3 Topics Over Dinner

3 Topics Over Dinner is a dinner discussion group that meets on weekends. Links to articles or videos on the internet about 3 Topics, usually unrelated to one another, are posted on the event listing. Attendees read the articles (and other sources if they so wish) or watch the videos to be discussed over dinner. The idea is to be similar to a book club, only with far less reading. The idea is that this required reading / video viewing will be less than 3 hours.

We go to a different nationality restaurant every month, and always restaurants that will do separate checks for a large group, so everyone can pay with their own credit card and we don't have to figure out how to split the check. The restaurants are chosen to be quiet and nice, but not extremely exorbitant. A link to the menu of the restaurant, with prices listed, will always be provided on the announcement.

The restaurants chosen will always be in Manhattan, 77th St or further south.

RSVP's will be limited to have about 8 people at dinner, small enough that everyone can hear one another and we can conduct a single conversation.

The group has been going roughly once a month since 2008. It was formed on meetup.com and has shifted to Eventbrite.

A $5.00 deposit is required to RSVP. This deposit is refunded in cash ten minutes after the event starts. No-shows and latecomers forfeit their deposit.

Monthly Climate Science and Energy Engineering Dinner

Nearly all economists, including conservatives and especially including Liberatarians, agree that the tariff package that Trump wants to impose is a terrible idea.

Trump held a press conference where he showed a chart showing the alleged "tariffs" that other countries were imposing on US exports to them:

It turns out these numbers weren't really tariffs or duties imposed on US exports, according to Forbes magazine, "journalist James Surowiecki suggested on X it appeared the tariff rate Trump said other countries were charging the U.S. was calculated by taking the U.S.’s trade deficit with a country and dividing it by the country's exports to the U.S., with the “reciprocal rate” calculated by then dividing that figure by two. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative later confirmed that was the basic formula it used." So the numbers were not, as Trump wanted us to believe, an accurate showing of the duties other countries were imposing on our goods, but rather a wild distortion of the facts.

People who believe the president honestly think that all Trump is doing is "fighting back" against an extremely unfair trade status quo, while in fact he is launching an unprovoked trade war on the whole world that will probably trigger a global recession and especially a recession in the US.

Many Trump supporters expect that the tariffs will bring us well-paying low-skilled union jobs, but in a country where labor is as expensive as the US, factories are full of robots. There aren't many jobs in them, and what jobs there are are for highly skilled mechanics.

These manufacturing plants that Trump and his supporters want brought into being won't be able to compete and sustain themselves against foreign competetion without Trump's new tariffs. We may have a new president who feels differently about tariffs in a few years. And economic policymaking by Trump is so erratic, fast-changing, and unpredictable that few investors are going to want to make any long term bets on it.

Topic 2: Trump's Due Process and Border Enforcement

Trump's critics argue that he is deliberately defying the courts and that this is a threat to the "due process" guaranteed by the constitution, threatening spiraling the country into a dictatorship.

Trump is arguing that border enforcement is impossible unless due process is violated. Many Republicans feel that a failure to enforce the border poses an existential threat to everything they believe in, on a par with the threat posed by undermining due process, so many of them are willing to forgive a violation of due process here and there, particularly if the victims have no legal right to be in the country.

Trump argues that with over a dozen million people in this country who should be removed, we have no hope of making any progress if each is entitled to a full trial with a dozen jurors. But "due process" doesn't require that -- a hearing will do.

Trump could effectively enforce the border by aggressively prosecuting those who hire them -- the laws are already on the books, so this would involve no controversial conflict with the courts. The fact that he doesn't do this suggests that the conflicts with courts are the end here, rather than the means.

I would estimate that at least 30% of Americans feel that there should be no border enforcement at all, and they frequently argue that the constitution, international law, and treaties we've signed guarantee that effective border enforcement is impossible, that being how they want it. But such arguments play right into Trump's hands -- they back up his excuse to violate due process.

Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan deliberately broke the law to obstruct the deportation of an illegal immigrant and she has been arrested for it. Many people are protesting her arrest. But the constitution definitely doesn't say that judges may not be arrested or prosecuted when they violate the law.

Hannah Dugan and her supporters agree with Trump on one thing: that the border enforcement issue is more important than the rule of law.

A president defying the courts is an impeachable offense, but impeachment is not possible until he loses a lot more popularity, which may happen if he wrecks the economy. Hopefully if Trump continues to disobey the courts he will pay the price, and similarly we should hope that Judge Hannah Dugan is prosecuted, convicted, removed from the bench, disabarred, and incarcerated.

Here's commentary from Andrew Sullivan, which is paywalled, for a pirate version, click here.

Topic 3: How We Were Deceived About the Lab Leak Theory

There is not an overwhelming consensus on whether COVID originated with a lab leak in Wuhan, but it is clear that many scientists acted in bad faith to rule the idea out.

The real tragedy is that part of the philosophy of Trump supporters is that "everybody's screwing us", including foreigners (in this country and out) and highly educated people and "experts". Having the experts behave in such bad faith justifies Trump appointing RFK Jr, an "anti-expert", to a position where his stupidity can cost many lives.