq by the end of the 2012. This will be an enormous blow to our ability to project US power and influence in the Middle East and will open the door to Iran to destabilize its neighbor. When you put our departure from Iraq together with the fact that Mr Obama intends to pull us out of Afghanistan as soon as possible and has done absolutely nothing to prevent Iran from moving forward with its program to acquire nuclear weapons, it is obvious that the Middle East in the not too distanct future will be a much less secure place for US interests than it was when George Bush left office.

Another major accomplishment of the Obama Administration has been to alienate completely the government of Israel, who has traditionally been America's staunchest ally in the region.

So, what the Obama Administration will have accomplished by the end of 2012 is: alienate Israel, withdraw major detachments of US troops from the Middle East, appease Iran, and generally portray the United States as a nation that "leads from behind" and does not have the stomach to stand up to tinhorn clerics and follow through on long term nation building in the Middle East. In other words, Mr Obama will have sown the seeds of continued unrest and discord in the Middle East for decades to come.

Robert Reich on the benefits of Progressivism

In his most recent screed, Robert Reich tries to make the argument that Democrats are "progressives" who "push us forward," while Republicans are "regressives" who "pull us back."

The problem with this argument is that it does not comport with reality. Only a brazenly shameless Democrat would maintain that the nation has been moved "forward" over the last three years. As even Mr. Obama himself has admitted, if voters were asked the famous question Ronald Reagan put to them in 1980: "Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?" the answer would be a resounding "No!" Yet, according to Mr Reich, Democrats are somehow supposed to have moved us forward over this period of time. Forward into higher unemployment? Forward into greater national debt? Forward into a lower standard of living? This is progress?

Mr Reich opines:

Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity and tolerance.

Openness? President Obama promised several times that the deliberations over health care legislation would be conducted on C-SPAN. Instead, these deliberations were held behind closed doors with Republicans excluded. It seemed at times that the only parties given a place at the table were Mr. Obama's union cronies.

Equal opportunity? Democrats believe in equality of results, not equality of opportunity. That is why Democrats continue to support affirmative action. Ask Frank Ricci whether Progressivism fosters equality of opportunity. Mr Ricci, a white, dyslexic fireman from New Haven Connecticut, studied hard and took a test required for promotion to lieutenant. There was no question that the test, which incorporated both written and oral components, had been administered fairly. In the competition for eight positions, the top 10 exam scorers, including Mr Ricci, were all white. The top African-American candidate scored 14th, and the top Hispanic candidate scored 27th. The city decided not to promote anyone because they feared a discrimination lawsuit if they only promoted white firefighters. Is this the kind of equality of opportunity that Progressivism promotes?

Tolerance? Progressives believe in tolerance except when it comes to tolerating those with opposing opinions.

Mr Reich continues:

Progressives assume we're all in it together: ... [W]e all do better with ... a truly progressive tax system.

Yes, this is the heart of Progressivism: We are all in it together, just so long as our togetherness is funded by someone else's money. It always amazes me how willing Progressives are to spend other people's money, how confident they are that they know better how to spend it, and how truly awful the results of their spending often are. Mr. Obama continues to make the argument that the "rich" are not paying their "fair share" in spite of the fact that the tax burden of the top 1% is greater than the tax burden of the bottom 95%. Apparently, this tax system is not progressive enough for Messrs Reich and Obama and they would like to seize even more money from top income earners to spend on such green boondoggles as Solyndra.

Mr Reich rises to his crescendo:

[Regressives would] like to return to the 1920s - before Social Security ... In truth, if they had their way, we'd be back in the late 19th century - before the federal income tax ... and the Federal Reserve.

Well, yes. And I have no apologies for wishing it so. Let's consider Social Security for a moment. Social Security is sold to us as a "social insurance" program. Under an insurance program, what we get back out is supposed to be a function of what we put in. But, in the future it is quite likely that any Social Security payments to me will also be "means-tested," so that, if my income is above a certain level, the government will not pay me. I have been paying into Social Security all my working life. And now the government will tell me that they will renege on their payments because, in the government's opinion, I don't need it. Imagine if I were treated by a regular insurance company in a similar manner. Progressives would be passing 1000 page long bills to prevent such malfeasance. But, if the government does it, somehow it is ok. Why would I not want to go back to a time before Social Security when I alone was responsible for saving for my own retirement and would reap the benefits (or losses) of my investment?

As for Mr Reich's implication that a life with the federal income tax is better, well, maybe then we should impose the wonderful benefits of paying this tax on the 50 percent of Americans who currently do not pay any federal income tax whatsoever.

As for the wonderful benefits of the Federal Reserve, on the contrary, its loose monetary policy has not only been undermining the value of the dollar for decades now, but it was also a major contributing factor to the recent financial crisis.

I note that not even Mr Reich is foolish enough to include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in his litany of the many wonderful governmental agencies that have rained the benefits of Progressivism on us over the last 100 years.

In reality, the history of Progressivism has been that of a nation stumbling from one disaster to the next, all caused by the well-intentioned, but ill-informed central planning of the federal government and its distortion of market forces in the private sector. Hopefully, the disaster that has been the Obama presidency will result in the permanent discrediting of the Progressive/Keynesian program and America will return to the Classical Liberalism of the late 19th century that made America so great and that Mr Reich seems so utterly to abhor, wishing upon us instead the grey, dismal, dreary world that Progressivism has led us "forward" into.

Uncle Joe and the "plausible" argument

Joe Biden provided a wonderful illustration this week of my Theses 6 and 8.

These theses hold generally that: Increases to government spending or programs that benefit special interest groups are always justified by noble-sounding, plausible arguments about promoting the general welfare:

• when we increase teachers' pay, we are "helping the children;"
• when we increase the pay of policemen, firefighters, and prison guards, we are "improving public safety;"

If funds for these special interest groups are cut, we are told, catastrophic consequences will ensue. In fact, the extra money spent often does not result in a significant increase to the general welfare, but only serves to pad the salaries and pensions of public service employee unions, who, in turn, fund the political campaigns of those politicians who supported the increases.

Mr. Biden stood in a room of the Capitol backed by row upon row of uniformed police officers, firefighters, and teachers and declaimed:

In Flint, Michigan, they cut their force in half; murder rates have doubled in the last year ... Police departments, as I said, in some cases literally cut in half, like Camden, New Jersey, and Flint, Michigan. In many cities, the result has been -- and it's not unique -- murder rates are up, robberies are up, rapes are up ... I said rape was up, three times in Flint. There are the numbers. Go look at the numbers.

The implication is that if you vote for Republicans, you will be raped.

The Washington Post's Fact Checker, Glen Kessler, has written a marvelous refutation of Mr. Biden's claims:

In other words, even if you could make a link, it is likely one of many factors that affects the crime rate, not the single one, as Biden suggests. The FBI itself lists more than a dozen variables in what causes crime to increase in a community. Others believe the connection is tenuous, at best. “There is limited or no correlation between the number of officers and the homicide rate,” said David Carter, a Michigan State University criminal justice professor who works with the Justice Department to track homicides. “To draw any kind of conclusion on simply the number of officers and the number of homicides is virtually meaningless. There are too many other variables that will influence the commission of homicides as well as clearances. In essence, the reporting of this simple data, whether using Biden's data or city data, does not describe changes in the incidents of homicides in Flint or any city.

So, once again we have a liberal, progressive politician making the "plausible" argument that increasing pay and benefits for members of public service employee unions will achieve a noble-sounding result, improve the general welfare, and preclude catastrophic consequences, when, in fact, what is happening is that the politician is simply seeking to make sure that the governmental special interest unions that support him are well-funded so that their dues can continue to flow into his campaign coffers.

Plain and simple, this is corruption and political payoff of the most vile kind.

The Democrats keep talking about how awful the world will be if the Republicans are elected. How much worse could it get? Unemployment is running above 9% by the most optimistic figures. We have run trillion dollar deficits for the last three years. Dependency on the government is at all time highs. The catastrophe is already upon us, and its name is Obamaism.

Simply outrageous

Marketwatch reports:

Five top Democrats, led by Rep. Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, sent a letter Thursday calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to open an investigation into whether bank trade associations and individual banks have violated antitrust law by colluding. The letter comes after outrage has erupted over Bank of America Corp.’s announcement earlier this month to charge customers a $5 monthly fee starting January for debit-card-usage. Other big banks are testing debit-card-usage fees in select markets. ... “Statements made by individual banks and their trade associations raise questions about whether some price increases that have occurred this year have actually been coordinated,” the letter says. “This collective pricing activity is harmful to competition and raises serious legal questions.” Rep. John Conyers, Democrat from Michigan and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, also signed the letter, as did Reps. Michael Honda of California, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, and Raul Grijalva of Arizona. Ellison and Grijalva are co-chairs of the House Progressive Caucus.

As I have pointed out before, what we are seeing here is a repetition of what happened with Obamacare: Obamacare was passed; insurance companies raised premiums and non-insurance companies took charges to cover the additional costs imposed by Obamacare; the President, his Administration, and the Democrats immediately attacked and threatened those companies for taking these actions.

Now, the Dodd-Frank bill has passed; the banks have imposed new debit card fees to cover the additional costs imposed by the Durbin Amendment to that bill; and the President, his Administration, and Democrat thugs in Congress immediately start to attack, threaten, and strong arm the banking industry for taking these actions.

Simply outrageous!

We are all "Petro-States" now

I have been reading Daniel Yergin's new book, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. In Chapter 5, entitled "The Petro-State," Yergin describes the ailments that afflict countries (for example, Venezuela) that are primarily dependent on oil revenues for national income. Yergin writes:

When [oil] prices soar, governments are forced by society's rapidly-rising expectations to increase their spending as fast as they can -- more subsidies to hand out, more programs to launch, more big new projects to promote. ... But when world oil prices go down and the nations' revenues fall, governments dare not cut back on spending. Budgets have been funded, programs have been launched, contracts have been let, institutions have been created, people have been hired. Governments are locked into ever-increasing spending. Otherwise they face political and social explosions.

What struck me about this passage was not that it was an insightful description of Venezuela and other Petro-States (which it is), but that it was a description that could be generally applied to the recent crises of so many governments around the world. For example, Michael Lewis describes the similar plight of the city of San Jose, California in his new book, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

The problem, [San Jose mayor Chuck Reed] explains, predates the most recent financial ciris. "Hell, I was here. I know how it started. It started in the 1990s with the Internet boom. We live near rich people, so we thought we were rich." San Jose's budget, like the budget of any city, turns on the pay of public safety workers: the police and firefighters now eat 75 percent of all discretionary spending. The Internet boom created both great expectations for public employees and tax revenues to meet them. ... Over the past decade the City of San Jose had repeatedly caved to the demands of its public safety unions. In practice this meant that when the police or fire department of any neighboring city struck a better deal for itself, it became a fresh argument for improving the pay of San Jose police and fire.

In other words, the phenomenon described by Yergin is not at all limited to countries whose primary source of revenue is oil. Rather, a more general description of the phenomenon can be given as follows: A boom in some segment of the economy (global oil prices for Venezuela, the value of Internet stock options for San Jose) causes an increase in tax revenues for the state. The state, flush with cash, spends these new revenues on lavish social programs for its citizens and lavish pay and pension packages for members of public service employee unions. The state locks itself in to obligations to continue paying for these programs and pay/benefits regardless of the future condition of the economy. The boom then ends, the gusher of tax revenues dries up, but the state is still left with its long-term obligations, which it now cannot pay. The beneficiaries of these programs, ordinary citizens and public service union employees, having grown accustomed to and dependent on government largesse, rebel at any suggestion that spending be cut back.

Under similar circumstances, private markets adjust: private companies lay off workers and cut back spending; in the worst case, they declare bankruptcy and abrogate the fixed obligations they are not able to meet. In the public sector, however, there are obstacles, political and legal in nature, that prevent govermental entities from declaring bankruptcy. Given the high degree of fiscal rigidity in politically supported social programs and labor contracts, government is unable to adapt, it cannot cut back. Fiscal crisis ensues.

This is the situation so many governments around the world find themselves in today. Besides California and Venezuela, we can see a similar situation in Greece. There the boom was not in oil or stock options, but in credit. The Greek government, flush with the proceeds from bonds it had issued at the same interest rate as its more financially conservative neighbors, expanded the public sector dramatically. Now credit has dried up, but the government is still obliged to spend, but cannot, and seeks to cut back on the salaries of public employees. These employees, having become dependent on the government, rebel. The result is the riots we have seen in Greece, the precursors of similar riots we are starting to witness with the Occupy Wall Street crowd here in the United States.

Here in the United States, we used to laugh at the financial trials and tribulations of "Third World Countries." Now it is our turn to be laughed at. We are all Petro-States now.

The Berkeley Free Speech Circle

In my last post, I pointed out the contradictory nature of the demands being made by one of the members of the Occupy Wall Street movement. One of the demands was that the government spend $2 trillion on new infrastructure and environmental remediation projects. I pointed out that the government would obviously have to incur additional debt in order to spend this amount. Another demand was that all debt all over the world be forgiven. I observed: “How exactly an additional $2 trillion of debt is to be incurred at the same time that all debt is being stricken from the "Books" is something our author does not feel requires an explanation.”

As I pondered the sheer ignorance evinced by these contradictory demands, I recalled a similarly self-contradictory revolutionary declaration made by various parties at the University of California at Berkeley some years ago. Unlike the Occupy Wall Street demands, however, this declaration is not contained merely in an ephemeral post on an internet blog, but rather is memorialized in stone in the most public place on the Berkeley campus. I am speaking, of course, of the so-called “Berkeley Free Speech Circle,” a circular granite slab embedded in the surface of Sproul Plaza with the following inscription: "This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity's jurisdiction."

Such idealism! Such spontaneity, as Nancy Pelosi might say! But, if you actually think about what the words mean, they are completely self-nullifying. Obviously, the words are meant to be a statement by an authority with jurisdiction over the disk. For, if the words were uttered by someone without jurisdiction over the disk, they would have no force. And yet, the statement made by that authority with jurisdiction over the disk is that the disk “shall not be subject to any entity’s jurisdiction.”

As with their noble comrades in the Occupy Wall Street movement, how exactly the Berkeley revolutionaries thought they could exercise their jurisdiction over a plot of land by making a statement that no authority (including, presumably, themselves) had jurisdiction over that plot of land is something that the authors of the inscription did not feel required an explanation.

These are the kinds of pronouncements that pass for intelligent political discourse on our campuses today.

Demands of the Occupy Wall Street Movement

An anonymous member of the group styling itself the Occupy Wall Street movement has authored a list of demands, including:

• Raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hour.
• A guaranteed living wage regardless of employment [I'd like to get some of that].
• Free college education [as a parent of two boys in college, I'd really like to get some of that].
• One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
• One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.
• Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." ... And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

So, on the one hand, our author is demanding that an additional $2 trillion dollars be spent on infrastructure and environmental remediation. Presumably, this is in addition to the $3.8 trillion that the federal government spent last year, of which approximately $1.5 trillion already was borrowed. This implies that the author is demanding that an additional $2 trillion be borrowed by the federal government. And yet, at the same time, the author also demands that all debt, including "sovereign debt" be forgiven and "stricken from the books." How exactly an additional $2 trillion of debt is to be incurred at the same time that all debt is being stricken from the "Books" is something our author does not feel requires an explanation.

The utter "Michael Moore" incoherence of this programme would be laughable if it were not for the fact that it was immediately endorsed by the leading lights of the Democratic Party. President Obama expressed sympathy with the protesters. They are, he said, "giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works … and that's going to express itself politically in 2012 and beyond." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif added, "God bless [the protestors] for their spontaneity. It's independent ... it's young, it's spontaneous, and it's focused. And it's going to be effective." Spontaneous indeed, if we understand that characterization to mean that the protestors' demands were made without prior reflection.

I find it deeply troubling that young people these days cannot seem to grasp that a default on debt is the breaking of a promise, a violation of a moral obligation. If we are not to keep our promises to repay our debt, why should we keep any of our promises at all? Why should we hold ourselves bound by any agreements? Why should we stay married? Why should we feel ourselves obligated to care for our children or our parents? Why shouldn’t we just dispense with all law and morals and live as animals in the wild?

The truly shocking thing is that many young people, never having read Burke or Bloom, never having experienced a French or Russian Revolution, would applaud a proposal to wipe civilization from the “Books.” They would welcome this brave new world, stripped of all hypocrisies, as “authentic” and would perceive it as a return to a state where we were once more “in touch with ourselves.”

Alas, once again the virus that has infected our society since the Sixties rears its ugly head. I had hoped that it would perish with my generation, the old Hippies, but, unfortunately, the fever is being rekindled by the likes of Obama and Pelosi and the rest of their amoral thugs.

I am left to hope in the American People, to hope that, yes, the activities of the Occupy Wall Street movement will have an impact on the 2012 elections, only not the one anticipated by Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi.

The Ongoing War against the Banks and the Insurance Industry

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Thursday that financial institutions in the U.S. risk holding back the economy because they are unwilling to lend. "If you look at the U.S. economy today, I'd say the biggest risk we face is institutions not taking enough risk," Mr. Geithner said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

Now, why might the banks be reluctant to take on risk these days?

Consider, for example, what President Obama said in an interview with George Stephanopoulos yesterday:

Stephanopoulos: Can you put a stop to this [Bank of America’s new $5 per month debit card fee]?

President: ... [T]his is exactly why we need this Consumer Finance Protection Bureau that we set up that is ready to go ... [Th]is is exactly why we need somebody whose sole job it is to prevent this kind of stuff from happening.

Stephanopoulos: Can you stop this service charge?

President: Well, you can stop it because, if you say to the banks, you don’t have some inherent right, just to get a certain amount of profit, if your customers are being mistreated, that you have to treat them fairly and transparently. And my hope is you’re going to see a bunch of the banks say, you know what, this is actually not good business practice. Banks can make money, they can succeed, the old-fashioned way, by earning it, by lending to small businesses, by lending to consumers, making sure that we are building the economy together. But without the kinds of protections we’re starting to see the Republicans roll back, we’re going to continue to have these kinds of problems, and this is exactly the sort of stuff that folks are frustrated by. This, by the way, is an example, of the contrasting visions we have. If the Republican Party believes that we should do nothing to curb abuses on Wall Street, and roll back regulations put in place to prevent the next big financial crisis, well, I’ve got a big difference with them.

Let’s break this down.

• The President is claiming to know the business of the banks better than the bankers themselves. All the banks have to do, according to the President, is “earn money the old-fashioned way.” How quaint. The amount the President does not know about the banking industry could fill an encyclopedia.
• The President is claiming that the new debit card fee is an “abuse” under the terms of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and that this abuse is actionable and preventable by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection under the terms of this Act. What BofA did may not be good business practice (that is for BofA's customers to decide), but there is not a speck of evidence that what BofA did is an "abuse" or that the CFPB can do anything about it.
• The President opposes BofA's new fee in the name of preventing the "next big financial crisis." If BofA were to refrain from imposing this new fee, how would that prevent the next major financial crisis? On the contrary, if BofA's fee has the desired effect, it will strengthen BofA's balance sheet, thereby reducing the risk of a financial crisis. It is rather the ongoing war being waged by the Democratic Party against the financial services industry that is destabilizing markets and increasing the risk of a new crisis. If the Democratic Party really wanted to pass legislation that would reduce the likelihood of a future financial crisis, they would have passed a bill to close down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They did not do this. Instead, Messrs Frank and Dodd have been staunch defenders of Fannie and Freddie for years, with Mr. Frank making his famous statement about Fannie: "The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios."
• The President is setting himself up as the arbiter of what the appropriate profit margin is for a major industry. Does the President seriously believe that American businesses don't have an "inherent right" to maximize their profits so long as they operate entirely within the bounds of the law (supplemented by massive new regulation) and so long as their customers show themselves willing to bear the costs?

What we are seeing here is a repetition of what happened with Obamacare: Obamacare was passed; insurance companies raised premiums and non-insurance companies took charges to cover the additional costs imposed by Obamacare; the President and his Administration immediately attacked and threatened those companies for taking these actions.

Now, the Dodd-Frank bill has passed; the banks have imposed new debit card fees to cover the additional costs imposed by the Durbin Amendment to that bill; and the President and his Administration immediately start to attack and threaten the banking industry for taking these actions.

And so we are led to the spectacle where, at the same time the Obama Administration undermines the banking industry with threats of action from the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, the Treasury Secretary attacks the banking industry for not taking on new risk.

The Democratic Party. We raise your taxes, your gas prices, your insurance premiums, and now, your debit card fees. And yet, it is we Democrats, not those evil Republicans, who have your best interests at heart.

America not "soft" or "dysfunctional" or "racist," just rejects Obamaism

It's not that America has become "soft" or "dysfunctional" or "racist." Americans are dragging their feet simply because they reject the Obama agenda.

"Stop complainin', stop grumblin', stop cryin'." shouted out Mr. Obama with a preacher's fervor in a recent speech in front of the Congressional Black Caucus. Even Maxine Waters was taken aback.

On his weekly radio speech yesterday, Mr. Obama said: "It is time for Congress to get its act together and pass this jobs bill so I can sign it into law."

The President cannot bring himself to acknowledge that there is significant disagreement with his policies, both on the Left and on the Right. Since, in Mr. Obama's mind, this disagreement cannot have any rational basis, cannot be legitimate or offered in good faith, it must have some other, darker, cause, namely, that America has become "soft" or that Congress is "dysfunctional" or that the Tea Party is "racist." Therefore, Americans need to be bullied into doing what Mr. Obama wants them to do.

We have seen this modus operandi before with the passage of Obamacare. Don't deliberate. Just "get your act together" and pass the damn bill. People will realize later what is in it and how smart I was to pass it.

It is as if the President is saying: "It is enough that I, Barack Hussein Obama, have thought deeply about these issues and have decided for everyone what is the best thing to do. Any further delay or deliberation is just a waste of my precious time. So, just shut up and do what I tell you to do."

There is a certain haughtiness in this, a disgust with having to descend to the level of ordinary politics. Why can't they all just see how brilliant I am, how impeccable my reasoning is? This is the certainty of the central planner. The intelligence and knowledge of a single individual or of a small cadre of bureaucrats is supposed to substitute for all the distributed wisdom of the masses. And, if the policies fail, it will not be the fault of the policies themselves. Rather, it will be because the masses didn't cooperate.

Yes, fortunately, in circumstances like these, the masses do begin to slow walk.