Abolishing Property Taxes

Municipal taxes are going up in my municipality: Tantramar, a relatively recent amalgamation of several former smaller communities and a rural Local Service District (or, LSD ... potential an unfortunate acronym). The tax increase has prompted the usual cry against tax increases and the usual social media debates about what people are actually "getting" for the tax increase. I'll take this to be a fair discussion and a fair question.  The problem is that we don't often get fair answers. Maybe those aren't to be expected on social media. With some notable exceptions -- I know some people who try -- social media is not about reasoned political discussion. I'm trying with this blog but ... does it make any differences? The point is this: most of the time, reasoned discussion is not what social media is about. 

But, let's take this question (or, cry) as an invitation to try to answer it. First, there is a specific context.  Recently, the provincial government of then-premier Blaine Higgs amalgamated a number of smaller communities (towns, villages, LSDs) to create larger municipalities. There was some resistance to this on the part of communities that believed they were losing their identity and on the part of some folks who rightly asked questions about policies and changing tax rates. It turns out that taxes went up and that was by design. The Higgs government's goal with amalgamation was to increase taxes. There actually was little other need for it. What they were trying to do was to find a way to increase municipal funding without themselves -- as a conservative low-tax government that was planning to run for re-election, in part, on that issue -- having to increase taxes. Local municipalities needed more money so Higgs was confronted with a choice. The province could provide that funding, as provinces have constitutional control of and jurisdiction over municipalities, or it could use that control to pull a con game. It could engage in the age-old political bait and switch and hand the ball off to newly created amalgamated municipalities. That was what they chose to do.  It made them look good (they didn't increase taxes and could even promise to decrease them) while foisting what was a needed revenue issue onto others -- politicians at a different level of government -- who would have to pay the political price for it. 

There is an immediate problem with this kind of approach to taxes, or likely more than one. The first and most obvious problem is that there is only one taxpayer. It does not matter too much which level of government levies the taxes because they are all coming from the same source. Passing the buck to municipalities, in other words, creates an illusion. Whether I pay those taxes through property taxes or income taxes or sales taxes is largely irrelevant. What is going on, in all instances, is that money is being re-allocated from the individual to the state. Governments, in fact, go through great lengths to disguise this with all sorts of different names: surtaxes, mandatory levies, mandatory user fees, etc. But, they all amount to the same thing. I'll get to the question of what we "get" out of this in later. My point, however, is that this dishonesty is, in fact, dishonesty. In the case of the Higgs' government, they were introducing a policy that they *knew* was going to increase taxes at the municipal level and was, in fact, designed to do precisely that all the while pretending that they were the party of low taxes. In this case, the policy was an act of manifest dishonesty in which Higgs did one thing while pretending he was in favour of another. 

Amalgamation was, then, from its beginnings a policy that was intended to upwardly harmonize property taxes. This is what has happened. Those complaining about this harmonization are, however, asking another question: is this fair? If my taxes go up and I don't get any new services, am I being ripped off? 

Maybe, but maybe not. The big point I want to make here is that this is an empirical question. There are many reasons why taxes go up. One is inflation. If part of our taxes go toward buying certain products (say, salt for winter snow removal or car parts for municipal vehicles or lawn mowing equipment, etc.) municipal governments are left with two options: increase taxes or decrease services. Someone might say "cut the fat," and that could be an answer but it depends on there being fat to cut. It is an easy and popular answer, particularly among opposition politicians because it makes an implicit promise: I'll cut the fat so you (taxpayer) can have your cake and eat it too (that expression never made sense to me but that is another story).  I will create a situation, this politician says, where you can have everything you have now (or, in some cases more) and you won't have to pay anything extra for it. So, yes, prices went up and that means that the things our town (for instance) buys cost more but we won't pass that extra cost along to you. We will find a way that you can enjoy things that now cost more at a lower cost than you otherwise would pay. 

Political figures like this because it works. It gets people elected by promising the electorate something (some kind of municipal service in this case) without taxpayers, in effect, having to pay full freight. I will come back to this another time, but you can see the appeal. If taxpayer voters don't check things out and work with their ideological perspectives (government = bloat), they could be lured by it. Few people run on this platform: elect me and you taxes will increase.

One answer to the increase in taxes in Tantramar then -- and I have not checked this out -- is that some people are now paying more in taxes because they are having to pay a harmonized rate that represents  the actual cost of the products they are receiving. I hasten to add that I don't know this is the case, but I'll repeat my earlier point as well: this is an empirical question. We can measure it. I'll make up an example: if there were a person living just outside town who had gotten town services (snow removal, water, sewage, access to town supported libraries or events, etc., you can find some of the stuff my town does here), then it would be fair that taxes increased because before they were, in effect, a free rider on other tax payers. If they had subpar services, then, the reverse becomes true. Other tax payers are free riding on them (getting them to subsidize their services). 

I have more to say about this but, you can see the points I want to make. Even a preliminary effort at reasoned discussion takes us a good distance from "taxes are too high" discourse. It asks us to consider what constitutes fairness, to look at tax rates and services, to think about the reasons we have taxes, and how taxes can be politically manipulated. By considering this, we clear away a bunch of misconceptions and -- in my view -- some pretty rank dishonesty and that allows us to take a step toward having a serious and mature discussion about taxes and tax rates. 

Syria, Hard Power, Russia and Iran

A little more than a day ago, rebels in northern Syria crossed the boundary between themselves and government forces, launching what appears to have been a surprisingly successful offensive, the first in years, their first successes in a long time. Indeed, at least in Canada, the Syrian Civil War has not been much in the news, overshadowed by other conflicts. One could even argue that this offensive is the product of those other conflicts, one of their knock consequences, as it were. Why is this important? What does it tell us about the state of foreign policy. 

Foreign policy is a complicated thing that is subject to a range of contingencies. There are appreciable differences in the way different scholars and political figures view foreign policy and think about what their country should be doing on the international stage. My intention is not really to get into that and I don't want to turn other people's tragedies -- people caught up in the fighting -- into my own soapbox. 

The rebel offensive was not, in fact, new. Its size, scope, and objectives seem to be new but even while most of our media were ignoring it, fighting has been going on in Syria. We should also have no illusions about the rebels. They do include pro-democracy forces. But, they also include Islamicists with whom the supporters of democracy and equality might otherwise have little truck or trade. 

What is interesting to me is the scope and depth of this offensive. Rebel forces contend that the offensive itself is a response to government and Russian (I mention Russia for a reason) bombings aimed to destabilize redevelopment in rebel controlled parts of the country. 

Livemap, a good place to get relatively current information, shows the rebel offensive across large swath of the border previously separating them from government forces. Moreover, rebel forces seem to be gaining ground rapidly, sweeping past check points, overwhelming what appear to be relatively limited government forces and taking control -- according to some news reports -- of significant military equipment. 

What happened? How could the rebels have been so successful and what does this mean? The Syrian Civil War, we need to remember, is a multi-front, multi-force war with extensive foreign intervention. Iran and Russia have supplied forces and significant military equipment and expertise to the Syrian government. Without this support, it is likely that it would have collapsed. The Islamic State, at one point, controlled large swaths of Syrian territory -- although few significant population centres -- while Kurdish and other forces control other parts of territory. Some rebel groups "reconciled" to the government and their forces now fight on the government side and Turkey directly intervened, creating a security border, of some sort, in the north supposedly protecting against Kurdish inclusion. There are also shifting alliances. Kurdish forces allied to other democratic forces have worked with government forces to prevent further Turkish intrusion while both sides fought against the Islamic state, tending to stay out of each others' way, rather than working together. 

Syria became a proxy war of sorts in the reconfiguring power relations of the Middle East. Iran and Russia backed the government Assad regime while Turkey and the US backed some of the rebel groups. The end result is a fractured and divided country, a massive refugee problem, and an incredible death toll. 

It would be difficult to pin down all the different interests. I don't think Turkey is, for example, looking to dramatically expand their sphere of interest in Syria, at least that is the noise they are making while Russia and Iran (also working together against Ukraine) do seem to want to expand their authority and prop up their allies in the government. Because of the manifest threat from the Islamic state, other countries -- such as the US -- were willing to play a more limited role, supporting some groups and having some modest military presence. Syria might also not have been viewed as an area of pressing US concern or interest, as well, with the US at the time bogged down in its failed intervention in Afghanistan and the morass that became Iraq. 

For its part, Russia seems to have been OK with a piece of the pie, as it were, and a frozen conflict. A frozen conflict is a conflict that continues with either limited or low level fighting, few gains by anybody, but no peace. For a range of reasons, Putin-era Russian foreign policy was OK with frozen conflicts. It has a number: Transnistria, Georgia, the Donbas and Crimea, along with Syria. Russia also propped up (under the guise of peacekeeping) Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan.

There may be advantages to frozen conflicts from a Russian perspective. Russia is interested in extending its power and hard power is one of the few weapons it has at its disposal. It is on the wrong side of international law in most of these conflicts (say, in Georgia, the Ukraine, Transnistria) and so international mediation that respected international law is a no go for them. In addition to that, the governments of a range of country (China, India, Israel, the central Asian republics) were willing to ignore international law or at least look the other way because they had self interested reasons to maintain some kind of positive relationship with Russia. While democratic countries in the west had either (1) little interest in these parts of the world or (2) in the case of Syria, were willing to let Russia and its proxies bring down a huge hunk of the Islamic State. 

The problem highlighted by what is going on in Syria is that this approach to foreign policy -- to live with frozen conflicts and resolve problems through hard power -- might have reached its limits. It failed completely in Nagorno-Karabakh.  It took the Azeris ten years, but they had ten years because it was a frozen conflict. Armenian forces collapsed and Russia was in no position -- with about 90% of its forces engaged in Ukraine -- to do anything. The result was that Armenia now no longer wants to be part of the Russian orbit. Likewise, the pro-democratic forces in Georgia don't seem willing to go down without a fight. They might not win, but the process is not going to be easy or smooth. And, the Syrian government now seems to be caught flat footed and, at least right now, don't have a response. Their main arms suppliers (Russia and Iran) have to direct their arms supplies elsewhere with Hezbollah having taken a pounding from Israel and the Russian offensive in Ukraine requiring more and more weapons. 

Russia and Iran have been, so far, able to fight multi-front conflicts because of vast energy wealth, but the ability to fight a conflict is different from winning it. The rebels in Syria are showing that.  

The Phantom Menace Does US Politcs

Conservative evangelical Christianity is the phantom menace of American progressives and Canadians, too. It is a phantom menace because, like the movie, most progressives don't know the scope and nature of the problem they are confronting. That makes its menacing character even more menacing.  It is, nonetheless, important to engage conservative evangelicals precisely because they are a voting block that upholds Republicanism and has been particularly committed to Trump. Why is this and what can be done about it? 

First, we need to concede that the task is stunning in its magnitude. Right now, however, the current approach to engaging evangelical Christians is not working. That approach is to point out to them -- over and over again -- on social media that they (1) are not well versed in their own scripture and, hence, (2) vote against the way they should be voting, and so (3) are being taken in by identify politics and charlatans. All of these points can be true. I'll leave my own views out of this discussion for the minute. But, saying them over and over again serves to confirm the perspectives of those who already oppose right-wing populism. Said differently, it confirms for people who are already against Trump and evangelical Christianity that they are right in their views. It does not dislodge or engage evangelical supporters of right-wing populism. I'd argue, in fact, that it can't.

Second, the magnitude of this task is complicated by the fact that we are, as it were, starting to watch a movie that is already in progress. What do I mean? This: the rise of the populist right in the US is not a matter isolated to Trump or his popularity. It is the product of its own extended history. Carol Anderson's White Rage and Kristin Du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne chart the political, religious, gendered, and cultural processes that brought us to this point. I don't want to make these conclusions too stark because that would involve its own drastic simplification, but if Trump had not already existed, he would have been invented. Said differently, the drift of the US right to populism -- and the drift of evangelical Christians along with it -- is not a new phenomenon. It has been conditioned both within the Republican Party and among evangelical Christians for a long time. People like me were surprised by Trump's popularity only because we had not been paying attention to those trajectories of recent American history. 

I might have more to say about this as time goes by, but what it means for an anti-extremist counter political organization is this: there is a lot of work to do. It is not a matter of convincing, say, a retired steel worker with moderate politics to come back to voting Democrat. Instead, among evangelicals, what we are actually talking about is over a generation of populist views that are passed down from generation to generation. Instead, what is being asked something more akin to this: people in tight nit Christian families are being asked to disbelieve everything they have been taught, to disbelieve their parents, their pastors, their closest friends, their wives and husbands. They are being asked to disbelieve just about everything they have ever learnt. An effective counter politics needs to begin from that assumption: it is very late coming to the party and that lateness is a reason it has not been effective. 

This is not, in my view, reason to despair or give up. It is, however, necessarily "pessimism of the intellect" (clear, cold analysis) that is the first step in a renewed engagement and a renewed politics. 

The other important consideration is that progressives do not usually speak to conservative evangelicals. Part of this is that these two groups don't run in the same circles. The other part is that they don't operate through the same media. Conservative evangelicals maintain their own media systems, their own bookstores, conferences, music, speakers, etc. There is little interchange across that division. The problem here is twofold: (1) if you don't talk to someone, you can't have any effect on them. (2) Even if you can talk to them, you are one voice. The overwhelming weight of the voices they hear (through social media, churches, conferences, books) is the other way. 

What is more that overwhelming weight has built in reasons for wanting to deflect any progressive message. They personally disagree with it. But, beyond that, they also economically benefit from the current situation. Marketing to evangelical Christians has become big business. By challenging their conceptions of, say, gender relations, one is actually taking on the livelihood of hundreds or maybe even thousands of authors, speakers, broadcasters, etc. The result is that new messages are not well received, particularly messages that challenge both viewpoints and bottom lines. Directly engaging evangelical Christians, then, will prompt a response and that response will not be an invitation to an open dialogue. 

I don't want my point to be misunderstood. My point is not that evangelical Christians are stuck in a rut, obstinate, dinosaurs. My point is that attempting to communicate in ways that encourage re-thinking is a challenge for other reasons. This could be good news. It does not lessen the challenge but it does mean that the reasons people hold specific views likely relate to things other than bigotry and obstinateness. A conversation is possible and one that can change minds is possible. It is just difficult to get going. 

Evangelicals have long held up the Republican Party in some measure because they are a sure vote. The Republicans know that they have evangelicals in their back pocket and the Democrats barely bother to try to engage them, likely for the same reason. There are a number of things that the Democrats need to do to counter the new Republican hegemony. They need to rebuild party organization. They need to abandon the celebrity endorsement politics on which they try to rely. They need to have real leadership contests and they need to take a long hard look at their policies. For reasons that are odd, the Democrats have made themselves into the last rung of defence of neoliberalism. That is not a good look and their compromise with neoliberalism is coming home to roost. It does not need to be like this. 

I think, however, that they also have to carry the contest on the Republicans home turf. They need to engage evangelicals, communicate directly with people whose votes they are trying to win, carry on friendly conversations (don't reply to vindictive). In the short run, this approach is not going to turn the tide. In the longer run, it is a necessary step. Even if it is not successful, they will force the Republicans to direct time, resources and energies to races they thought were sewn up. That, in itself, would be something of a victory. 

The Return of Trump

Just about everyone and their dog, cat and pet fish has a view on why Kamala Harris lost the US presidential election. The answer is pretty simple: she had fewer votes and fewer votes in the electoral college. I am not trying to be flippant. Like you, I'm sure I've read an endless stream of commentaries on the election and the Democrats across-the-board failure. And, also probably like you, watching the US election from afar, I've been surprised by friends -- well, more acquaintances -- who have said they were undecided or even voted for Trump.  And, I am sure like you, I personally feel that there is more than enough blame to go around. In an effort to say something perhaps slightly different let me make a few points.

First, I don't fault Harris. She did the level headed best that she could have done. She came to the campaign late, the normal leadership contest -- which would have allowed her to stake out policy positions and explain them in more detail -- was not there, and she inherited a political infrastructure that appears to have been little short of a mess. Outside of their core areas of support, the Democrats as a party did not seem to have an organization on the ground that would have allowed them to turn out their vote or broaden it. Harris had about 10 million fewer votes than Biden, while Trump remained constant (suggesting that there was, in fact, not a lot of movement to Trump outside of his core constituencies).  The difference, however, is not that the Biden campaign was better at mobilizing voters. They're weren't and the late Mike Davis actually wrote a really piece on this in Sidecar. Where Biden made inroads, he was able to piggy back on other political groups that organized on the ground but were not part of the Democratic Party apparatus. None of this was Harris' fault. In fact, I think she campaigned as long and as hard as possible. She was dealt a losing hand (for a range of reasons) and ... lost. 

The take away point here is this: in retrospect, what would have happened if there had been a Democratic leadership contest? Harris might have won and used the contest to create her own political space within the Democratic Party. Or, she might not have. I noticed CNN was already lamenting that there is no Democratic front runner for 2028. Allowing that it is way too early to make that determination, let me also say: (1) good and (2) that is lazy journalism on CNN's part. Looking around for a front runner allows easy reporting. The absence of a front runner pushes the party to where it needs to be: considering its voting base, thinking about the policies needed to build the future, counteracting incredibly weak and lazy journalistic presentations of Democrats, and organizing. If there had been a real leadership contest, we don't know who would have won. But, it might not have been Harris. In either case, all bets would have been off. The take away here is that political leaders who are past their best before date need to step aside and it should not have taken George Clooney to make this point. 

Second, and connected to this, is the actual nature of the Democrats campaign. I am not certain it convinced anyone of anything. IOW, those who supported Harris did so before the campaign. Those who supported Trump ... same thing. The voting shifts don't seem to have been from Harris to Trump (or, vice versa) but from Biden to not voting. The Harris campaign amounted to a series of celebrity endorsements.  I understand why they did this. It was a second best option in the absence of an effective on-the-ground organization, but it got tiring to listen to pop stars endorsing Harris. It really did and I wondered ... why should anyone take their cue from them anyway? The drop in vote suggests to me that a lot of people felt the same way. 

The Republicans, I hasten to add, did not necessarily do any better organizing but they could continue to piggyback on self-organized groups and on evangelical churches to motivate and -- in this case maintain -- their vote. 

For the Dems, the take away is this: they need to do three things: 

1. Rebuild their party apparatus where it is weak 
2. Make alliances with other existing groups with strong organizations on the ground (groups that are opposed to Republicanism but have similar ideological perspectives as Democrats)
3. Begin the process of going after the Republicans on their "home turf." 

I'll come back to that last point in a future blog. But, for now, let me say that I think it is important for Democrats to use the time that they have to take the political contest to the Republicans on their home turf. This is, in fact, what Trumpists did to the Democrats in the Blue Wall. This is not a TV commercial, snap your fingers and it is fixed, kind of thing. It will take time but the Dems have time right now. And, it will be the right politics. But, I'll explain that later. 

Third, if you have not read Carol Anderson's White Rage, you should. Anderson makes a number of key points to which more people should have been paying attention. In very brief these are as follows. (#1) The Republican approach to politics that we have seen under Trump is not new. In fact, it dates to well before Obama, even if Obama's electoral success gave further impetus to it. The easy contrast between a pre-Trump Republican Party and a Trump one does not really stand up. In fact, it was the changes through which the Republican Party passed independently of Trump that laid the ground work for him. An example is "voter fraud." I've listened in amazement to commentators who seem to honestly think that Trump made this up and that his supporters who continue to believe it are being tricked by him. As Anderson points out, the truth of the matter is that the idea of voter fraud went back to the Bush, Jr. days. The numbers Trump cited may have been his own but the idea of massive voter fraud was circulating within the Republican Party long before Trump arrived on the scene. Said differently, Republican supporters believed Trump because they already believed -- independently of him saying it -- that voter fraud had become part of American public life. The campaign against Trump's perspective needed to dislodge not Trump's words but a couple of decades worth of self-confirming discussion replete with its own data among Republicans.  It turns out, that was impossible to do.

(#2) Likewise, the use of vigilante politics (let's call it that) long pre-dates Trump as well. Again, Bush, Jr. could be implicated, but the roots are deeper than that. Republican politics has long empowered ordinary citizens to take the law into their own hands and feel that they are right in so doing. One could recall the disruption to recounting in Florida during the Bush/Gore election. Said differently, no one in the Republican Party batted an eye at the vigilante politics that accompanies Trump because it was already deeply embedded among the faithful. 

What does this mean? It means that getting high-profile Republicans to endorse Harris could do little good because the trajectory of Republican politics was already set. The discourses Trump and his followers mobilized were not new, but old and that oldness gave them strength. In the face of everything else, Harris was fighting history. 

Chris Bassitt is a Smart Guy: Part II

One of the odd/interesting idiosyncrasies of the Blue Jays this past year is their love affair with old rookies. Not all of these players are technically rookies, but they all got their first real significant playing time with the Jays this past season. The Jays opened the year with twenty-five year old Davis Schneider in LF and twenty-eight year old Ernie Clement in a utility role that morphed into a regular gig at third base. Bowden Francis, also twenty-eight, made the pitching staff (although was in and out for the first half of the season). Over the span of the year, the Jays brought in Will Wagner (26), gave playing time to Nathan Lukes (29), traded for Joey Loperfido (25) and called up Spencer Horwitz (26). The only players that looked like real rookie-aged rookies were Addison Barger, who was 24, which would have made him an average aged rooked and Leo Jimenez (23) who was more or less forced into duty after the Jays conceded Bichette couldn't play and they had no one else on their roster who was anything more than an emergency sub at short. 

Collectively, they weren't horrible. Clement looked (to me) good at third base. His offensive numbers were break even (102 OPS+). Horwitz had a good season at the plate. Second base is not his natural position and its showed.  His dWar (a measure of defensive value) was bad and really bad when he played second. But, his 125 OPS+ put him well above replacement offensive value. He had serious problems against lefties, but this also means that his numbers against right handers were even better. Lukes and Wagner had good offensive numbers but more limited playing time. And, Francis, of course, pitched incredibly well down the stretch. Jimenez was basically average and that is actually not bad for a player in their first year. The other old rookies did not fare as well. Schneider (78 OPS+, 100 is average), Barger (70), Loperfido (65) looked enthusiastic but overmatched. 

What are we to make of this? I think it is a development strategy. IOW, I think this was an intentional choice. But we need to be careful with the word "choice." People make history, but not under circumstances of their choosing. IOW, if, given other options, the Jays management might have gone a different way. My bet is that they'd prefer to a team like Baltimore's, which is loaded with good younger and young players. Or, they would have preferred a farm system that was producing talent. Or, they would have preferred to have signed Ohtani. Failing that, however, I think they tried to do the best with what they had. 

What was the best with what they had? They had two choices. One: burn the house down, which is what I said was a smart plan.  This was a nuclear option in which everyone was on the block with the idea of securing grade-A prospects from other teams to rebuild the farm system and become competitive in three years. They didn't go this way and we don't know why. Maybe they tried and no one wanted Bichette or Gausman or Kirk, etc. The other option was to try to find players who would be ready to fill out a major league roster and contribute next year.  This is they way they went. Hence old rookies. 

Said differently -- and to their credit the Jays management said this -- they were not looking to rebuild but believed that their core talent was good enough to compete in 2025 with the right additions. How will this work? It is very difficult to say. Bowden Francis pitched really well down the stretch but this was down the stretch against a lot of teams that were not good and playing out string. Pitching well is better than pitching poorly. He had two good starts against the Angels, one against the Cubs, a couple against Boston and one against Texas. He did pitch against good teams, the Phillies, Mets, Baltimore, but his best games were against teams that were poor, out of it, and auditioning players for next season much like the Jays.  And, this might not be fair, but I am also haunted by the Chris Colabello story.

Colabello, you may recall, was a Jays player who had kicked around the minors and had a couple of shots with the Twins in which he seriously under performed before he was pressed into duty by the Jays who were in a playoff hunt but short on bench players. Colabello played like he never had before, nor would again. In a bit more than than half a season's worth of at bats, he hit 15 HRs and drove in 54 while scoring 55 runs. His OPS+ was 138. His OPS .886, all-star territory for a regular player. Here is the thing, he was 31 years old and this is shockingly unusual. Very few players established completely new performance levels for themselves after about 27, before which they are improving as they age and gain experience. And, you can usually see them coming. Some do. The example, I always use is Tony Phillips, who went from being a regular at Oakland to an all-start in Detroit at a similar age. He scored 100+ runs for the first time in his life at 33. It happens, but it is exceedingly rare. Jose Bautista did something similar with the Jays at age 29.

But here is the thing, neither Bautista nor Phillips were poor players. They were major leaguers who were under performing but had been solid starters. Colabello was nowhere to be seen. He went from being a poor player to playing at an all-star level late in his career and that is winning lottery ticket rare. It turned out, of course, that it wasn't true. Colabello was using performance enhancing drugs.

Now, I am not saying Francis is. In fact, he doesn't have the look of a player who uses PEDs. My point is simply that he might be good.  The Jays might have found a diamond in the rough and I kind of hope so because I liked watching him pitch and he seems like a good guy. It is just rare and the rarity makes it improbable that he'll keep pitching at that level. 

Horwitz played well, but really can't hit lefties at all and has no natural defensive position on the Jays. Clement impressed me, but is he a championship quality player at third? 

In my last post, I agreed with Chris Bassitt: the Jays are not one player away from being competitive. They go into next season hoping that Romano and Bichette are back to form, that Springer can arrest his decline, that Kirk really is an everyday catcher. That's a lot of "ifs." And, here is the thing. I am not sure there is space on the team for Barger and Loperfido if they sign an outfielder. I am not certain what they do with Horwitz if they sign a middle infielder. 

The Jays have gambled on a very unusual team development strategy. I think they were doing the best they could with what they had. Exactly how they got to this "what they had" place is another story (and, not a good one), but let's leave that aside for now. Will this strategy work? I'd love it if it did but I think the odds have to be against them. 

Chris Bassitt is a Smart Guy

As the World Series wound to its close in a hail of hyperbole and a triumph of big budget teams, Blue Jays media is rife with rumours.  That might be because they don't have a lot else to discuss. The Jays have made some significant steps behind the scenes, firing coaches and player development folk in the minor league system. This is simply a belated recognition of what everyone already knew: the Jays suck at player development. If these rumours are to be believed, the Jays are in on just about every potential free agent that they can in on in an effort to rapidly redevelop (what baseball folk call "reload") the team to be competitive (aka, make the playoffs) next year. What is interesting is that the most intelligent comments we've heard on the Jays season likely came from one of their players, Chris Bassitt, who strikes me as a pretty observant guy. Before the end of the season Bassitt gave an impromptu assessment of the Jays season and what went wrong. His assessment is basically correct. And, if it is basically correct, it suggest that the Jays woes will likely continue. Why? 

In that interview -- after which Jays reporters and media people were at great pains to deny that he said what he said -- Bassitt said the Jays had three problems:

1. The Jays had no back up plan. They allocated close to $700 million to signing Shohei Ohtani -- who landed with the Dodgers -- but didn't have a plan in place if -- as it turned out -- they didn't sign him. In effect, the Jays put all their eggs in one basket. They quickly tried to cobble together some kind of back up plan (Vogelbach, Kiermaier, Turner, IKF) but that was more a prayer than a plan and it was about as effective as one should have expected it to be. Bassitt's point: the front office is paid a lot of money to have a plan.  The fact that they didn't, is a problem. 

2. The Jays are not getting any younger. I forget Bassitt's exact wording but it was something like "there is no way to make me twenty six again." His point is this: the Jays entered the season with an aging pitching staff. They were, in particular, relying on starters who were good but whose careers were necessarily going to start to decline because of their age. Berrios pitched well (but he was the youngest of the crop). Bassitt, Gausman, and the now departed Kikutchi all took steps backwards in a year where -- failing a real plan for team development -- the Jays front office was counting on a repeat of the previous season from the starters. It just wasn't there. All pitchers added to their ERAs and Bassitt himself pitched significantly fewer innings that the year before. This put strain on a bullpen that, in turn, just wasn't there and was, in turn, relying on relying on aging pitchers with injury histories. 

The logic could, of course, be extended to positions players. Springer and Kiermaier were just not going to get better. 

3. The Jays are not one player away.  I don't remember the exact number but I think it was four. Bassitt suggested that the Jays were four -- all-star quality -- players away from competitiveness. Put in other words, the difference between the Jays and making the playoff is not a player or two having an off season but a significant difference in talent. The gap is wide.

If that is the problem what can be done about it? 

Well, rebuilding the farm system and player development is a necessary first step. The Jays were putting all their eggs in one basket because their system was simply not producing the players that would make them competitive. The Jays aren't Baltimore.  

Put all this together, and what it means is that the Jays will likely not be competitive this year coming, if we define competitiveness as something like having a real chance at winning. I strongly suspect the Jays will be better next year. I suspect, for instance, that Bo Bichette was actually injured the entire year but the Jays kept him in games -- despite truly rotten play both offensively and defensively -- out of sheer desperation. I think they were hoping the problems that plagued Bichette were not as serious as they ended up being, that he'd catch fire -- and he is a streaky hitter -- and propel that Jays into competition for a wild card spot. I do worry about Bichette's long-term prospects. I'm not sold on his D and his swing looks to me to guarantee injury problems. But, he was nowhere near as bad as he played this past year. 

I also think Alejandro Kirk might have finally gotten his act together after what was a close to two year slump. He end up with a slightly sub 100 OBS, which means offensively he was costing the Jays games, and scored a measly 23 runs. He is not a kid anymore either. He'll be 26 next year and has been in the league since his late-season arrival at the age of 21. But, regular playing time after Jansen was traded seemed to do him good. 

Finally, I think the Jays will go after free agents. There are free agents I'd be worried about. Santander is a player I've long liked, but he had his best seasons at 30, the year he is set to be a free agent. He also plays right field, which means that if Springer is coming back (!?), one of them will have to move to left.  My view, however, is that signing Santander would be a lot like signing Springer: it would add an expensive name to the payroll on a longer term contract that the team will end up regretting after a year or two. 

Even with this, I suspect the Jays will look at add real value via free agency or trades.

They Jays will be better but ... so what? They won't be a good enough to win the World Series. They might get into the playoffs but is that our definition of competitive? I honestly don't know. It might be. It might be what the front office is setting as a goal. And, that being the case, it is likely within reach. But, Chris Bassitt is a smart guy. If you definition of competitiveness is something else: say, a reasonable chance of winning, then, the Jays are much further away. 

Labour's Mandate: Thoughts on the UK Election

I happened to be in the UK during the election and I was impressed by the overall dignity and decorum of British politics. It wasn't perfect. The Tories raised all kinds of false spectres in a vain effort to ward off the scope of their inevitable defeat. There was a scandal involving sitting politicians gambling on the election (one labour candidate seems to have tried to short himself, betting on his opponent), and the expected racist fiasco coming out of the new Reform UK. Overall -- and perhaps because the election was a foregone conclusion -- there was little of the Boris Johnston effect. Much of the commentary has focused both on the size of Labour's victory in terms of elected representation and its supposed absent mandate in terms of its popular vote. I think this was a good election for Labour and not simply because they won. I think it provides Labour with an opportunity to refashion Britain for what is now clearly a post-Brexit age along lines something other than the "new Labour" of Tony Blair. There are a number of significant points that follow from the election. 

First, the issue for Labour might not be the overall size of their popular vote (however important this can be), but the fact that they won in virtually all key geographic regions they needed to. The British electorate appears deeply divided, something that should not surprise us and something that is not a horrible thing.  I would argue that a divided electorate represents actual divisions in society and that an organized response to this on the part of Labour is preferable to a false sense of popular unity. For Labour, what was significant was not that they took advantage of a divided electorate but that they were able to defeat different opponents in different regions. They took Scottish central belt from SNP, retook the northern "red wall" from the Brexit Conservatives, and pushed back Reform UK in southern Wales and urban northeast. They drove the Tories out of urban London and recaptured the industrial/post-industrial northern and midlands. Moreover, they finished second in an impressive number of seats, suggesting that they have not exhausted their growth potential.  (Wikipedia has a map of second place finishes.) 

What this means is that Labour is, in important ways, the architect of its own victories. With the SNP on the run (despite what its proponents say), the Tories disorganized, and Reform largely kept off the board, the main opposition will come from moderate centrist Liberal Democrats. For Labour this not a horrible thing. Labour is not competitive everywhere and this is where their low popular vote really shows.  Rural southern England was a battle between the Lib Dems and the Tories; they have no real supporters in Northern Ireland, and the strongest Scottish unionists still prefer the Tories. What all this means, though, -- and this is why Labour should be in a good mood -- is that they fought a multi-front electoral campaign against different opponents and won the battle on the ground. 

Second, the Tories are left with a question and it is the same question that confronted American Republicans and Canadian Conservatives. Is an inclusive conservatism possible? In Canada, we are seeing something of a wave of nostalgia for Brian Mulroney's government, at least among political historians. I've been struggling to understand why. The answer, I think, is that Mulroney's PCs represented that last real effort to build a diverse and inclusive conservatism in Canada. At some future time I'll go back over that history to consider what ultimately made that project impossible. For now, however, we likely should take Mulroney at his word. He supported Charter rights, looked to build a big-tent conservatism that ditched its grass roots opposition to bilingualism and multiculturalism while respecting regionalism and promoting some kind of green politics. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I don't think I share this nostalgia, but I think I see its appeal. Mulroney's government -- and the figures who tried to keep his form of conservatism alive -- believed a diverse, inclusive conservatism possible. 

In Canada, the Harper agenda pushed away this idea and Poilieve has -- and will, if elected -- go further. In the US and France, this connection of conservatism with intolerance is even more advanced (and, my list is not complete). The Tories under Sunak tried to position themselves differently than under Johnston and that positioning was a gamble. That gamble wasn't just unfavourable electoral conditions befalling a government that had been in power for an oddly long (and unstable) time. The gamble was that one could shift British Toryism away from name-calling and toward a broadly inclusive centre-right movement. I don't know what will happen next for theTories, but this gamble is not off to a good start. 

Third, Reform UK was Reform UK. A few of its candidates were shocked that there were racists in the party but no one should be. Reform represented a peal away from the Tories but it also represented something else: the creation of a new intolerant political movement. Some Tories seem to feel that this movement can be folded back into the Tories but it is not clear -- to me at least -- that Reform supporters were good Tories to begin with. I suspect, most found themselves into Reform through the fraying boundaries of the Brexit Party and the shadow of UKIP that still floats about British politics. Said differently, folding Reform UK into the Tories would likely mean -- ideologically at least -- the reverse: folding the Tories into Reform. In this case, it is not clear that one could simply add the two votes together (Reform and Tories) and see how many seats that might have won. 

Why? Well, like the Republican voter base in the US, I suspect that there are a heck of a lot of Tories who (1) accept intolerance as a good thing and won't jump ship because someone points out that their party is drifting to populism, but (2) there are voters who will not move to the Tories (say, Lib Dem or SNP voters) and that will continue a split electorate. There are moderate Tories who will sit on their hands or consider other options (like the Lib Dems). 

Fourth, what about the SNP? They took a real kick and find themselves in a position similar to the BQ in Canada. They are a party with a purpose but without a potential means to that purpose. The influx of Labour and Lib Dem MPs combined with the remaining Tories likely means that the SNP has no chance of winning another referendum and they may not want to even try. Losing a second referendum (as the PQ discovered in Quebec) deflected separatism for a generation and brought to light new political formations (like the CAQ). The SNP has also discovered what others separatist parties in government discover: that policies other than independence count. Said differently, if one is not a good government, getting voted back in because of independence is no guarantee of victory. 

Overall, then, it is easy to be critical of the Labour victory, but I'd rather have a victory than a defeat. I'd rather be Labour, than the SNP, Reform UK, or the Tories. Victory gives Labour a chance to build a different kind of Britain. I hope they take it.