Donald Trump's challenge to a hallowed principle of Chinese nationhood has opened a counter to China's unconstrained hegemony of the Pacific Rim. If China wants its sphere of influence then it must show those under it that its an useful order. If it allows the reckless kid next door to play with nuclear missiles then its only natural for Taiwan to reconsider mainland China's usefulness as the sheriff in town and ask the United States for weapons to help them protect themselves from that crazed neighbor, just like South Korea did and Vietnam wants to.
James Madison’s impetus to form a better system of governance than the Articles of Confederation came from the observation that it had descended into a chaotic tyranny of the majority. The economies of the various States stagnated because the property of individuals was at risk to the will of the mob. One of many examples was that the law was fashioned to benefit the many debtors to the detriment of the few debt holders so that trade and banking came to a halt. The Constitution was devised as a federal system that protected individual rights under a unified rule of law and yet allowed States, “small republics with it leaders on a tight leash”, to practice their majority rule within the constraints of those rights. The Electoral College system was devised by the elites who drafted the Constitution to keep the unruly from power. Today with the plural majority having lost there is much questioning and consternation regarding how it was that this scheme of the establishment allowed the deplorable to enter into the halls of power. Nevertheless it can be argued that with 472 counties voting for Hillary Clinton and 2,874 counties voting for Donald Trump the Electoral College gave voice to a rural minority over the tyranny of the urban majority and that it is a just result with the clear message that the Federal Government overreached to become the giant, Roman, republic feared by our forefathers.
Trump mobilized voters seeking to avenge the harm that the establishment had inflicted on them. How else can Bernie Sanders' appeal among the very same voters be explained? The AIG bailout in 2008 in particular created the singular image of bonuses for Wall Street and pink slips for the rest of us that cemented the anti-establishment fury on which he fed. It's a resentment urban elites on both coasts forgot about and which a popular voting system would have kept under the rug.
Only 472 counties voted for Hillary Clinton on Election Day. But according to Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution, they account for 64 percent of the nation’s economic activity. The 2,584 counties where Mr. Trump won, by contrast, generated only 36 percent of America’s prosperity. With a rural urban divide such as this, one size fits all federal solutions are problematic. The Electoral College is exposing the rural minority's rights. The fair thing is for urban States like New York and California to self fund their progressive programs, even fairer is for New York and California to let their metropolitan areas self fund rather than inflicting them on their rural counties. What is clear though is that an election result based on individual votes would make our country even more Washington elites based than it is.
Trump is getting a lot of flack for ignoring CIA briefings. He may not be wrong. Think of it as a biased point of view just like reading The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.
30 September 2016 blogpost: New Law Shifts Fight on Claims for 9/11 Victims and Saudis Warn of Risks is a headline that reflects CIA Director Brennan's erroneous view that Saudi Arabia is a key intelligence source for our fight against terrorism rather than that their extreme Wahabbi vision of Islam is the source of terrorism. Another problem is that Authoritarian regimes are opaque to the CIA but with the reassurance it's getting the really good stuff from official sources. The Agency ought to remember its experience with the Shah of Iran's authoritarian regime where it was caught flat footed when he had to flee. Brennan appears to be complacent about the need for independent intelligence gathering in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
15 May 2015 blogpost: Mike Morrell’s hours on Charlie Rose shows a foreign policy dependent on containing the middle eastern pressure cooker rather than exploring paths to relieve some points. I need to read his new book and critique that which appears obvious, such as where he laments the loss of Gaddafi’s stabilizing influence in Libya and welcomes Egypt’s recent military coup d'etat. Tuesday May 19th Just saw "Secrets, Politics and Torture" on Frontline and my opinion of Mike Morrell dropped like a stone. Don't want to bother reading his book and when he is on Charlie Rose I'll turn it off since my doubts about the CIA torture program are affirmed and its determination to cover up its ineffectiveness just makes Morrell a shill for a fraud.
ISIS poised to Recapture Palmyra From Syrian Troops proves that military conquest with political dysfunction as a follow up is another in the long line of events where winning the battle is losing the war. Bashar al-Assad does not have the politic to re-assemble Syria. Turkey on the other hand is doing its level best to separate out its Kurdish minority. A regional solution for Erdogan to consider is to annex Sunni Arab regions of Syria and Iraq and give up Turkey's Kurdish regions to Iraq's Kurdistan as a means to bring political function into the areas' dysfunction.
Trump's Taiwan Call could be a realpolitik opening to control North Korea, the kid next door playing with nuclear warheads and terrorizing not only South Korea, but Taiwan and Japan as well. If China in its quest for a regional hegemony won't promote a Pax China by taking out Kim Jong-un then its logical for those at risk to seek U.S. arms to defend themselves from errant or not so errant missiles.
Andrew Jackson is the original anti-establishment populist who slayed the Adams dynasty just as surely as Donald Trump slayed the Bush dynasty and Clinton family rule. And as with The Donald, Jackson’s frontier populism rode roughshod over a minority, native Americans which in comparison make Trump’s threats against Mexicans and Muslims tame. Nevertheless Jackson is considered an important President. It was his argument to Henry Clay against breaking the union that Lincoln called for to review before taking the oath of President and as the South was seceding, yet so reviled by Washington elites that they called him a jackass, ergo the donkey symbolising modern day Democrats. Less known is Jackson’s populist hatred of banks, specifically the 2nd Bank of the United States purposely lead by Nicholas Biddle to take the debts of Congressmen and Senators as a means of influence and power outside of the Constitution and the executive branch. Trump on the other hand is showing a rare political disconnect with his rural supporters by calling on Goldman Sachs to fill out the Treasury despite it being the same bank that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama called upon. The very name voters believed got the bonuses while they got the shaft. Curiously the assessment of Messrs. Simon Johnson and James Kwak in their book 13 Bankers was that Jackson’s veto of the re-authorization of Hamilton’s central bank opened up the U.S. economy during the later half of the eighteen hundreds in beneficial ways, especially in comparison to Mexico and Brazil’s closed elite central banking structures of the time. The point being that if Trump is going to be hard on an interest group he could do worse than take a few scalps on Wall Street to placate his supporters and do the country some good.
Trump is caving on all fronts. The wall is turning into a fence, Hillary will not be locked up and water boarding isn't all that effective. He is disappointing many of his followers. He needs one promise on which to strike hard. Break up the too big to fail banks is an issue that would show his rural supporters that he hears their resentment to Obama's unfair coddling of Wall Street and evicting of Main Street. The beauty of a demagogic, think Andrew Jackson's hatred of banks and vetoing The Bank of the United States Washington elites power grab, persecution of this group is that it would be good for the economy and renew America's belief of fair play.
Brooks' A Time for Listening identifies Trump's win as a push back from The Tyranny of Experts. It's a libertarian resistance to Washington solutions for local issues.
Warren G. Harding is considered the worst President of the previous century. James Grant's The Forgotten Depression shows, however, an executive who saw the great threat to the economy was to leave in place the spending and government controls put in place during The Great War, World War I. His command to the newly formed budget bureau, its director, Charles Dawes, and 1200 of his minions on June 20, 1921 right in the thick of the depression of 1920 was to "restore something like prewar order and balance in the nation's finances."
"The administration is committed to economy in government. This statement is not with any thought of criticizing has gone before. Its made with in anew realization of the necessity of driving out the loose, unscientific expenditures of government. There is not a menace in the world today like that of a growing public indebtedness and mounting public expenditures. There has seemingly grown up an impression that the public treasuries are inexhaustible things, and with it a conviction that no efficiency and no economy are ever to be thought of in public expense. We want to reverse things."
How the Iranian-Saudi Proxy Conflict Tore the Mideast Apart goes a long way toward explaining the futility of pursuing actions or policies that favor one side of this religious divide in Islam. American policy should be a pox on both houses because its preferable to deal with declared enemies than with careless friends.
Common Sense: Trump Size Idea for a New President: Build StuffBuild something awe-inspiring. Something Americans can be proud of. Something that will repay the investment many times over for generations to come.
Build the modern-day equivalent of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam, the Lincoln Tunnel or the Timberline Lodge. Or even, given Mr. Trump’s passion for the sport, another Bethpage State Park Black Course — the first public golf course to host the prestigious United States Open.
The Golden Gate Bridge under construction. The bridge was completed in 1937, in the Great Depression, during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
All of these are Depression-era New Deal public works projects started under President Franklin D. Roosevelt that are still in use.
Fed Official Offers a Way to Eliminate Mega Banks by requiring Too Big Too Fail Banks to have more capital than smaller ones and reverse their advantage. Neal Kashkari is right to say, "nation’s current political anger and polarization to how the government responded to the financial crisis — which allowed large banks to survive while thousands of Americans struggled to keep their homes and find new jobs. “The bailouts violated a core belief that has been handed down from generation to generation in our society that if you take a risk you bear the rewards and consequences of that risk,” he said. “We had to tear that up during the crisis because the biggest banks were going to fail and bring down the U.S. economy. And when you violate the core beliefs of society it does lead to anger and a feeling that this wasn’t fair.”
Philippine's Deal With China on Disputed Sea Pokes Hole in U. S. Strategy is an unnecessarily provocative headline. Hopefully our strategy is not to deny reality and resist China's expansion of power and influence. Rather we face it and accommodate. As odious as Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte may be to our sensibilities his recent visit and accommodation with China has a positive conflict defusing effect.
Alec McGillis' “Go Midwest Young Hipster” seeks to moderate rural over representation in Washington by convincing young hipsters to go populate the hinterlands with their urban sensibilities and votes. Unfortunately there is a population trend back toward the cities because of their economic and intellectual stimuli, which make this appeal futile. For example, General Electric moved its headquarters from a rural campus in Fairfield Connecticut to Boston, Massachusetts to be close to the high tech hipsters it needs to invigorate the corporation. Taxes were not the issue because the move was to Taxachusetts, as the neighbor to the north is colloquially called. Fairfield is suburban nevertheless too isolated to attract the young techies GE wants to work and innovate with so that intelligent hipsters will not hear the call of a political dilettante to populate and conquer rural opposition for an urban majority’s vision.
U.S. Planning to Start Assault on Raqqa Soon to keep the pressure on ISIS as the battle of Mosul proceeds in Iraq. But the tactic of using the Kurdish pesh merga as an imperial force to conquer a Sunni Arab city is contrary to the region's move toward a balkanizing of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish tribes into their respective states. Better to invite Sunni Turkey to invade Syria and give Sunni Arabs support to take and administrate Raqqa because it does't conflict, in other words not trying to unite allies "who essentially loathe each other", with the regions ethnic separation.
David Brooks states in his editorial that "Moral capital is the set of of shared habits, institutions and values that make common life possible" and that "This year Trump is dismantling those restraints one by one." His declaring "Hillary must hate Catholics" at the Al Smith dinner was a particularly cringing, I can't watch this, moment which brings up the point that it's church leaders who are failing us most. Ralph Reed, a politically motivated evangelical, has yet to cede the point that Trump is the Devil, a not particularly artful one at that with his unconvincing last minute expedient conversions. Jerry Falwell Jr.'s unconditional support for Trump shows his father's moral force was just politically motivated and Liberty University is now a shameful place to seek a Christian education. The founding fathers separated church and state for a reason. Its mix this year has put us down a moral rat hole which makes clear why they did it, for the good of The Church and The State.
Behind Putin's Combativeness is the need to stay on the wire in an act where there is no end point to step off. Secretary of State John Kerry is particularly obtuse on this point. The way to motivate him is to make him look good. For example when Bashar al-Assad crossed Kerry / Obama's red line with chemical weapons it was Putin who forced his client toward the good result of eliminating them to general acclaim, though not from the U.S. press. Calling Putin a war criminal is diplomacy guaranteed to lead to a poor result and increased tensions. Putin's motive in Syria is to keep Russia's only naval base on the Mediterranean safe with a local leader beholden to him. There is no possibility of Putin abandoning his client. But from Bashar's last visit in Moscow its apparent there is little respect for him. Putin could be convinced to contain him in his Shiite Alawite region of Syria, which of course also has the naval base, because of the doubt that he can ever regain and control the Sunni Arab and Kurdish regions. Of course this negotiation would require the U.S. to give up the pipe dream of a unified Syria. This result gives Putin the image in the World's eye of a disciplining parent of an errant child in pursuit of a real peace and saves him from further insulting Sunni Muslims in Russia and other in his sphere of influence.
Strikes as Proof of Role of U.S. is an example of how a a careless friend can entangle you in fight you have no business being in. Yemen has Islam's divide between Shia and Sunni. The Houthis being Shiite are the logical clients of Iran as the majority Sunni population is logically supported by Saudi Arabia. The Saudi's escalated the turmoil in Yemen with gross use of American built F15 fighter bombers. That Iran counters by supplying missiles is natural. What isn't is our taking sides in Islam's internecine divide by using our Navy to keep the missiles out and support Saudi's air strikes. The next step is for a Navy Vessel to be in an incident with a Gulf of Tonkin like resolution demanding we enter Yemen to settle what?
Deutsche Bank's distress is symptomatic of malaise from too big to fail banks. Assets locked up in derivatives, best described by Warren Buffet as weapons of wealth destruction, and stagnant loans, mostly ordered by the government to support Greece and other Euro deadbeats. Germany doesn't need another Bundesbank. It shouldn't help out Deutsche weather its permanent malaise but break it up so it does something useful rather be the rug all the problems are swept under.
New Law Shifts Fight on Claims for 9/11 Victims and Saudis Warn of Risks is a headline that reflects CIA Director Brennan's erroneous view that Saudi Arabia is a key intelligence source for our fight against terrorism rather than that their extreme Wahabbi vision of Islam is the source of terrorism. Another problem is that Authoritarian regimes are opaque to the CIA but with the reassurance it's getting the really good stuff from official sources. The Agency ought to remember its experience with the Shah of Iran's authoritarian regime where it was caught flat footed when he had to flee. Brennan appears to be complacent about the need for independent intelligence gathering in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Russia's Brutality in Aleppo May Be Calculated, and Effective is a headline that attributes too much long term thinking to a tactic. Aleppo is a city that Bashar al-Assad wants in his Alawite enclave and Russia is aiding that effort. But there is no indication that Russia would be willing to support an effort to bring Sunni Arab and Kurdish regions back into a unified Syria under his control.
Headlines in today's paper, Fate of British Labour Party May Be in Leftist Group's Hand and Opposition Leader Survives Revolt in Fight for Reins of Spain's Socialist Party, shows the fragmentation of the workforce breaking down the old call of "Worker's of the World Unite." The problem for Conservatives brought up in opposition of a united left sets them up to propose central, federal, solutions be dealt with locally. It's a universal problem. Here in the U.S. there is tug of war between authoritarians on the left and right with federal solutions that most localities don't want imposed on them. Progressive urban regions have requirements that Conservative rural ones have no interest in solving. The Libertarian Party is the ideology that simplifies to let localities determine the best answer for themselves. The Johnson Weld ticket reflects the sanity that comes from what appeared to be chaos but with a far better result than from traditional centralized parties who have lost their way.
In War and Diplomacy, Russia Falls Short of Its Ambitions is a headline taken from State Department sources that don't recognize a diplomatic opening staring at them in the face, which is that Russia does not respect al-Assad and his dream of putting humpty dumpty back together again. If State were to play on Russia's need to be viewed as a great power then convince them to be true to their keeping their naval base on the Mediterranean in secure hands by not letting their client overreach into Sunni Arab and Kurdish regions of Syria that he will never dominate. As in Russia's previous success of getting chemical weapons out, which made them look good in the World's eye, have them contain and protect al-Assad in his Alawite enclave by the sea. Of course that would require State give up the idea of a united Syria and for that matter Iraq as well.
Wells Fargo Tests Justice Department's Get-Tough Approach, so do investors care? On the margin yes and that's important. The whole Too Big To Fail bank sector is in a dull patch for investors, dull enough for G.E. to sell out it's finance assets and thus get out of the extra bank regulation hindering it's industrial products with sensors reporting performance business. Frankly, any TBTF entity should look at itself with the idea of spinning off units to take themselves out of government's dead hand of scrutiny. Having Senator Elizabeth Warren chew you out publicly is bad enough. But publicly defending such a loser business model focuses investors on the idea that if Wells Fargo's prospects are so bad that they have to resort to playing games then its needs breaking up.
The Economist September 17th 2016 Free Exchange | Stealth socialism:
Passive funds moderate reactions because they mechanically work at keeping a sufficient percent of company's stock in the portfolio to best represent its industry position and not its prospects. Yes these funds react but possibly not enough to cause active hedge funds to invest enough to force a break up.
Brings up the point that Mutual Funds vote with management and so they too would be slow to react to Wells Fargo's poor prospects as well, especially if it was such a dullard that it had yet to determine the poor prospects of all TBTF institutions.
Income growth protects the environment rather than diminishes it. Don't believe it? Compare rich high energy consuming Switzerland to poor low energy consuming Haiti whose forest are denuded as an energy source.
Smiling as Syria Burns, Assad Remains Secure in Power and Impunity because he embodies Shia Alawite political power, which may be a minority but nevertheless is the strongest in the region. The Kurds have taken away the Northeast from his possible sphere of influence by taking back Kobani from ISIS last year and with that conquest settled in with a strong political union that desires to form a Kurdish Nation. Where Assad lacks power and influence is in Sunni Arab regions and he miscalculates by thinking he can forcibly retake these regions without utterly destroying and thereby his capability of ruling them. Its a wish that Russia and Iran can be convinced not to pursue for Assad because he lost the political power to keep Sunni Arabs under his control. Syria is partitioning. Rather than take an emotional diplomatic approach that he must go at all costs it would be preferable that John Kerry and the State Department take a realpolitic acceptance of Assad's power and negotiate with Russia and Iran to contain him in his Alawite enclave.
At Banks, the Buck Stops Short describes the Wells Fargo cross selling scam which as an investor, such as Warren Buffet, is very telling for the following: Aren't there profitable win win banking opportunities to be pursued? There is a crying need for inexpensive money transacting systems and not for more bricks and mortar outlets in high income towns. The Federal Reserve would be doing a favor to Too Big Too Fail banks by requiring them to spin off into portions controlling assets of less than 1% of gross domestic product, roughly $200 Billion, so that they aren't too big to fail. Consider John D Rockefeller's observation to shareholders when his giant Standard Oil was broken up in 1911 that the pieces would be all together more valuable than the original whole because the favor would come from, in the bank's case, the focus management would have on real business instead of bankrupting schemes to diddle customers and pay themselves bonuses for having done it.
Why Turks Suspect The Worst of the West is simply because we officially back the denial of the Armenian Genocide and the declaration of an oppressed Kurdish minority as terrorists to placate an irrational ally. Barack Obama as Senator and Presidential Candidate freely declared that the Armenian Genocide happened, yet as President he denies it. Its not trustworthy. A rule of diplomacy should be to confront your ally's delusions, not affirm them.
The required realignment is one between those that are confident in self organized systems, for example language is self organized with meaning and rules without a central authority dictating how it should be, versus those who believe that authoritarian rule is required. The public displeasure with both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is that they are both authoritarian. Until Republicans and Democrats understand this libertarian authoritarian divide and decide which side they want to be on will there be a clear choice between parties and a moderate center for compromise between the two.
U.S. Urges Syrian Truce Despite a Stall in Policy. yes urging, as if that were enough to come to a peaceful end in a civil war. A war where the ""marbling" of the various rebel groups with more extremist groups has been a sticking point in negotiations" as if John Kerry thinks he has the power to micro manage the belligerents to make peace. The only power outsiders should consider is diplomatic power to pull and keep the belligerents apart. Negotiate with Russia and Iran to keep al-Assad in his Alawite enclave so that the Sunni Arab regions are left alone to work it out among themselves how to self govern and serve their people. U.S. policy should be to just discourage radical efforts for imperial expansion into other regions not of their sect.
German Far-Right Party Overtakes Merkel's Bloc in Elections in Her Home State is the beginning of the end of her Chancellorship of Germany. It's ironic that Germany's policy of penance for World War Two and the Holocaust whereby political refugees are accepted without limit has lit the fuse to a reactionary bomb in all of Europe.
Decades of Warnings of rise in Sea Level by Scientists are no Longer Theoretical, only the other warnings are such as more intense storms when trying to explain a ten year drought of hurricanes. Yes low lying areas subject to flooding in moderate storms and catastrophic loss in major storms should be studied by Insurance Companies and Real Estate Investors with the knowledge that the sea level rise will only make it worse for these communities so that abandonment or supplemental investment be considered intelligently.
Kurds Fear the U.S. Will Again Betray Them in Syria comes from the incorrect use of the Kurdish pesh merga as an imperial force to conquer Sunni Arab regions as a means to oust ISIS and its caliphate. The Kurds have a desire to make a homeland nation for which their militia will fight with a zeal that out did Daesh's defense of Kobani, a Kurdish city in northeastern Syria. It made the U.S. military believe that their fighting ability should be used for retaking Arab cities regions. No doubt promises were made to the Kurds about unifying their eastern region with a western Kurdish region split by an Arab region. But taking Arab regions is an overreach for the Kurds because they do not have the political will to govern Arab people. What is clear in the Middle East is that each tribe, clan or people does better governing their own and that is why both Syria and Iraq are currently balkanizing into their separate regions and any attempt to deny it is a useless waste of blood and treasure, particularly when we use a foreign militia with no interest in the people of the area to be re-taken.
The Human Face of Coal Power describes Germany as the greenest of green countries concerned it will miss its 2020 carbon dioxide emissions target because it will subsidize the burning of the dirtiest coal available, lignite, to placate its coal workers union. Maybe, but the reality is that the traditional atomic and coal power generators, whose assets values have dropped precipitously from Germany's nuclear shutdown, are the ones that need a rational energy policy. In order to make as much money as possible to mothball the nuclear facilities these companies buy the cheapest dirtiest coal possible for their coal burning plants to make the best of the hopeless position that Angela Merkel's emotional nuclear ban after the Fukishima, Japan disaster has put them in. The best move for her government would be to get the priorities right and rescind the nuclear mothballing so that the money now being allocated to dismantle the most effective tool for reducing carbon emissions can be devoted to mothballing the dirty coal power generators as soon as possible.
Syrian Rebels Threaten Territory Held by Kurds, in a Clash of U.S. Allies is a less confusing than it appears considering that the Kurdish are not an imperial force to take charge of Arabic regions. Turkey's incursion into Syria's predominantly Sunni Arab town of Jarabulus is logical and keeps the Kurd's from overreaching into Arab territory they are not inclined to govern. Yes there is an isolated Kurdish region to the west which if Turkey were sane then would allow Kurdish pesh mega militia and governing elements free access to while it further invades Sunni Syria pushing ISIS out and provide a safe haven for Sunnis with possible annexation because of Syria's political dysfunction its sovereignty should be respected or of concern.
It's Complicated with Turkey because of it's denial of the Armenian massacre at the end of Ottoman Empire which was also the end of the federalism that peacefully accommodated the various sects, clans and tribes within it. Turkey's Erdogan fears Kurdish separatism to a point of irrationality. He should embrace Kurdistan efforts to form a Kurdish nation as a means of diffusing the call for separation in Turkey. As an ally the U.S. shouldn't be a part of its denial of its Armenian history or its irrational call of declaring the PKK as terrorists rather than a political union. However, pointing out that not all of Northern Syria is Kurdish and that Turkey has a role in displacing radical Sunni ISIS from normally Sunni parts of Syria because the Kurds are not interested in empire where they fight, sacrifice and die taking over and administering non Kurdish regions was a good call.
Break up the Big Banks is a populist call coming from the base of both sides of the political spectrum and where the elites favor concentration because it favors them. Dodd-Frank was an attempt to reign in finance after the disaster of 2008 and Glass-Steagall was a similar attempt after the Crash of 1929. The later lasted for fifty years before it began to break down as financial institutions explored means of circumventing its restrictions. Today's bank lobby has an expertise developed over the decades that is sure to gut Congress's two thousand page attempt to regain financial control in a few short years. Its because of the bill's complexity which gives the opportunity for Banker's to game it. It's a complexity which comes from the many committees and subcommittees that feed off the Bank lobby's largess and is the primary reason we need term limits.
The posters on the The Atlantic's article shows protesters supporting Massachusetts' Senator Elizabeth who ironically is part of the problem because of her elite conceit that solutions require micro managing. Its what provides the devilish details so adored by lobbyist. This blog has called for a simple law for to big to fail banks which is that no financial institution can control more assets that 1% of the nation's GDP and ones finding themselves above that level need to split apart into smaller independent units that comply. Its a law that allows failure a chance to cull out the poor performers and restrains all actors so that they act prudently rather than game a system where their bonus is assured no matter who loses. Unfortunately the prospect of rendering a juicy committee seat, where bank lobbyist shower funds on a one's reelection campaign, irrelevant makes such a logical solution currently impossible. Maybe the Federal Reserve could require it?
Turkey Assists as Syria Rebels Seize ISIS-Held Town is great news for closing off a depot border town but as usual there appears to be the muddled thinking on the U.S.'s part when it "floated a suggestion that vetted Syrian rebels could fight extremists in exchange for a role in a somehow expanded or reformed Syrian government."
Because government requires local political unions, not one of Dudley Dorights cobbled together by a meddlesome outside power.
Three dead end mantras are: 1) There can be no peace in the Middle East without a unified Syria and or Iraq
Iraq and Syria are like fissile uranium with too many resisting components set to explode. Both countries want to partition so let them to relieve the pressure. 2) Climate change is the number one priority for human kind over every other issue period
Is like LBJ committing to saving South Vietnam from the enemy who is us. Reducing carbon emissions carelessly will starve the World's poor and if serious requires a tight hugging embrace of nuclear to make the math work. 3) Citizens United is corporate money influencing politics
Planned Parenthood to the National Rifle Association is the spectrum of corporate money enjoying freedom of speech under the Citizens United decision. The misappropriated money in politics is from lobbyist who influence would be undercut by term limits.
Kurds Sign Truce With Syrian Government in Northeast, Portending a Shift from an asinine U.S. foreign policy objective for a unified Syria and Iraq before their can be peace. While it may not be apparent to Bashar al-Assad that he can't regain control of all of Syria, both Russia and Iran realize that its useless. Iran has made its peace with the Kurds in Iraq's Kurdistan region so that the same can be expected in Syria. Putin on the other hand has no respect for al-Assad as was apparent during his hat in hand visit to Moscow last year but he has gotten Russia's support because of the Naval Base on the Mediterranean coast, an Alawite enclave. Anything to keep his base secure is in Putin's interest but he has no interest in expanding al-Assad's control beyond the Alawite regions of Syria because its a quagmire of dysfunction with no end.
Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart is a background work on the Middle East that should be required reading for our State and Defense Department policy makers. Nowhere in this work is it possible to see Iraq and Syria unifying rather than Balkanizing into separate ethnic and religious states.
Fractured Lands Part IV ISIS Rising 24. Azar Mirkhan “I’ve never trusted the Arabs, but as strange as it sounds, I trusted Daesh,” Azar explained, using a common term for ISIS. “In the past, the Arabs always lied — ‘Oh, you Kurds have nothing to fear from us’ — and then they attacked us. But Daesh was absolutely clear what they were going to do. They wanted to take this part of the world back to the caliphate. They wanted to eliminate everyone who was not their kind — the Christians and the Kurds and the Shia — and they were absolutely open about it. After their June offensive, I had no doubt they were coming for us next.”
New York Times Magazine Part IV: ISIS rising by Scott Anderson 26. Azar Mirkam :
By May 2015, Barzani said, nearly 120 pesh merga had died in Sector 6, where the greatest ISIS incursions had occurred. At the same time, pesh merga commanders make an interesting distinction between where they are willing to suffer losses to regain land and where they aren’t. For example, the ISIS-held village that Azar studied with his binoculars was inhabited by Arabs, not Kurds.
“So even though it is on K.R.G. territory, it’s not worth losing men for,” he explained. “Not until we’re ready to do a much bigger offensive.”
But when that offensive might come was a matter tied up with international geopolitics, and with the outcome of decisions being made in Washington and Brussels and Baghdad. In light of the woeful conduct of the Iraqi Army in the past — and absent any will to place significant numbers of Western troops on the ground — many American and European politicians and foreign-policy advisers were calling for deputizing the one fighting force in the region that had proved its mettle, the pesh merga, to lead the campaign to destroy ISIS. Less clear was whether anyone had seriously discussed this idea with the Kurds.
“You know, the Americans come here, and they want to talk about retaking Mosul,” Sirwan Barzani said. “Are you going to do it with American troops? No. Are you going to do it with the Iraqi Army? No, because they’re useless. So let’s have the Kurds do it. But what do we want with Mosul? It’s not Kurdistan; it’s Iraq, and why should we lose more men for the sake of Iraq?”
Climate Change: What's so Alarming? This guy is Danish for God's sake so don't give me any grief about my climate change bias which is that Bill McKibben is dumber than shit and his New Republic piece "The World at War" is laughably stupid reflecting poorly on the magazine's readers.
Obamacare is going down. It's "Wellness" gamble is not paying off and so the young and healthy will drop out leaving in the system only those who need it. Long life and health comes from moderate consumption that needs to be taught by both family and medicine. Rather than devote government resources to the aged it should be to the young and leave it to voting age citizens to choose and pay for the services they can afford. Make Medicare for the prenatal and young and hand off them off to the private sector as they mature.
NPR's interview with Julian Assange, the morally sketchy founder of Wikileaks secluded in the Ecuador Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape charges, this morning showed a train of thought that was lucid, clear and correct and in great contrast to the interviewer who could have been mistaken as the spokesperson of an authoritarian kafkaesque nightmare of a government.
The World’s economy is best described as full of liquid assets ready to fire the furnaces of growth and prosperity but the coals inside are smoldering and refusing to flame. Apparently there is a need for paper fires, “helicopter money” as postulated by the late Nobel Laureate Economist Milton Friedman, to ignite some dry wood to start the furnace. President John F. Kennedy’s goal to be the first on the moon showered cash on start up companies dedicated to develop miniaturized solid state electronic chips to power the moon project’s need for computational power. Today’s Silicon Valley came not even as an afterthought, but nevertheless California has an economic furnace powering it forward in complete defiance of Conservative austerity orthodoxies. The moonshot is an example of funding a hare brained scheme with no foreseeable economic benefit that boosts to a level where the speculative juices of private investors is aroused sufficiently to take it to the next level. So what scheme and how to fund it?
One scheme comes to mind from the U.S. Northeast’s combined need to shore up against the inevitable rise in sea level and for a high speed corridor between Boston and Washington D.C. Build a spine for urban development suitable for the centuries to come. It’s a long view investment that takes the worst case assumptions of the rise in sea level and then secures an accessway along the inland ridge line described by such a study. The cost of a corridor project along this high ground is moderate as it avoids the dense urban areas along the low lying coast as well enhancing the performance of the future trains with straight runs. This corridor project will have cynics commenting that it starts from, goes through and ends nowhere but when hubs and spokes tie it to the old cities it becomes economic. The project’s advantages are that it draws population inland away from vulnerable coastal regions giving urban planners a long term framework using the corridor as a resource. The other advantage is to let planners abandon ideas of remediating dense urban obstacles in future flood zones. California’s high speed rail project is a similar idea already underway but which may stall out from the same future payback problem. So how to fund it?
The Federal Reserve Bank acting as the supra national bank that it is could start a paper fire or two if it had a little imagination. Its dual mandate of maximizing employment and stabilizing prices is one that it finds hard to even attempt to reconcile much less answer. Here is an idea, what if it bought the complete initial bond offering of projects it deems worthy as engines of economic development? What if it bought the offering at a negative yield? In other words initially fund the above example of a Northeast Corridor Authority’s land acquisition and development by paying interest to the Authority instead of the usual vice versa. Madness a Conservative would think but actually it may help in the stabilizing part of the Fed’s mandate as well. There is a concern that today’s extremely low interest rates distort investment activity so that there could be an ugly future reckoning. If the Fed were to fund a few of these negative rate projects then it could feel free to raise rates in general. And by holding a mixed portfolio of bonds yielding positive and negative rates prudently weighed to the positive. Yes, it’s a sketchy proposal, so go ahead and look for the holes in it and comment.
Battles to Control Aleppo Seem as Endless as Syria's War Itself is a case of Bashar al-Assad practicing ethnic cleansing by bombing the eastern Sunni half of Allepo to make it safe for his Alawite tribe to the city's west. John Kerry should negotiate with Putin to split the city. Contain the Shiite Alawites to the West and leave the Sunnis to self organize to the east. The lever on Putin? Be a peacemaker in Islam's Sunni / Shiite divide or become a pariah to Russia's Islamic population which is 95% Sunni.
Consumers Zip Wallets, Surprising Economists? Which one? Retail sales with Amazon taking out the likes of Macy's and other traditional retailers is going through such obvious Schumpeter's "Creative Destruction" that the Federal Reserve would be out of its mind to consider such an indicator as a measure of the economy's health.
A Flood of Money, but to Where? is the problem confronting China where on one hand China's President Xi Jinping is suppressing a free press just when the economy needs it to efficiently allocate assets. The great Leap Forward, the one started by Deng not Mao, took the low hanging fruit. Now entrepreneurs need to figure out new and not so obvious opportunities that only a free press can examine to separate the wheat from the chaff, including the press.
Military Officials Distorted Intelligence on ISIS, Report Says reminds one of Vietnam when then Defense Secretary McNamara used enemy combatants killed as a measure of success, like there would not be any left to fight, and then the Tet offensive happened with a major counter by North Vietnam in five arenas at once!
Mike Morell on Charlie Rose tonight declared Hillary to be tough in foreign diplomacy because she is willing to back words with military force, the crux of many people's objection to her candidacy. What this country needs is a State Department that thinks and acts with its tools rather than subcontracting the job out to the Defense Department. Mike talks of Putin playing Trump, how about our side playing Putin in Syria? There is no love lost between Vladimir Putin and Syria's Bashar al-Assad. A cold assessment of Syria shows its hopeless for Bashar's Alawite Shiite sect to control all of Syria as it used to and that he should retreat to his region by the sea where Russia's only Mediterranean naval base happens to be located. Putin's ego can be stroked as a World leader who protects his military assets and controls his ally's excesses, just as he did a few years ago by taking out his chemical weapons. With al-Assad out of the way the current ceasefire would allow Sunnis and Kurdish sects to further partition the country into more workable self organized, it won't be pretty, political unions.
Kansas Republicans Turn Away from Allies of Governor indicates a level of disapproval with conservative Ayatollahs interested in moral bedroom issues and carelessly fostering an economic malaise. When Governors Gary Johnson of New Mexico and William Weld of Massachusetts were in charge of heavily Democrat controlled legislatures they compromised to support services necessary for economic growth while reducing spending. On the face of it Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's tax cuts should have encouraged business. But without vigorous loyal opposition, services essential for a well functioning local economy were starved and useless back slapping cronyism, not evident but a without a long list of vetoed legislation, probable. On the other hand farmer and Congressman Tim Huelskamp's primary loss is a win for federal crony capitalists, the unholy alliance of GOP Ag and Democrat food stamp interests. If Kansas had been doing well then his principled small federal government stand would have been able to resist Washington.
Voter ID Laws Take a Beating in U.S. Courts is a strike against political monopoly which is good for business. Currently North Carolina’s rural legislators have a control to exercise their political power without feedback from the marketplace of voters. Enough to do something about imaginary problems such as the pressing need to do something about transgender mis-identification in public bathrooms, but not without economic consequences. Charlotte North Carolina, an urban economic powerhouse for the state, is finding resistance to this transgender bathroom law so that it loses business, the latest being the NBA’s decision to put the All-Star game elsewhere. So no big deal to these rural legislators, but what about North Carolina’s national furniture business centered in rural High Point and Hickory? Making the generalization that the furniture business skews toward those that may be offended by what these rubes have wrought let the message get out that you don’t insult customers and stay in business for long.
Japan is thinking about an economic stimulus called “Helicopter Money” pondered by the late Nobel Laureate Economist, Milton Friedman. The idea being to directly fund consumers with money which strikes the match to a paper fire in an economic furnace, first to ignite dry wood logs which then ignites the coal. Japan’s problem is that its coal furnace is lit but smoldering. Adding paper to it isn’t going to do anything rather they should look at what regulation and policies are keeping the vents closed on its economic fire.
N.B.A. to Move All Star Game from Charlotte, North Carolina is an example of private enterprise voting with its feet when a laboratory of democracy gets it wrong. Governor Pat McCory’s nonsensical and withering defense of majority rule over a minority right, to go to the bathroom discretely, insults customers enough to drive them elsewhere. Despite his business credentials he apparently does not have the backbone to veto his rural Republican legislature’s over reach the likes of which his neighboring Governor did when confronted with a similar law. The clearest message that N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver could give is to move the All Star game to the shop next door, Atlanta.
As ISIS Loosens Grip, U.S. and Iraq Prepare for Grinding Insurgency predicts a long protracted U.S. presence in Iraq solving nothing. When will our leaders understand that without a political union capable and willing to settle in the conquered territory there is no winning the war.
In his famous essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative" F.A. Hayek called "fear of change" the radical difference between "conservative" and the liberal, classical liberal which today is called libertarian.
Vast Purge in Turkey as Thousands Are Detained is a very clear sign that President Erdogan is proceeding to consolidate his power toward that of a totalitarian state. It’s a change that requires a reassessment of our alliance and policies in effect with our State and Defense departments, most particularly the Incirlik Air Base which houses nuclear weapons for NATO and which is deemed essential for close in air support in the fight against ISIS. Unfortunately rather than pull out of the base and take the nuclear weapons out, the status quo inclinations are sure to prevail only to harden our position in the region by appeasing another dysfunctional regime destined to end badly.
For two days after the Dallas ambush of five police officers there was confusion about how many shooters there were because many demonstrators openly carried assault rifles which made each one of them a suspect as well a potential victim in a firefight where police fired at those carrying. Apparently in Texas its easier to carry a concealed weapon than to open carry and so one seeking protection rather than demonstration would have been better off concealing. Ohio on the other has got it reverse, were concealed is difficult and open carry easy. The Republican National Convention in Cleveland Ohio is going to have demonstrations where some are going to show off their Second Amendment right to bear arms. If the NRA really understood its heritage it would be like Wyatt Earp and ask the gunslingers to check their weapons before entering town because it doesn't take much imagination to figure how horribly wrong it could all go.
Exiled Cleric denies Leading Coup effort in Turkey tells of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish Cleric living in self imposed exile in Pennsylvania. What is remarkable about Mr. Gulen is that he is a leader of a view of Islam that is democratic, moderate, and tolerant which to be promoted despite Turkey's Erdogan's protestations to the contrary,
If a Carrot for Jordan Works, Syrian Refugees Will Stay Put shows an incredible lack of regard for Jordan's central geography and moderate politics in the chaos of the Middle East. Stressing Jordan's fragile economy and society with debt to cover other country's problems is certain to cause it to break down. The Western Allies should incentivize Jordan with massive funding direct to the refugees so they pay for relocation back in Syria and Iraq city states along Jordan's border and military protection to develop the moderate Sunni political unions to repopulate inward beyond the border rather than saddle Jordan with debt which will radicalize the country with a future austerity campaigns to repay.
South Korea's Turn to U.S. Delivers Setback to Beijing begs the question: Does China understand how to use its growing naval power? It's assertive territorial expansion in the South China Sea and its threat to Vietnam's offshore oil fields are examples of China's bullying which makes the entire region run to the U.S. to counter. That they are surprised by this setback and last month's embrace by Vietnam of a former enemy as formalized by Obama's visit shows a real disconnect between their foreign policy and the purpose of military might which more logically would provide friendly security for the region to lull them away from their dependence on our Navy and war materials rather than run to embrace it. It reeks of authoritarians in a closed end loop believing their own propaganda.
In a Desolate Spot, Desperate Syrian Refugees is the lemon that the Western Allies seeking a solution to the immigrant crisis into Europe as well as peace in the Middle East should turn into lemonade. Germany especially and the rest of the EU should go to the point of over funding the U. N. refugee program taking care of the camps in Jordan that distributes funds directly to the refugees in a debit card form. This helicopter money, a Milton Friedman economic term, is one that allows markets to self develop, one which promote a moderate political unions more concerned about serving the people, because it's the people that pay! The over funding should come to the point that these refugees pay for city states to be built in Syria just across the border using Jordanian contractors and paying for Jordanian military protection. The point is to funnel so much money into the area; but only directly to the consumers, no central planning please, that these city states become the utopia that attracts more refugees and take away the need to migrate to Europe. Rather than an albatross for Jordan these Syrians are a profit center and with years of self organizing these city states will develop a yearning to go forth retake Sunni Arab Syria from ISIS all the time using Jordan's logistics resources.
Steady Siege Squeezes ISIS Stronghold in Libya has a local tribal militia fighter scoffing at CIA Director Brennan's testimony to Congress estimating eight thousand Islamic fighters as if the scene was developing along the lines where American military intervention would ever be useful. It won't because as the article makes clear there is no government in Libya, only tribal factions. The CIA should analyse Libya as Afghanistan when fighting Russia but without a central modern enemy, only strongmen using the ideology de jeure of cohesion, Islamisism instead of Communism, to develop an army solely for the purpose of reaping the oil riches that fed Qaddafi and his dictatorial rule. As long as the treasure is funneled though a central office the prize remains. Get rid of the prize by distributing the oil money directly to tribal leaders much like General Petraeus did with the Surge in Iraq and you defuse the bomb that is otherwise to come.
The dissension of fifty-one State Department underlings seeking military intervention in Syria shows a distressing dependence on force rather than persuasion by our diplomatic corps. It’s a notion blind to the elements in place to partition the country and thereby defuse the sectarian irreconcilability of the belligerents, something bombs can not do. If State is hampered by the thought of Syria’s sovereignty then consider it a state that has ceased to function and thereby has no sovereign. Syria could logically split into three parts, an Alawite Shiite region to the west above Lebanon on the Mediterranean Sea, a Kurdish partition in the northeast and the remainder to the southeast for Sunni Arabs to self organize and settle. The first step for State would be to negotiate with Russia, whose primary motive in Syria is to protect its naval base on the Mediterranean, to isolate and protect their client Bashar al-Assad in his Alawite enclave by that very same base. Iran may be persuaded that al-Assad doesn’t have the political muscle to bring back under his control the rebellious Sunni Arab regions of Syria so that his attempt to do so is hopeless and that they would be better served to consolidate with their Shiite brethren in the Alawite region as well. Diplomatic success in getting al-Assad to back off and retreat to his enclave would allow the recent ceasefire to work, certainly it’s more logical than lobbing in a few bombs at great humanitarian cost that settles nothing as long as Bashar remains in Damascus.
As a Libertarian and true believer in our Constitution the bone I have to pick with the National Rifle Association (NRA) is their cheer leading for gun ownership as a means of personal safety. How about reverting back to their original purpose in forming the organization after the Civil War of promoting safe use and responsible ownership? The best that can be expected from the Connecticut Judge's ruling on a trial for the manufacturer of the AR-15 used in the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre is a detailed discovery of the promotional materials used for the sale of this weapon. The NRA should be front and center on disowning the message that is sure to come out in this material.
"Russian entry into Syria has precluded many U.S. options" is a point of view from those who are blind to reality. Putin has volunteered to support his client Bashar al-Assad to protect the Russian naval base in the Alawite region of Syria by the Mediterranean Sea. Russia has no real interest other than that. John Kerry could practice some realpolitik by negotiating with Russia to force their client to move from Damascus to the Alawite region and so protect their asset and let them show their diplomatic effectiveness, just like they were able to to get al-Assad to turn over chemical weapons. Iran may also be enlisted to convince al-Assad to withdraw to the Alawite Shiite region since Sunni Arabs and Kurdish of Syria are not governable by a single sect and certainly not by Shiite Bashar. This line of thinking comes from the realization that Syria is to be balkanized into separate states because its too far gone among its separate sects to contemplate unification.
My Senator, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, in memory of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre did a Jimmy Stewart "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" style filibuster and successfully had a vote put on some watered down gun control provisions, which were summarily defeated. Washington will not pass any sort of federal gun control legislation, its that simple. And what it has passed it actively works at sabotaging, such as requiring gun records to be maintained in paper not digital form and specifically instruct the CDC not to use funding allotted by Congress to study guns and health. Yesterday Justices Refuse to Hear Challenge to Connecticut Ban on Semiautomatic Rifles, is a message by the court to keep it local. There is nothing stopping Connecticut to require gun records to be kept in digital form and for the State to share the data with other like minded states. Also there is nothing stopping States from forming a consortium to commission and fund the CDC's study on guns and health.
The New York Times Editorial Board's "Standing Up for Democracy in Venezuela" is the classic call to meddle in a convulsing dysfunctional state where there is nothing to do but watch. Currently there is no lever in our economic, diplomatic or military mechanism to affect any change and its a reality even our most meddlesome types realize. So what is this stirring of the pot, a precursor to a call for action?
"Dozens of U.S. Diplomats, in Internal Memo of Dissent, Urge Strikes Against Assad” is distressing headline for how the State Department with effective diplomatic arrows in its quiver would cede these to the Defense Department’s guns and bombs which have proven to be singularly ineffective in a region of government dysfunction. The first arrow is to Balkanize Syria among its major sects of Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish peoples to better isolate the bad actors and protect the good. Negotiate with Russia and Iran to put their client Bashar al-Assad in his Alawite enclave by the sea and then declare Damascus an open city. 2nd is to provide economic aid and support to Syria’s Kurdish in the northeast with the intent of partitioning it off. 3rd and finally promote the move of Jordan’s Syrian refugee camps back across the border into Syria’s southeast with the intent of aiding and protecting an enclave for the development of a functional Sunni Arab government that displaces ISIS.
"Obamacare Premiums Rising, not just a Little" and will do so until we as a society accept that health care is a good, not a right. Oddly the comparison with European health care is an acceptance that death is inevitable where in the U.S. we try to stave it off for as long and expensively as possible. Europe is more hardhearted about costs and benefit weighed for those who will not pay personally.
It was the National Rifle Association's position that the Sandy Hook elementary school tragedy could have been stopped by armed security people at the school. But what about the deranged off duty security guard who takes out fifty people in Orlando in an explosion of self hate? The NRA, started after the Civil War by soldiers who were dismayed by the poor shooting and firearms handling skills of the public in general, needs to throttle back its current and dogged determination to defend the indefensible and go back to its roots of educating the public on the proper use of firearms rather than use its political muscle to test the outer edges of the Second Amendment. The parents of the Newtown Connecticut shooting have a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the AR-15, the gun used in the massacre of children and teachers, where the Judge is ruling that the Pandora’s box of promotional materials and internal memos regarding the gun’s ego boosting Rambo qualities be made public and shame the NRA from being the cheerleaders of unfettered and irresponsible gun use rather than the responsible organization they started out as being.
Reading Jeff Sommers' gas tax proposal and found the usual: such and such tax is regressive so to compensate lets give the poor a tax credit. Tax credits are such a sop to the regressive tax argument, sure such and such tax is regressive so to make it fair let’s give the poor a credit for the taxes collected. Okay let's see. A poor person looks over his credit card statement and calculates the gallons of gas bought and taxes paid which then he gives to his accountant to prove the credit being taken after have been advised that the credit is available. It’s pretty much like Marie Antoinette declaring “let the poor eat cake” and retain a really good tax attorney.
David Brooks "The Unity Illusion" The G.O.P. has in its unthinking denial of anything good of the Obama administration left untended its optimistic free market Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” economic philosophy that Ronald Reagan used to ride into office. The party has been negative for so long that it forgot what it’s about and so it’s establishment lost contact with the base and let the brat in the room take over to destroy the party’s conservative ideology. On the other hand the Libertarian Party candidates, former two term Republican Governors Gary Johnson of New Mexico and William Weld of Massachusetts are the conservatives that Brook’s describes. Weld would have been an ideal Republican nominee for President if the party had its head screwed on right. It’s important that in this election conservatives establish the Libertarian Party because the G.O.P. may never recover from its loss of bone structure on which to hold political muscle.
"G.O.P. seeks a subdued Trump" is an indication of the party's end because there is no changing him. This week's primary victory teleprompter speech was so flat that there is no chance of his continuing in that manner only to lose the interest of his marginalized base. On other hand there is no getting rid of him by denying him the nomination and further sever their populist base, what ever that may be. It was thought to be conservative evangelicals but that was proved wrong by Ted Cruz's biblical Southern campaign which thoroughly lost to Trump, the devil incarnate. The Republican Party is in danger of going the way of the Whig party as the Libertarian Party with two former Republican governors, re-elected with big majorities on their second terms that reaffirmed their prudent taxing, spending and budgeting stewardship of their state's economy without moralizing on personal liberties, who will establish a sensible center right alternative. In a different time Libertarian's Vice Presidential nominee former Governor William Weld of Massachusetts would have been enthusiastically nominated Republican candidate for President but for the fact that he was run out of the party by North Carolina's Rush Limbaugh of the sixties and later Senator, Jesse Helms, who objected to Weld's pro choice and tolerant LGBT policy. It was Weld's being turned down as ambassador to further develop his Presidential credentials when the G.O.P. turned away from the being the party of business and prudent stewardship of the economy to the authoritarian personally intrusive and Chamber of Commerce nightmare that it currently is.
Tom Friedman's"Dump Trump for a Grand New Party" : "America needs a center-right party to support both free trade and aid to workers impacted by it. America needs a center-right party that appreciates how much more complicated foreign policy is today, when you have to manage weak and collapsing nations, not just muscle strong ones."
Tom is showing his bias for authoritarian preferences. His center right party already exists and it's called the Libertarian Party. It's a self organized party of the right which best reflects American's preference for a government that is prudent in taxing, spending and budget keeping with less moralizing at home and abroad.
Corruption in Brasil has created an anarchy in government and politics from which there will be no good result because the rule of law has been trampled over so thoroughly that nothing good can arise from that garden. Spain suffers from the same disease. Several years ago the center right PP, Partido Popular, swept into power over the left PSOE, Socialist, with a clean government and economy agenda but it soon was disclosed it too had the same corrupt system of party leaders with Swiss bank accounts. Ciudadanos, Citizens Party, recently developed on the right with a corruption free agenda and now finds itself having to ally themselves with the PP if they are to enter government. Their leader Alberto Rivera fears that Citizens will develop the same cancer should they work with Mariano Rajoy and the Popular Party.
Rivera's is right to resist a short term gain if he then has to to sell his soul.
Grover Norquist on ABC this morning countering Paul Krugman made a very telling comment about the gig economy and corporate taxes, which is that the current system based on old time businesses with staffs will stifle the new economy of independent contractors without bookkeeping and legal services keeping track of money and arcane regulation. That Trump or Hillary are aware of the problem can not be said since Krugman is right about Trump; who knows what he is for? On the other hand Presidential candidate Governor Gary Johnson and Vice Presidential candidate William Weld of the Libertarian Party come from an ideology that is tailor made for the gig economy.
Both Romney and Trump suffer from unseemly private business lives that make them both unsuitable leaders of a country that prides itself in its exceptionalism of equal opportunity. If you know you are going to run for President then you have to be prudent about taking advantage of carried interest income and foreign tax havens for Romney and what is certain to be tax avoidance practiced to the edge of the envelope by Trump's tax accountants.
"Near Falluja, Fear of a 'Catastrophe Unfolding'" shows an understanding finally that without the political union ready to inhabit and govern a city or region makes military action to conquer useless. It brings up memories of General Waste-More-Land as a policy that proved useless in Vietnam. A Shia operation obliterating a Sunni city will further divide Iraq's civil war between sects and leave a smoldering rubble of city behind declared as a glorious victory.
Neocon Bill Kristol pushed a gullible George W. Bush into Iraq. If David French accepts Kristol’s push into the arena then his first decision will be the wrong one because he lacks recognition, money and the political experience to know his candidacy is futile and meaningless despite Bill’s casual reassurances.
The G.O.P. attempt to enlist the Amish for Trump is laughable primarily because it shows the disconnect elites have with the voters. First and foremost the Amish don't endorse, rather they stay out of politics so completely I doubt they are registered to vote. If they were so inclined then the photo ID to register and vote would be a problem, but its not because they don't vote. Second the Amish are about piety, community and a simple way of life. Trump's lifestyle on the other hand is the polar opposite. Finally, think about it! The Amish are an example of self governed libertarian life. No interaction with Washington Federal or Pennsylvania State government. No local need for police, schools or judicial service because the elders organize the community to take care of it. The Amish prove that the Libertarian's call for no government is not a call for chaos.
$Billion Stakes on the Menu brings up Warren Buffet's new stake in Apple and the advise he could give regarding capital allocation, which Apple desperately needs. 300 $billion in the bank and the reality that whatever next big thing to invent will take less than a billion in cash to do it saddles it with a risk adverse phalanx of finance geeks who will snuff out the company's creativity. It would be much better if that capital were given back to its shareholders, like Warren Buffet, who could then allocate it more efficiently and liberate Apple back to a lean, mean and creative position. The problem of course is that most of that money is locked away in foreign accounts and can not be repatriated without paying a corporate tax. So, why not have those smart finance geeks figure out a way to distribute dividends directly to shareholders without first repatriating the profit? It couldn't be much harder than the schemes they used to put the profits overseas with in the first place.
