If China won't protect its sphere of influence from the crazy kid next door, then....

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.  

Brazil needs to break it's Fisman Equilibrium favoring dishonest dealings

Dangerous Equilibrium

Professor Fisman argues that the most accurate way to think of corruption is as an “equilibrium” — the result of people acting rationally within a flawed system, not just individual moral lapses.

The cost-benefit analysis of whether to pay a bribe, he explained, "depends on how many people around me I think are also engaged in corruption.”

If most people are honest, he said, paying a bribe is a risky endeavor. There are relatively few people interested in accepting one, and many willing to report bribery to the authorities. In that scenario, the equilibrium favors honest dealing.

But “if everyone around you is paying bribes, the cost-benefit tradeoff flips,” he continued. “As more and more people engage in corruption, you’re better able to find willing partners in crime. And the benefits of staying honest decline, because everybody is cutting in front of you in line to see the doctor, or winning the contracts that you might have had a decent chance of getting.”

A new equilibrium will take hold — one that favors dishonest dealings.

Trump's Electoral College victory gave voice to notion Federal Government overreached

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.

The Electoral College illuminated a minority's disaffection with the Establishment

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.

There is justice in the Electoral College our forefathers set up

President-Elect Found Votes Where the Jobs Weren't has a very interesting observation:

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.

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.

Turkey should annex Sunni Arab regions of Syria Iraq and give up its Kurdish region

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

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.

Trump does not have Jackson’s clear populist hate for Wall Street that elected him

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.