tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6578071828712690592024-02-07T01:38:53.529-08:00California FirstMichael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-78917183388313217622018-08-29T15:32:00.000-07:002018-08-29T15:51:07.545-07:00The risky policies of "know nothing" political amateurs Protecting the value of U.S. technology, including biotechnology, could be suicide<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/health/china-flu-virus-samples.html" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-right: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.2em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="48" data-original-width="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg49k88gKVQMELtOu-kQV-lRV96lO3ZusN82Jj47m1x1PogVq44orhG9OXHRG7ni8BmmlpbgzK1BpP-TMFuavKhU3wAO_328w8PZr0-R45ul32_MWCCYmLyPkYMIcKHJ5MOz9QliA2xd7A/s1600/lead.png" /></a></div>
This <i>New York Times</i> headline on Page D1 (page D1???) of the August 28 edition is seemingly more important than most articles about the Trump Administration on the front page. At least the article reluctantly recognizes a relationship between its subject - mutated flu virus samples - and the dangers of the deplorable trade war of the Trump Administration.<br />
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What could the avian influenza A(H7N9) virus possibly have to do with the trade war and technology (which includes biotechnology)?<br />
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Well, if you're interested in making money on a health threat, you could order the market research report <a href="https://thetacticalbusiness.com/185396/h7n9-vaccines-market-sales-area-and-gross-revenue-of-key-manufacturers-2018/" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #9bef9b;" target="_blank">H7N9 Vaccines Market Sales Area and Gross Revenue of Key Manufacturers 2018</a>.<br />
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Or you could just read the <i>New York Times</i> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/health/china-flu-virus-samples.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">story</a> which explains:<br />
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...More than one year after a devastating wave of H7N9 infections in Asia — 766 cases were reported, almost all in China — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still waiting for several viral samples, the National Security Council and the [World Health Organization] confirmed.
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Scientists at the Department of Agriculture have had such difficulty obtaining flu samples from China that they have stopped requesting them altogether, according to a government official who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.
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Recent trade tensions could worsen the problem.
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The Office of the United States Trade Representative in April released a proposed list of products to be targeted for tariffs — including pharmaceutical products such as vaccines, medicines and medical devices.
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So far, none of those medical products have landed on the final tariff lists. But lower-level trade negotiations with China concluded on Thursday with few signs of progress, increasing the likelihood of additional tariffs.
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The United States relies on China not only for H7N9 influenza samples but for medical supplies, such as plastic drip mechanisms for intravenous saline, as well as ingredients for certain oncology and anesthesia drugs. Some of these are delivered through a just-in-time production model; there are no stockpiles, which could prove dangerous if the supply was disrupted, health officials said.
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Most Americans, and most certainly the Deplorables, think the trade issues are about cell phone technology, autos, and steel in terms of their personal wealth. But those who understand political economics know it is also about the potential for severe illness and death, the avoidance of which has economic value.<br />
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The <i>New York Times</i> article notes:<br />
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Scientists believe top commerce officials in both governments view the viral samples much like any other laboratory product, and may be unfamiliar with their vital role in global security.
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The scientists are wrong, of course. Top officials in the Chinese government are fully aware of the vital role of the viral samples to global security. And unlike those scientists, top officials in the Chinese government are fully aware of the trade value of those samples in the context of Trump's trade war against China. As noted in the article:<br />
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For over a decade, epidemiological data and samples have been used as trade war pawns.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEUaPDR7Z2WeN6AtOBaAZf9XE2xwBFcrEuvDDbpioPH997yZhCW1Gq3iim28JQFy7BA8pf78gGdRWaR6cFWSyin7ri_n4WjK-B92lXS4L30B4uDGBHS0AS4rQg0ekJSoMY9gWoK-wGXgk/s1600/Influenza_deaths2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="232" data-original-width="372" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEUaPDR7Z2WeN6AtOBaAZf9XE2xwBFcrEuvDDbpioPH997yZhCW1Gq3iim28JQFy7BA8pf78gGdRWaR6cFWSyin7ri_n4WjK-B92lXS4L30B4uDGBHS0AS4rQg0ekJSoMY9gWoK-wGXgk/s320/Influenza_deaths2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
And here is where determining whether free trade or nationalism is the most important element in political economics can become a problem. Influenza A viruses usually are associated with more deaths in children and the elderly. If we don't have a vaccine for a truly virulent Influenza A strain, about 2 million Americans could die, using as an indicator the 1918 Spanish Flu which was also an Influenza A subtype.<br />
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The World Health Organization - also known by its acronym WHO - would usually be able to facilitate sharing of the viral samples under an existing agreement. If you occasionally read the news perhaps "WHO" seems similar to another acronym "WTO" the Trump people have been denouncing. That acronym stands for World Trade Organization under which trade is governed by agreements which the United States is currently blocking by preventing appointments to its Appellate Body as part of its trade war against China.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxvPJQp2mSXxRwAPk1zELeXlYUmuRSlO77V78N_W4DsOy-2kvAVN1R8-RyrVo5TF4WLGf-XlMunvZ_lDoeV4XVjT16utCAnNSqHZShJe0iNaAkOFw7AKLrub7vbHqmJ4lt4IhMYiN2xsA/s1600/shot-no-mask.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="458" data-original-width="355" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxvPJQp2mSXxRwAPk1zELeXlYUmuRSlO77V78N_W4DsOy-2kvAVN1R8-RyrVo5TF4WLGf-XlMunvZ_lDoeV4XVjT16utCAnNSqHZShJe0iNaAkOFw7AKLrub7vbHqmJ4lt4IhMYiN2xsA/s320/shot-no-mask.png" width="248" /></a></div>
In 1918 when the Spanish Flu hit the world, World War I was just ending. By the early 1920's due to a resurgence of xenophobic American nationalism, world trade was handled with bilateral negotiations. The U.S. position had sentenced the League of Nations to a meaningless existence. That ultimately led to the Great Depression and WWII.<br />
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It is 100 years later and xenophobic American nationalism again has been restored to a leading tenant of U.S. policy. The U.S. government has decided that the well-being of
the world's population of 7.6 billion is not it's concern. Only the well-being of 4% of the world's population is of concern, those who live in the United States.<br />
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If nationalism is considered a legitimate policy position for the United States, then you have to consider it a legitimate policy position for China. Thus the American position is that only the well-being of the 18.5% of the world's population who live in the China should be of concern to the Chinese government.<br />
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Or perhaps Americans all need to move our attitudes into the 21st Century. In the meantime a headline in June noted <a href="https://www.contagionlive.com/news/h7n9-spreading-westward-from-southern-and-eastern-china" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #9bef9b;" target="_blank">H7N9 Spreading Westward from Southern and Eastern China</a>.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-87106151577829465402018-08-20T14:48:00.000-07:002018-08-20T14:54:25.794-07:00Remind me, what was wrong with timber harvesting??? When your air is clogged with congestive climate change, who should be blamed?In 1976, a 28-year-old newly minted Congressman, Al Gore, held the first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste and global warming. About that, in December 2016 <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2016/12/climate-change-shiny-old-object.html" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #9bef9b;" target="_blank">we noted</a>: "But on climate policy 40 years ago, he..., well, kids..., my generation failed him and you."<br />
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In December 2017 in the post <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/12/foolish-planning-and-inevitable.html" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #9bef9b;" target="_blank">Foolish planning and the inevitable wildfires: What could have been learned from John Steinbeck about California's true climate</a> we noted: "What we cannot do honestly is blame it on Global Warming which at worst only accelerated an inevitable timeline. And we are not going to "fix it" because we are the environmentally aware California. "<br />
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<a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92570/smoke-plumes-tower-over-california" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 85%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="720" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfAo8gHnoouNaCX8-y8sg_t_imuQm4x07AzCBPXy2Ip-dOZ1zE9GejauM9APS7CRIN7ga0tv3yKfCe2YaKsFQSyNjl67ORI_tAX7QZam8C0cAbXUcvHHfh4j5UaF1RhPa63Qhvt4AiPMI/s640/ranchfire_oli_2018216.jpg" width="640" /><br />On August 6, 2018, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured an image (top) of a dense column of smoke topped by a pyrocumulus cloud over the Ranch fire. The heat generated by intense wildfires can churn up towering pyrocumulus and pyrocumulonimbus clouds, which lift smoke above the lowest part of the atmosphere, the boundary layer. Then that mix of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, organic carbon, and black carbon often travels hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from the source before descending.</a></div>
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The Ranch Fire pictured above has burned more acreage than any fire in California's recorded history. It is likely that this year's fire season ...well, we don't have a season anymore, so let's say that this year's wildfires... will have burnt more acreage than any prior year.<br />
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As discussed in <a href="http://www.capradio.org/articles/2018/08/07/extreme-california-wildfires-emit-more-greenhouse-gases-but-scientists-dont-know-exactly-how-much/" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #9bef9b;" target="_blank">Extreme California Wildfires Emit More Greenhouse Gases — But Scientists Don’t Know Exactly How Much</a>:<br />
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Cal Fire says more than 750,000 acres have burned so far in 2018, combusting grass, trees, homes, and all pushing out greenhouse gases.
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The fires have consumed three times as much land as the 2013 Rim Fire, which the U.S. Forest Service estimates released 10-to-15 million metric tons of carbon — roughly the equivalent of the emissions resulting from a million Californians over a year.
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As explained in <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Huge-wildfires-can-wipe-out-California-s-12376324.php" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #9bef9b;" target="_blank">Huge wildfires can wipe out California’s greenhouse gas gains</a>:<br />
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Most years, the amount of greenhouse gases spewed by California’s cars, factories and power plants drops slightly — a hard-won result of the state’s fight against global warming.
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And in any given year, one big wildfire can wipe out that progress.
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Over the course of just a few weeks, a major fire can pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than California’s many climate change programs can save in 12 months. Scientists debate whether California’s vast forests are emitting more carbon dioxide through fires than they absorb through plant growth.
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To get a sense of the problem, look at 2015
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Greenhouse gas emissions across the California economy inched downward by 1.5 million metric tons that year, the most recent for which emissions data are available. And just one fire in 2015 — the Rough Fire, in the foothills of Fresno County — produced 6.8 million metric tons of greenhouse gases, according to an estimate from the U.S. Forest Service.
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This is a problem, of course, for the State of California's whole self-congratulatory aggressive environmental policy. For instance, up to 2018, wildfire impacts have not been considered in reports about progress such as this one...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjljOn8lCNZJG9xasMTOukYn1OeKV2m4RP_a3KQQrODgJoFECDi1Brol9APFJdq_HNGygOuxRks4vpK-AOj4V-lutOzTpcoqWnQDH1sqwGy_QJfIhdUSBbfROquHyPBw-weHqYusospaiA/s1600/2013caemissionscomparison.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="865" data-original-width="1232" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjljOn8lCNZJG9xasMTOukYn1OeKV2m4RP_a3KQQrODgJoFECDi1Brol9APFJdq_HNGygOuxRks4vpK-AOj4V-lutOzTpcoqWnQDH1sqwGy_QJfIhdUSBbfROquHyPBw-weHqYusospaiA/s640/2013caemissionscomparison.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
...because wildfires have been considered natural phenomenon. And so each year since that chart, some gain has been reported.<br />
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On December 11, 2017, the official scientific journal of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, publish an article <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/12/05/1713885114.full" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #9bef9b;" target="_blank">Human presence diminishes the importance of climate in driving fire activity across the United States</a> which acknowledges...<br />
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The adverse effects of increasing wildfire on human assets, and altered fire regimes on ecological integrity, are becoming a worldwide concern, especially in the wake of recent “megafire” events in some regions, which have resulted in enormous loss of human lives and properties. Most of these large fire events are driven by extreme weather conditions combined with prolonged drought; and escalation in fire activity is widely attributed to climatic factors and global warming. Furthermore, projections suggest that fire extent, frequency, and intensity could skyrocket in upcoming decades due to warmer temperatures and drier fuels, although there is inherent variability and regional variation.
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...but points out...<br />
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Climate was significantly less important where humans were more prevalent, suggesting that human influence could override or even exceed the effect of climate change on fire activity. Although climate change may play a significant role in altering future fire regimes, geographical context and human influence should also be accounted for in management and policy decisions.
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As explained in <a href="http://latfusa.com/article/2018/8/as-california-fires-continue-170-million-in-grants/" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #9bef9b;" target="_blank">As California Fires Continue, $170 Million In Grants Given To Reduce Fire Threat</a>:<br />
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While California experiences another destructive fire season, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) announced that more than $170 million has been awarded in grants to prevent catastrophic wildfires, like the Carr Fire and Mendocino Complex, and restore forest health. More than 100 agencies and organizations across California will receive funding to help the state reduce greenhouse gas emissions from wildfires and sequester carbon.
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With funds provided by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for California Climate Investments (CCI), CAL FIRE awarded 142 fire prevention grants totaling $79.7 million and 23 forest health projects totaling $91.5 million.
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The Fire Prevention grants will enable local organizations like fire safe councils, to implement activities that address the risk of wildfire and reduce wildfire potential to communities and forests. Funded activities include hazardous fuel reduction, fire planning, and fire prevention education with an emphasis on improving public health and safety, all while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
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“California continues to invest millions of dollars into creating healthier, more resilient forests that benefit all of us,” said Chief Ken Pimlott, CAL FIRE director and California’s state forester. “Already this year more than 700,000 acres have burned across the state creating significant carbon releases that counter our efforts at reducing greenhouse gases. Local projects funded by this money will prevent wildfires before they start, and when combined with our fire prevention activities, will help move us toward our greenhouse gas reduction goals.”
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Wow! The Californian who bought a Tesla Model S for $90,000 must be really into carbon emission reduction. Not only did she shell out for that, she paid the State $4.25 of her taxes to address the wildfire problem.<br />
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Of course, it might be effective to have the State raise her taxes for wildfire reduction and forest health projects to $42.50 per person generating $1.7 billion a year to spend on reducing wildfire emissions and increasing Carbon Dioxide absorption.<br />
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But hey, being human we're looking for someone else to blame as noted in <a href="http://time.com/5359127/california-wildfire-liability/" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #9bef9b;" target="_blank">California Wildfires Are Causing Billions in Damage. Who Will Pay?</a> I wonder when the Trump people will be pointing out the liberal environmentalists opposition to timber harvesting?Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-80968803441338239072018-08-06T23:16:00.000-07:002018-08-06T23:22:53.195-07:00Trump tweets about California wildfires and water - here's a visual to help him be less ignorant about the government he runsThe President of the United States tweeted about California's wildfires as follows:<br />
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“California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!” — tweet Sunday.
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“Governor Jerry Brown must allow the Free Flow of the vast amounts of water coming from the North and foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Can be used for fires, farming and everything else. Think of California with plenty of Water — Nice! Fast Federal govt. approvals.” — tweet Monday.
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The federal government owns 45.8% of the land area of California as indicated in the graphic below:<br />
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<a href="http://www.redwoodretreat.us/Dish/federal-lands-wildfires-water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 85%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; line-height: 14px; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank">Click on image to see a larger version<br /><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="443" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU1F9aiUqEeOJ3JNou2ucbleAQUBt67fxTPANkgCxFrJVGS91kns7AhOdi4YDa88kO1RVOpJJC23-Si_p5pscBq9xxSH7Qzdu-WutODhBbUa7zqPadii67Ewk6xI4CRjGYxEKvk9G6n-U/s1600/federal-lands-wildfires-water.jpg" /><br />Click on image to see a larger version</a></div>
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As indicated most of the current wildfires are as usual on federal lands as are most of the trees about which he states: "Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading" And as indicated on the bottom map, the federal government owns a significant portion of the water contained in reservoirs in California and President Donald Trump, not Governor Jerry Brown, heads the government that manages the water "foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean."<br />
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It is embarrassing to have a President so ignorant.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-15547211479826521312018-07-07T12:53:00.000-07:002018-07-10T21:57:04.315-07:00More is at risk than abortion and gay marriage California must protect itself from the rise of "A Handmaid's Tale" theonomist judiciary<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9fTWH31ZGXv3wtLc5T3LGiP7ql4bzsU9TK5dDrCe_hF6FHeHLu5nMdlfX8OX3gKaEw9eiaCQcfZoHHjM2hOENZSMMT_7NP2MWLmHiAsE4gF_ldetLSFQqFr4aupsx6MxIbXOnutdBAxE/s1600/handmaids_bench1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: serif; font-size: 95%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="692" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9fTWH31ZGXv3wtLc5T3LGiP7ql4bzsU9TK5dDrCe_hF6FHeHLu5nMdlfX8OX3gKaEw9eiaCQcfZoHHjM2hOENZSMMT_7NP2MWLmHiAsE4gF_ldetLSFQqFr4aupsx6MxIbXOnutdBAxE/s1600/handmaids_bench1.gif" /><br />Theonomists use Biblical moral pronouncements as the standard by which the laws of governments may be measured.</a></div>
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<a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/nobody-expects-the-spanish-inquisition" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition</a> is a popular meme which, if you click the link, is supported by videos viewed by millions, graphic images, and even T-shirts. It has not been used in reference to the Supreme Court. Yet.<br />
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Contrary to everything I understand about religion <i>vis-à-vis</i> the Judicial Branch within the Union is reflected in this from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States#Religion" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>: <br />
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Of the 113 justices who have been appointed to the court, 91 have been from various Protestant denominations, 12 have been Catholics (one other justice, Sherman Minton, converted to Catholicism after leaving the Court). Another, Neil Gorsuch, was raised in the Catholic Church but later attended an Episcopal church, though without specifying the denomination to which he felt he belonged.
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At the beginning of 2010, Justice John Paul Stevens was the sole remaining Protestant on the Court In April 2010, Justice Stevens announced his retirement, effective as of the Court's 2010 summer recess. Upon Justice Stevens' retirement, which formally began on June 28, 2010, the Court lacked a Protestant member, marking the first time in its history that it was exclusively composed of Jewish and Catholic justices. Although in January 2017, after seven years with no Protestant justices serving or nominated, President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Court, as noted above it is unclear whether Gorsuch considers himself a Catholic or an Episcopalian.
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This development led to some comment. Law school professor Jeffrey Rosen wrote that "it's a fascinating truth that we've allowed religion to drop out of consideration on the Supreme Court, and right now, we have a Supreme Court that religiously at least, by no means looks like America".
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That "we have a Supreme Court that religiously at least, by no means looks like America" is a bit of an understatement. Consider this chart:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-37Lvok91Nr5VsRMweVf0wZGjQY5Xo6rkbyRcRK9raMuHvnPAQgmUAjYBhazUCkBii4L_k2M7Iu6PZunJnBTuyRvFp-YPA9CWD0WlCLbeMHW5VZ1x5hiLDI_qMUh_vIK-38hLgIIhqDg/s1600/justices3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="778" data-original-width="691" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-37Lvok91Nr5VsRMweVf0wZGjQY5Xo6rkbyRcRK9raMuHvnPAQgmUAjYBhazUCkBii4L_k2M7Iu6PZunJnBTuyRvFp-YPA9CWD0WlCLbeMHW5VZ1x5hiLDI_qMUh_vIK-38hLgIIhqDg/s1600/justices3.jpg" /></a></div>
While generally courts are expected to administer the law as written, or at least as the judge reads it, the Supreme Court applies standards to laws to decide if they violate statements such as "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."<br />
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Some of us think that which religion one was raised in can influence what one believes is right and wrong. Some of us think that one's values are influenced by grade school and high school experiences. Some of us think that adults make judgements based upon their associations with their college professors and fellow university students, as much as they do based on which books they read.<br />
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So,
yes, it is troubling not only for law school professor Jeffrey Rosen but of many Americans that five of the eight current Supreme Court Justices were raised Roman Catholic while the other three were raised in Judaism. It is also troubling that four of the eight (half) attended parochial schools. It is also troubling that not one attended a state institution of higher learning at any time in their college education.<br />
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Even if one ignores the fact that only three of the Justices are women, or only one is Hispanic and only one is black while seven are white, one could comfortably state that we have a Supreme Court that by no means looks like America <i>in terms of formation of values and intellect</i>.<br />
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Note that the caption under the picture at the top of this post states "Theonomists use Biblical moral pronouncements as the standard by which the laws of governments may be measured." It's surprisingly easy for many older persons to dismiss this theonomist concern about the Court when discussed only in the context of abortion or gay marriage. But it isn't quite as easy to dismiss it when considering Justice Neil Gorsuch's reasoned doctoral thesis that asserts that assisted suicide for the terminally ill is homicide - no mitigations are allowed:<br />
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<span style="color: #dffbdd;"><i>What if within the next decade the Constitutionality of state laws allowing assisted suicide for terminally ill patients is resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court? Here are excerpts from <a href="https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:688e5b8c-bb06-4d86-abe0-440a7666ffc1" style="color: #dffbdd; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">The Right to Receive Assistance in Suicide and Euthanasia, with Particular Reference to the Law of the United States</a> written in 2004 by Trump-appointed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, when he was a candidate for a DPhil degree in law (legal philosophy), University College, Oxford, supervised by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Finnis" style="color: #dffbdd; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">natural law philosopher John Finnis</a> </i>:</span><br />
<span style="color: white;"> I consider legal doctrine surrounding autonomy and personal privacy, and conclude that it is likely too weak a foundation on which to build a judicially created right to assisted suicide (Chapter V).
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I submit that there is a secular moral theory which, to date, has been largely neglected in contemporary American debate over assisted suicide and euthanasia. This theory rests on the notion that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.
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After considering arguments from history, fairness, autonomy doctrine and theory, and utilitarianism, I suggested that courts and legislators may wish to consider a less frequently voiced perspective on the assisted suicide and euthanasia question, one grounded in the recognition of human life as a fundamental good. Under this view, private intentional acts of homicide are always wrong. Recognizing human life as intrinsically, not instrumentally, valuable, I submitted, would rule out assisted suicide and euthanasia.</span>
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Take a hard look at that list of Justices above.<br />
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One of the three names most mentioned by the "Trump people" to replace Kennedy is Amy Coney Barrett. Raised a Catholic, she graduated from St. Mary's Dominican High School in New Orleans. She received her BA from Rhodes College (formerly known as Southwestern Presbyterian University after being founded as the Masonic University of Tennessee), a private college located in Memphis, Tennessee. She then went to the Catholic Notre Dame Law School, where she taught full time as a Professor of Law from 2002 until 2017. She continues to teach part-time since since November 2, 2017, when she received Senate confirmation after President Donald Trump nominated Barrett to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.<br />
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She has seven children: five biological children and two children adopted from Haiti.<br />
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She is an active member of a particularly conservative Catholic religious group called People of Praise described as follows in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_Praise" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>:<br />
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<a href="https://peopleofpraise.org/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">People of Praise</a> was formed in 1971 by Kevin Ranaghan and Paul DeCelles. Both men were involved in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, in which Pentecostal religious experiences such as baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues and prophecy were practiced by Catholics. In its early history, it influenced the institutional development of the Catholic Charismatic movement in the United States and played important roles in national charismatic conferences.
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People of Praise practices a controversial form of spiritual direction that involves supervision of a member by a more spiritually mature person called a "head". People of Praise maintains that members retain their freedom of conscience under such direction. The community excludes women from the highest leadership positions and teaches that men are the spiritual leaders of their families. At the same time, it encourages women to pursue higher education and employment. Former People of Praise member and Catholic critic Adrian Reimers has accused People of Praise of being too ecumenical and of compromising Catholic teaching by embracing Protestant ecclesiology.
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It is not a church or denomination, and membership is open to any baptized Christian who affirms the Nicene Creed and agrees to the community's covenant. The majority of its members are Catholics, but Protestants can also join. It has 21 branches in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean, with approximately 3,000 members including children. It founded a group of non-denominational Christian schools, Trinity Schools.
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During Barrett's Circuit Judge confirmation hearing, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein questioned Barrett about whether her Catholic faith would influence her decision-making on the court. Feinstein, concerned about whether Barrett would uphold <i>Roe v. Wade</i> given her Catholic beliefs, stated "the dogma lives loudly within you, and that is a concern". The line of questioning became a point of outrage from many of her defenders, both Catholic and non-Catholic alike.<br />
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The subject of Feinstein and other Democrats' concern was a 1998 article by Barrett where she argued that Catholic judges should in some cases recuse themselves from death penalty cases because of their moral objections to the death penalty. Feinstein's line of questioning was criticized by some observers and legal experts while defended by others. <br />
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During her hearing, Barrett said: "It is never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge's personal convictions, whether they arise from faith or anywhere else, on the law." That might seem comforting to some, but <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626118139/trumps-top-two-supreme-court-picks-reflect-warring-republican-factions" target="_blank">as reported</a> her academic writing is far less comforting to those who support <i>Roe</i> and <i>Obergefell</i>:<br />
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"There is little reason to think that reversals [of past decisions] would do much damage" to the court's reputation, she wrote. "I tend to agree with those who say that a justice's duty is to the Constitution" rather than to a precedent she thinks is clearly in conflict with it.
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People learn not only from the upbringing and education, but as young adults from who they work for. Barrett worked a year as clerk to late Justice Antonin Scalia. Over the years Scalia repeatedly called upon his colleagues to strike down <i>Roe v. Wade</i>. In <i>Obergefell v. Hodges</i> in which the 5-4 majority decision written by Justice Kennedy struck down laws prohibiting gay marriage, in his dissenting opinion Scalia noted there were no evangelical Christians on the Court (he also literally dismissed California which we'll explore later):<br />
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Take, for example, this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. Four of the nine are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single South-westerner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count). Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans), or even a Protestant of any denomination.
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Unlike her male counterparts, Barrett admits she is occasionally conflicted about her role as a judge relative to her religion. In a 1998 article Barrett argued that Catholic judges should in some cases recuse themselves from death penalty cases because of their moral objections to the death penalty. Presumably she does not want the murderer to die. And presumably she would be conflicted about physician assisted suicide, but whether she would recuse herself if that subject reached a court she was on is doubtful.<br />
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It is worth noting the other blunt, though perhaps heartfult, dissents in the <i>Obergefell</i> case.<br />
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Chief Justice Roberts noted: "Today’s decision...creates serious questions about religious liberty. Many good and decent people oppose same-sex marriage as a tenet of faith, and their freedom to exercise religion is—unlike the right imagined by the majority—actually spelled out in the Constitution." He goes further stating: "The majority graciously suggests that religious believers may continue to “advocate” and “teach” their views of marriage. ...The First Amendment guarantees, however, the freedom to “exercise” religion. Ominously, that is not a word the majority uses." He does not elaborate on what he means by "exercise" religion in the context of its impact on others.<br />
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Justice Samuel Alito expressed concern that the majority's opinion would be used to attack the beliefs of those who disagree with same-sex marriage, who "will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools", leading to "bitter and lasting wounds" and defending the rationale of the states, accepting the premise that same-sex marriage bans serve to promote procreation and the optimal child rearing environment.<br />
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Justice Clarence Thomas wrote: "Aside from undermining the political processes that protect our liberty, the majority’s decision threatens the religious liberty our Nation has long sought to protect." He extensively explored the history of religion in from the time of the colonies noting that "in our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well" concluding that "today’s decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter. It appears all but inevitable that the two will come into conflict, particularly as individuals and churches are confronted with demands to participate in and endorse civil marriages between same-sex couples.'<br />
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Thomas is unrestrained as he offers his key opinion about the primacy of his Catholic upbringing over other individual right issues such as the Constitutionality of state laws banning gay marriage:<br />
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The majority appears unmoved by that inevitability. It makes only a weak gesture toward religious liberty in a single paragraph.... And even that gesture indicates a misunderstanding of religious liberty in our Nation’s tradition. Religious liberty is about more than just the protection for “religious organizations and persons . . . as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.” ... Religious liberty is about freedom of action in matters of religion generally, and the scope of that liberty is directly correlated to the civil restraints placed upon religious practice.
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"Religious liberty is about freedom of action in matters of religion
generally, and the scope of that liberty is directly correlated to the
civil restraints placed upon religious practice." What that literally says is that if a Christian majority in a community voted to start ducking witches (those that practice the Wicca religion), Thomas apparently would struggle with legally condemning the practice as he abhors civil restraints placed on religious practice. And he makes it clear that he thinks America's religious history deserves a place in the law as in his opinion he notes: "Many of the earliest immigrants to America came seeking freedom to practice their religion without restraint. ... When they arrived, they created their own havens for religious practice. ... Many of these havens were initially homogeneous communities with established religions." <br />
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Roberts, Alito, and Thomas are three of the four "conservatives" on the Court. Gorsuch, whose words about physician assisted suicide are quoted above, was not on the Court at the time of the <i>Obergefell</i> case.<br />
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<h3>
The Threat of Christian Theonomist Rule
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In the map below, the dark grey states are those that adopted certain theonomist laws in the years between 2011-2016, the years leading up to the 2016 elections in which the Republicans won the majority of U.S. House of Representatives, the majority of the U.S. Senate, and the office of U.S. President, which will lead to a solid Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court:<br />
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The issue these maps present isn't whether anyone has the right to believe in words in the Bible or rules of personal behavior pronounced by men based on those words. Rather it is what determines the proper role of a state in regulating the personal lives of its people, most particularly when large numbers of people disagree.<br />
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In those dark grey states if the adoption of Islamic Sharia law was proposed, those that backed the adoption of certain theonomist laws in the years between 2011-2016 would threaten revolution. In their minds they see no comparison between implementing laws restricting abortion and Sharia law. <br />
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As explained by Canadian professor of comparative religion who from 1964–1973 was director of Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Cantwell_Smith" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Wilfred Cantwell Smith</a> in his <i>Islam in Modern History</i>: <span class="reference-text">"What theology is for the Christian, law is for the Muslim." The problem is within these United States despite the assurances of separation of church and state, controversial biblical pronouncements have a way of becoming law. Thus when I saw the original of the greyed map, I realized that Smith's statement in 21st Century America would be: "W</span>hat should be Christian theology has become judicially imposed law within these United States.<span class="reference-text">" </span><br />
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My understanding is that the belief structure of the majority of the populous in those ten states resulted in the actions of two houses of each state's legislature and the governor of each state putting into law those restrictions.<br />
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For me the best understanding that belief structure can be found in the <a href="http://www.kfl.org/issues_being_pro_life.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Kansans for Life: Issues web page</a> (Kansans for Life is the largest anti-abortion group in the state) telling their followers (<b><i>emphasis</i></b> added) "Our society <b><i>now</i></b> recognizes that past discrimination on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity and social status was deeply unjust." <br />
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That web page also indicates their immediate political agenda:<br />
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Pro-lifers oppose abortion because it takes the life of a human being before he or she is born....
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We oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide....
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We oppose embryonic stem cell research.... Human embryos are human beings.... And all human beings, regardless of appearance or location (e.g., a petri dish), ought to be treated with respect and not as mere raw material to use for the hypothetical benefit of others.</div>
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Notice that their newly discovered unjust discrimination basis does not include "religion"
which you might want to argue isn't an indicator of anything. Except you might notice the picture at the top of that issues web page:<br />
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And then you might move your cursor over to the "Resources" link at the top of the page and discover this:<br />
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Now one might accuse me of making an unfair judgement about people wishing to impose their religious beliefs on others and considering them dangerous to Californians. But I would call the reader's attention to this 2012 article <a href="https://rewire.news/article/2012/08/14/koch-brothers-and-kansans-life-alliance-that-killed-kansas-moderate/" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">The Koch Brothers and Kansans for Life: The Alliance That Killed the Kansas Moderate</a> or this <a href="http://theleaven.org/topeka-rally-for-life-brings-thousands-to-state-capitol/" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Topeka rally for life brings thousands to state Capitol</a>.<br />
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The first explains how seeking to eliminate government regulations and taxes on business in just one red state the very successful national Koch brothers Neoliberal network (see the post here <a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/01/worldwide-ascendancy-of-neoliberalism.html" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Worldwide Ascendancy of Neoliberalism</a>) joined with a strong Christian political movement which seeks to expand and tighten state and federal government regulations on the lives of individuals.<br />
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The second indicates the deep involvement of Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann and the other Kansas bishops in the Kansans for Life political movement even using students from Catholic grade and high schools. Not that Kansans for Life is a Catholic organization which is clear from this:<br />
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Still, many have a problem with the abortion and gay marriage issues being used to demonstrate an insidious encroachment on freedom. Why would I think this is dangerous to Californians?<br />
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<h3>
"California does not count." Justice Antonin Scalia
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I was born in California. I went to elementary school in California. My California high school 1962 graduating class was 393± students.<br />
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It included 28 Japanese-American students (7%) who were born in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Internment Camps</a> where Japanese Americans were relocated - well, American citizens who were as little as 1/16 Japanese heritage and orphaned infants with "one drop of Japanese blood" were placed in internment camps.<br />
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It included 41 Hispanic students (10%). Many of their parents and/or grandparents were impacted by the so-called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Mexican Repatriation</a>:<br />
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The Mexican Repatriation was a mass deportation of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans from the United States between 1929 and 1936. Estimates of how many were repatriated range from 400,000 to 2,000,000. An estimated sixty percent of those deported were birthright citizens of the United States. Because the forced movement was based on race, and ignored citizenship, the process arguably meets modern legal definitions of ethnic cleansing.
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If you add in the two Black classmates (issues: slavery and segregation), the two Chinese classmates (issue: the 1892 - 1940 Chinese Exclusion Act, the only U.S. law ever to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race), and the three Native American classmates (issue: genocide, forced relocation, and removal of children), the governments in the Union (with U.S. Supreme Court approval in some cases) committed heinous acts based on racial bigotry against the parents and/or grandparents of about 20% of my classmates.<br />
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Am I paranoid about young black men being murdered by cops, by Hispanic deportation outside the norms of our federal court system, the bluster and potential fallout from "Trade War with China" and the anti-Muslim rhetoric? Or are my concerns valid? <br />
<br />
I'm a Californian whose high school graduation in 1962 included a non-mandatory separate invocation event held apart from the graduation ceremony. It was jointly led by a Buddhist Priest, a Jewish Rabbi, a
Protestant Minister, and a Catholic Priest. If we were holding such an invocation today it would include others, such as Islamic and an Amah Mutsun Tribal Band
representation.<br />
<br />
As noted in the chart above and similar to all the current "conservative" Justices, Justice "California-does-not-count" Scalia was raised a Catholic in New York City, attended Xavier High School, a Jesuit (Catholic) military school in Manhattan. He earned his bachelor of arts degree at Georgetown University, also a Jesuit school, and attended Harvard Law School. Classmate and future New York State official William Stern remembered Scalia in his high school days: "This kid was a conservative when he was 17 years old. An archconservative Catholic. He could have been a member of the Curia. He was the top student in the class. He was brilliant, way above everybody else."<br />
<br />
Scalia died in February 2016. But that comment "he could have been a member of the Curia" is troubling on many levels as I believe that it reflects a level of truth about the four "Conservative Justices" listed on the chart above who will remain after the retirement of Justice Kennedy.<br />
<br />
Am I paranoid to think there is a real threat of Christian theonomist rule through the Court? Or are my concerns valid?<br />
<br />
California now finds itself under a Union government based on minority rule, but it is more like Scalia said: "California does not count."<br />
<br />
One of the more misleading 2016 election facts is frequently repeated in the press. And now with the resignation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy it is being repeated again. For instance, New York Magazine <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/anthony-kennedy-the-trump-court-and-minority-rule.html" target="_blank">tells us</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 18px;">
Democrats have won the national vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, which, with the retirement of Anthony Kennedy, will have resulted in the appointment of eight of the Supreme Court’s nine justices. And yet four of those justices will have been appointed by presidents who took office despite having fewer votes than their opponent.
<br />
The House has a massive Republican tilt, requiring Democrats to win the national vote by six or seven points in order to secure a likely majority. The Senate has an even more pronounced tilt, overrepresenting residents of small states, which tend to be white and rural.
</div>
</blockquote>
Factually the Union (see the post here <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2018/06/why-factually-these-united-states-is.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Why factually these United States is a more perfect Union, not a country, nation, or state</a>) has never been a democracy so it shouldn't surprise anyone that:<br />
<ul>
<li>Donald Trump won the Presidency by winning the Electoral College even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a substantial margin; </li>
<li>Republicans won a substantial majority in the House of Representatives even though Democrats received the majority of the popular vote cast for House candidates; and</li>
<li>U.S. Senators were not even elected until the 20th Century and the Senate was never intended to reflect the will of the voters nationally.</li>
</ul>
But there is also another set of facts.<br />
<ul>
<li>Without counting California votes, Donald Trump won the popular vote in the 2016 Presidential Election.</li>
<li>Without counting California votes, the Republicans won the popular vote cast in the 2016 House elections.</li>
</ul>
It is no small irony that Justice Kennedy, a Californian appointed to the Court by President and Former California Governor Ronald Reagan, while on the Supreme Court usually voted far more conservatively than would be accepted in California.<br />
<br />
Only about a third of California voters vote Republican. That reflects California's substantive cultural differences with the red states. We need to consider the following maps:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf8IeHLkSRu4__a7Gd8gjsrhUEXVeP-arWwy4sLbYUu6rNJxJ0NXXi7bZtbS0XQTXR86XcqlIdPO_Lkcq_rBkQlAftvEltshe237bXp8riwSTzQH9AIfa3OEfph6C5WLBVXAdLIv44p6U/s1600/2017-Legislative-Party-Control.jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="352" data-original-width="650" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf8IeHLkSRu4__a7Gd8gjsrhUEXVeP-arWwy4sLbYUu6rNJxJ0NXXi7bZtbS0XQTXR86XcqlIdPO_Lkcq_rBkQlAftvEltshe237bXp8riwSTzQH9AIfa3OEfph6C5WLBVXAdLIv44p6U/s1600/2017-Legislative-Party-Control.jpg.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The map above indicates which political party controls the state legislature, with the blue states controlled by Democrats. This map would seem to belie the quote above when it says: "Democrats have won the national vote in six of the last seven presidential elections." These United States, after all, is not a country, nation, or state, but a Union of diverse states as explained here in <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2018/06/why-factually-these-united-states-is.html" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Why factually these United States is a more perfect Union, not a country, nation, or state</a>.<br />
<br />
But diversity is one thing. This was the map of the Union that immediately preceded <i>Obergefell v. Hodges</i>:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjEEFDSR3KlQ3MLMOoreIkBkq9Iq2khQxhEvbRKAn189y8237DXMTk8pvGsubAtqDiwRLG_avIHfLU_L7NBgb2wSSpCvHKgclVLd-Y3pSn9CCXPRZ14zL2y3fh52dJc77vSMdkIIJCxwg/s1600/gay-marriage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="530" data-original-width="692" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjEEFDSR3KlQ3MLMOoreIkBkq9Iq2khQxhEvbRKAn189y8237DXMTk8pvGsubAtqDiwRLG_avIHfLU_L7NBgb2wSSpCvHKgclVLd-Y3pSn9CCXPRZ14zL2y3fh52dJc77vSMdkIIJCxwg/s1600/gay-marriage.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Is there anything about this map that looks similar to the maps above? Considering all of the maps above, would this map surprise anyone:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi93ISawDpuyw70vpDI-UGX9El2ZeMhpRl06T8jHoMvslOKb-5BPQymciR-6EkTLchKoCuxU-m4HzB7S6dmEJ45KkM0kTQUcgeuS91M_uucmdL7BejYRaWR4oKA08Hq_6QTtZP2oqFFxjQ/s1600/church-attendance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="397" data-original-width="692" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi93ISawDpuyw70vpDI-UGX9El2ZeMhpRl06T8jHoMvslOKb-5BPQymciR-6EkTLchKoCuxU-m4HzB7S6dmEJ45KkM0kTQUcgeuS91M_uucmdL7BejYRaWR4oKA08Hq_6QTtZP2oqFFxjQ/s1600/church-attendance.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
While I have no problem with these folks trying to alter the behavior of individuals through persuasion (free speech), what they have accomplished within those states is imposing their beliefs about individual behavior on everyone through the law. And what now seems possible is that they could succeed in altering the Wilfred Cantwell Smith phrase "what theology is for the Christian, law is for the Muslim" to "what should be Christian theology has become judicially imposed law within these United States."<br />
<br />
Lest you think I'm overstating the situation, consider this. Chief Justice Roberts stated: "Many good and decent people oppose same-sex marriage as a tenet of
faith, and their freedom to exercise religion is—unlike the right
imagined by the majority—actually spelled out in the Constitution." Justice Thomas wrote: "The First Amendment enshrined protection for the free exercise of religion in the U. S. Constitution."<br />
<br />
Those statements are simply a lie. The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The key word there is "Congress." At the time of the adoption of the First Amendment, several states had state "established" religions and had laws the favored one religion over another. Other states had laws protecting religious practices ...well, Christian religious practices.<br />
<br />
The difficulty in challenging the belief structure of the Court's majority has its foundation in cat videos. Odds are the people today who in the future might find themselves in the same disadvantaged position others did before <i>Roe</i> or <i>Obergefell</i> likely can tell you about YouTube videos in great detail. They just couldn't provide any hint of understanding regarding the fact that Abrahamic religions are one of the major divisions in comparative religion, along with Indian religions, Iranian religions, East Asian religions, African religions, American religions, Oceanic religions, and classical Hellenistic religions.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOGagyfK1vYHa13C5_czo5GyfKwp2uUmuN-I_YtTcmchff0qwX8uJiBqfZhn4Evie1w8DTqw-MUjDrFAAWaf8ci9S0tHS-WURVMP84ZoTl4wrGIC-C2K38DqWFnjSGAsBZxAVAMx-NeSU/s1600/Dhalwant-Singh-Dhaliwal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="775" data-original-width="800" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOGagyfK1vYHa13C5_czo5GyfKwp2uUmuN-I_YtTcmchff0qwX8uJiBqfZhn4Evie1w8DTqw-MUjDrFAAWaf8ci9S0tHS-WURVMP84ZoTl4wrGIC-C2K38DqWFnjSGAsBZxAVAMx-NeSU/s200/Dhalwant-Singh-Dhaliwal.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
The fact is the majority of Americans upon seeing the man pictured to the left would absolutely assume he is a Muslim. In fact, his "freedom to exercise religion" initially was prohibited by the U.S. Postal Service (see <a href="http://www.unitedsikhs.org/PressReleases/COMVCE-10-05-2006-01.htm" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">news release</a>).<br />
<br />
Despite the fact that turban wearing bearded members of the Sikh faith have been a significant element in the British and Indian armies - by the beginning of World War I Sikhs in the British Indian Army totaled 20 percent of the force and by 1945 fourteen Victoria Crosses were awarded to Sikhs, a per-capita regimental record - the good Christian United States military defending our "free exercise" of religion until 2017 would not permit them to serve wearing the turban and beard offering up all sorts of reasons belied by the obvious British/Indian history. And then consider this <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/15/us/sikh-hate-crime-victims/index.html" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">news story</a>:<br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: #083c08; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 115%; padding-bottom: 10pt; padding-left: 5pt; padding-right: 5pt; padding-top: 20pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfqOGe2ZX90xsc2fXiQwG8aEUGLGtnks9GzZKMvWjjplbjJ42woW5abt2YWT77v-uSv8zMNJXlZBwA2ACmGe-A5vKrjShh_gPMXh2QFMn1IVz_H5WqtstVHQp9QQ28-BXA6Qmra4GugLA/s1600/hate-sikhs.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="586" data-original-width="790" height="473" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfqOGe2ZX90xsc2fXiQwG8aEUGLGtnks9GzZKMvWjjplbjJ42woW5abt2YWT77v-uSv8zMNJXlZBwA2ACmGe-A5vKrjShh_gPMXh2QFMn1IVz_H5WqtstVHQp9QQ28-BXA6Qmra4GugLA/s640/hate-sikhs.png" width="640" /></a>
<span style="color: #dffbdd;"> Sikhism was founded in the 16th century by Guru Nanak in Punjab, an area that is now divided between India and Pakistan. Nanak rejected the rituals involved with other South Asian religions and stressed the importance of good deeds such as serving others and treating all people equally.
<br /> The monotheistic religion has more than 25 million followers worldwide and about 500,000 in the United States. Yet a majority of Americans -- 60% -- admitted in a 2015 survey that they knew nothing at all about Sikhs.
<br /> Lawyer and activist Valarie Kaur says the threat of violence seems to have become mainstreamed.
<br /> Her grandfather settled in California a century ago, and she knows firsthand from her family that discrimination against Sikhs existed long before 2001. But 9/11, she says, was a paradigm shift, a turning point.
<br /> She used to talk about living in the "shadow of 9/11." Then the shadow turned out to be long, and what seemed temporary became permanent.</span>
</div>
<br />
There are between 500,000 and 700,000 Sikhs in the United States, roughly half of them in California. Of course, the beloved Conservative Catholic Justice Scalia made it clear - California does not count.<br />
<br />
I must now digress a bit. Being a Northern Californian I did work with a Sikh I considered a friend who was of my generation. Of course, he was a Californian, so his father was Sikh, his mother of Mexican descent, and he was married to a white woman. He was born and raised in the southern-most part of California where he attended a segregated public school (yes, like the rest of the country California has a past bloated with bigotry) and was a beneficiary of <i>Mendez v. Westminster</i> which is part of Scalia's California does not count.<br />
<br />
In 1947 a federal circuit court in California ruled that segregation of school children was unconstitutional—except this case involved the segregation of Mexican American school children years before the U.S. Supreme Court ended racial segregation in U.S. schools with <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i>.<br />
<br />
The infamous Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reached this historic decision. The Ninth Circuit is generally hated by the right in the United States for its far reaching consistent view that the most important right of all Americans is to be treated equally by other Americans in "the town square."<br />
<br />
Historic in its own right, <i>Mendez</i> was critical to the strategic choices and legal analysis used in arguing Brown and in shaping the ideas of a young NAACP attorney, Thurgood Marshall. Moreover, the <i>Mendez</i> case—which originated with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) but benefited from the participation of the NAACP—also symbolized the important crossover between different ethnic and racial groups who came together to argue in favor of desegregation.<br />
<br />
But then again, California does not count, so the <i>Mendez</i> case is not taught in Kansas schools so let's return to the subject at hand.<br />
<br />
Sikhism is one of the largest organized religions in the world, with 20 million members living in India and 27 million worldwide. But it is not among the Abrahamic religions that claim descent from the practices of the ancient Israelites and the worship of the God of Abraham, the largest of which are (in alphabetical order) Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. These religions have a long history of violence, so much so that the Wikipedia entry has a section headed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions#Violent_conflicts" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Violent conflicts</a> with subsection headings <i>Between Abrahamic religions</i>, <i>Between branches of the same Abrahamic religion</i>, and Between <i>Abrahamic religions and non-adherents</i>. This is religion as embraced in American history and law.
<span style="font-size: 8px;"><br /> </span>
<br />
<center>
<h3>
I may be paranoid, but...
</h3>
</center>
<br />
Some may want to accuse me of paranoia and/or, as they did to Diane Feinstein, accuse me of religious bigotry. But I'm an old Californian whose high school graduation included a non-mandatory separate invocation event where a Buddhist priest led part of the ceremony. I'm an old Californian who had a Sikh friend. I am an old Californian who had friends in high school who because of their racial heritage were born in American concentration camps. I am an old Californian who had friends in high school whose American-born parents and grandparents were subjected to the so-called Mexican Repatriation and whose grand-children are now subjected to an out-of-control Trump immigration policy. I'm an old Californian who does not accept what the Union has become in the 21st Century.<br />
<br />
Perhaps I'm paranoid, but just maybe I have a reason to fear the rise of "A Handmaid's Tale" theonomist judiciary regardless of which of the possible nominees for replacement of Justice Kennedy is selected. And that is because of the majority of the people living in the states on the map below do not even know that the "Star Spangled Banner" was written by an avid advocate of slavery and has a verse attacking escaped slaves:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqRk5Oenb4IdexSuBlNPCDzTHK3fBkgOaZbDDcOTBKSSDHV_NZvf4ZrH5cZU42_eHw20vuOKa9_IRstcQv_WR17mMIdqEmQYUhwia-adaJAGTXWIAM65-0xYZRgBld9vjcuCSsu5RNDpw/s1600/notmy-us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="465" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqRk5Oenb4IdexSuBlNPCDzTHK3fBkgOaZbDDcOTBKSSDHV_NZvf4ZrH5cZU42_eHw20vuOKa9_IRstcQv_WR17mMIdqEmQYUhwia-adaJAGTXWIAM65-0xYZRgBld9vjcuCSsu5RNDpw/s1600/notmy-us.jpg" /></a></div>
Scroll up to compare this map with maps indicating the related facts - not that facts matter. And God forbid in this country, which according to a sitting Supreme Court Justice "enshrined protection for the free exercise of religion," we would have a mandatory 8th Grade course on comparative religions so we know what religion is and that it includes Islam and Zoroastrianism (one of the world's oldest extant monotheistic religions which enters recorded history in the 5th-century BCE and is practiced by about 11,000 people in the United States and many facets of which are incorporated into Christianity and Islam).<br />
<br />
Or does the makeup of the Court itself and the map above together tell us which religions were actually enshrined and which are just tolerated. And which American citizens are deserving of legal protections?<span style="font-size: 8px;"><br /> </span>
<br />
<center>
<h3>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="update">7/10/2018 Update: Nominee Brett Kavanaugh</a>
</h3>
</center>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmd4U6P7K-bxveNZbSXdhmQbq22XPy-Nb6-VuCG6lC53dU4_Scsqaco-WJtVyBRD7T91fRWcD0xgHCHZGAHwhDk9wQ88rz0hfHonmGR-CeUKSdcPYtS9QBf5IqetTcRP2JzzjCiT_2pZQ/s1600/nominee692.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="116" data-original-width="692" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmd4U6P7K-bxveNZbSXdhmQbq22XPy-Nb6-VuCG6lC53dU4_Scsqaco-WJtVyBRD7T91fRWcD0xgHCHZGAHwhDk9wQ88rz0hfHonmGR-CeUKSdcPYtS9QBf5IqetTcRP2JzzjCiT_2pZQ/s1600/nominee692.jpg" /></a></div>
Somewhat to my surprise President Trump nominated Bret Kavanaugh to replace Justice Kennedy.<br />
<br />
As explained above in the original post, some of us think that which religion one was raised in can influence what one believes is right and wrong, one's values are influenced by grade school and high school experiences, adults make judgements based upon their associations with their college professors and fellow university students, as much as they do based on which books they read. <br />
<br />
It is very troubling that Kavanaugh's life as can be seen on the chart above adding to the chart in the original post, reads like five of the eight current Supreme Court Justices who were raised Roman Catholic, four of the eight who attended parochial schools, and eight of eight none of whom attended a state institution of higher learning at any time in their college education.<br />
<br />
It isn't comforting that Kavanaugh is a regular lector (reader) at his Washington, D.C. church, the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtv9MuYiUntH4GPOsJYSZgH2Q5i85E9lbwaBxbX5lmCfcxu35dWrP1PLmvHjPUqpFzyESFleFdqnCzaUX381T43umUl-aPRNF7J7dAZSI0DQ9mk0TwWt89PzBEwPfmf4TB4eCKeYUPsNc/s1600/lector.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="120" data-original-width="583" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtv9MuYiUntH4GPOsJYSZgH2Q5i85E9lbwaBxbX5lmCfcxu35dWrP1PLmvHjPUqpFzyESFleFdqnCzaUX381T43umUl-aPRNF7J7dAZSI0DQ9mk0TwWt89PzBEwPfmf4TB4eCKeYUPsNc/s1600/lector.png" /></a></div>
<br />
According to <a href="http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/the-mass/order-of-mass/liturgy-of-the-word/the-lector-at-mass.cfm" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">The Lector at Mass - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops</a> this carefully constrained role is:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 18px;">
In the procession to the altar, in the absence of a Deacon, the reader, wearing approved attire [see GIRM, no. 339], may carry the Book of the Gospels, slightly elevated. In that case, the reader walks in front of the Priest but otherwise walks along with the other ministers.
<br />
Upon reaching the altar, the reader makes a profound bow with the others [see also GIRM, no. 274]. If he is carrying the Book of the Gospels, he approaches the altar and places the Book of the Gospels upon it. Then the reader takes his own place in the sanctuary with the other ministers. (GIRM, nos. 194-195)
<br />
The reader reads from the ambo the readings that precede the Gospel. In the absence of a psalmist, the reader may also proclaim the Responsorial Psalm after the First Reading.
<br />
In the absence of a Deacon, the reader, after the introduction by the Priest, may announce the intentions of the Universal Prayer from the ambo.
<br />
If there is no singing at the Entrance or at Communion and the antiphons given in the Missal are not recited by the faithful, the reader may read them at an appropriate time (cf. nos. 48, 87). (GIRM, nos. 196-198)
<br />
At the conclusion of the Mass, the lector does not process with the Book of the Gospels. The Lectionary is never carried in procession. The lector may join in the procession at the end of Mass in the same order as in the procession to the altar.
</div>
</blockquote>
Nor is it comforting that Kavanaugh has tutored at the Washington Jesuit Academy, a Catholic private school in the District of Columbia.<br />
<br />
In stark contrast, outgoing Justice Kennedy who Kavanaugh clerked for and would replace has been active off the bench as well, calling for reform of overcrowded American prisons in a speech before the American Bar Association. He spends his summers in Salzburg, Austria, where he teaches international and American law at the University of Salzburg for the McGeorge School of Law of the University of the Pacific (founded in 1851 with a Methodist affiliation) and often attends the large yearly international judges conference held there.<br />
<br />
Defending his use of international law, in 2005 Kennedy told The New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin, "Why should world opinion care that the American Administration wants to bring freedom to oppressed peoples? Is that not because there's some underlying common mutual interest, some underlying common shared idea, some underlying common shared aspiration, underlying unified concept of what human dignity means? I think that's what we're trying to tell the rest of the world, anyway."<br />
<br />
Not since <span class="st">Episcopalian </span>David Souter has anyone been on the Court who was not raised in Catholicism or Judaism.<br />
<br />
Besides the heavy dose of Catholic upbringing represented on the Court, I have one other problem with this Court. Since the Supreme Court was established in 1789, 113 persons have served on the Court. Of the first 100, 40 had no prior judicial experience. A complete list is below, but the 40 include Earl Warren, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Louis Brandeis, just to name a few whose name some Americans might recognize.<br />
<br />
No one appearing on this list has been seated on the Supreme Court since 1972 even though the role of the Supreme Court is radically different than that of a judge.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNq37vYR0b83aKS1P0buGa5LfxlKlud2AoJRCsCdNiuIHAueO7ov1V-BNSv8UdZLQzH3YqfUvJ7Q2TktIPqtZx9MVDMwVPYHzdxVhoaSKL_D6hE9bKcFaAqwCnF_gh1k6WUc8aFYJEx2E/s1600/non-judge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; line-height: 14px; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">Supreme Court Justices with No Prior Judicial Experience<br /><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="650" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNq37vYR0b83aKS1P0buGa5LfxlKlud2AoJRCsCdNiuIHAueO7ov1V-BNSv8UdZLQzH3YqfUvJ7Q2TktIPqtZx9MVDMwVPYHzdxVhoaSKL_D6hE9bKcFaAqwCnF_gh1k6WUc8aFYJEx2E/s1600/non-judge.jpg" /></a></div>
Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-21309937347146022018-06-28T16:43:00.001-07:002018-06-29T12:26:57.078-07:00The Development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) AI should be regulated but perhaps not by an elected, divisive U.S. legislative body<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: serif; font-size: 95%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; line-height: 14px; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="564" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhARV4GCDWbJl4YUjTAJjeA366U7QrDvvl6jxn8XBXAzWc__glb3xNxr_D846wv3L8uIGI5MDH_jwn5bYJJnYigTh8anP4wG1oMXYDgo4gqeA1rtqNrFhagDl4xQm0mWzN4P1Ov_CplBoE/s320/IBM564.jpg" width="320" /><img border="0" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="564" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP-GwgA4FfYpPd4CACts8y0cX1HdMlQpeEKgU-cX9DCyw-gsRRnLhYKl1fldN6LDecLBMZhzvLsUzFL3PLJmvRV69rRlHj4oh9TakoEHYXe-fT-Nc8PfbktNkf0BJpHSFzGm9qyPAqbCo/s320/Westworld564.jpg" width="320" /><br />Which photo represents The Dawn of the Age of Artificial Intelligence?</div>
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"Halt and Catch Fire (HCF): An early computer command that sent the machine into a race condition, forcing all instructions to compete for superiority at once. Control of the computer could not be regained." - <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/tv-lust/bal-halt-and-catch-fire-recap-io-20140602-story.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">title card for the TV series <i>Halt and Catch Fire</i></a>
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In computer engineering, Halt and Catch Fire, known by the assembly mnemonic HCF, is an idiom referring to a computer machine code instruction that causes the computer's central processing unit (CPU) to cease meaningful operation, typically requiring a restart of the computer. - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>
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Greg Brockman is likely a name you do not recognize even though he is on the 2018 Forbes List <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/greg-brockman/" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><i>30 Under 30 - Enterprise Technology</i></a>. He's 29. The Forbes entry reports his education as follows: "Drop Out, arvard University; Bachelor of Arts/Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (also drop out)." It tells you he resides in San Francisco.<br />
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Brockman testified before Congress Tuesday on artificial intelligence (AI). Thinking about Brockman reminded me of....<br />
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Halt and Catch Fire</h3>
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In its first season, the TV series <i>Halt and Catch Fire</i> won the Critic's Choice Television Award for Most Exciting New Series. By the third season it had a 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In its fourth and final season which received critical acclaim it held a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. <br />
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Per <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series)#Critical_response" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>: "Taking place over a period of ten years, the series depicts a fictionalized insider's view of the personal computer revolution of the 1980s and later the growth of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s."<br />
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<i>Halt and Catch Fire</i> told the story of a few
people who found themselves in the middle of the creation of technology
that thus far has driven the 21st Century. It aired on AMC from June 1, 2014, to October 14, 2017.<br />
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On February 6, 2018, it won the Women's Image Network Awards award for Best Drama Series. For the show offered the best representation of women in tech and management in ways you would have a hard time finding elsewhere.<br />
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For someone who was involved with computers beginning in the 1970's and 1980's the show was a historical piece, a story of the late 20th Century, and well done. It also reminded me of how young and naive we were - unaware of the real implications of what we were doing.<br />
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One programmer observed: “I know that something’s coming, something big, like a train, and all I want is to jump on board. But it’s getting faster and faster and I’m terrified I’m going to miss it … I don’t want to get left behind.”<br />
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With foresight, another young staffer in his suicide note warned: “Beware of false prophets who will sell you a fake future, of bad teachers and corrupt leaders and dirty corporations … But most of all beware of each other, because everything is about to change. The world is going to crack wide open. The barriers between us will disappear, and we’re not ready. We’ll hurt each other in new ways. We’ll sell and be sold. We’ll expose our most tender selves only to be mocked and destroyed. We’ll be so vulnerable and we’ll pay the price.” <br />
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Airing in the second decade of the 21st Century, the series offers hindsight which sometimes provides us with insight regarding current activities. And yet, relatively few Americans watched it. And why would they?<br />
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After all as late as 2006 United States Senator Ted Stevens was reflecting the average American's understanding of the technology that could make or break their employer in that decade:<br />
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Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got… an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.
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...They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. <b><i>It's a series of tubes.</i></b> And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
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Even recognizing that Stevens was just one member of Congress, most of us who were involved in the computer industry in the 1970's and 1980's, who also had governmental/political involvement, understood that the 19th Century U.S. Constitution was entering a "Halt and Catch Fire" condition. Because it is government, it would take about a decade before the need to "reboot" our federal government with all new "machine code" uploaded would become obvious.<br />
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And indeed in 2016 the need to "reboot" our federal government with all new "machine code" did become obvious, with the Russian interference in the Presidential Election based solely upon the use of primary goal of the American corporate internet - advertising to make corporations rich. And indeed in 2016 the need to "reboot" our federal government with all new "machine code" did become obvious with the effective use of internet social media by a reality game show host who had no previous political or government experience to get himself elected President.<br />
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The fact "it won't work anymore" came from knowning that Ted Stevens chaired the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. And because of his very limited knowledge about 21st Century technology he used the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">series of tubes</a>" metaphor to criticize a proposed amendment to a committee bill which would have prohibited Internet service providers such as AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon Communications from charging fees to give some companies' data a higher priority in relation to other traffic.<br />
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And today while Congress members are somewhat better versed on the 50-year-old technology, their median expertise level is only slightly better than knowing how to watch cat videos on YouTube. Even their staffers are most certainly not at the level necessary to begin the process of regulating Artificial Intelligence. The "cat video" level of knowledge (along with a predisposition to listen to corporate lobbyists in order to fund reelection campaigns) is why in the United States achieving privacy and security on the internet through Congressional action will never happen.<br />
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The Dawn of the Age of Artificial Intelligence
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On Wednesday November 30, 2016, Greg Brockman gave his first testimony on Capitol Hill to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness. The subject matter of the hearing was "The Dawn of the Age of Artificial Intelligence" and the Chair of the Subcommittee was a different Senator named Ted. Here are some of the hearing opening remarks from Senator Ted Cruz:<br />
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Today, we’re on the verge of a new technological revolution, thanks to the rapid advances in processing power, the rise of big data, cloud computing, mobility due to wireless capability, and advanced algorithms. Many believe that there may not be a single technology that will shape our world more in the next 50 years than artificial intelligence. In fact, some have observed that, as powerful and transformative as the Internet has been, it may be best remembered as the predicate for artificial intelligence and machine learning.
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Artificial intelligence is at an inflection point. While the concept of artificial intelligence has been around for at least 60 years, more recent breakthroughs...have brought artificial intelligence from mere concept to reality.
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Whether we recognize it or not, artificial intelligence is already seeping into our daily lives. In the healthcare sector, artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to predict diseases at an earlier stage, thereby allowing the use of preventative treatment, which can help lead to better patient outcomes, faster healing, and lower costs. In transportation, artificial intelligence is not only being used in smarter traffic management applications to reduce traffic, but is also set to disrupt the automotive industry through the emergence of self-driving vehicles. Consumers can harness the power of artificial intelligence through online search engines and virtual personal assistants via smart devices, such as Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Home. Artificial intelligence also has the potential to contribute to economic growth in both the near and long term. A 2016 Accenture report predicted that artificial intelligence could double annual economic growth rates by 2035 and boost labor productivity by up to 40 percent.
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Furthermore, market research firm Forrester recently predicted that there will be a greater-than-300-percent increase in investment in artificial intelligence in 2017 compared to 2016. While the emergence of artificial intelligence has the opportunity to improve our lives, it will also have vast implications for our country and the American people that Congress will need to consider, moving forward....
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Today, the United States is the preeminent leader in developing artificial intelligence. But, that could soon change. ...Ceding leadership in developing artificial intelligence to China, Russia, and other foreign governments will not only place the United States at a technological disadvantage, but it could have grave implications for national security.
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We are living in the dawn of artificial intelligence. And it is incumbent that Congress and this subcommittee begin to learn about the vast implications of this emerging technology to ensure that the United States remains a global leader throughout the 21st century. This is the first congressional hearing on artificial intelligence....
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As did a number of leaders in the AI industry, Brockman gave an extensive presentation. Here are some key points:
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I’m Greg Brockman, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI. OpenAI is a nonprofit AI research company with a billion dollars in funding. Our mission is to build safe, advanced AI technology, and to ensure that its benefits are distributed to everyone....
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The U.S. has led essentially all technological breakthroughs of the past 100 years. And they’ve consistently created new companies, new jobs, and increased American competitiveness in the world. AI has the potential to be our biggest advance yet.
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Today, we have a lead, but we don’t have a monopoly, when it comes to AI. This year, Chinese teams won the top categories in a Stanford annual image recognition context. South Korea declared a billion-dollar AI fund. Canada actually produced a lot of the technologies that have kicked off the current boom. And they recently announced their own renewed investment into AI.
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So, right now I would like to share three key points for how the U.S. can lead in AI:
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The first of these is that we need to compete on applications. But, when it comes to basic research, that should be open and collaborative....
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The second thing...is that we need public measurement and contests. There’s really a long history of contests causing major advances in the field. For example, the DARPA Grand Challenge really led directly to the self-driving technology that’s being commercialized today. ...Measures and contests help distinguish hype from substance, and they offer better forecasting. ...Good policy responses and a healthy public debate are really going to depend on people having clear data about how the technology is progressing. What can we do? What still remains science fiction? How fast are things moving? So, we really support OSTP’s recommendation that the government keep a close watch on AI advancement, and that it work with industry to measure it.
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The third thing that we need is that we need industry, government, and academia to start coordinating on safety, security, and ethics. The Internet was really built with security as an afterthought. And we’re still paying the cost for that today.
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Academic and industrial participants are already starting to coordinate on responsible development of AI. For example, we recently published a paper, together with Stanford, Berkeley, and Google, laying out a roadmap for AI safety research. Now, what would help is feedback from the government about what issues are most concerning to it so that we can start addressing those from as early a date as possible.
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...The best way to create a good future is to invent it. And we have that opportunity with AI by investing in open, basic research, by creating competitions and measurement, and by coordinating on safety, security, and ethics.
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Tuesday's joint meeting of the House Subcommittee on Research and Technology and Subcommittee on Energy offers insight into how it is when technology advances at the hands of young creators, even ones who are concerned about the deficits in the process. You can watch it on YouTube (note: the action doesn't start until 22 minutes into the video):<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_ObbBp5Vo9U/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_ObbBp5Vo9U?feature=player_embedded" width="420"></iframe></div>
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The problem is the expert witnesses are asking the technology challenged, AI-uninformed to create regulations, an ethics system, when the experts themselves are unable to know and describe what problems are likely to arise from a technology level that does not exist and has never been tested.<br />
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The baseline example is the so-called "autonomous" vehicle. In that case, the first step is to acquire a dictionary and discover "autonomous" means "existing or capable of existing independently, not subject to control from outside."<br />
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In other words, an <i>autonomous</i> vehicle will decide where it's going and what route it's taking, and also drive itself there. Would you climb into such a vehicle, perhaps right after you named it "Hal" (and if you don't recognize that reference, you do need to stream the movie <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>).<br />
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On the other hand, a "self-driving" vehicle is capable of driving to the destination on the roads you tell it to, hopefully safely without your intervention through the controls such as the steering wheel or brakes.<br />
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Despite the fact that self-driving-capable vehicles exist, American governments are having trouble regulating them and there are no ethical nuances involved.<br />
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In 2016 Brockman observed: "The Internet was really built with security as an afterthought. And we’re still paying the cost for that today." That was after the 2016 election but before the full scope of the Russian interference problem was known. Unfortunately, we have no answers for the security problem that does not in some way interfere with either individual freedom or individual privacy or both.<br />
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I cannot even begin to imagine the operating assumption that will go into real AI, assumptions that will turn out to be false - you know, the ooops of technology. I cannot even begin to consider the complex ethical and moral issues that will arise even if the AI is not in the form of a Dolores (pictured to the right at the top of this post), Bernard, Maeve, or Teddy.<br />
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Government? In considering and effectively dealing with such a complex issue as AI and with the opinions of hundreds of millions of people slowly learning about AI, you're looking a two decades of debate. Then, of course, it will be too late to have avoided layers of crises.<br />
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If you think I'm wrong, you may want to read the paper prepared for the <a href="http://www.akademie3000.de/en/content/akademie/start.htm" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Academy to the Third Millennium</a> February 1997 Conference Internet & Politics entitled "<a href="http://www.citi.columbia.edu/elinoam/articles/munich97.htm" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Regulation and Deregulation of the Internet</a>." Presented by Columbia University by professor of Finance and Economics and Paul Garrett Chair in Public Policy and Business Responsibility <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Noam" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Eli Noam</a> who is the director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI).<br />
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In order to set context, let me return to the TV series <i>Halt and Catch Fire</i>. Episode 1 of Season 3. The year is 1986. The place is Silicon Valley. And Mutiny, the little
internet startup that could, is celebrating a 100,000-person user base and independence from the outsourced servers it once relied upon to keep itself running. Let me repeat - the year is 1986.<br />
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Noam's presentation was given in February 1997, over a decade after real life young tech nerds like those depicted in <i>Halt and Catch Fire</i> were establishing the internet. His presentation was over a decade after the internet became obvious to many and nearly 20 years before the Russian interference in the U.S. Presidential election in which the only candidate who knew how to effectively use social media (because he was the only non-politician) won. In that 1997 context Noam muses:<br />
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A myth is going around that has almost been elevated to the status of platitude: “you cannot regulate the Internet.” There is a related myth, that “a bit is a bit,” that no bit can therefore be treated differently from any other, and that attempts at control are therefore doomed to fail. Both claims, though originating with technologists who implicitly seem to believe in technological determinism, are wrong even as a matter of technology....
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Also, communication is not just a matter of signals but of people and institutions. For all the appeal of the notion of “virtuality,” one should not forget that physical reality is alive and well. Senders, recipients, and intermediaries are living, breathing people, or they are legally organized institutions with physical domiciles and physical hardware. The arm of the law can reach them. It may be possible to evade such law, but the same is true when it comes to tax regulations. Just because a law cannot fully stop an activity does not prove that such law is ineffective or undesirable.
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This, most emphatically, does not mean that we should regulate cyberspace (whatever it is). But that is a normative question of values, not one of technological determinism. We should choose freedom because we want to, not because we have to. And that choice will not be materially different from those which societies generally apply. As the Internet moves from a nerd-preserve to an office park, shopping mall, and community center, it is sheer fantasy to expect that its uses and users will be beyond the law. This seems obvious. Yet, for many, the new medium is like a Rorschach test, an electronic blob into which they project their own fantasies, desires and fears for society. As the Russians say: Same bed, different dreams. Traditionalists find the dark forces of degeneracy, as in everything. Libertarians find an atrophy of government. Leftists find a new community, devoid of the material avarice of private business. This kind of dreaming is common for new and fundamental technology, and it is usually wrong.
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A society’s choice of rules will depend, among other things, on its willingness to accept risk. The Internet is new and unchartedterritory. The term “electronic frontier” is quite apt. As it happens, America has been in the frontier business for a long time. It’s good at it. It’s its defining characteristic,together with liberty and free enterprise. No wonder then that America is atthe leading edge of the information age.
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It is a common fallacy to over-estimate the short term but to under-estimate the long term. Thus, we over-estimate the short-termability of electronic communications to be free of government controls, because it is believed that “you can’t regulate the Internet.” But the long-term is another matter. The long-term leads to entirely new conceptsof political community. Just as traditional banks and traditional universities will decline, so will traditional forms of jurisdiction. A few years ago, it became fashionable to speak of communications creating the"global village."-- communal and peaceful. But there is nothing village-like in the unfolding reality. Instead, groups with shared economic interests are extending national group pluralism through the opportunity to create global interconnection with each other into the international sphere. The new group networks do not create a global village, they create instead the world as a series of electronic neighborhoods.
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Communications define communities, and communities define politics. Thus, the breakdown of the coherent national communications system reflects and accelerates a fundamental centrifugalism that will reshape, in time, countries and societies. We are barely at the beginning of this evolution, and the forces of resistance are only beginning to fathom the impacts.
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It has been 55 years since Americans began to use something resembling today's internet. The earliest ideas for a computer network intended to allow general communications among computer users were formulated in April 1963 by computer scientist J. C. R. Licklider in memoranda discussing the concept of the "Intergalactic Computer Network". Those ideas encompassed many of the features of the contemporary Internet. In October 1963, Licklider was appointed head of the Behavioral Sciences and Command and Control programs at the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Funded by ARPA of the United States Department of Defense, ARPANET became the technical foundation of the Internet. <br />
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To put it simply, it has been over a half a century since the U.S. Government began creating the internet. In the face of various national security agencies needs for access to everyone's data which the private sector apparently already has, Congress is struggling with how to establish any semblance of security and privacy in the face of what was created by funding approved by...Congress.
<img border="0" data-original-height="16" data-original-width="16" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj9qk2EXo26hk5Zt8lt2tTDIL5_ycOxNhxGt7pwb0p6Mx4oSb4zZfMmhEVsSSnlr8Uwc2lDKekhRsuOFuj0MrVipTT_-Oc4i5deqv_kpMTlklOthIDL98Fg8AerEtGyMA_rIhIfI-Mza4/s1600/rolleyes.gif" /><br />
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In April the following headline appeared in <i>Newsweek</i> <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/ai-candidate-promising-fair-and-balanced-reign-attracts-thousands-votes-tokyo-892274" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">AI Candidate Promising ‘Fair and Balanced’ Reign Attracts Thousands of Votes in Tokyo Mayoral Election</a>. That article seemed just about as informed about AI as Congress. In a <a href="https://grapee.jp/en/97202" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">different source</a> we are offered a more prescient perspective:<br />
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Whether it's samurai robots, a hotel staffed by robots, or AI girlfriends, it seems that it safe to say that one should keep their eye on Japan when it comes to developments in the field of artificial intelligence. So while it seemed a foregone conclusion that AI would eventually break into the world of politics, the way we're seeing it do so in one city in Japan is a bit surprising. The mayoral election of Tama City in Tokyo is featuring its first "AI candidate".
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At least, that's what one can take from the promise of mayoral candidate Michito Matsuda. Matsuda has chosen to throw his hat into the election but is deferring to an AI-powered robot avatar, as he intends to maximize the use of artificial intelligence and rely on it heavily in the running of his municipal administration.
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As he writes on his Twitter account (which is run in character in an AI persona), "For the first time in the world, AI will run in an election. Artificial intelligence will change Tama City. With the birth of an AI-Mayor, we will conduct impartial and balanced politics. We will implement policies for the future with speed, accumulate information and know-how, and lead the next generation."</div>
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Even though he lost the election, Matsuda's effort could lead to a possible discussion regarding whether politicians or AI could do a better job at governing. And so long as Americans keep voting for candidates they can socially relate to, the answer some day could be AI. Or not as discussed in <a href="https://edgylabs.com/ai-101-why-ai-will-bring-on-the-next-revolution" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">AI 101: Why AI is the Next Revolution–or Doomsday</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPAZDgJMTZDCjJlNgK1bSHNOZCRjRRv0t1hTjn1W4ZXVIqHb9_80KivnTAqbRE-bOPw2TkVQ5rX1jAGyjcJOevryCld7MkJVmPEMcZHEAQXqV0yjCx4wE8xu8jERIUQN1KAm8x6pGek7Q/s1600/robot-people692.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="535" data-original-width="692" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPAZDgJMTZDCjJlNgK1bSHNOZCRjRRv0t1hTjn1W4ZXVIqHb9_80KivnTAqbRE-bOPw2TkVQ5rX1jAGyjcJOevryCld7MkJVmPEMcZHEAQXqV0yjCx4wE8xu8jERIUQN1KAm8x6pGek7Q/s1600/robot-people692.jpg" /></a></div>
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I'm not sure which will be more disruptive to humanity - AI or Climate Change. But I can tell Greg Brockman and Dr. Fei-Fei Li that the Congressional testimony they gave earlier this week is almost a complete waste of time.<br />
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California Joins the EU
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<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/06/28/how-tough-new-california-law-protect-internet-privacy/744171002/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="421" data-original-width="590" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwXrxo-LOc9LOpPyR_f9aGDn8594RKVX9t6M8snKG64GxBvCOGM-PflSxJ1KieXJVvQHBEqlj6LQoJkpdeDKoKHmr4NAdM0gjuq9vWkS9Stxl4RkCHzcXrzTLO-n1bkGIGAE_MSaCP1s8/s1600/cal-leg.png" /></a></div>
<br />
With all of that said, California - the home of Silicon Valley - is attempting to step in where Congress has failed essentially by adopting online privacy rules consistent with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union that became effective May 25.<br />
<br />
The GDPR begins with a simple statement: "The protection of natural persons in relation to the processing of personal data is a fundamental right. Article 8(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the ‘Charter’) and Article 16(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) provide that everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her." The term "natural persons" is used to distinguish humans from corporations in emphasizing human rights over economic constructs.<br />
<br />And so this week the California Legislature passed the toughest online privacy law in these United States. However, it doesn't take effect until January 2020 though, in order to allow the Silicon Valley corporations to prepare. <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK3O6aXxxD6jDd8Md1s65h5KWlvV45Jp-f2aJfgk_6EkmGtGW2WrWoXQqxn21CuJ11D6PAOufosKJDcP9pbRlHlULHDyN4vE6EjnYSLxqrzAzZtm86kHpcxJsiWcFHjd6C9XqTXp7XwdE/s1600/redface.gif" data-original-width="16" data-original-height="16" vertical-align="text-top" /><br />
<br />
Under the new law, California consumers will have the right to:<br />
<ul>
<li>know all the data collected by a business and be able to transfer it twice annually for free;</li>
<li>to opt out of having their personal information sold (but companies will then be able to charge those consumers higher fees);</li>
<li>to delete their data;</li>
<li>to tell a business it can't sell their data;</li>
<li>to know why the data is being collected;</li>
<li>to be informed of what categories of data will be collected before it's collected and to be informed of any changes to that;</li>
<li>to be told the categories of third parties with whom their data is shared and the categories of third parties from whom their data was acquired;</li>
<li>to have businesses get permission before selling any information of children under the age of 16.</li>
</ul>
<br />
As the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> noted <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-internet-privacy-20180628-story.html" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">With the federal government missing in action, California should set its own rules for internet privacy</a>.<br />
<br />
Regarding Artificial Intelligence, Brockman, Li, and their compatriots should move their advocacy effort for an AI regulatory/ethics structure to the California Legislature. That is because, as we've pointed out on a number of issues, it is the <a href="https://progressivepacific.blogspot.com/" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Progressive Pacific Message</a> that must be advocated:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/theodore-roosevelt/state-of-the-union-1902.php" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="246" data-original-width="675" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsq2C2c16C3r2QdOyOdaY-jnvgO7eANe1uJT1NVQSyzrJ0G-GTUX2hM8Jd2CrJSFf-gvDG23fcGytH56qLyw8_wBcem55i792YCufoLeoUXk8ULq3r6dNcAtOelb3XeRmaGno4FGX-QgRv/s1600/tr-corp675.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
The problem is that if individuals use the California online privacy law, it is very likely that the U.S. Supreme Court, with its membership reflecting the privacy preferences of most of the folks not in the Pacific States, would ultimately overturn it as a proscribed interference in interstate commerce. That is because the U.S. Constitution as literally written by the Founding Fathers primarily provides for (a) the conduct international relations including military defense and (b) provides for the regulation of interstate commerce exclusively by Congress. It took amendments contained in what we know as the Bill of Rights to have any provisions for human rights and online privacy was not included.<br />
<br />
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitzTqEBzOyp-z22pINSY3oOJUVqn9kZ-saggY4WxoRGFPWjfiwxziOTH7xJQn4qJencxAZ7cN6GjsKd8R9saeg5wyUmR0_znjSjeqcRlb0wf6QXo6Ladw1R53Z4KK2kpgmXnHCWZIAVUY/s1600/formular.gif" data-original-width="24" data-original-height="23" /> The U.S. Government because of its "machine code" known as the Constitution is simply not capable of surviving the 21st Century.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-50022255023667405062018-06-25T15:14:00.000-07:002018-06-25T22:36:34.942-07:00 Time for a non-violent civil war Hey Retailers! New Supreme Court ruling confirms it may be ok to refuse to serve customers based on your belief structureAs you may have read, on Friday evening (June 22), Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of Red Hen, a small farm-to-table restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, asked Donald Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her establishment.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTHS_Qn8dHCgfut4bMvEr7YaDAd3Sx7aCE_nt9CHDpmPSt3fFuyaU1fh4Uk7YlPXEWfocJr5f3OUHb7Od1L-pJRRkQLg8BGToH3YIWSaub6f2T5BBVlrpqYMOzHpXXJBKdkVS5aAPLcPE/s1600/owner-red-hen.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="653" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTHS_Qn8dHCgfut4bMvEr7YaDAd3Sx7aCE_nt9CHDpmPSt3fFuyaU1fh4Uk7YlPXEWfocJr5f3OUHb7Od1L-pJRRkQLg8BGToH3YIWSaub6f2T5BBVlrpqYMOzHpXXJBKdkVS5aAPLcPE/s1600/owner-red-hen.png" /></a></div>
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
"I’m not a huge fan of confrontation. I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals." <i>- Stephanie Wilkinson, Owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Va.
</i></div>
</blockquote>
What you you might not have read is that today the U.S. Supreme Court sent a case back to the Washington state courts. They could have refused to take up the case. They could have heard it. It is a case in which a florist refused to do the flowers for a gay wedding. They sent it back for additional consideration, in effect vacating the Washington's Court's ruling.<br />
<br />
The question these two news stories generated are:<br />
<ul>
<li>Do Americans who deeply hold political beliefs have fewer rights than those who hold religious beliefs? And do those who believe in little green humanoid alien life forms instead of one or more gods or goddesses have fewer rights?</li>
<li>Can Americans who hold religious beliefs thumb their noses at anti-discrimination laws? But those who hold deeply political beliefs cannot? </li>
</ul>
The answers as of June 25, 2018:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
The Supreme Court on Monday told a lower court to reconsider the case of a florist in Washington State who had refused to create a floral arrangement for a same-sex wedding. The justices vacated a decision against the florist from the Washington Supreme Court and instructed it to take a fresh look at the dispute in light of this month’s ruling in a similar dispute involving a Colorado baker.
<br />
The Washington Supreme Court ruled that Ms. Stutzman had violated a state anti-discrimination law by refusing to provide the floral arrangement. “This case is no more about access to flowers than civil rights cases in the 1960s were about access to sandwiches,” the court said, quoting from the plaintiffs’ brief.
</div>
</blockquote>
As noted in the above <i>New York Times</i><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/us/politics/justices-send-clash-between-florist-and-gay-couple-back-to-lower-courts.html" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank"> story</a> today, in its <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/2017/91615-2.html" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">carefully reasoned decision</a> the Washington State Supreme Court had noted:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
We agree with Ingersoll and Freed that "[t]his case is no more about access to flowers than civil rights cases in the 1960s were about access to sandwiches." Br. of Resp'ts Ingersoll and Freed at 32. As every other court to address the question has concluded, public accommodations laws do not simply guarantee access to goods or services. Instead, they serve a broader societal purpose: eradicating barriers to the equal treatment of all citizens in the commercial marketplace. Were we to carve out a patchwork of exceptions for ostensibly justified discrimination,<sup>21</sup> that purpose would be fatally undermined.
<br />
...But the Supreme Court has never held that a commercial enterprise, open to the general public, is an '"expressive association'" for purposes of First Amendment protections, Dale, 530 U.S. at 648. We therefore reject Stutzman's free association claim.<br />
__________________________
<br />
<blockquote style="line-height: 12px;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 85%;"><sup>21</sup> Stutzman argues that discrimination cannot be "invidious"-and thus subject to governmental prohibition-if it is based on religious beliefs. Br. of Appellants at 40-43. But she cites no relevant legal authority for this novel theory. She also argues that the government has no compelling interest in forcing her to speak or associate with Ingersoll or any other customer. But, as explained elsewhere in this opinion, the WLAD does not implicate Stutzman's rights of speech or association.</span></blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
The alarming truth is that today the U.S. Supreme Court simply ruled that the carefully reasoned Washington Supreme Court decision is in the same class as the Masterpiece Cakeshop case where, writing for the 7-2 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy held that some commissioners on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission - not state supreme court justices - showed hostility toward Phillips' religious beliefs.<br />
<br />
Justice Kennedy was born and raised in an Irish Catholic family in Sacramento, California. We here at California First know Justice Kennedy. In previous decisions, he has tried to thread the needle between the special sanctity of religious beliefs and what is right and justice. The problem is, the majority of the Court is conflicted regarding the extent of freedom to practice religion. I think for the majority witch burning is out, <i>but I'm not sure</i>.<br />
<br />
My guess is the U.S. Supreme Court Justices, along with those in the liberal legal and news media establishment, were indignant over the weekend after Stephanie Wilkinson refused to serve Sanders.<br />
<br />
My guess is the U.S. Supreme Court Justices would rule unanimously against the restaurant owner for acting in accordance with her political beliefs because most of the majority are Catholic and don't consider that political beliefs rise up to the level of sanctity of religious beliefs even within the town square:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXDUcIgzatGbeC9UfmCpiM8CRsZdhvB5hmRxizjgRRmIr8fMCvMZiRUcmxk4Wp-69YFBxwIwrsYl6AnqdtWMdywhMejbeMRrwIT7bVr8tIiEJ4hrK-lS9Gze8FbJU2RDddZDjsGXD4id0/s1600/supremes-religion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="305" data-original-width="569" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXDUcIgzatGbeC9UfmCpiM8CRsZdhvB5hmRxizjgRRmIr8fMCvMZiRUcmxk4Wp-69YFBxwIwrsYl6AnqdtWMdywhMejbeMRrwIT7bVr8tIiEJ4hrK-lS9Gze8FbJU2RDddZDjsGXD4id0/s1600/supremes-religion.jpg" /></a></div>
I have a real problem with the makeup of the court because there are no avowed agnostics, much less atheists. Again the questions are:<br />
<ul>
<li>Do Americans who deeply hold political beliefs have fewer rights than
those who hold religious beliefs? And do those who believe in little
green humanoid alien life forms instead of one or more gods or goddesses
have fewer rights?</li>
<li>Can Americans who hold religious beliefs thumb their noses at anti-discrimination laws? But those who hold deeply political beliefs cannot?</li>
</ul>
I hope I am wrong, but as near as I can tell, the majority of the Court would answer "yes" to the questions if they could decide solely based on their own gut beliefs about the world.<br />
<br />
This reinforces <i>my belief</i> that we need a to broaden and more effectively engage in California's non-violent civil war for states rights! Or maybe even support #Calexit. Because in my California personal view religious or philosophical beliefs of any kind have no role in and cannot be permitted to influence the conduct of retail sales, the power of the Union of Washington and Lincoln notwithstanding.<br />
<br />
I have to admit, in the cake case I too was initially diverted by the "artist" issue. Then it dawned on me. This is an artist's studio not open to the public <i>offering</i> no direct retail sales:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXdCCVDmNV7Cmtyn9PPM42j1lnubytZrpO6qV3vb_u3B7gnT12hEVa3VWK2h9GcUHdrYRBWSNT4mQzYdn0So74tjOLf8cjP5R5waPECgkh02OnInbG4q_tQaqSgzHhL1BHEGa7HUw2M4U/s1600/artist_studio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXdCCVDmNV7Cmtyn9PPM42j1lnubytZrpO6qV3vb_u3B7gnT12hEVa3VWK2h9GcUHdrYRBWSNT4mQzYdn0So74tjOLf8cjP5R5waPECgkh02OnInbG4q_tQaqSgzHhL1BHEGa7HUw2M4U/s1600/artist_studio.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Below is a retail store subject to public access/accommodations anti-discrimination laws, not an artist's studio no matter what they put on their sign:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh05IY60cxJD02jGK90Dj8qEd3WFJ7ejWJstbfHqgKiBmXXLCn_pphTwqIUIQmJ24ND3xa6o5pM4_MPCH0DB6hJv3BEHhvHXqPujtdhp4oFLJjAHECSYcyRMGw41_DiA0HFYcFUVQ-n7kk/s1600/artist_gallery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="1600" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh05IY60cxJD02jGK90Dj8qEd3WFJ7ejWJstbfHqgKiBmXXLCn_pphTwqIUIQmJ24ND3xa6o5pM4_MPCH0DB6hJv3BEHhvHXqPujtdhp4oFLJjAHECSYcyRMGw41_DiA0HFYcFUVQ-n7kk/s640/artist_gallery.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
And the following retail stores are subject to public access/accommodations anti-discrimination laws, as they are not an artist's studio:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqvpDfFEMgxj456lwXh-PZBSjlN8duLflLdRfuvWKlp9qMrUzr0_n3aFA0PyYeTmrhZGh_wQoIKixxkLlhmvnCVOoUK0W0J8rs43ouEZiVDmtcVxhBBr216j2F-A424nDi1892xX5IFw0/s1600/bakery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="508" data-original-width="707" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqvpDfFEMgxj456lwXh-PZBSjlN8duLflLdRfuvWKlp9qMrUzr0_n3aFA0PyYeTmrhZGh_wQoIKixxkLlhmvnCVOoUK0W0J8rs43ouEZiVDmtcVxhBBr216j2F-A424nDi1892xX5IFw0/s1600/bakery.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGnW2kOehr-OiKpf6N8BiN3dIEW7VjBPHLQCUOGmlKIVFxEBNezV83g8UqR1BFYJSHQglEokUWhNrC9BtGOJU-i7Ndj3jVAPsgFadgfO5HFNBhtWKpRLsng_h6vjy_mAd33nsN57Fe00U/s1600/florist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="446" data-original-width="640" height="446" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGnW2kOehr-OiKpf6N8BiN3dIEW7VjBPHLQCUOGmlKIVFxEBNezV83g8UqR1BFYJSHQglEokUWhNrC9BtGOJU-i7Ndj3jVAPsgFadgfO5HFNBhtWKpRLsng_h6vjy_mAd33nsN57Fe00U/s640/florist.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
And the description below is a retail business offering services to the public and therefore subject to public access/accommodations anti-discrimination laws:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-7ss6gpByLLk9c-lZU6gdyRHKXLpQvDUDIatqlOiO2MxB7QheNwexk1QiPfSuLhiTQ66OJId6_YI1Dj-dvV2_RFO5IWZyxmWjw6T5W3jAaPxGY5JJtMUtDJM0YDGcQP8ntXx93lKShVk/s1600/sisters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="766" data-original-width="675" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-7ss6gpByLLk9c-lZU6gdyRHKXLpQvDUDIatqlOiO2MxB7QheNwexk1QiPfSuLhiTQ66OJId6_YI1Dj-dvV2_RFO5IWZyxmWjw6T5W3jAaPxGY5JJtMUtDJM0YDGcQP8ntXx93lKShVk/s1600/sisters.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Just as residents of Washington and Colorado can tell the difference, Californian's can understand the difference between art for creative sake and art for retail. But we apparently live in a Union of states in which members of the highest court in the land may not be able to clearly see the difference. This situation is testing those officials:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://work.qz.com/1313965/the-red-hen-owner-asking-sarah-huckabee-sanders-to-leave-was-a-lesson-in-leadership/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="776" data-original-width="840" height="590" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUo94w7aeoSdw8FDmJja4wQ7gyWD2WG_MHGzz9pYGuQq1KcZjfrnABnrMWAAJwo0rV-yp_QnMacIyJba8Na-229p_wjbpCSFmCj5WAkuy6wAXjPR6K1mHU9FUTaKsUFeSRc-TZxqk6wAY/s640/red_hen.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-71650578039198342252018-06-20T10:36:00.000-07:002018-08-18T10:39:20.267-07:00Tariffs: Trump's excise tax to be collected soon from his deplorably unknowing fans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcrPX9h0eCpJ8-SH5gOhB4ESpakFbrBeu1K-0bWr89LsJznTwGDexsakKH7Baa_Zq4-g86l0ShOaFfQeMTgdUUzjlbKCbhH9zeqyqwumouoVYOmeQHEEbVzfTDdMFdkt1cbDwBID5-LfI/s1600/receipt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcrPX9h0eCpJ8-SH5gOhB4ESpakFbrBeu1K-0bWr89LsJznTwGDexsakKH7Baa_Zq4-g86l0ShOaFfQeMTgdUUzjlbKCbhH9zeqyqwumouoVYOmeQHEEbVzfTDdMFdkt1cbDwBID5-LfI/s320/receipt.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">A "tariff" is a <b><i>tax</i></b> on what you buy, not a <b><i>war</i></b> against China, Mexico, Canada, and the European Union. The use of the word "tariff" is a good way to hide a tax.</span><br />
<br />
When a 25% tariff is collected on a product entering the country, that increases the wholesale price by 25%. Importers<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGEjpK2d9Kj1Eor8E5vMYNUpL0CjMoLu2swdTtSt8BFxVDDCMxIvfI2fW8imPLJ8lwjg3r7C2_UAO5itBewqGu5mubhwo3psLTLtrardEGZPcTZ2CDAKUdv77VfnHnIbFl-Soq1_8aqEA/s1600/import_tax-apple.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="161" data-original-width="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGEjpK2d9Kj1Eor8E5vMYNUpL0CjMoLu2swdTtSt8BFxVDDCMxIvfI2fW8imPLJ8lwjg3r7C2_UAO5itBewqGu5mubhwo3psLTLtrardEGZPcTZ2CDAKUdv77VfnHnIbFl-Soq1_8aqEA/s1600/import_tax-apple.jpg" /></a>pay U.S. import tariffs to the federal government and the cost is passed on through the wholesaler and retailer.<br />
<br />
This is similar to an excise tax which, as explained by the <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/individual-consumption-taxes/excise-taxes/" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Tax Foundation</a>, are "included in the final price of products and services, and are often hidden to consumers." But one doesn't have to take the word of experts on such things or some "fake" news source.<br />
<br />
It was two years ago this month that Trump started bantering around the phrase "trade war" in a <a href="http://time.com/4386335/donald-trump-trade-speech-transcript/" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">speech</a> in Monessen, Pennsylvania. There he threatened Canada, China and Mexico.<br />
<br />
And it was there that he made it clear he intended to use taxes Americans would pay to benefit some American businesses stating: "Our original Constitution did not even have an income tax. Instead, it had tariffs emphasizing taxation of foreign, not domestic, production."<br />
<br />
The problem with that, of course, is taxes (tariffs) on imports don't tax "foreign production", they tax domestic consumption - you pay the tax. When a 20% tariff on imported goods is collected at the American port (not in the foreign country), the wholesale price of those goods is increased 20%. Now, perhaps the cost of Apple products depicted at the right above might not be increased the full amount of the tariff as Apple's retail markup is extremely high and they could afford to absorb some of that tariff cost.<br />
<br />
But consider the hypothetical Walmart receipt depicted at the left above. In all likelihood a person buying clothes for their kids which would have cost $64.91 including sales tax would cost an additional $9.48 which represents about a 15% tax paid to the Trump Administration. And that's also true of stores like Macy's and Costco.<br />
<br />
Of course, Costco members are considered wealthy, or "affluent", with only 15% just "getting by" or "poor." The average Costco member is college educated, owns a home and earns about $100,000 a year, while Walmart caters to low-and-moderate income families.<br />
<br />
As noted in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history" style="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #9bef9b; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>,
tariffs "were the greatest (approaching 95% at times) source of federal revenue until the Federal income tax began after 1913. Before Trump's new tariffs, existing federal taxes on imports contribute $44 billion to the federal budget. It is unclear where to even start to calculate how much of his personal income tax cut will be recovered from consumers through increased tariffs.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-82948903509035102502018-06-19T13:42:00.001-07:002018-07-05T21:49:56.642-07:00California must reject "Nazi-thought" inour Union government and consider anon-violent civil war for states' rights<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
"This is the United States of America. It isn't Nazi Germany, and there's a difference. And we don't take children from their parents, until now and I think it's such a sad day. "
<br />
<i>- U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.)</i>
</div>
</blockquote>
This I awakened to read an explanation by the Attorney General of our "more perfect Union" as to why his policy of concentrating "unacceptable" children in camps was different from that of Nazi Germany. You can click on the image below to learn more:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/19/politics/jeff-sessions-immigration-border-separation/index.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXbWsULnORGS46JNToo5wn5l6HtvjugqmUN7LDyhf3qLaP8I8fNvpPeI7fMeYlTwGwrR-wvK41FKc42I3-YtaZQIvUuKk6xOCkSP7EUZiBD2Jd38DK7thZKJhSzDgZ8Oh5A4OnZvMldUY/s1600/not-nazi.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday played footage of former CIA director Michael Hayden and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) comparing the Trump administration's policy of separating migrant families with the practices of Nazi Germany. “Well, it's a real exaggeration, because in Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country,” Sessions replied adding "Fundamentally, we are enforcing the law. Hopefully people will get the message and not break across the border unlawfully." <br />
<br />
The U.S. Attorney General just explained actions taken as "ok" according to the law because he wasn't working for the German government in 1938 trying to solve the Jewish problem, he is working for the U.S. government in 2018 trying solve the brown people problem. That's an explanation he could use for building concentration camps with gas chambers and ovens.<br />
<br />
After all, he is just following orders.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, earlier that day Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said at a meeting of the National Sheriffs’ Association in New Orleans: "“This department will no longer stand by and watch you attack law enforcement for enforcing the laws passed by Congress. We will not apologize for the job we do, or the job law enforcement does, or the job the American people expect us to do.”<br />
<br />
This is what is known as the "Nuremberg defense" where in Nazi Germany genocide was the law and people were given orders pursuant to duly passed law. And much like in Nazi Germany, there is no immediate threat to the health and safety of the American public that would justify that defense.<br />
<br />
Enough is enough. It is time for a non-violent civil war to reestablish states' rights. We can't protect people in Alabama, but we can protect them in California.<br />
<br />
Back in 2005, I created a website <a href="http://www.phrelin.com/3Cals/index.html" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Three Californias</a> dedicated to dividing California into three states. It soon was used as a reference by others on the web because there is a surprising dearth of <i>focused</i> information on my state. And this November California voters will have the opportunity to vote on a ballot measure to create three California's.<br />
<br />
A <a href="http://www.phrelin.com/3Cals/Separate.htm" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">discussion of what today is known as a #Calexit</a> was included. I knew then that obtaining Congressional approval to allow California to become a separate nation-state was likely to be laughingly referred to as "tilting at windmills" task.<br />
<br />
Even seeking approval to create three states out of California would be an uphill battle at best. And it would only slightly improve for Californians a grossly unfair situation that the inherently undemocratic U.S. Constitution gives each voter in Wyoming, Alaska, and North Dakota three votes for President for every vote cast by a California voter. The cost would be a serious disruption in the economy.<br />
<br />
In 2005 it was clear to this writer an effort to reorient those living in the other 49 states had to be made. What happened in the 2015-16 Presidential election cycle, seemed to add urgency to that goal. And on June 17 in my other blog I was still trying, with a very long post <a href="http://redwoodguardian.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-american-21st-century-kaleidoscope.html" tyle="text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">An American 21st Century Kaleidoscope versus a Civil War? Saving the Union is a struggle against pots, bowls, and mosaics, between individuality, identity, and assimilation, amid unprecedented wealth disparity</a>.<br />
<br />
But with this new "discussion" it is clear. Americans east of the Sierra Nevada range have a worldview, even the establishment class, one which could not be changed without a revolt.<br />
<br />
Yes, in April of last year in the post here <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-chilling-blurt-blats-of-trumpists_46.html" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">The Chilling Blurt-Blats of Trumpists: Jeff Sessions' Hawaii Incident reminds us to heed Sun Tzu's The Art of War</a> I expressed a strong concern about the Attorney General of our "more perfect Union" known as these United States:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
But as a fellow American whose frame of reference is Californian, I must consider Jeff Sessions' frame of reference in the context of his childhood and adolescence from the facts....
<br />
It isn't just that Sessions was born and raised in, and lived most of his life in, Alabama, a geographic region historically different from California, though that might give a hint. It isn't just that since the early 1700's no male in his paternal lineage ever called home a place outside the southernmost part <b>These</b> United States.<br />
Rather it's all that plus the fact that his great-grandfather died at the Battle of Antietam fighting for the South in the Civil War, and that his grandfather, his father, and he are all named "Jefferson Beauregard" Sessions...
<br />
<ul>
<li>as in Jefferson Davis was selected as President of the Confederacy at the constitutional convention in Montgomery, Alabama.
</li>
<li>as in Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard.
</li>
</ul>
Now I know those names were commonly used among white families in the South after the Civil War. And I know that Jeff Sessions didn't name himself. But most other people likely will <b>not</b> share a perspective, a way of looking at things, with Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III - including most any American whose lineage includes no one from the Slave States
</div>
</blockquote>
But Sessions is just an obvious symbol of a system gone bad.<br />
<br />
By 2005 I had concerns about the Bush Administration versus California. But at no time did Bush, in order to win an election, attack trade, migration, or California's history, culture, and largest ethnic group. In fact Bush in speeches after 9/11 took great pains to protect Muslim-Americans from discrimination. <br />
<br />
The 2016 election discourse set off loud alarms and the second minority-vote-elected President in the 21st Century was disconcerting.<br />
<br />
In popular culture we have made caricatures of Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. That is foolish. Hitler, for example, was a struggling veteran of WWI who decided to become a politician, ultimately running for national leadership. In free and open elections at his peak he won 43.91% of the vote in March 1933. By most estimates he had a 40% core popular support and, by 1938 when the economy was going well, only had about a 20% fearful residual opposition. Using today's polling methods, the other 40% were "independents" meaning they had no idea what was going on.<br />
<br />
This old Native Californian thinks it is time to recognize just how different California is from Ohio and North Carolina and why California needs to insist on a traditional view of citizenship based on the Constitution and states' rights. California needs to build a mythology around individuality and achievement.<br />
<br />
Let's begin with a statement of historical facts. <i>Migrants created the California we know today while white illegal aliens from the United States made California a part of the Union.</i> What 96%+ of Americans don't recognize is the United States government run by the ancestors/predecessors of the current Deplorables and the establishment who...<br />
<ul>
<li>from 1880-1943 prevented the families of one group of Californians - the U.S. citizen children of Chinese immigrants - from bringing their family members into California, targeting only this ethnic group of Asians, </li>
<li>from 1930-1946 in the Mexican "Repatriation" rounded up and deported one group of Californians - American citizens of Hispanic heritage</li>
<li>from 1942-1945 rounded up another group of Californians - American citizens of Japanese heritage - and put them into concentration camps, and</li>
<li>in began 1954 Operation Wetback which resulted in 1,078,168 arrests and deportations by the U.S. Border Patrol resulting in several hundred United States citizens being illegally deported without being given a chance to prove their citizenship.</li>
</ul>
Sorry America, but we Californians cannot permit a repeat of this kind of bigotry, discrimination, and violence against our people. Since the election, as well as during the campaign, we observed that focused violence and bullying is growing in the U.S. as a result of Donald Trump.<br />
<br />
These are signs that what few elements of a democratic society exist in the United States are endangered, a fact which has been confirmed repeatedly.<br />
<br />
As noted in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-liberal-democracy.html?_r=2&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1" target="_blank">How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red’</a>: "Americans who say that army rule would be a 'good' or 'very good' thing
had risen to 1 in 6 in 2014, compared with 1 in 16 in 1995" and offers this disturbing chart:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifk0tqx3fxNsbc6tUwQfhUMpZTtCbBpD0A1k6kxl6vedc_8W2_u3IahTzCF7Q1CuOYISdfwfA27J_CxnDPrF-gayDW5GTV_jnsqQY-jHykor0qM3itHBHbkc4JtOKc5kMitt4A9R9r_gU/s1600/democracy-essential.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifk0tqx3fxNsbc6tUwQfhUMpZTtCbBpD0A1k6kxl6vedc_8W2_u3IahTzCF7Q1CuOYISdfwfA27J_CxnDPrF-gayDW5GTV_jnsqQY-jHykor0qM3itHBHbkc4JtOKc5kMitt4A9R9r_gU/s640/democracy-essential.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
Which brings me to Hillary Clinton who said (<i><b>emphasis</b></i> added):<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">"I think we know what we're up against. We do, don't we? Donald Trump has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn marriage equality, and if you have read about the ones he says he's likely to support, he's not kidding. In fact, if you look at his running mate, his running mate signed a law that would have allowed businesses to discriminate against LGBT Americans. And there's so much more that I find deplorable in his campaign: the way that he cozies up to white supremacists, makes racist attacks, calls women pigs, mocks people with disabilities -- you can't make this up. He wants to round up and deport 16 million people, calls our military a disaster. And every day he says something else which I find so personally offensive, but also dangerous....<br /><br />"...You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call <i><b>the basket of deplorables</b></i>. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people -- now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America."</span></blockquote>
Perhaps verbalizing that observation was a foolish mistake for a Presidential candidate. But now because over 50% of Americans under age 50 apparently cannot bring themselves to say that it is essential to live in a democratic country and 1-in-6 Americans think they would be better off under a military dictatorship, I have to go where many Americans don't like to go in their political debate.<br />
<br />
Clinton is a policy wonk who understands what the difference was in Germany from 1934-1939 between (a) those who were were in political power, (b) those who were members of unacceptable minorities, and (c) those who were neither. Most of those who were neither, which was most of the populous, saw a slight improvement in their economic status and were quietly accepting-to-supportive. Those who were in power flourished. Those who were members of the unacceptable minorities were sent to concentration camps where most were murdered by the state.<br />
<br />
And Clinton knows that the ancestors/predecessors of the current Deplorables of her parents generation offered up the same attitudes as their Deplorable descendants towards refugees as demonstrated in this survey done just before WWII:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_pvZG4PbkVqTAKz-uRu5h_eL9smNNMsK5ouwZFYlOUqMkLlycBaFvKmdWHjRUDoQ3pUo0LMijAzXnNAV7zWLiW2IUwpjHL0MAGqC3C3OwwNsndV-y2W-3p5n2AAWVg4j4c3MrUlKKQUs/s1600/german-refugees.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_pvZG4PbkVqTAKz-uRu5h_eL9smNNMsK5ouwZFYlOUqMkLlycBaFvKmdWHjRUDoQ3pUo0LMijAzXnNAV7zWLiW2IUwpjHL0MAGqC3C3OwwNsndV-y2W-3p5n2AAWVg4j4c3MrUlKKQUs/s1600/german-refugees.jpg" /></a></div>
As the <i>Fortune</i> article <a href="http://fortune.com/2015/11/18/fortune-survey-jewish-refugees/#jewish-refugees" target="_blank">Here's Fortune's Survey on How Americans Viewed Jewish Refugees in 1938</a> says about this result so similar to today's attitudes regarding the Syrian refugees: "So much, then, for the hospitality of our melting pot."<br />
<br />
Oh, we're not that bad now - we wouldn't let them get slaughtered, you might say. Here are the Gallup poll historical results that show the numbers haven't changed much:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/186866/americans-again-opposed-taking-refugees.aspx" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0BaZjQr0KOUl6gXt6MDskjv7A7ehCz_ZrCfR6AHQkAQSvUA1LVg1H6upLZ3N5FS3w1nwOnN9qscfAenVD5KKAktUXm6B4QQuyjOAH39vmXrGPFt7XYP-LjVeGRLLt6vPSt-OJbyuu0Z4/s1600/immigration-gallop-history.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
By political party we see just how the results skew with Democrats favoring allowing refugees while 84% of the Deplorables prefer to allow the children of Syria to be slaughtered just like their grandparents did the German children in 1938:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/186866/americans-again-opposed-taking-refugees.aspx" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsgvWLshIuZ7yQnOAg6lS_dOQEUjbTgS74WBc__m9fX288Y_EyxCYi9lAYQtGeGShNyoSBxwjDi-eUlG_gtTa10S2IZfMhprDbQKZpIhecUDbqZc-eHqq6V1YU18fH198Mn582kz_a9c4/s1600/refugees-welcome-by-party.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
California in the 21st Century is, of course, the Bluest of the Blue states. In the era of Trump bigotry, Democrats gained a super-majority in both houses of the Legislature, it has seven partisan state executives offices all filled by Democrats, two Democratic U.S. Senators, and 39 of 53 (almost 75%) of its House members are Democrats.<br />
<br />
And, of course, <a href="http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/09/19/in-the-u-s-most-syrian-refugees-are-being-resettled-in-california/" target="_blank">California Leads The Nation In Resettlement Of Syrian Refugees</a>.<br />
<br />
We cannot participate in a nation that is dominated by a political party which has 84% of its members advocating allowing innocent children, women and men to die in a war for which that party's previous President is responsible for inciting.<br />
<br />
We cannot accept Trump, supported by the Deplorables, ordering a defacto reinstatement the 1929-1936 Mexican Repatriation carried out by American authorities which forcibly sent 1.2 million U.S. citizens into Mexico, most of whom didn't even speak Spanish but just had "the physical distinctiveness of mestizos."<br />
<br />
And, as a Pacific Rim economy, we cannot risk Trump destroying the value of our trade and migration reality.<br />
<br />
Trade, migration, and the economy are not the only issues
Californians need to evaluate. California's social and cultural policy
orientation was broadly attacked with Trump supporters threatening
violence.<br />
<br />
Though we Californian's have struggled at
times with social and cultural policy issues, the fact is since the Gold
Rush California has been a leader in creating equal opportunities and a
safe community for any migrant from any place - Ohio, China, Chile,
Samoa, India, Oklahoma, Japan, Honduras. We have generally tried to
provide a fair approach to what we know as civil rights issues.<br />
<br />
Today,
whether the civil rights issue is abortion, same sex marriage,
legalization of marijuana, gun safety regulation, workers' rights,
climate change, expression of religion, minimum wage, higher education,
use of technology, etc., Californians seek fair answers and work to
implement fair solutions. Settling for the status quo has never been a comfort zone
in California.<br />
<br />
Consider the abortion issue. On June 14,
1967, then California Governor Ronald Reagan signed the groundbreaking
Therapeutic Abortion Act. If a "Trump Supreme Court" simply nullifies <i>Roe v Wade</i>, as the Washington Post article <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/15/what-abortion-could-look-like-in-an-america-without-roe-v-wade/?wpisrc=nl_wonk&wpmm=1" target="_blank">What abortion could look like in America under Donald Trump</a> notes only a few states have Pro-Choice laws following California's example while many more have Pro-Life laws:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8-rS4BdAOLdFlJQDosRvSalYE7_3bLCJGgJCBXURIykab5ey2xSaPo88Ivf99YKaYJ8BaWz3xm_iZyWoTAas3GD1BZU3uQbmopPIBKPlxiLsgH-71WX6FjHwDltEDFzgbYVCLFxzxOCw/s1600/Roe_v_Wade.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8-rS4BdAOLdFlJQDosRvSalYE7_3bLCJGgJCBXURIykab5ey2xSaPo88Ivf99YKaYJ8BaWz3xm_iZyWoTAas3GD1BZU3uQbmopPIBKPlxiLsgH-71WX6FjHwDltEDFzgbYVCLFxzxOCw/s640/Roe_v_Wade.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
It is time to protect all those living in California. We need to push hard to wrench back as much of California's sovereignty as we can.<br />
<br />
Or
we could just sit back and continue to watch an old, white Alabaman
determine what civil rights people have and a rich, super-religious,
anti-gay-marriage white Michigan suburbanite privatize our school
systems.<br />
<br />
And we could allow government officials to abuse children because it is the law. Though it really isn't.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-54516745360040935772018-06-17T14:50:00.000-07:002018-07-02T14:52:37.235-07:00Why factually these United States is a more perfect Union, not a country, nation, or state<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmFFMvMPOxG0F7k2zAc0M3KMZA2HLXTIEZ3akXPEvagxunjjrX8GyxzglgJeMrwvdytfRh5l92-cnQ31JFUPwUEidbsXDicS506Oj6id-A1rU0sbJGTJ-G-xIBD4V6GbKzkdrKChf8ZME/s1600/union-TITLE-695.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="695" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmFFMvMPOxG0F7k2zAc0M3KMZA2HLXTIEZ3akXPEvagxunjjrX8GyxzglgJeMrwvdytfRh5l92-cnQ31JFUPwUEidbsXDicS506Oj6id-A1rU0sbJGTJ-G-xIBD4V6GbKzkdrKChf8ZME/s1600/union-TITLE-695.png" /></a></div>
One cannot understand the range of emotions experienced - and related opinions held - by Americans, without having an awareness of the world of the men we call the Founding Fathers of the United States. Particularly, we need to understand the language they spoke, the meaning of the words they used. Late 18th Century Colonial English might seem to resemble the language of 21st Century America, but it is not the same language. <br />
<br />
Political disinformation in the United States for 230 years has created confusion about certain words important to an understanding about what was new and different in the world after the Revolutionary War.<br />
<br />
Key to the confusion is the American jumbling together of words that once had truly different definitions and implications - country, nation, state, and union. <br />
<br />
For purposes of clarity and simplicity, <i>as used here</i> from this point on the following words have specific meanings based upon pre-17th Century concepts:<br />
<ul>
<li>"Country" means "any considerable territory demarcated by topographical conditions."</li>
<li>"Nation" means "any distinctive population with a common language, culture, and considerable history."</li>
<li>"State" means "a central civil government or authority that exercises the legitimate use of force within defined geographical boundaries."</li>
<li>"Union" means "a number of states or nations joined together for defined purposes to be accomplished by a separately created autonomous authority."</li>
</ul>
Using those definitions, the Cherokee Nation is a nation. Italy is a country and a state. Japan is a country, a state, and a nation. The United States of America is none of these. It is a union of states.<br />
<span style="font-size: 8px;"><br /> </span>
<br />
<center>
<h3>
It's not a country - here's why</h3>
</center>
<br />
Again, "country" as will be used here means "any considerable territory demarcated by topographical conditions."<br />
<br />
As explained in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country#Etymology_and_usage" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 18px;">
In English the word has increasingly become associated with political divisions, so that one sense, associated with the indefinite article – "a country" – through misuse and subsequent conflation is now a synonym for state, or a former sovereign state, in the sense of sovereign territory or "district, native land"....
<br />
The equivalent terms in French and other Romance languages (<i>pays</i> and variants) have not carried the process of being identified with political sovereign states as far as the English "country".... In many European countries the words are used for sub-divisions of the national territory, as in the German <i>Bundesländer</i>, as well as a less formal term for a sovereign state. France has very many "<i>pays</i>" that are officially recognised at some level, and are either natural regions, like the Pays de Bray, or reflect old political or economic entities, like the Pays de la Loire.
<br />
A version of "country" can be found in the modern French language as contrée, based on the word cuntrée in Old French, that is used similarly to the word "<i>pays</i>" to define non-state regions, but can also be used to describe a political state in some particular cases. The modern Italian<i> contrada</i> is a word with its meaning varying locally, but usually meaning a ward or similar small division of a town, or a village or hamlet in the countryside.
</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
For purposes of sharing an understanding of the political world as understood by our Founding Fathers, here is a map of Europe at the time of the creation of the United States of America:<br />
<br />
<img border="0" data-original-height="1245" data-original-width="1600" height="498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7bFgRv3AmYzw5AHXAa0gHBRaG_FiYisGL83KR5tTPodZP73xaPtociwkN8b8aYqZa8xiMLGeUd7JfbNtzXWQltitE2mXBMXM0XCJMw0osGu9-XjSHoNkhmDNOA_qlZ9wWD6k5CAAJ-zc/s640/central-europe-1789.jpg" width="640" /><br />
<br />
Fundamentally, Europe was divided into constantly warring empires with shifting boundaries. While topographical conditions may have slowed some conquests, our concept of "country" did not set boundaries for kingdoms and empires which are "states" by our definitions. And that was an attitude that Europeans brought to the Americas and which has resulted in a blurring of the terms "country" and "state."<br />
<br />
As can be seen on the map below, North America is a large geographic area with significant topographical conditions:<br />
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Click on image to see a larger version!
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9msQFV_S0mjQpjOpYhfj1RriX-4kPqtFSOwkfEfmD2nsLOzqGnmmHl9cIo4jNMJRgc9S9NIyksoeKNM9rAD8LQanJn_zwFks6vQHLI4eKX8kZ4Ik2LLXNAOzya2dfMU3XfImCFmIgwVw/s1600/north_america_physical_map.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="962" data-original-width="1600" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9msQFV_S0mjQpjOpYhfj1RriX-4kPqtFSOwkfEfmD2nsLOzqGnmmHl9cIo4jNMJRgc9S9NIyksoeKNM9rAD8LQanJn_zwFks6vQHLI4eKX8kZ4Ik2LLXNAOzya2dfMU3XfImCFmIgwVw/s640/north_america_physical_map.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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If a people whose only mode of transportation on land is walking "discover" such a geographic area and through walking logically divide it into more than one division without intent, it is reasonable to assume that the dominate shape for divisions would most likely be in a north-to-south direction, more or less. And indeed, the result of an actual natural migration produced this map:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBKk0sWEEn1NnXm9OZ9FlMRCPGibs4rzClSbAIxmHUkhQbgTvOJSlDZvzJBDbrAsxGrzk6ipJyQS-ZTZU3Xa2AZmMXP2omdFEANp9V-lZQ4kScWK4aAzzwpeuBGYtUiFx5yR7HhFmBA4/s1600/linguistic3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="1040" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBKk0sWEEn1NnXm9OZ9FlMRCPGibs4rzClSbAIxmHUkhQbgTvOJSlDZvzJBDbrAsxGrzk6ipJyQS-ZTZU3Xa2AZmMXP2omdFEANp9V-lZQ4kScWK4aAzzwpeuBGYtUiFx5yR7HhFmBA4/s640/linguistic3.jpg" width="493" /></a></div>
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Further some predominantly English-speaking Europeans came along and, initially struggling just to survive, began to occupy a land bounded by topography:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWcSGyTpHbtLfv24xDT6rZANQkINbIr5X5u5TKLRERV3NVBUDT8VSJtqgiVMF2Z4yk1n9M0rqN9JmsTe8iAlZaBx8EgPFHGHM2BpuR2-1qCHtw696ffAE-eBB4e0k4rtep2m3T_jyxbaw/s1600/13-cols%253Dappalacian.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1515" data-original-width="1008" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWcSGyTpHbtLfv24xDT6rZANQkINbIr5X5u5TKLRERV3NVBUDT8VSJtqgiVMF2Z4yk1n9M0rqN9JmsTe8iAlZaBx8EgPFHGHM2BpuR2-1qCHtw696ffAE-eBB4e0k4rtep2m3T_jyxbaw/s640/13-cols%253Dappalacian.jpg" width="425" /></a></div>
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But these folks were Europeans used to warring empires with shifting boundaries not constrained by topography. So over the next 150 years in defiance of the idea of a topographically-defined "country" they and their descendants drew some lines dividing that continental topography in illogical ways... <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIU-w87jH9G23HB_SjLC3biokRvS557-f197-z4KgJguFgYn73j80D9f7dn1ZK7JgX4LaBFsXWgFoUIHfc59IuL7CPvXXAtzE_hR_rmeHAuym0-3M1BhHWTnrTHiXmAro4JHALTlEvdTQ/s1600/us-topo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="865" height="472" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIU-w87jH9G23HB_SjLC3biokRvS557-f197-z4KgJguFgYn73j80D9f7dn1ZK7JgX4LaBFsXWgFoUIHfc59IuL7CPvXXAtzE_hR_rmeHAuym0-3M1BhHWTnrTHiXmAro4JHALTlEvdTQ/s640/us-topo.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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... and, more irrationally, even further like this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6l74XcwZ2NCpwjNwRbA4GhvEqoR-NWQafCcv2I-zITKM3r6e34yp_gkBJVf4t3NKO6aKMGOqVFl5lblqHDN874rmkXrPdUvS3xB6OJ4qnR0lnf9qTHD7I0z2yc3WFqCB59IbPe9CM1l0/s1600/USA.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="841" data-original-width="1200" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6l74XcwZ2NCpwjNwRbA4GhvEqoR-NWQafCcv2I-zITKM3r6e34yp_gkBJVf4t3NKO6aKMGOqVFl5lblqHDN874rmkXrPdUvS3xB6OJ4qnR0lnf9qTHD7I0z2yc3WFqCB59IbPe9CM1l0/s640/USA.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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To summarize, the United States is not a "country" defined by obvious topographical extremes. Even the oceans did not stop it from including Hawaii as one of the internal "state" governments even though it is 2,500 miles from the American Continent. In fact, the Rocky Mountains were known as the Continental Divide but even that didn't suggest creating separate "countries" based on topography. The United States is not a country as we define it.<br />
<span style="font-size: 8px;"><br /> </span>
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<h3>
It's not a nation - here's why</h3>
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<i>As it will be used here</i> "nation" means "any distinctive population with a common language, culture, and considerable history." And it is this map that indicates a division of the North American Continent by "nations" of indigenous peoples...<br />
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As already discussed, the American "melting pot" did not include those indigenous North American nations, African slaves and their descendants, and the indigenous Spanish speaking residents of lands purchased or conquered by the United States. Not only that, the United States encouraged immigration from around the world, such as from China to build the Transcontinental Railroad, resulting in these maps today...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5I4JNFEDf_3lZezWPgD-HB7RE-RG6UvuxqyOBgh3LwUyag-DkKopsDsyhOzP_YR0OmVj5QMQpyckw52v18QdCThhrSoYiLq3RVpc99ZZHrtlhr2QC3pIZIQbFC7xRuNwmr6zfgAu8s-g/s1600/1.01_all_groups_2012b.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1237" data-original-width="1600" height="530" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5I4JNFEDf_3lZezWPgD-HB7RE-RG6UvuxqyOBgh3LwUyag-DkKopsDsyhOzP_YR0OmVj5QMQpyckw52v18QdCThhrSoYiLq3RVpc99ZZHrtlhr2QC3pIZIQbFC7xRuNwmr6zfgAu8s-g/s640/1.01_all_groups_2012b.jpg" width="686" /><img border="0" data-original-height="918" data-original-width="686" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmymtPqCz7UKTpoUPhKl953bFbhrmizOhgGLO9Cw6hjXeud9gX3UQiCS7RrV7hBtQCHMRQ3YajJPOqDA0R5n3L-SmKQmRrpvuJDrRUrZfIgCnekXM-xH7hqCout74XFYfaIgSMje88SdU/s1600/language-allalt.jpg" /></a></div>
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...which makes it very clear that the United States is not a "nation" by our definition as "any distinctive population with a common language, culture, and considerable history."<br />
<br />
As a reminder, as explored in another post <a href="http://redwoodguardian.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-american-21st-century-kaleidoscope.html" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Saving the Union is a struggle against pots, bowls, and mosaics, between individuality, identity, and assimilation, amid unprecedented wealth disparity</a> the historical fact that the term "melting pot" was a concept to encourage immigrant "English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes" who back home in Europe constantly fought wars with each other to form an English-speaking culture. Had anyone before 1920 suggested adding other races, they would have been met with incredulous laughter.<br />
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So it is a perfectly logical outcome of this history that emotionally for many within the United States "nationalism" means only white English-speaking <i>nation</i>alism. But that doesn't reflect the population born and living here.<br />
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Again the United States is not a "nation."<span style="font-size: 8px;"><br /> </span>
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<h3>
It is not a state but rather a union - here's why</h3>
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<i>As it will be used here</i> "state" means "a central civil government or authority that exercises the legitimate use of force within defined geographical boundaries." Given the definitions accepted here, most would want to say the United States is a "state."<br />
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Except, of course, within the defined geographical boundary that is the United States pursuant to Constitutional law there are 50+ "state" governments which independently exercise the legitimate use of force within defined internal geographical boundaries. There is nothing confusing about the wording of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution:<br />
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The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
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So the United States is not even a "state" in the our use of the word (for this discussion entering into the arguments over the so-called "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_powers" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">implied powers</a>" is not relevant). Rather, it is a "union" which means "a number of states or nations joined together for defined purposes to be accomplished by a separately created autonomous authority." The following is the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States (emphasis <b><i>added</i></b>):<br />
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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect <b><i>Union</i></b>, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
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And here is where the confusion exists. In that document, the Constitution of the United States, a "Union" was formed. That "Union" meant "a number of states or nations <i>joined together for defined purposes</i> to be accomplished by a separately created autonomous authority."<br />
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The existing real states jointly assigned the Union the limited authority to use a very few of <i>their</i> powers and functions while retaining the vast balance of powers of a state to themselves.<br />
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Americans seem to be confused about that. Perhaps that is because political history is not something we think is as important as, say, how to use technology to see cat videos to make us laugh. But sometimes we need to consider the concept of a "union" in the context of the American Revolution and Constitution which happened in the last quarter of the 17th Century. It literally was all the latest in government.<br />
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"Founding Father" Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706 which meant that even our oldest Founding Father had a clear understanding of the then new, cool British concept of a "union." That is because over the first two years of Franklin's life the concept of a political "union" was formalized during the process of creating Great Britain which most Americans probably think was created by the Romans at the time Jesus was alive.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> provides a brief insight into what we frequently shorten to Britain:<br />
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The Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, thus forming a personal union of the three kingdoms. Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. In 1801, Great Britain itself entered into a political union with the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
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Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles and other royal symbols of statehood specific to the pre-union Kingdom of Scotland. The legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland; Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. The continued existence of legal, educational, religious and other institutions distinct from those in the remainder of the UK have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and national identity since the 1707 union with England.
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In 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy....</div>
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In a different <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707" style="text-decoration: underline; text-shadow: 0 0 3px #8bcdf3;" target="_blank">Wikipedia entry</a> we can also learn:<br />
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The Acts of Union were two Acts of Parliament: the Union with Scotland Act 1706 passed by the Parliament of England, and the Union with England Act passed in 1707 by the Parliament of Scotland. They put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union that had been agreed on 22 July 1706, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two countries. By the two Acts, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland—which at the time were separate states with separate legislatures, but with the same monarch—were, in the words of the Treaty, "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain".
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The Acts took effect on 1 May 1707. On this date, the Scottish Parliament and the English Parliament united to form the Parliament of Great Britain, based in the Palace of Westminster in London, the home of the English Parliament. Hence, the Acts are referred to as the Union of the Parliaments. On the Union, the historian Simon Schama said "What began as a hostile merger, would end in a full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world ... it was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history."
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It might surprise many that within the Constitution of the United States the term "country" <i>never appears</i>. The term "nation" appears only in reference to "Commerce with foreign Nations" and to "punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations." The term "state" does appear, but always in reference to the proposed union of 13 states - you know, the real states per our definition which was the definition understood by Benjamin Franklin and the other Founding Fathers.<br />
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On the other hand, besides in the preamble quoted above, the term "union" is used as follows:<br />
<ul>
<li>New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union...<br />The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government... </li>
<li>He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union... </li>
<li>Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers...</li>
<li>To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union...</li>
</ul>
In the lifetime of the "Founding Fathers" prior to the Revolutionary War, Great Britain was clearly understood to be newly created as a "union" which was a revolutionary acknowledgement of a political idea. Because of the words used in the Constitution, it would be fair to say that the United States was created as a "union" of somewhat diverse states, where "state" clearly referenced 13 central civil governments that exercised the legitimate use of force within 13 defined geographical boundaries. This shouldn't come as a surprise, as for the Founding Fathers a "union" was a new and improved concept of political organization.<br />
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And is it surprising that the winning army in the Civil War was the Union Army? Was not the Union Army a land force that fought to keep and preserve the Union of the collective states? Did you never wonder why they called it the "Union" army?<br />
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In fact throughout the 19th Century, the Union was known as "these United States" which is a plural designation meaning more than one state. Titus Munson Coan who in his 1875 article "A New Country" in which he coined the term "Melting Pot" uses "these United States are" a decade after the end of the Civil War while trying to argue that it is a country, though what became the American Melting Pot "transforms the English, the German, the Irish emigrant into an American" creating a "great nation of Christendom."<br />
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Coan's piece was written after the 1849 approval of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the Mexican-American War, which permits Spanish-speaking brown folks to remain in the United States entitling them "to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States, according to the principles of the Constitution; and in the mean time, shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty and property, and secured in the free exercise of their religion without; restriction." Coan's piece was written after the Civil War when the slaves were freed and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted which begins: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." But Coan had no confusion about who is in the American "nation" which is similar to most today's Americans of European descent living in the Red States indicated above.<br />
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But still, Coan wrote "these United States."<br />
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Linguist Mark Liberman in <a href="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1798" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 115%; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">When did the Supreme Court make us an 'is'?</a> noted that, contrary to one of his previous posts indicating the change to "the United States is" may have been made after the Civil War, he learned that Minor Myers of the Brooklyn Law School prepared a study <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1484731" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 115%; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Supreme Court Usage and the Making of an 'Is'</a> which examined the use of the phrases “United States is” and “United States are” in opinions of the United States Supreme Court from 1790 to 1919 and determined that the plural usage was the predominant usage in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s and did not disappear until the 1920's.<br />
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As one comment speculated it is likely the plural persisted "at least through Reconstruction, and I'm afraid it hasn't entirely disappeared in some quarters."<br />
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No it it hasn't disappeared, and sometimes the use of the plural in the 21st Century creates a political buzz. For example, on Thursday, April 25, 2013, speaking at the dedication of the George W. Bush Library, then President Barack Obama asked God to bless "these United States."<br />
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Don't dismiss this as if it were Bush fumbling a speech. Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years. In his 2013 inaugural address he closed with "Thank you, God Bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America." Obama understands that those who drafted the Constitution never intended that the Union be other than "these states." When he says "these" states Constitutional Law professor Obama knows full well that it is "these" states that make up a Union.<br />
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Again, the singular usage "the United States is" did not become the "common" form until after World War I when it became obvious that the Union functioned as an "is" in a complex international scene where people could kill each other in the millions based on their "is-ness."<br />
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We need to understand "these United States" is a <i>union</i> created solely for purposes of a common military defense and assuring economic success of the numerous and separate states, not regulate mundane issues such as who can have sex with whom. That's one reason why in 1792 Americans insisted on leaving establishing government churches to the real states.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-60230946632552374402017-12-20T15:11:00.001-08:002018-06-18T13:37:52.195-07:00Democrats, about that tax reform bill The unseen Republican political strategy as Ryan says minds are going to changeHere's everything you need to know about the Republican tax bill (aka the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017), the most significant tax reform in 30 years.<br />
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In early 2018 the federal withholding tables will be scaled downward (see <a href="https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-statement-withholding-for-2018" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">IRS notice</a>). By March 2018 almost all middle class folks who draw a paycheck will see an increase in their take home pay resulting from that reduction in federal tax withholding. Let me repeat this for the Democrats and cocktail party liberals out there. <b><i>By March 2018 almost all middle class folks who draw a paycheck will see an
increase in their take home pay.</i> </b><br />
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<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 150%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">
DEMOCRATS, QUIT TALKING ABOUT THAT TAX REFORM BILL!
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL3-vDOrP_p-_91ifk3ESm7wFuqTl3jl59vhiIp1Ut0eQcOY1VjjuHrubAS_U0PfWSNAsmSPh6hKO4Lx5p6PWbrqpBHRWCGMPgn89UCohuBOU7-1uS73xtvErRrQHns085qAimaMH3scs/s1600/tax-cut-animation2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="345" data-original-width="690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL3-vDOrP_p-_91ifk3ESm7wFuqTl3jl59vhiIp1Ut0eQcOY1VjjuHrubAS_U0PfWSNAsmSPh6hKO4Lx5p6PWbrqpBHRWCGMPgn89UCohuBOU7-1uS73xtvErRrQHns085qAimaMH3scs/s1600/tax-cut-animation2.gif" /></a></div>
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Democrats are, and apparently will continue to be, telling those folks their extra take home pay will be reduced to nothing by 2027, or in some cases 2023, or 2025 or.... Well, it's complicated and it will be different strokes for different middle class folks.<br />
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And they'll be telling those folks, the majority of whom are personally in a-bit-to-deep debt, that the federal government's debt is going to rise, by some number which no one knows.<br />
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And maybe those liberals will publish for each other to read some long working papers and brilliant magazine articles on the inequities of the tax bill.<br />
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In any event, the "pointed-headed intellectuals" will be telling each other how bad the tax bill is/was.<br />
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And they'll share that discussion with the middle class workers who will be puzzling how what they are being told relates to their reality - extra bucks in the paycheck. (Yeah, ok, their electronic payroll deposit.)<br />
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If asked about the possible disappearance of that extra take home pay, the Republicans will explain that if the Democrats in 2017 had just joined them in cutting taxes they could make the middle class tax cuts permanent - all it would require is a one time rule change. And they will explain that the voters could replace the Democrats with Republicans and that will get the job done.<br />
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And the middle class folks who might just vote for Democrats in 2018 because of morality issues will be asking those very same Democrats in 2020 if they're going make permanent the Republican tax cuts for the working folks. Because they know that almost every year income tax rule adjustments are approved and that sometimes, such as in the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 when a bunch of extra tax rebates were sent out, the deficit issue is ignored by Democrats.<br />
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After all, the tax cuts for the rich and corporations (who donate to the Democrats as well as the Republicans) are permanent. Why would the Democrats in 2020 oppose that for the working folks?<br />
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So to summarize, all you need to know is that in 2018 most folks will take home more income because of the Republican tax cuts. By 2020 they will understand that it was the Democrats who made their tax cuts temporary - Donald Trump will tell them it is true. And it might be the simple truth.<br />
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(Note, the 2017 tax return most people will file in April 2018 - as well as January
2018 payments for those who pay taxes quarterly - will continue to follow the
2017 current tax code.) <br />
<br />
Some will argue that it's not going to be that simple as various deductions change in the bill. Right? The <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tax-returns-update-20171220-htmlstory.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">LA Times offers this information</a> for some real Californians:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" data-original-height="1042" data-original-width="690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgby26yA7QwAIcE5qccZhx7gwzIV7q4yeu6bHxetSPn2lrj-vsSN8ySBl9E9_vrkdn0CN7g3VZkK9NYZfgfIpi06UTubeFVs2rdw4P1t0cwClNI7JXwrEKz4Mh_wDE_H3hs35jwBNZ_FDE/s1600/taxrateimpactcals01.jpg" /><img border="0" data-original-height="1108" data-original-width="690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqWYF_p3sPWY-XPsEnkqbrQppOfi31sbie3UpmAxqVqdkeS2tc3N7vyoHUI1cXNpUGCG3e9AyHiGJUi39ma0lka4X1bpPVaSIVzbVX_xcHuUtZAXsGShSORAL-I6qmjxq4e8aqhdrUcTg/s1600/taxrateimpactcals02.jpg" /></div>
The first thing you notice that the only loser in the the new tax bill lottery was the couple that owns a house. As explained by the <i>Times</i>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
Maya Bader, 39, and her husband Matthew Pratt, 41, bought a new house
last year. Between mortgage interest, property taxes and California
income taxes, they took more than $58,000 in deductions....
<br />
The plan allows taxpayers to deduct up to $10,000 in combined property and state income taxes....
<br />
But Bader and Pratt, like many Californians who own homes and have good
incomes, will still lose. They deducted more than $26,000 in state
income and property taxes last year....
<br />
They’ll also lose out on a deduction for interest paid on a home equity loan....
<br />
Richer child tax credits will shave $4,000 off their tax bill.
</div>
</blockquote>
With this explanation we can see the reality of who loses. Let's begin with income:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig85mbBYcwS0GSY1ljoiAPw1073XAC2ZFRbs48ZKhboqfkNhk3cCTkSRRbhd1V-fUTWJEX9YJVSRmIt5_SnbY3wshyphenhyphenSZzLGj76_l9t5GvCJnq8lK1jnnSTn02757XM61X_gQQHAVsWa60/s1600/statistic_id203183_household-income-in-the-us---percentage-distribution-2016-690.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig85mbBYcwS0GSY1ljoiAPw1073XAC2ZFRbs48ZKhboqfkNhk3cCTkSRRbhd1V-fUTWJEX9YJVSRmIt5_SnbY3wshyphenhyphenSZzLGj76_l9t5GvCJnq8lK1jnnSTn02757XM61X_gQQHAVsWa60/s1600/statistic_id203183_household-income-in-the-us---percentage-distribution-2016-690.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
To begin with, to be a loser among these four examples, your household income must be in the top 14%. And to be a loser you apparently have to be unaware of the 2008 housing market bubble crash and go deeply into debt to buy a very expensive house.<br />
<br />
The couple that rents itemized less deductions and, because the tax plan almost doubles the standard deduction and puts them in a lower tax rate, they will do better seeing their net income rise about $500 per month (compared to the $125 decrease on the homeowner couple). But that means that their federal tax will drop from almost $41,000 per year to almost $35,000 per year.<br />
<br />
What is obvious to many Californians is that the federal government tax policy will stop subsidizing unjustified housing price inflation harming lower income folks in California urban areas. <br />
<br />
Both higher earning couples in the <i>Times</i> story itemized. In the first part of 2019, as tax filing season gets underway, those taxpayers will be figuring out on their tax returns whether to take the standard deduction or to itemize. The losers will continue to itemize, but the couple with the highest income will probably stop itemizing.<br />
<br />
Based on past statistics indicated in the chart below, just consider how few voters will be interested in all the BS in the press about various deductions. But then the press has to fill either space (print media) or time (video news):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-standard-deduction-and-itemized-deductions-compare" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="876" data-original-width="1326" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiISr7iaeTUiePw9u1omvE28PMtH8dIdsf9eS-2otDNijdgJV72l2vZ6KhXL35bDnxGmv8TNG1SsMzGxXaZY8o5fr-c5rcqRRswVWamZRyq8yF-ZFzqJi_BITOxk6HxL3PgFqrE6nY7Z4/s640/4.1.3-figure1_0-itemize.png" width="640" /></a></div>
Again, the new plan nearly doubles the standard deduction and alters the available itemized deductions (though it does away with the exemption system). So that percentage of taxpayers who itemize likely will go down making tax filing simpler for more people.<br />
<br />
And for the Millennials who likely will have to live with much of this tax bill for 30 years, it may be a winner for those working and/or trying to get an education or training as <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/19/pf/how-tax-bill-affects-you/index.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">explained by CNN Money</a>. <br />
<br />
Regarding all the other stuff in the tax bill, the average American knows that most of the rich and some corporations will do better. As they always do, along with their accountants and tax attorneys.<br />
<br />
Really old people with memories know that it was a Democratic Congress that passed the Revenue Act of 1964 when the top tax rate on the relatively few rich folks that liberals carry on about was dropped by 20%, and that the Democrats controlled the House in 1982 when it was dropped by another 20% and that the Democrats controlled both the House and Senate in 1988 when it was dropped by another 22%. Thus despite the warnings of Republican Dwight Eisenhower, the Democrats dropped the top marginal individual income tax rate from 91% in 1960 to 28% in 1988.<br />
<br />
Since then it has gone back up -1991 to 31% and 1993 to 39.6% - so now this big tax cut drops it all the way down to 37% from 39.6%.<br />
<br />
What exactly again is the problem with this again, Democrats?<br />
<br />
If anyone thinks the general public will understand and remember the intricacies of this tax bill in 2020, they are deluded. Let me offer <a href="https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/12/the-final-gop-tax-bill-is-here/548576/?utm_source=nl__link1_121817&silverid=MzEwMTU3NTU2OTI1S0" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">a recent article</a> on the bill from one of my sources of information on matters related to municipal issues which discusses complex special provisions in the Bill almost nobody in the general public knows about like "the brand new Base Erosion Anti-abuse Tax" (BEAT), the fact that "engineers and architects won a special exemption in the tax bill", and other matters.<br />
<br />
Finally, while some corporations are big winners, some policy surprises lurk in this bill, maybe even for Donald Trump supporters, maybe even for Donald Trump who is never going read it. Consider this article <a href="https://qz.com/1160761/gop-tax-bill-the-republican-tax-plan-is-a-victory-for-globalization/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">The GOP tax bill is a massive victory for globalization</a>. The possibilities when considered over the long term could mean economic opportunities for struggling California corporations such as Apple and those opportunities could accrue to California with the right incentives.<br />
<br />
This is why we see the headline <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/speaker-paul-ryan-minds-change-republican-tax-bill/story?id=51902841" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Speaker Paul Ryan: 'Minds are going to change' on Republican tax bill</a>.<br />
<br />
Of course, we all know that for any number of reasons before November 2020 the world's economy could be hit by a recession/depression or the U.S. could be hit with runaway inflation or...not. But one of the lesser-known aspect of the plan could create major economic growth: the provision that lets companies fully deduct their investments in plant and equipment in one year. When accelerated depreciation was introduced in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, according to <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/modeling-economic-effects-past-tax-bills/" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Tax Foundation modeling</a> the long term impact was an increase in the GDP by 2.69%.<br />
<br />
The thing is, that tax bill is a winner for the Republicans and particularly the Koch Neoliberals who already dominate politics in America.<br />
<br />
And the bill is a winner because it represents a dozen compromises, where Republicans have had to compromise with each other which resulted in such things as tuition waivers continued, employer tuition assistance remains non-taxable, some state and local taxes remain deductible, etc. No Democrats were involved in the compromises. <br />
<br />
Right now the Koch Neoliberals are cheering the current liberal media/politicians sexual morality campaign because they understand that the very-repugnant-to-them Roy Moore received the following vote:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0T1GkA6yiruL1Il6NqxGe2RZbvMLatd6tXUdzY9a-q4oIEaRN5hs5D8W1SqgBFWWn_vT2Pi93mgK9tdAmwayCqEZ1wSOZbuh19VkCxcKKkNty9zS3iGx4yKHxB4hNs6pMWyPBasOroRE/s1600/atlas_SkU3z_A-f.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="185" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0T1GkA6yiruL1Il6NqxGe2RZbvMLatd6tXUdzY9a-q4oIEaRN5hs5D8W1SqgBFWWn_vT2Pi93mgK9tdAmwayCqEZ1wSOZbuh19VkCxcKKkNty9zS3iGx4yKHxB4hNs6pMWyPBasOroRE/s1600/atlas_SkU3z_A-f.png" /></a></div>
Nonetheless, in 2017 it's the Democrats who are putting at risk the most Congressional and legislative seats in the sexual morality campaign.<br />
<br />
The Republicans understand that for American voters in 2020 it will be all about "the economy, stupid" meaning how much money the folks take home. And they will be taking home more money because of the Republicans.<br />
<br />
That's because Republicans understand if you don't win, you have no power. For Democrats, it's about some complicated discussion among the indignant, not winning.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-30082789278298050972017-12-09T22:43:00.000-08:002018-08-19T15:08:19.932-07:00Foolish planning and the inevitable wildfires What could have been learned from John Steinbeck about California's true climate<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGA5yfKhOylzGp-PIELf69Z0OOeD2aYFylX8jWf-NZdUWYpfMpABPR8QHvhawG-gX0LBthvBH5HtomrXku8CMDhApgv4nH8Mtc85KbRmMmRbYNLpIf4TbiRwro4CEgGkpw7gsFc5SsDO8/s1600/smoke.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="383" data-original-width="690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGA5yfKhOylzGp-PIELf69Z0OOeD2aYFylX8jWf-NZdUWYpfMpABPR8QHvhawG-gX0LBthvBH5HtomrXku8CMDhApgv4nH8Mtc85KbRmMmRbYNLpIf4TbiRwro4CEgGkpw7gsFc5SsDO8/s1600/smoke.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
The smoke obscures our vision of reality when it comes to wildfires. This week while reading <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/southern-california-wildfires-climate-change-emergency-w513659" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">California's Climate Emergency</a> in <i>Rolling Stone</i> I was confronted with this statement:
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: bold; text-align: left;">In the hills above the Pacific Ocean, the world crossed a terrifying tipping point this week.<br />[...]<br />As the largest of this week's fires skipped across California's famed coastal highway 101 toward the beach, rare snowflakes were falling in Houston, all made possible by a truly extreme weather pattern that's locked the jet stream into a highly amplified state. It's difficult to find the words to adequately describe how weird this is. It's rare that the dissonance of climate change is this visceral.<br />[...]<br />For years, climate scientists have warned us that California was entering a year-round fire regime. For years, climate campaigners have been wondering what it would take to get people to wake up to the urgency of cutting fossil fuel emissions. For years, we've been tip-toeing as a civilization towards a point of no return.<br /><br />That time is now.</span></blockquote>
Well, yes and no. As John Steinbeck said "...God save me from amateurs. [...] They have the authority of ignorance, something you simply cannot combat."<br />
<br />
California has a climate history clearly described in the writings of that California native Steinbeck, most significantly in his second novel <i>To A God Unknown</i> published in 1933 which tells an allegorical tale of the California experience.<br />
<br />
The protagonist, Joseph, comes to California to create his future. He discovers a place of apparent wealth and promise. And indeed he appears to be achieving all that he dreams. But over time, tragedies strike and drought undoes his life work.<br />
<br />
The story is about the arrogance of Californians who hold the belief that their efforts as humans, individually and collectively, create orderly wealth in a place where natural wealth has always existed in its own order of things.<br />
<br />
Steinbeck later acknowledged that <i>To A God Unknown</i> was the hardest for him to write, taking him more years than his better known works. Part of the problem is that he initially tried to adapt a play written by a friend but kept adding context based upon facts as he understood them. And what he understood from the generations of Californians who preceded him was the truth about the land and the water, a truth we need to face.
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: bold; text-align: left;"> About every thirty years there have come periods of rainlessness to Central and Southern California. These desolating years seem to come creeping up out of the white desert to warn the west that it will one day die as the desert has died. They are like the Reminders of Death at an Egyptian feast ....
<br /> And now the periodic drought had settled on the land. Little by little, year on year the water was sucked from the ground. The hills looked gaunt and hungry and pale. The bones of many thousands of starved cattle were whitening on the ground. Two families of Waynes packed up their possessions and drove away. Joe watched his dying land with terror and with loathing. - From <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=J2hhz2uIXUsC&pg=PT165&lpg=PT165&dq=%22About+every+thirty+years+there+have+come+periods+of+rainlessness+to+Central+and+Southern+California%22&source=bl&ots=eGRrKydRSU&sig=KqoEn9j0pujHfQ2d82QYlwohhFs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjd75ik3v3XAhUC9WMKHck-ClMQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=%22About%20every%20thirty%20years%20there%20have%20come%20periods%20of%20rainlessness%20to%20Central%20and%20Southern%20California%22&f=false" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">an early draft</a> of <i>To A God Unknown</i> by John Steinbeck
</span></blockquote>
Sadly Joe's "terror" derived from a normal California weather cycle. Twenty years ago in 1993, Scott Stine, Ph.D, of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at California State University, Hayward, completed a research study entitled "<a href="http://www.phrelin.com/blog/stine_1993.pdf" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Extreme and Persistent Drought in California and Patagonia During Mediaeval Time</a>" which was subsequently published in June 1994 in the academic journal <i>Nature</i>. In it he offers the evidence, now supported by others, that indeed before and after the year 1000 AD California had two droughts that lasted well over 100 years.<br />
<br />
In May 2001 the website <i>Sierra Nature Notes: The Online Journal of Natural History News in the Sierra Nevada</i> published a followup article by Stine "<a href="http://www.sierranaturenotes.com/naturenotes/paleodrought1.htm" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">The Great Droughts of Y1K</a>" in which he explained what he believed to be the weather pattern associated with the 100+ years droughts:
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: bold; text-align: left;"> One may reasonably ask why these droughts occurred. The simple answer lies in the wintertime configuration of the "storm track" (a.k.a. the "jet stream" and the "polar front") over the northeastern Pacific. When the storm track persists over California for much of the winter (as it did, say, in 1982, ‘83, 86, and ‘96), many Pacific cyclones are steered over the state, and we accumulate much precipitation. When the track lies to the north of California, the fronts are steered away, and the region remains dry. This latter case prevailed during the 1976-77—the one period of our instrumental record dry enough to provide an analog to the Medieval droughts....<br /> Evidence is now emerging that the "dry-winter-in-California, wet-winter-in-Alaska" model holds true not only for 1976-77, but for much of upper Medieval time as well....
<br /> ...Persistent droughts, moderate by Medieval standards but strident relative to our "normal" conditions of the past 150 years, drew lakes and rivers well below their modern levels on numerous occasions during the past two millennia, most recently during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Indeed, increasing evidence indicates that there is little that is climatically "normal" about the past century - and- a-half; it appears, in fact, to be California’s third- or fourth-wettest century-scale period of the past four or more millennia.
<br /> Since statehood, Californians have been living in the best of climatic times. And we’ve taken advantage of these best of times by building the most colossal urban and agricultural infrastructure in the entire world, all dependent on huge amounts of water, and all based on the assumption [it] will continue as it has during the past 150 years. Yet even in these best of times we have run out of surplus water, and we fight over allocation.
</span></blockquote>
So yes, Climate Change may very well be speeding up the return to an "upper Medieval time" dry weather period measured in centuries. We could, of course, have simply read Steinbeck's story which begins as California migration stories begin and ends with an expression of regret:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: bold; text-align: left;"> After a time of wandering, Joseph came to the long valley called Nuestra Señora, and there he recorded his homestead. Nuestra Señora, the long valley of Our Lady in central California, was green and gold and yellow and blue when Joseph came into it. The level floor was deep in wild oats and canary mustard flowers.<br />[...]
<br /> Joseph leaned back against his saddle again, and suddenly he chuckled. "I will go," he said. "I will take every means. Look, Juanita. You know this place, and your ancestors knew this place. Why did none of your people come here when the drought started. This was the place to come."
<br /> "The old ones are dead," Juanita said soberly. "The young ones may have forgotten."
<br /> And time passed and Joseph grew grey too.... "I should have known," he whispered.... "I am the land," he said, "and I am the rain." - from <i>To A God Unknown</i> by John Steinbeck</span></blockquote>
Indeed, the young ones do "forget" in the sense that from generation-to-generation people start over by leaping at opportunities without studying to learn the lessons of all times before them. And so in California there was this:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhudpT8meWr5-5W9OiGjhwX3dcXMKN1tlZhHP37w_834b-P5XPVF-WTAluT67QUGfiHvRYdf-4vX_G_zuChrSV7KhZ4L_sPFw7CynglGSXG_7XSYIvIJQQ9CxlWhDP5xy8pNFUUEiehmvc/s1600/California_Population_Growth-690.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhudpT8meWr5-5W9OiGjhwX3dcXMKN1tlZhHP37w_834b-P5XPVF-WTAluT67QUGfiHvRYdf-4vX_G_zuChrSV7KhZ4L_sPFw7CynglGSXG_7XSYIvIJQQ9CxlWhDP5xy8pNFUUEiehmvc/s1600/California_Population_Growth-690.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: bold; text-align: left;">When the dust came up, people were starving; they had no place to go. Naturally, they went in a direction where they would not suffer from cold: they went toward California. They came in the thousands to California. <i> - John Steinbeck in<a href="http://forum.quoteland.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/5511096101/m/2353957187?r=4833978187#4833978187" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"> an interview on British radio</a></i></span></blockquote>
Life's struggles brought millions of migrants from states east of the Rocky Mountains to California as recognized in the above John Steinbeck quote. It also brought millions of migrants (which the other migrants called immigrants) from other nations. And because from 1950 through 1988, the California economy was rich by all comparative historical standards, they kept coming.<br />
<br />
Ignoring history and Steinbeck, Californians bought land and built buildings and were and are homeowners and businesses owners. Now they have to live with what always was the normal California climate. And they need to quit calling it a "drought" when history and science tell us most of the 20th Century was a very extended wet cyclonic period, an abnormal time.<br />
<br />
What we cannot do honestly is blame it on Global Warming which at worst only accelerated an inevitable timeline.<br />
<br />
And we are not going to "fix it" because we are the environmentally aware California. <br />
<br />
In fact, as explained in the <a href="http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Huge-wildfires-can-wipe-out-California-s-12376324.php?cmpid=gsa-sfgate-result" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><i>San Francisco Chronicle</i></a> despite our environmental activism California is the source of more harm than ever and it is just possible that human population growth and related governmental planning for real estate development based on historical scientific studies going back as long as ...oh... a couple of decades is a cause:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; font-weight: bold; text-align: left;">Over the course of just a few weeks, a major fire can pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than California’s many climate change programs can save in 12 months. Scientists debate whether California’s vast forests are emitting more carbon dioxide through fires than they absorb through plant growth.</span></blockquote>
Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-8021932167087280792017-12-08T15:15:00.001-08:002018-06-18T14:01:34.720-07:00About today's important headlines So what news story will impact the most 21st Century Americans in the next decade?<a href="http://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-says-us-declared-war-trying-invade-help-south-japan-742895" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">North Korea Says U.S. Declared War and Is Trying to Invade With Help From South and Japan</a> and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/08/politics/north-korea-trump-dangerous-choice/index.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">A dangerous choice looms for Trump on North Korea</a> are among the headlines today. The images below show some news stories that appeared today and in recent days.<br />
<br />
They aren't about A-to-D-list celebrities or politicians. And they don't represent anything that you can do anything about. In other words, they aren't entertaining and there is no "me" in them for anyone not in the highest levels of government.<br />
<br />
Well, maybe there is a "me" in these stories if you are bothered by the increasing likelihood that tens of millions of people soon will be killed in a nuclear war and one of them might be you. <br />
<br />
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<img border="0" data-original-height="254" data-original-width="690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZUEGZAcdEz3WaLlGjLqwzAEe19vP5mjDczsYWSZQNcjGkvekRNVBxT36iFMdEHHhaV2LRxuVLnJbINeAT2eVDVYJ-_zkF9AAN_RGmIKSA8SPPBsU-0qG0B5WshNH7LymsQVsyGStUDEE/s1600/2017-12-08_headlines-690.jpg" /><img border="0" data-original-height="1419" data-original-width="690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM0GFeyBiCBd7-XxKmJM2K7gSkTF_eoPYtLD7ZFFgYGp218a_d9jz6SV3smmRJQ09308HiZYOQLQe1-J83C_zIveFFlyI566FfytCjEaB3_UUaVtVFVHM2o8yZFhe-dls4F2YFYa9U56Y/s1600/headlines-690.jpg" /></div>
<br />
I've already written about this issue:<br />
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<a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/03/blundering-into-war-with-north-korea_3.html" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU3u_cmvda6TaFkzKsjBHhQFZTVsCbsMxib8RvI9mb6THzB3sZlGkgdELChX1ywph0yzvSlsAnuLAajTb0QJSdMmopwawgU5NrN-oHlLfgoYWGKrTUzfDb7_7PMt-jmjzRfG2G__i-oDQ/s1600/2017-03-03-blogtitle.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
A reporter recently wrote “In Kim, Trump has met his match. The risk of two arrogant fools blundering into a nuclear exchange is more serious than at any time since October 1962.” That writer <a href="http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">noted</a> that Steve Bannon said: “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”<br />
<br />
I don't agree with Bannon on much, but he got that piece of the North Korea war equation right. The other piece is that the Western U.S. is well within North Korea's nuclear strike zone, the Pacific States particularly. Bannon was fired from the White House so he doesn't have Trump's ear.<br />
<br />
If you just can't bear to tear your eyes away from the other "top" stories of this week for more than one story about North Korea, read <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/this-is-how-nuclear-war-with-north-korea-would-unfold/2017/12/08/4e298a28-db07-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef_story.html?utm_term=.85812eae237e" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">This is how nuclear war with North Korea would unfold</a> and note that the possible North Korean nuclear missile strikes described could be anywhere in the U.S. - the writer just picked out a couple.
Hopefully these headlines won't be the ones that impact the most 21st Century Americans in the next decade. But winning a war that devastated the West Coast would would be a good reelection move for Trump.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-51191505755384407222017-11-17T11:04:00.000-08:002018-06-18T15:27:42.510-07:00The Art of the Pro-Communist Deal President Trump enlists the United States in Xi Jinping's 21st Century World Vision as U.S. Pacific allies reject him, and by necessity usForty-five years ago, in 1972, President Richard Nixon made a historic trip to open a diplomatic relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC).<br />
<br />
Over the past two weeks, President Donald Trump also made a historic visit to Asia to:<br />
<ol>
<li>Bestow the U.S. government's endorsement upon Chinese President and <span data-ved="0ahUKEwjxmpKS0MHXAhWFMGMKHWkpB-8Q2koIyQEoAjAe">General Secretary of the Communist Party of China</span> Xi Jinping's <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/05/xi-jinpings-21st-century-silk-economic.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><i>Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road Initiative</i></a> by encouraging American companies to make billions of dollars in investments in the economy of the People's Republic of China, some directly funding the Initiative, some not so transparent.</li>
<li>Grant the U.S. government's approval of People's Republic of China government-affiliated companies and banks making
<ol type="a">
<li>investments in a natural gas project in Alaska;</li>
<li>investments in shale gas development and chemical manufacturing projects in West Virginia; and</li>
<li>investments to be managed by Goldman Sachs in American companies across the manufacturing, industrial, consumer and healthcare industries.</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Incite the remaining 11 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) nations in Asia and the Americas to achieve agreement on the “core elements” of what is to be known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership <span class="st"> (CPTPP), an agreement that prior to Trump's insulting speeches was thought impossible after the U.S. withdrawal from the original TPP.</span></li>
<li>Abide a polite but firm statement from Vietnam President Tran Dai Quang and a blunt statement from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte telling the U.S. to stay out of <i>their</i> dispute with China over the South China Sea as they wanted to avoid any chance of war, a position affirmed by President Xi.</li>
</ol>
These results, which are as surprising as was Nixon's 1972 trip, represent major reversals in American trade policy, foreign policy, and foreign investment policy. These "achievements" are considered below under the headings:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/11/president-trump-enlists-united-states.html#belt" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Trump's Surprising Endorsement of China's Belt and Road Initiative</a></li>
<li><a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/11/president-trump-enlists-united-states.html#tpp" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">How Trump Incited the TPP Deal's Anti-American Pacific Trade Wall</a></li>
<li><a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/11/president-trump-enlists-united-states.html#war" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">The Choice: War or The Pacific Americas Prosperity Neighborhood</a></li>
<li><a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/11/president-trump-enlists-united-states.html#Nixon" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Remembering The Nixon China Surprise</a></li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<center>
<h3>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="belt"></a>Trump's Surprising Endorsement of China's Belt and Road Initiative
</h3>
</center>
<br />
As <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2119046/xi-trump-sign-trade-deals-worth-us280-billion-sources" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">reported</a> in the Chinese press this week, Trump and Chinese President and <span data-ved="0ahUKEwjxmpKS0MHXAhWFMGMKHWkpB-8Q2koIyQEoAjAe">General Secretary of the Communist Party of China</span> Xi Jinping "witnessed the signing of deals worth US$253 billion on Thursday, making the US head of state’s visit to China one of the most fruitful for Chinese and US businesses in terms of the value of agreements struck."<br />
<br />
Perhaps we need to back up here and make clear what really happened during this China visit. Sure, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, United States trade representative Robert E. Lighthizer and Jared Kushner were there. And sure the American media did not provide boring in-depth economic explanations focusing instead on the personalities, in this case Trump and Xi, and in Vietnam Putin.<br />
<br />
But the important policy fact about the China visit was that 29 other persons were specifically included to accompany Trump in China in order to further what appears to be the Trump Deplorable Trade Policy (TDTP) including in order of their business or organization name:<br />
<ol>
<li> Mr. Seifollah Ghasemi, Chairman, President & CEO, <a href="http://www.airproducts.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Air Products</a> of Allentown, Pennsylvania</li>
<li> Mr. Keith Meyer, President, <a href="https://agdc.us/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC)</a> of Anchorage, Alaska</li>
<li> Governor Bill Walker, <a href="https://gov.alaska.gov/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">State of Alaska</a></li>
<li> Mr. Donald Chen, President, Asia-Pacific, <a href="https://www.adm.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Archer Daniels Midland Company</a> of Chicago</li>
<li> Mr. Daniel Revers, Managing Partner, <a href="http://www.arclightcapital.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Arclight Capital Partners, LLC</a>, of Boston</li>
<li> Mr. Mitch Snyder, President & CEO, <a href="http://www.bellhelicopter.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Bell Helicopter</a> of Fort Worth</li>
<li> Mr. Kevin McAllister, President and Chief Executive Officer, <a href="http://www.boeing.com/commercial/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Boeing Commercial Airplanes</a>, Renton, Washington</li>
<li> Mr. Jack Fusco, President and Chief Executive Officer, <a href="http://www.cheniere.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Cheniere Energy, Inc.</a>, of Houston</li>
<li> Mr. Timothy Tangredi, President & CEO, <a href="https://daisanalytic.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Dais Analytic Corporation</a> of Odessa, Florida</li>
<li> Mr. Frederick Jones, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, <a href="http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=253829&p=irol-home" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Delfin Midstream, LLC</a>, of Houston</li>
<li> Mr. Andrew Liveris, Executive Chairman, <a href="http://www.dow-dupont.com/home/default.aspx" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">DowDuPont</a> of Midland, Michigan</li>
<li> Mr. Luka Erceg, President & CEO, <a href="http://www.drylet.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Drylet, LLC</a>, of Houston</li>
<li> Mr. David Messer, CEO, Freepoint <a href="http://www.freepoint.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Commodities LLC</a>, of Stamford, Connecticut</li>
<li> Mr. John Rice, President & CEO, GE Global Growth Organization, <a href="https://www.ge.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">General Electric</a>, of Boston</li>
<li> Mr. Shane Tedjarati, President, High Global Growth, <a href="https://www.honeywell.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Honeywell</a> of Morris Plains, New Jersey</li>
<li> Mr. Lloyd Blankfein, Chief Executive Officer, <a href="http://www.goldmansachs.com/index.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Goldman Sachs</a> of New York City</li>
<li> Mr. Vance Hum, President and Chief Executive Officer, <a href="http://www.imsg.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">I.M. Systems Group, Inc.</a>, of Rockville, Maryland</li>
<li> Mr. Theodore Walker, CEO, Worldwide Property & Casualty, <a href="https://partnerre.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Partner Reinsurance Company of the United States</a> of Greenwich, Connecticut</li>
<li> Mr. Steve Mollenkopf, CEO, <a href="https://www.qualcomm.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Qualcomm, Inc.</a> of San Diego</li>
<li> Mr. Nick Lisi, Executive Vice President , <a href="https://www.sas.com/en_us/home.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">SAS</a> of Cary, North Carolina</li>
<li> Mr. Kevin Smith, CEO, <a href="http://www.solarreserve.com/en/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">SolarReserve</a> of Santa Monica, California</li>
<li> Ms. Li Zhao, Country Representative, <a href="http://www.stineseed.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Stine Seed Company</a> of Adel, Iowa</li>
<li> Mr. John Garrison, President & CEO, <a href="https://www.terex.com/en/index.htm" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Terex Corporation</a> of Westport, Connecticut</li>
<li> Mr. Langtry Meyer, Founder & Chief Operating Officer, <a href="http://www.txlng.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Texas LNG Brownsville, LLC</a>, of Brownsville, Texas</li>
<li> Mr. Paul Doherty, President and CEO, <a href="https://www.thedigitgroupinc.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">The Digit Group, Inc.</a>, of Memphis, Tennessee</li>
<li> Mr. Gianluca Pettiti, President, <a href="https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Thermo Fisher Scientific</a> of Waltham, Massachusetts</li>
<li> Mr. Jim Miller, Chairman, <a href="https://ussec.org/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">U.S. Soybean Export Council</a> of Chesterfield, Missouri</li>
<li> Mr. Paul Koenig, CEO, <a href="http://www.viroment.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Viroment</a> of Minneapolis, Minnesota</li>
<li> Mr. Jose Emeterio Gutierrez Elso, President & CEO, <a href="http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC</a>, of Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania</li>
</ol>
Speaking alongside Trump in Beijing as the deals were announced, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-qualcomm-china-deals/qualcomm-signs-12-billion-in-china-deals-amid-trump-visit-idUSKBN1D90AX" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">reportedly</a> welcomed U.S. companies to participate in his ambitious “Belt and Road” infrastructure-led initiative. In one deal <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2119218/look-inside-beijings-us253-billion-trade-package-trump" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">reported</a>, China’s Silk Road Fund and General Electric signed an agreement specifically to cooperate in investments under China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” as it was defined prior to Trump's visit.<br />
<br />
But other "deals" appear to be an expansion of the “Belt and Road Initiative” <i>into the United States</i>. Perhaps we need to back up again and provide a description of the Initiative from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Belt_One_Road_Initiative" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">the Wikipedia entry</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
<b>The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road</b>, better known as the <b>One Belt and One Road Initiative</b> (<i><b>OBOR</b></i>), <b>The Belt and Road</b> (<i><b>B&R</b></i>) and <b>The Belt and Road Initiative</b> (<i><b>BRI</b></i>) is a development strategy proposed by China's paramount leader Xi Jinping that focuses on connectivity and cooperation between Eurasian countries, primarily the People's Republic of China (PRC), the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the oceangoing Maritime Silk Road (MSR). The strategy underlines China's push to take a larger role in global affairs with a China-centered trading network.
<br />
<br />
The Belt and Road initiative is geographically structured along 6 corridors, and the maritime silk road.<br />
<ul>
<li>New Eurasian Land Bridge, running from Western China to Western Russia through Kazakhstan.</li>
<li>China–Mongolia–Russia Corridor, running from Northern China to Eastern Russia</li>
<li>China–Central Asia–West Asia Corridor, running from Western China to Turkey</li>
<li>China–Indochina Peninsula Corridor, running from Southern China to Singapore</li>
<li>China–Myanmar–Bangladesh–India Corridor, running from Southern China to Myanmar</li>
<li>China–Pakistan Corridor, running from South-Western China to Pakistan</li>
<li>Maritime Silk Road, running from the Chinese Coast through Singapore to the Mediterranean</li>
</ul>
The area of the initiative is primarily Asia and Europe, encompassing around 60 countries. Oceania and East Africa are also included. Anticipated cumulative investment over an indefinite timescale is variously put at US$4 trillion or US$8 trillion. The initiative has been contrasted with the two US-centric trading arrangements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
<br />
<br />
The Belt and Road Initiative is expected to bridge the 'infrastructure gap' and thus accelerate economic growth across the Asia Pacific area and Central and Eastern Europe: World Pensions Council (WPC) experts estimate that Asia excluding China will need up to $900 billion of infrastructure investments per year during the next 10 years, mostly in debt instruments. They conclude that current infrastructure spending on the continent is insufficient by 50%. "The gaping need for long term capital explains why many Asian and Eastern European heads of state "gladly expressed their interest to join this new international financial institution focusing solely on ‘real assets’ and infrastructure-driven economic growth".
<br />
<br />
The <i>Global Times</i> hosts a <a href="http://www.globaltimes.cn//special-coverage/Belt%20and%20Road%20Initiative%20News%20Desk.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">news desk</a> dedicated to the Belt and Road Initiative.
</div>
</blockquote>
The GE deal is the only one transparently constituting an investment in the Eurasian-Africa elements of the Initiative. As explained by Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), the Silk Road Fund and GE established a joint energy infrastructure investment platform. The Silk Road Fund was founded in December 2014 and is jointly backed by China's foreign exchange reserves, China Investment Corp, the Export-Import Bank of China and China Development Bank.<br />
<br />
The SAFE statement said: "The two sides will make joint investment in infrastructure projects in the fields of power grid, new energy, and oil and gas, in countries and regions along the Belt and Road. The cooperation between the Silk Road Fund and GE will not only boost cooperation between high-end manufacturing companies from China and the US, but also promote economic development of the regions where their investment goes."<br />
<br />
What is surprising about three of the other "deals" is that they constitute PRC capital investments in the United States when the Eurasian-Africa elements need substantial capital as described above. Let's look at those three "deals."<br />
<br />
Perhaps the deal stirring the most interest in America's Rust Belt is the world’s largest power company by asset value, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Energy_Investment" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">China Energy Investment Corp.</a> owned by the PRC, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the West Virginia Dept. of Commerce on an $83.7 billion plan to invest in shale gas development and chemical manufacturing projects in West Virginia, with some possible benefit to Ohio and Kentucky<br />
<br />
"This investment by China Energy is the culmination of years of relationship building, both by West Virginia University and the state,” WVU President Gordon Gee said. “It is also an excellent example of the possibilities that we have been discussing within the West Virginia Forward initiative with our partners at the state Department of Commerce and Marshall University.<br />
<br />
“As I have traveled the state talking about West Virginia Forward, I have frequently said we need a ‘quick win.’ In the economic development world, this is a nearly unprecedented big win. The agreement, and the ramifications from it, will help move West Virginia forward for years to come.”<br />
<br />
In another "deal", China’s top state-owned oil company <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinopec" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Sinopec</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_China" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Bank Of China</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Investment_Corporation" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">China Investment Corp</a> (which reports to the State Council of the People's Republic of China) agreed to help the State of Alaska develop a $43-billion natural gas project in Alaska.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">
<img border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp542xzFEJtHdvNJ7GKaSQ2gQum9RnYg6rmWpMpK4xAJBdDVCCDZqajDL31dQZLDc9ubeGdic38kT4pEwB4yiT0Ubr33b3bs7iI8YUNrF1x833nN2K3nuGzAgVRW0oMQh8Gq62OoZ27dU/s1600/signing-ceremony.jpg" />Alaska Governor Bill Walker and others participate in a an agreement signing ceremony while Presidents Trump and General Secretary Xi observe
</span>
</div>
<br />
In a <a href="https://agdc.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Alaska-and-China-Sign-Historic-Joint-Development-Agreement-Press-Release-1.pdf" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">news release</a> issued by the state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corporation created by the Alaska Legislature in 2010, Alaska Governor Bill Walker states: “This is an agreement that will provide Alaska with an economic boom comparable to the development of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in the 1970s.”<br />
<br />
From the news release we learn:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC), the State of Alaska, China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec), CIC Capital Corporation (CIC Capital), and Bank of China (BOC), today announced a joint development agreement to advance Alaska LNG, Alaska’s strategic gas infrastructure project.
<br />
The agreement was signed in the presence of United States President Donald Trump and China President Xi Jinping, and expresses the common interests in the preparatory work of Alaska LNG.
<br />
Alaska LNG is designed as a 20 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) integrated LNG system comprised of a three train liquefaction plant in Southcentral Alaska at Nikiski; an approximately 800 mile, 1.1 meter diameter gas pipeline; a gas treatment plant on the North Slope of Alaska; and various interconnecting facilities to connect the Prudhoe Bay gas complex to the gas treatment plant.
<br />
Under the agreement, the parties have agreed to work cooperatively on LNG marketing, financing, investment model and China content in Alaska LNG, and get a periodic result by 2018.
<br />
“Today’s agreement brings the potential customer, lender, equity investor, and developer together with a common objective of crafting mutually beneficial agreements leading to increased LNG trade between Alaska and China,” said Keith Meyer, president, AGDC.
<br />
“Sinopec is interested in the possibility of LNG purchase on a stable basis from Alaska LNG,” said Sinopec.
<br />
“CIC Capital is an experienced financial investor in the energy and infrastructure sectors and has long been interested in investing in American LNG infrastructure. CIC Capital is pleased to work with fellow industry and financial partners on this project,” said CIC Capital.
<br />
“As the most internationalized bank in China, Bank of China is willing to facilitate the China-U.S. energy cooperation and provide financial solutions for this transaction by taking advantage of its vast experiences and expertise in international mega-project financing,” said Bank of China.
<br />
Sinopec is a huge, state-owned, fully integrated energy and chemical company. Based in Beijing, Sinopec is the largest oil and gas company in the world by revenue with annual revenue of USD 455.49 billion.
<br />
CIC Capital is China’s direct investment arm, which is mandated to make direct investments and manage bilateral and multilateral fund investments in order to pursue long-term financial returns and promote international investment cooperation. CIC Capital is a market-oriented commercial entity with a specialized mandate and global reach. As a long-term financial investor, CIC invests on a commercial basis.
<br />
Bank of China is a state-owned commercial bank. Bank of China ranks top 10 largest banks in the world by market capitalization value and provides a comprehensive range of financial services to clients in 52 countries and regions around the world.
<br />
The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC) is an independent, public corporation of the State of Alaska, empowered to maximize the benefit of Alaska’s vast North Slope natural gas resources through the development of infrastructure necessary to move the gas into local and international markets. Visit www.agdc.us for up to date information.
</div>
</blockquote>
The purpose of the agreement is to develop natural resources located in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA), an area of land owned by the federal government and managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) which is located to the west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.<br />
<br />
The State of Alaska entered into an agreement with Sinopec - a PRC-owned "energy and chemical company," CIC Capital - a sovereign wealth fund responsible for managing part of the People's Republic of China's foreign exchange reserves, "China's direct investment arm," and the Bank of China - a PRC "state-owned commercial bank."<br />
<br />
At a minimum it is curious that the Republican President of the United States Donald Trump oversaw the signing of the agreement while sitting with the <span data-ved="0ahUKEwjxmpKS0MHXAhWFMGMKHWkpB-8Q2koIyQEoAjAe">General Secretary of the Communist Party of China</span> Xi Jinping.<br />
<br />
The third "deal" which for all intents and purposes looks like the expansion of the Initiative into the United States occurred despite <a href="https://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/07/12/2017/chinas-sovereign-fund-pushes-greater-access-sensitive-u.s.-investments" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">earlier opposition to Chinese investment in U.S. companies</a>
by the Trump Administration, Congress, and the Pentagon.<br />
<br />
Goldman Sachs and China Investment Corp (CIC) signed a strategic agreement to establish a China and United States industrial cooperation fund. The Cooperation Fund will target $5 billion in commitments with a broad mandate to invest in American companies in the manufacturing, industrial, consumer and healthcare industries, among others, that have or can develop a material business connection to China. The Cooperation Fund is designed to enhance commercial linkages and promote market access for US firms in China and will seek to improve the balance of the US-China trade relationship.<br />
<br />
“The China-United States relationship is one of the most important in the world and strengthening economic and trade cooperation is vital to the economies of both countries,” said Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. “The Cooperation Fund will increase Chinese investment in the United States, creating more opportunities for American workers and contributing to China’s economic transition and growth.”<br />
<br />
“CIC has invested in the US for ten years and is committed to be both an investor and facilitator to develop a stronger China-US investment relationship,” said Tu Guangshao, Vice Chairman and President of CIC. “The partnership will help promote China’s supply-side structural reform and economic transition, and by investing in the US, it will act as a multiplier for business growth throughout the country.”<br />
<br />
The deals endorsed by Trump and Xi could be valued as much as $250 billion. Sure Boeing won orders and commitments worth $37 billion at list prices for 300 jets, including 260 narrow-body Boeing 737s and a total of 40 wide-body 787s and 777s from state purchasing agency China Aviation Supplies Holding Co. Other "deal" signings overseen by Trump and Xi include:<br />
<ul>
<li>Delfin Midstream has reached a preliminary 15-year sales deal to supply 3 million tonnes a year of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to city gas distributor China Gas Holdings (0384.HK) from 2021.</li>
<li>Air Products and Chemicals (APD.N) signed an agreement with Yankuang Group for a $3.5-bln coal-to-syngas production facility in China and signed an agreement to form a $1.3 billion joint venture (JV) with Lu’An Clean Energy Company, which will significantly expand Air Products’ scope of supply serving Lu’An Mining (Group) Co., Ltd.’s syngas-to-liquids production in Changzhi City, Shanxi Province, China..</li>
<li>Cheniere Energy Inc (LNG.A) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China National Petroleum Corp [CNPET.UL] for long-term LNG sales and purchase cooperation. </li>
<li>Westinghouse Electric Co. signed contracts
with China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Co. to build six AP1000 nuclear power plants in China.</li>
<li>Bell Helicopter, part of Textron Inc (TXT.N), reached a deal to sell 50 additional Bell 505 helicopters to Reignwood International, with Reignwood also being named the craft’s exclusive reseller in China.</li>
<li>Terex Utilities Inc. and Xuzhou Handler Special Vehicle (300201.SZ) signed a strategic letter of intent for Xuzhou Handler to buy 5,000 insulated aerial devices from Terex over five years worth $250 million. </li>
<li>Qualcomm (QCOM.O) signed three non-binding agreements to sell $12 billion of semiconductors to Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo over the next three years. </li>
<li>Ford Motor (F.N) and China’s Anhui Zotye Automobile (000980.SZ) have agreed to invest a combined $756 million to set up a 50-50 joint venture in China to build electric passenger vehicles. </li>
<li>The United States soybean industry including Archer Daniels Midland Company has signed letters of intent worth more than $5 billion – a $1 billion bump from similar contracts signed a year ago - with Chinese importers covering the purchase of an additional 12 million tonnes of soybeans in the 2017/18 marketing year. </li>
<li>JD.Com Inc (JD.O) said it would purchase more than $2 billion of U.S. agriculture and food products over the next three years, including at least $1.2 billion of beef from Montana Stock Growers Association and pork from Smithfield Foods Inc. [SFII.UL]. </li>
<li>Drylet LLC agreed to form a joint venture with Nanjing Hoyo Municipal Utilities Investment and Administration for wastewater treatment in China. Hoyo Municipal Utilities Investment and Administration will also become an equity investor in Drylet. </li>
<li>Software company SAS signed a cooperation agreement with Shenzhen Zhenghong Technology to establish the Big Data Innovation Center for Smart Manufacturing in Shenzhen. </li>
<li>Caterpillar, Inc. (CAT.N) and China Energy Investment Corporation signed a five-year strategic cooperative framework agreement covering future agreements for mining equipment sales and rentals, technology applications and product support. </li>
</ul>
And looking at a cross-section of other industries represented at the signing is interesting.<br />
<br />
For instance, Minneapolis waste water treatment company Viroment signed an agreement with Hangzhou Iron and Steel worth $800 million addressing textile and sewage sludges for over 800 plants. Viroment also signed a $100-million agreement with Guangye Guangdong Environmental Protection Group to address sewage sludge solids disposal requirements in South China.<br />
<br />
The agreements will allow more than 800 textile companies in eastern China’s Zhejiang province and 80 waste water treatment plants in southern Guangdong province to install Viroment technology to help them comply with China’s environmental regulations.<br />
<br />
“Right now we have no footprint in China, so this is our kick-off,” Viroment’s chief executive Paul Koenig said. “If Trump wasn’t coming, I don’t think we would have pushed to have [such] large deals in writing.”<br />
<br />
“Everyone’s excited and everyone’s motivated … you can pretty much always add one or more zeroes when you’re dealing with China,” Koenig said.<br />
<br />
Koenig will attend three more trade missions to China later this year, with ongoing plans to work with companies in Hebei province and major port city Tianjin, and eventually “tackle all of China”.<br />
<br />
Smart city developer The Digit Group of Memphis, already having a presence in China, signed three contracts worth a combined $1.9 billion, including one to build a 200-hectare virtual reality theme part in the eastern city of Qingdao.<br />
<br />
DowDuPont signed a tire contract with bicycle-sharing startup Beijing Mobike Technology Co. to develop lighter, more durable materials for tires and saddles, as well as coatings, adhesives and synthetic rubber. The U.S. company said the agreement creates incentives for U.S. exports of polyurethane and other products. DowDuPont began working with Mobike last year, and about 2 million bicycles already use their tires.<br />
<br />
Honeywell International Inc. inked a memorandum of understanding with China’s Oriental Energy to cooperate on an ethane dehydrogenation project of 600,000 tons a year. Like DowDuPont, its deal also involves an existing Chinese partner. Honeywell announced in May that two Oriental Energy subsidiaries had licensed its technology to begin producing propylene. Honeywell also signed a service contract with Spring Airlines Co., China’s biggest budget carrier that flies over 130 routes with a fleet of Airbus A320 planes. The deal would further develop Honeywell’s ties to China’s aviation industry. The U.S. company is a supplier for the C919, a new single-aisle plane being produced by state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China Ltd. <br />
<br />
Sure, this seems like good economic opportunities for American companies. Still, creating a positive focus on trade with the People's Republic of China and having open public discussion of PRC Communist Party <span data-ved="0ahUKEwjxmpKS0MHXAhWFMGMKHWkpB-8Q2koIyQEoAjAe">General Secretary </span> Xi Jinping's 21st Century Silk Economic Belt and Road during Trump's visit is bit of a surprise. China's "Belt and Road" initiative is its economic centerpiece for the future of international trade.<br />
<br />
From a policy standpoint, a U.S. President endorsing<br />
<ul>
<li>a U.S. private company's involvement in the "Belt and Road" and </li>
<li>Communist-PRC-owned companies investing in U.S. natural resources and businesses </li>
</ul>
represents a significant pro-China turn-around from the Trans-Pacific Partnership goal of resisting China's effort to dominate world trade in the future.<br />
<br />
Not that the Trump Administration has backed down from U.S. <i>imports</i> trade issues. Disputes over such imports <a href="https://www.trade.gov/press/press-releases/2017/us-department-of-commerce-issues-affirmative-preliminary-antidumping-duty-determination-on-hardwood-plywood-products-from-china-061917.asp" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">such as hardwood plywood</a> continue where it has been determined that the Communist government is subsidizing product production costs.<br />
<br />
But in light of that, it seems like a questionable move to have Communist-PRC-owned companies directly involved in the U.S. economy, obtaining ownership interests in U.S. corporations.<br />
<br />
As noted in the prior post <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/xi-jinpings-strategy-for-21st-century.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">With thoughtful Chinese characteristics a President tends his plan for 1.4 billion people for 2020 ...and 2035 ...and 2049</a> President Xi heads a 7000-year-old autocratic nation and clearly with regard to economics and business thinks in time frames far longer than the next quarterly report.<br />
<br />
In his three hour and 23 minutes speech at the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Party General Secretary Xi Jinping under the title <b><i>Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era</i></b> laid out his vision for the Chinese people. “The Chinese nation … has
stood up, grown rich, and become strong – and it now embraces the brilliant prospects of rejuvenation … It will be an era that sees China moving closer to center stage and making greater contributions to mankind.”<br />
<br />
<center>
<h3>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="tpp"></a>How Trump Incited the TPP Deal's Anti-American Pacific Trade Wall</h3>
</center>
<br />
In contrast to how Trump helped the "deals" in China, Trump's first stop on his trip was in Japan where he went on the attack.<br />
<br />
For the U.S., the Japanese trade deficit is second only to that with China and to Trump that means the other side is somehow breaking the rules. He said the U.S. has "suffered massive trade deficits at the hands of Japan for many, many years".<br />
<br />
"We want free and reciprocal trade but right now our trade with Japan is not free and it's not reciprocal and I know it will be and we've started the process," Mr Trump told the group of US and Japanese executives. He took aim at Japanese carmakers in Tokyo.<br />
<br />
"Try building your cars in the United States instead of shipping them over. That's not too much to ask," the US president said at the briefing, adding, "is that rude to ask"?<br />
<br />
Rude? Yes. But also downright ignorant of some troublesome facts - you know, facts that Trump's Deplorables won't accept - about Japanese automakers, the ignorance of which allows him to create the Trump Deplorable Trade Policy.<br />
<br />
Data shows that in 2016, three-quarters of Japanese branded cars sold in the US were manufactured in North America. Last year, those carmakers built nearly 4 million vehicles and 4.7 million engines in the US and contributed $45.6bn in total investment through 24 manufacturing plants, and 43 research and development and design centers in the U.S.<br />
<br />
The problem isn't the Japanese. The problem is Americans who are still buying cars from Japan, along with agricultural goods, electronic components and pharmaceutical products.<br />
<br />
American-made cars can be sold in Japan. But in a country where people cram onto mass-transit, there is no demand for American cars. Only a delusional person or an ignorant President would think otherwise.<br />
<br />
While listening to Trump's misinformation and insults, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hadn’t forgotten that it was Trump who pulled out of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, a move the U.S. president once again defended Monday.<br />
<br />
Abe spent significant political capital to back the deal, particularly among farmers who don’t want to see tariffs on agriculture lowered. Japanese officials also say the TPP would’ve helped narrow the trade gap.<br />
<br />
So Prime Minister Abe and other Japanese officials spent most of their energy during Trump's China visit on a process known as “TPP 11” -- an attempt to keep the Trans-Pacific Partnership framework intact with 11 nations <i>and definitely without the U.S</i>. <br />
<br />
Trump left Japan with no changes in trade policy, went to China and seemingly embraced China's trade leadership, then moved on from China to Vietnam.<br />
<br />
In Vietnam, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum was meeting, a forum for 21 Pacific Rim member economies that promotes free trade throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The annual APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting is attended by the heads of government of all APEC members.<br />
<br />
In 2014 Xi was pushing APEC members to create a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) saying that it is a "strategic initiative critical for the long-term prosperity of the Asia-Pacific". He touts it as as "an institutional mechanism for ensuring an open economy in the Asia-Pacific." It has been China's offer of an alternative to what was the American-led TPP until Trump rejected it.<br />
<br />
This year the APEC meeting was held in Danang, Vietnam. In contrast to endorsing the "Belt and Road", according to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/world/asia/trump-apec-asia-trade.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">New York Times</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
President Trump on Friday vowed to protect American interests against foreign exploitation, preaching a starkly unilateralist approach to a group of leaders who once pinned their economic hopes on a regional trade pact led by the United States.
<br />
“We are not going to let the United States be taken advantage of anymore,” Mr. Trump told business leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Danang, Vietnam. “I am always going to put America first, the same way that I expect all of you in this room to put your countries first.”
<br />
But taking the stage at the same meeting immediately after Mr. Trump, President Xi Jinping of China delivered a sharply contrasting message, championing more robust engagement with the world. Mr. Xi used his own speech to make a spirited defense of globalization, saying relations among countries should be “more open, more inclusive, more balanced, more equitable and more beneficial to all.”
<br />
Mr. Trump’s remarks were strikingly hostile for an audience that included leaders who had supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping 12-nation accord that was to be led by the United States, from which Mr. Trump withdrew immediately after taking office.</div>
</blockquote>
Trump's logical fallacy is clear to Vietnam. Vietnam is the source of smart phones (Samsung), clothing and shoes (such as Walmart, Zara, and North Face brands) for Americans as well as the rest of the world. Like those Japanese cars, ordinary Americans are buying Vietnamese imports, mostly because alternatives are unaffordable.<br />
<br />
Before and after Trump's speech, TPP-11 members continued negotiations. Key decisions were made by the TPP-11 countries indicated in green on the map below including Japan fuming over the new insults, plus Canada and Mexico recently insulted regarding the NAFTA talks.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik4cV0p5eHtpsLzuIVvh-1doKXhddiSw09b08I8KkZ-5PQkpCsOeCbP4vJgLQVC50GZC6Rjc5mOgR6KnekpGOdLk5DbubuCsKlLZc_BS4BDBfWZ0cKChRLDtFixssarGDDiV_jZJnW7Sk/s1600/CPTPP-700.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="859" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik4cV0p5eHtpsLzuIVvh-1doKXhddiSw09b08I8KkZ-5PQkpCsOeCbP4vJgLQVC50GZC6Rjc5mOgR6KnekpGOdLk5DbubuCsKlLZc_BS4BDBfWZ0cKChRLDtFixssarGDDiV_jZJnW7Sk/s1600/CPTPP-700.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
As we learned from the Financial Times article <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/df9b5a8e-c7c2-11e7-ab18-7a9fb7d6163e" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">TPP deal ignites criticism of US isolation on trade</a> the United States will likely be isolated in terms of Pacific trade, ironically except for China:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
A weekend move by Japan and 10 other Pacific nations to press ahead with a vast regional trade agreement without the US has prompted fresh criticism that Donald Trump’s “America First” trade policy is leaving Washington increasingly isolated.
<br />
The 11 remaining members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the Obama administration spent years negotiating and Mr Trump pulled out of on his third day in office, announced on Saturday that they had reached agreement on the “core elements” of a deal to proceed without the US.
<br />
The group still has work to do, as Canada, Malaysia and Vietnam seek changes to an agreement they have rebadged — at Canada’s request — as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
<br />
But officials said the plan was to sign a final agreement early next year, in a deal that would eliminate the tariffs on 95 per cent of goods traded in a bloc covering some 500m people and more than $10tn in economic output.
<br />
“This will send out a very strong message to the US and to other Asia-Pacific countries,” said Toshimitsu Motegi, the Japanese economy minister.
</div>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDDo19jHRO9dlGbkqYT9FrqlAuEJcpE63tstkjLBApoT23NLD9_VlvbdwLHhMFwtUe__FqFTIfXZlP6kM9AYW5LLCB2tliCNT-RFDMlcqxsTqW4EkwTqWjRyK5zMgqtp8OSoZMoxhTvh0/s1600/trump-leave-TPP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 2px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="115" data-original-width="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDDo19jHRO9dlGbkqYT9FrqlAuEJcpE63tstkjLBApoT23NLD9_VlvbdwLHhMFwtUe__FqFTIfXZlP6kM9AYW5LLCB2tliCNT-RFDMlcqxsTqW4EkwTqWjRyK5zMgqtp8OSoZMoxhTvh0/s1600/trump-leave-TPP.jpg" /></a></div>
It is not a coincidence that the Japanese economy minister spoke for the group, but that wouldn't be noticed by those embracing the Trump Deplorable Trade Policy as they would never believe how much damage is being done to their grandchildren's economic future.<br />
<br />
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership is different from that achieved at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency.<br />
<br />
About 20 provisions that were once part of the TPP talks have been "suspended," according to a joint statement by the agreement’s member countries. And there are still four sticking points — including a commitment on coal that affects Brunei — to solve, but experts say a final deal could be announced as early as next year.<br />
<br />
But of real interest <b><i>because it would preclude future American participation</i></b>, most of the provisions in the chapter on intellectual property have been “suspended,” meaning they likely will be excluded from future negotiations. This includes the proposed 20 year increase in copyright term and the introduction of criminal penalties for circumventing technological protection measures. <br />
<br />
The effect will be to put differing trade walls between the United States and every one of those countries on the map above between now and 2020. What Trump is putting at risk with his nationalistic <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/world/asia/trump-apec-asia-trade.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">"America First"</a> speeches are the exports from the Pacific States as explained in the <a href="http://www.progressivepacific.com/pacific.html#economy" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Progressive Pacific Message</a> website which includes this information:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.usglc.org/state-network/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQaeszfmBcjc3HMyzsJ-fQktBs9GlpWxruhYg9UvCB8qNSn95G2mZty6LQDI_25hyphenhyphen2fi05TWUbze0cEqoy1ZBGIGyojo0vRwuqn1DUCVPgqXSkoUVkEZxA33y02R_iISx9zdKQgRsC85c/s1600/Exports600_Washington.jpg" /><img border="0" data-original-height="687" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQqUKeJaShGUWu-bdDPaYzLvMt3VnW8lcAMieDXn94HWxhm5h2t7bvqpZ4zj0c5gkS1Cu4CiNmy0Y9-QRVYslNsZvHZGDzJ0LFIZxHAvnTof0bm_4I36lXsvMAy1Nnlq7dsFGYuzXkcjY/s1600/Exports600_Oregon.jpg" /><img border="0" data-original-height="670" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjihHKAG98nS9UPfvzjoDyv_BVE-5DzDkm4KsaURt4TLeg7pXTuLlysQ_Dm4wDmrokDVdaOJCpSZHxr4L9ZdaA_DANR-vleI66VbY1DF31X0zp1SMA975lwCmqyVfRP6N1G1oSN8Tn_3u0/s1600/Exports600_Hawaii.jpg" /><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrB1V62pkgB826C1s8_t4USe259N_x5NWsMSG6_EoE7Pfpz-T0M30PTJBop367EDbpmT92BGCUiupSfBVmArFdmsho48LIqDVQeoC4bwcUZHg3IzeQX-MVGvRjAayNJq_ayrTDB1ZjjRI/s1600/Exports600_California.jpg" /></a></div>
Note that all but one of the largest markets listed for exports from these states are countries on that map above and none are in Europe or a country on the Atlantic Ocean.<br />
<br />
Based upon Trump's tacit endorsement of "Belt and Road" funding by American companies, it seems the Trump Deplorable Trade Policy (TDTP) has a great big gap in the direction of China. In the tables above, China is the largest export market for Washington and Oregon, and second behind Mexico if you combine China and Hong Kong for California.<br />
<br />
But based on Trump's attacks in Japan and Vietnam, plus his prior attacks on NAFTA countries Canada and Mexico, the Trump Deplorable Trade Policy (TDTP) is a threat to the economic well-being of the Pacific States, China notwithstanding.<br />
<br />
In 2015 the <i>LA Times</i> ran an Infographic piece <a class="link" href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ports-imports-exports-20150218-htmlstory.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"> West Coast ports: What comes in, what goes out and what it's worth</a> providing look at the volume and variety of both imports and exports at the 28 ports along the West Coast totaling over $630 billion in 2014 including smaller ones like the <a href="http://portofkalama.com/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Port of Kalama, Washington</a> (total 2014 trade $3.0 billion, top export Soybeans, top import Rolled iron and steel).<br />
<br />
Consider this from <i>The Daily News</i> <a class="link" href="http://tdn.com/news/local/local-ports-worry-over-trump-s-possible-steel-tariffs/article_27f70d23-935d-5d0b-9cf5-a6e232e50721.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Local ports worry over Trump’s possible steel tariffs</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
At <a href="http://www.steelscape.com/http://www.steelscape.com/" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Steelscape</a> and its subsidiaries, steel imports support about 800 jobs in the U.S., including 270 jobs at the Port of Kalama. The company imports hot rolled steel coils, which are processed into cold-rolled, flat steel for building materials such as siding and roofing.
<br />
Although the company gets a small amount of steel from domestic sources, imports are the bedrock of its business model. Steelscape says it can save about $60 to $100 per a ton of steel by importing it through the Columbia River docks rather than shipping it in over the Rocky Mountain.
</div>
</blockquote>
It might be tempting to say that this discussion represents a typical West Coast State versus the rest of America dispute and that Steelscape should bite the bullet and buy American steel or get out of business. But actually, should lernin' be a goal, as one could learn from <a href="http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2016/06/17/pittsburg-steelmaker-uss-posco-in-international-trade-dispute-bind/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Pittsburg: Steelmaker USS-POSCO in international trade dispute bind</a> the assumption that somehow buying "American-made" steel will improve net employment in the Rust Belt is a foolish fallacious thought process. <br />
<br />
<center>
<h3>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="war"></a>The Choice: War or The Pacific Americas Prosperity Neighborhood
</h3>
</center>
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Trump left Vietnam for a visit to the Philippines. Both the Philippines and Vietnam have recently seen China disrupt oil and gas exploration in disputed areas of the South China Sea. While the U.S. ordinarily doesn’t take a position on territorial disputes, it has aggressively challenged China for moves to assert control over areas also claimed in part by Southeast Asian countries.<br />
<br />
In early September the headline was <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/us-navy-to-conduct-regular-naval-patrols-in-south-china-sea/article/2633243" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">US Navy to conduct regular naval patrols in South China Sea</a>. In early October the headline was <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/10/politics/us-navy-south-china-sea-freedom-of-navigation-operation/index.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">US Navy destroyer sails near disputed islands in South China Sea</a>. Now the headline is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-12/trump-offers-to-broker-deal-to-resolve-south-china-sea-dispute" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Trump Offers to Broker Peace in South China Sea as Trip Wraps Up</a>. <br />
<br />
Trump's association with the Alt-Right spokesman Steve Bannon creates fear in the Asia-Pacific region. It is likely that on his trip Trump doesn't remember <a href="http://redwoodguardian.blogspot.com/2017/02/why-you-should-fear-trumpisms-steve.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">this statement Bannon made</a> on his radio show in a March 2016 discussion with Neoliberal Lee Edwards of the Heritage Foundation:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
We’re going to war in the South China Sea. I was a sailor there. We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years. There’s no doubt about that. They’re taking their sandbars and making basically stationary aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the United States in front of our face – and you understand how important face is – and say it’s an ancient territorial sea. That's a throwdown, is it not sir.</div>
</blockquote>
Yes, Bannon is no longer a part of the Trump Administration. But China, Vietnam, and Philippine officials aren't foolish and ignorant - they study everything said about the South China Sea associated with the Trump Administration. They know there is considerable evidence that Bannon is respected by Trump. One can imagine how eyes might glaze over when Trump offers to mediate the dispute at least partly because of Trump's ignorance about what's actually going on.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Vietnam President Tran Dai Quang at a joint press briefing in Hanoi in response to questions about Trump's offer to mediate said “I have shared my thoughts with President Donald Trump on the recent developments in this area,” adding that Vietnam wanted to settle disputes through “peaceful negotiations” in accordance with international law.<br />
<br />
The Philippines' overlapping claims with Chinese claims which expand beyond the Philippines to Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, was not part of the 40-minute discussions in the South China Sea when Trump sat down with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for their first formal bilateral talks in Manila.<br />
<br />
Regarding Trump's offer to mediate, Duterte said: “The South China Sea is better left untouched. Nobody can afford to go to war.” Duterte, who turned towards China since taking office last year, noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping told him on Saturday that he also didn’t want to “waste the lives of my countrymen for a useless war that cannot be won by anyone.”<br />
<br />
Robespierre Bolivar, spokesman of the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs, announced Monday that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei) will "commence the negotiations on a substantive and effective code of conduct" based on a framework established with China last August.<br />
<br />
A draft copy of the announcement released previously to the media said, "While the situation is calmer now, we cannot take the current progress for granted." The statement said it is "important that we cooperate to maintain peace, stability, freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the SCS [South China Sea], in accordance with international law. It is in our collective interest to avoid miscalculations that could lead to escalation of tensions." <br />
<br />
China claims most of the South China Sea, one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. ASEAN member nations Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Brunei, as well as Taiwan also claim overlapping parts of the area.<br />
<br />
A code of conduct would serve as a guideline for the competing claimants on how their sea vessels and aircraft can pass through the territory without any dispute.<br />
<br />
In other words, as Trump runs around the world announcing the Trump Deplorable Trade Policy (TDTP) of forcing negotiated bilateral arrangements - a laborious one-by-one process with other nations - the other nations are continuing to move forward with multilateral agreements.<br />
<br />
The TDTP is popular in parts of the United States where book lernin' is detested.But the rest of the world realizes that bilateral ultimately equates with war because factually in the 20th Century bilateral resulted in the killing 160± million people in wars.<br />
<br />
The leadership of the rest of the world understands that the Trump Deplorable Trade Policy cannot even achieve the goal of more jobs sought by the Deplorables because it has no teeth. The only way to significantly alter the trade deficit is to get Americans to quit buying stuff made elsewhere or to put up tariff walls both of which would disrupt the ability of the poor and middle-class to afford things they purchase, most significantly things like clothing, toys, appliances, electronics, even food.<br />
<br />
The question Americans have to ask is the Trump Administration aggressively pursuing Bannon's war or a Pacific Americas Prosperity Neighborhood. An <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Times" target="_blank"><i>Asia Times</i></a> headline recently asked <a href="http://www.atimes.com/article/us-naval-assertion-south-china-sea-legal/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Are US naval assertions in the South China Sea necessary?</a> noting "US freedom of navigation operations in the Spratly Islands are pre-emptive challenges to China's potential claims and thus are beyond normal international practice." The article clearly explains why the awareness of Bannon's "let's get into a war with China over the South China Sea" policy makes Asian's nervous.<br />
<br />
It should be making all Americans nervous also. The multilateral free trade movement which could create a Pacific Americas Prosperity Neighborhood is an alternative to bilateral aggression and war. Smart trade economics is an alternative to war. The Trump Deplorable Trade Policy (TDTP) is not only not smart trade economics, it is a previously abandoned 20th Century formula for causing wars.
<br />
<br />
<center>
<h3>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Nixon"></a>Remembering The Nixon China Surprise
</h3>
</center>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUUeOPiuAgUq7ptFaDAA4nOzfzZ3B80JN1k4iooS40xoOS9Ubg1Bii2xBsIRKINYHSgkJ_fsfcyDgoKpouEn6VHSLWz59hpPXPxBiDUDsZUSTc7FlJRjTgawVz_5-yoS4m8BwoNlmJH_k/s1600/nixon-china-350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 2em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="458" data-original-width="350" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUUeOPiuAgUq7ptFaDAA4nOzfzZ3B80JN1k4iooS40xoOS9Ubg1Bii2xBsIRKINYHSgkJ_fsfcyDgoKpouEn6VHSLWz59hpPXPxBiDUDsZUSTc7FlJRjTgawVz_5-yoS4m8BwoNlmJH_k/s320/nixon-china-350.jpg" width="244" /></a>
<br />
As mentioned at the beginning of this post, forty-five years ago, in 1972, President Richard Nixon made a historic trip to China.<br />
<br />
For 23 years, Americans had been isolated from China by the U.S. government. As explained in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Nixon_visit_to_China" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">the Wikipedia entry on Nixon's trip</a>: "The American ruling class was concerned that communists might dominate schools or labor unions."<br />
<br />
At the time, Nixon's trip seemed almost shocking because as the 1952 vice-presidential candidate on the Eisenhower ticket his strong anti-communist stance was important in garnering votes.<br />
<br />
As noted in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_goes_to_China" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">another Wikipedia entry on the trip</a>: "Because Nixon had an undisputed reputation of being a staunch anti-Communist, he was largely immune to any criticism of being 'soft on Communism' by figures on the right of American politics."<br />
<br />
Per Wikipedia: "'Nixon going to China' has since become a metaphor for an unexpected or uncharacteristic action by a politician." <br />
<br />
When one considers Trump's campaign bluster against trade with China, the actual details of his trip to China seem almost as surprising as Nixon's, except the surprise is the level of Trump's failure to protect the interest of Americans other than corporation executives like those who went on to China with him.<br />
<br />
What was troubling during the 2016 campaign was Trump's opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement which resulted in what was to be its defeat.<br />
<br />
The TPP was intended to counter China's growing dominance in trade among Pacific nations. Trump further bolstered that Chinese dominance on his trip and is isolating the United States from some of its most important allies in the Pacific.<br />
<br />
Of course, in 1972 Nixon had Henry Kissinger as his National Security Adviser organizing his China trip. Prior to becoming National Security Advisor Kissinger was director of the Harvard Defense Studies Program and the Harvard International Seminar starting in 1951.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-tillerson-china-20170926-story.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">As reported in September</a>, Trump had Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of State organizing his China trip. Prior to becoming Secretary of State Tillerson was Exxon/Mobil chairman and CEO. Tillerson joined Exxon Company USA in 1975 as a production engineer. <br />
<br />
<hr align="left" noshade="noshade" style="color: #0a3e0a; width: 100%;" />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">
The previous four posts in this blog were, in part, written in anticipation of the most important event of Trump's Presidency to date which occurred this past two weeks - his trip to Asia, particularly to China. <br />
<br />
Those four posts are about China, The People's Republic of China, which may be more important to the future of the Pacific States (Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, and California) than Virginia and certainly is far more important than Britain. If you aren't a China watcher and haven't read those posts, they provide important background information (click on the images to link to the posts):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/05/xi-jinpings-21st-century-silk-economic.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="80" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMJpv7zAvqpiMiWA3N5qmuYjvCoxewQcDYnI0NyPLAwW1gmXR-nUUKLnnvoSr1oKqwGnAyinNXzQh_4x6XBMgsbc-DeuEDZ7ch0UqWcF6FSv-FPrjkS-WtDcNoPszbopBdql3klbplQIk/s1600/2017-05-23.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/xi-jinpings-strategy-for-21st-century.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="102" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXPWpZ4Zql6KGOO58vaa4nj44jj9mH_BPpAxeafNpNh3o8un7omf86eNPCgUrfqXp1H3_rv7Dsov-c5NfVKNB2vSdLASvHsggLPvRRDQEWgvAjDE1vyBWIFB5po06o94bpC2t__5cxRAY/s1600/2017-10-23.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/xis-team-to-lead-21st-century-china.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="102" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2eu1ZrCE8Mx8WXj4PA-q3LY0qWrjWfIYrK_Ljns8gC97rVxwF4Z4HUT6fxFncmI5MyZY0yK38QalaYTIcC1gmwxLnxC-WI8AGoICPSI02o4u8zwHeqeb63NnL2Q_r45bEEJkHDUVxps/s1600/2017-10-27.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/clear-waters-and-green-mountains-are.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="82" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGUHUjJADT-HKgqNCY6ohiwU-UoHUyCRVvYabVuaVe5R90txYBgKBd5aI1PC5FnVaHPrwgHbpiz_9zXrT2Q8sKmCF8ooMA9L752gq3fvTM1s5eco_AvLxENn-gDrz6-0l8zAfHjwPRfvs/s1600/2017-10-29.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
As usual, the 21st Century American national news media missed telling the boring, very significant background story leading up to Trump's trip. Generally the American media's "tabloid-press orientation" allowed the day-to-day "boring" events in China to be buried in Trump celebrity/personality news that in 2060 will be a tiny blip in the collective American memory.
</div>
</blockquote>
Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-85981690082547688932017-10-29T14:44:00.001-07:002018-06-18T14:46:57.849-07:00"Clear waters and green mountains are mountains of gold and silver." Seeking a Beautiful China and California together in harmony for our grandchildren<img border="0" data-original-height="583" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM8emwFHYRMwwR69SUuCUxUfF13MrDC3GfxxWchJYb1UJXVtBhYZiGGXS34zhthJpzu07BIXO4EPKMoc_oDUDXcwffTSYLnf-wB_m_5T1iKwBkTk6Wb70-VMElVJB2SlynVBTkjokuVfc/s1600/china-cal-climate700.jpg" /><br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
Pollution has become a scourge in China, the debilitating consequences of rapid industrial development. Chinese people are exceedingly displeased to see their air, water and soil so polluted, and the government has responded by elevating "Green Development", the third development concept, to highest national importance. <b>One of the pioneers has been East China's Zhejiang province, where in 2005 Xi Jinping, then Zhejiang Party secretary, famously said: "Clear waters and green mountains are mountains of gold and silver."</b> Putting the theory into practice, Zhejiang has pioneered an "eco-compensation" system, which enables regions to both preserve the environment and develop eco-friendly industries. <i>- from <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2016-09/23/content_26872399.htm" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">"The five major development concepts"</a> by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lawrence_Kuhn" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Robert Lawrence Kuhn</a></i>
</div>
</blockquote>
This post is the last of four on the 21st Century political and cultural objectives that have been set by China.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/05/xi-jinpings-21st-century-silk-economic.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="80" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMJpv7zAvqpiMiWA3N5qmuYjvCoxewQcDYnI0NyPLAwW1gmXR-nUUKLnnvoSr1oKqwGnAyinNXzQh_4x6XBMgsbc-DeuEDZ7ch0UqWcF6FSv-FPrjkS-WtDcNoPszbopBdql3klbplQIk/s1600/2017-05-23.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/xi-jinpings-strategy-for-21st-century.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="102" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXPWpZ4Zql6KGOO58vaa4nj44jj9mH_BPpAxeafNpNh3o8un7omf86eNPCgUrfqXp1H3_rv7Dsov-c5NfVKNB2vSdLASvHsggLPvRRDQEWgvAjDE1vyBWIFB5po06o94bpC2t__5cxRAY/s1600/2017-10-23.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/xis-team-to-lead-21st-century-china.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="102" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2eu1ZrCE8Mx8WXj4PA-q3LY0qWrjWfIYrK_Ljns8gC97rVxwF4Z4HUT6fxFncmI5MyZY0yK38QalaYTIcC1gmwxLnxC-WI8AGoICPSI02o4u8zwHeqeb63NnL2Q_r45bEEJkHDUVxps/s1600/2017-10-27.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Xi Jinping, of course, has been President of China since March 14, 2013. And if you haven't read the above posts, you can click on the images above where you might learn about the most important government policy developments of the 21st Century to date which will impact on your grandchildren's generation. You will also learn about Xi, the fellow human overseeing the implementation of those policies.<br />
<br />
Of course, these government policy developments have nothing to do with Donald Trump. And of course, they are too complex for social media. And of course, because their goals are targeted for 2049 China they have no real impact on the day-to-day lives of Americans today. So of course, Americans generally have no awareness of them.<br />
<br />
In 2005 Xi Jinping, then Zhejiang Province Communist Party Secretary, was not even on any pundits radar though in 2002 Xi was elected a full member of the 16th Central Committee. His environmental statement quoted above "Clear waters and green mountains are mountains of gold and silver" was far from pandering to the popular thinking.<br />
<br />
In the first decade of this century, climate change skepticism in China was worse than in the U.S. as discussed in <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/31/the-convenient-disappearance-of-climate-change-denial-in-china/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">The Convenient Disappearance of Climate Change Denial in China: From Western plot to party line, how China embraced climate science to become a green-energy powerhouse</a>. Fortunately, as the article notes: "By the time China adopted its 12th Five-Year Plan in 2011, a green strategy had begun to crystalize."<br />
<br />
Keep that 2011 year in mind as you read <a href="http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2115749/will-xi-jinping-build-deng-xiaopings-legacy-or-unravel-it" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">this posted two weeks ago in the <i>South China News</i></a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
Ten years ago [October 2007], as early autumn set in and the Communist Party of China prepared to convene its 17th National Congress in Beijing, the names of two Lis – Liaoning party chief Li Keqiang and Jiangsu party chief Li Yuanchao – were making the rounds as odds-on favourites to emerge from the scrum of candidates to be anointed supreme leader-in-waiting of the party’s Fifth Generation.
<br />
Newly appointed party chief of Shanghai, Xi Jinping, was not expected to contend for the post. He had just been elevated to his position in spring 2007, was expected to continue serving as Shanghai party chief, and there was no prior precedent of a regionally based leader serving concurrently on the party’s Politburo Standing Committee – the party’s highest decision-making organ.
<br />
By mid-autumn, the script had been re-written.
<br />
In the ‘open audition’ selection process at the party congress for the 25-member Politburo, which for the first time allowed all Central Committee members to vote from a wider pool of candidates drawn from provincial and ministerial-level cadres, Xi won the most support.
<br />
The day after the National Congress, at the First Plenum of the party’s 17th Central Committee, Xi was selected as the sixth-ranking member of the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee and executive secretary of the party’s Secretariat. Later that December, he was appointed president of the Central Party School – mirroring the path that Hu Jintao had taken during his elevation to the supreme leader-in-waiting position in the late-1990s.
<br />
That Xi was neither a protégé of Jiang [Jiang Zemin, President from 1993 to 2003] nor belonged to Hu-linked groupings [Hu Jintao, President from 2003 to 2013] – and therefore his elevation was beholden to neither factional politics nor to the reigning supreme leader’s dictates, was also instrumental in his meteoric rise to the top.
</div>
</blockquote>
Five months later, at the 11th National People's Congress in March 2008, Xi was elected as Vice-President of the People's Republic of China. By the time of that 2011 Five Year Plan, Xi's vision of "clear waters and green mountains" had become the basis for policy.<br />
<br />
On 15 November 2012, Xi Jinping was elected to the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party and Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission by the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and on 14 March 2013 was elected President of the People's Republic of China by the 12th National People's Congress.<br />
<br />
China is the largest country in the world in terms of population, second only to Russia in terms of land area, and the second only to the United States in terms of GDP (though <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">China is first</a>cwhen measured by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">purchasing power parity</a>). As noted in the May 23 post linked above, California and Californians need strong ties to China for economic growth and measures to reduce climate change impacts.<br />
<br />
In the pictures at the top of this post, Governor Jerry Brown is shown during his June 2017 trip to China with Chinese Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang (left) and with Chinese President Xi Jinping (right).<br />
<br />
Shortly before meeting with President Xi, Brown, one of the co-chairs of a bipartisan group of U.S. Governors called the Climate Alliance, signed an agreement providing that China and the Golden State will work together on cutting their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over time.<br />
<br />
From renewable energy technologies to zero-emission vehicles, from low carbon infrastructures to electricity efficiency savings, a working group of top-level officials from both sides will continually plot ways to cooperate on climate measures and to zero in on initiatives that will help both countries cut their carbon footprints.<br />
<br />
The agreement builds on subnational pacts Brown signed with officials in Sichuan and Jiangsu provinces earlier this week.<br />
<br />
“California is the leading economic state in America and we are also the pioneering state on clean technology, cap and trade, electric vehicles and batteries, but we can’t do it alone,” Brown said before a Chinese delegation. <br />
<br />
"I have proposed that California will cut its greenhouse gases 40 per cent below 1990 levels and that we'll have 50 per cent of our electricity from renewables," Brown told President Xi Jinping in a 45-minute meeting. <br />
<br />
"To keep that goal, we need a very close partnership with China - with your businesses, with your provinces, with your universities," Brown said. <br />
<br />
"Nobody can stay on the sidelines. We can't afford any dropouts in the tremendous human challenge to make the transition to a sustainable future," Brown said during a green energy conference in Beijing. "Disaster still looms and we've got to make the turn."<br />
<br />
Chinese President Xi expressed support for California to play a bigger role in promoting exchange and cooperation between China and the United States. He said he hoped California could continue to promote bilateral exchanges between localities and contribute more to China-U.S. cooperation in areas including technology, innovation and green development. He welcomed California to join the Belt and Road Initiative.<br />
<br />
Voicing appreciation of Xi's speech at the World Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos in January, Brown said California was willing to join the construction of the Belt and Road and was looking forward to a stronger cooperative relationship with China in trade, investment, clean technology and environmental protection.<br />
<br />
Which brings us to the point of these posts. Climate change and economic issues in California are intricately tied to China. And going even further, understanding Chinese history, problems, and politics can help to understand the continuing political evolution of the United States and particularly of California. For example, consider the issue of multiculturalism.<br />
<br />
China has about 7000 years of history, 1.4 billion people, and 56± ethnic groups. About 92% are considered Han Chinese while 8% are:<br />
<br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" style="width: 100%px;"><tbody>
<tr><td width="122"><div align="left">
<b>Ethnic Group</b></div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
<b>Major Areas of Distribution</b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Achang</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Bai</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan, Guizhou</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Bao'an</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Gansu</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Bouyei</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Guizhou</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Bulang</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Dai</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Daur</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Xinjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
De'ang</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Dong</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Guizhou, Hunan, Guangxi</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Dongxiang</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Gansu, Xinjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Drung</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Ewenki</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Hani</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Hezhen</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Heilongjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Hui</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Ningxia, Gansu, Henan, Hebei, Qinghai,
Shandong, Yunnan, Xinjiang, Anhui, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Jilin,
Shaanxi, Beijing, Tianjin</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Gaoshan</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Taiwan (population not counted), Fujian</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Gelo</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Guizhou, Guangxi</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Jing</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Guangxi</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Jingpo</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Jino</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Kazak</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Kirgiz</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Xinjiang, Heilongjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Korean</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Lahu</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Li</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Hainan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Lisu</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan, Sichuan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Loba</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Tibet</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Manchu</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Hebei, Beijing, Inner Mongolia</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Maonan</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Guangxi</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Miao</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hainan, Hubei</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Mongba</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Tibet</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Mongolian</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Gansu, Hebei, Henan, Qinghai</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Mulam</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Guangxi</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Naxi</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yannan, Sichuan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Nu</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Oroqen</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Ozbek</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Xinjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Pumi</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Qiang</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Sichuan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Russian</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Xinjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Salar</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Qinghai, Gansu</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
She</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangdong</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Shui</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Guizhou, Guangxi</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Tajik</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Xinjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Tartar</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Xinjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Tibetan</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Yunan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Tu</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Qinghai, Gansu</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Tujia</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Hunnan, Hubei</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Uygur</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Xinjiang</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Va</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Yunnan</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Xibo</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Xinjiang, Liaoning, Jilin</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Yao</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Guangxi, Hunan, Ynnan, Guangdong, Guizhou</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Yi</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Yugu</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Gansu</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122"><div align="left">
Zhuang</div>
</td>
<td width="483"><div align="left">
Guangxi, Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
If one wants to talk about a "melting pot" and assimilation or multicultural diversity, China is the place to go, not the United States. DNA sampling indicates that the Han Chinese have about the same kind of historical experience as white European Americans - practically everybody is mixed because that is the result of constant human migration.<br />
<br />
Language, however, does represent a clearer picture of multicultural diversity. Let's begin with this from the Microsoft Technet Citizenship Asia Pacific site <a href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_citizenship_asia_pacific/2015/02/08/celebrating-linguistic-diversity-on-international-mother-language-day/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Celebrating Linguistic Diversity on International Mother Language Day</a>:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; line-height: 80%; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJlkJ3ggdvDBFnpruaUgKKPnSeMk-UlTTMZaV_Q-M5AK2Pu8QQWNV7oL2eADxDZTd0qNn5Jlc5-5subZPusViZjC-RioWiTK795U3QeeP21lKP9QDzwVxELZoc3ZQCaXFwxz_PZjmHrSw/s1600/asia-language-map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="554" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJlkJ3ggdvDBFnpruaUgKKPnSeMk-UlTTMZaV_Q-M5AK2Pu8QQWNV7oL2eADxDZTd0qNn5Jlc5-5subZPusViZjC-RioWiTK795U3QeeP21lKP9QDzwVxELZoc3ZQCaXFwxz_PZjmHrSw/s1600/asia-language-map.jpg" /></a>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">
On 21 February, we celebrate International Mother Language Day, aimed at promoting linguistic and cultural diversity and multi- lingualism. A world map denoting the native languages spoken in different countries. Image courtesy of Daniel Dalet on d-maps.com.
</span>
</div>
<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
2,200—that is the estimated number of languages spoken in Asia
Pacific, more than any other region in the world. Check out some
interesting facts about Asian languages that you might have missed out
learning in school:<br />
<ul>
<li>Mandarin Chinese has the most native speakers of any language, with
an estimated 12.5 percent of the world's population speaking it as their
first language. If you are planning to pick up Mandarin, don’t be
daunted by the fact that it has 50,000 characters—practice always makes
perfect!
</li>
<li>There are 830 listed languages in the island state of Papua New
Guinea (PNG), accounting for the greatest concentration of linguistic
diversity on Earth today. Sitting in what is known as a language
hot-spot—an area where many languages face the threat of
extinction—linguists from National Geographic’s Enduring Voices
programme are surveying many in PNG to better understand the world’s
languages and the forces that drive language extinction.
</li>
<li>Asia is home to some of the world’s most endangered languages,
including the Ainu in Japan, Dumi in Nepal and Manchu from China. The
youngest speakers of these languages are often grandparents themselves,
who are only able to speak them partially and infrequently.</li>
</ul>
While this rich variety of languages continues to shape and preserve
the unique cultural identities of many Asian communities, language
barriers can be a significant concern.</div>
</blockquote>
Within China there is a diversity of languages and cultures many as 292 living language identified though most are very small populations. The map below gives a sense of the areas where larger populations speak a language other than Mandarin which is spoken by 70% of the population:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj72OqXYJrozIclLREkL22toXHhoiho6_ZDLTMyVPzghJMXxQrnD1l8pWzQhAcOtW7aH9Oif2e1oMRWur-03y96S3n2W3qIHUikrN94wbC13WtGZNrHy0FhmMAhEinDc9RVFyFDPoaHBm4/s1600/language-groups.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="544" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj72OqXYJrozIclLREkL22toXHhoiho6_ZDLTMyVPzghJMXxQrnD1l8pWzQhAcOtW7aH9Oif2e1oMRWur-03y96S3n2W3qIHUikrN94wbC13WtGZNrHy0FhmMAhEinDc9RVFyFDPoaHBm4/s1600/language-groups.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
This gives China problems as reflected in this 2016 story<a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/1921328/china-aims-ease-ethnic-tensions-integration-policy" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"> China aims to ease ethnic tensions with integration policy</a> which is an indication that 7000 years of history still offers no solution to the "melting pot" versus "multicultural diversity" debate.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGAvhMn_MHIO2eIKokKolWrziu7IiSQh9506qOAcE0y-yMTmiXSCWJKWEZgP8YecQ-JAz4b2QSo5Et6Omif7jVRV7Au8XQ60yTU8T_EWNfO-r2dkL2G27-dt9YNOaCkFq-g5VpO3Qq2Ak/s1600/cops-ethnic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="309" data-original-width="415" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGAvhMn_MHIO2eIKokKolWrziu7IiSQh9506qOAcE0y-yMTmiXSCWJKWEZgP8YecQ-JAz4b2QSo5Et6Omif7jVRV7Au8XQ60yTU8T_EWNfO-r2dkL2G27-dt9YNOaCkFq-g5VpO3Qq2Ak/s1600/cops-ethnic.jpg" /></a></div>
Pictures do appear in the press like the one on the right of police patroling the streets of the Muslim Uighur quarter in Urumqi after a series of violent incidents hit the Xinjiang region in the summer of 2013. China’s state-run media blamed around 100 people it branded as “terrorists” for sparking “riots” in the ethnically-divided region of western China.<br />
<br />
On December 31, 2013, President Xi Jinping appeared on CCTV and extended his “New Year’s wishes to Chinese of all ethnic groups.”<br />
<br />
The history is complicated as it is in the United States. As one commenter noted in <a href="http://www.chinafile.com/conversation/are-ethnic-tensions-rise-china" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Are Ethnic Tensions on the Rise in China?</a> the answer is time frame dependent. From month to month the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. Since the formation of the People's Republic of China in 1949 regarding the Tibetans and Uighurs, China saw major armed rebellions during the mid 1950s, the imposition of martial law in 1989, and the 1990s were particularly volatile with many clashes, bombings, and assassinations. So right now, ethnic tensions are not quite so tense.<br />
<br />
But just like us, they will see pictures appear like the one above and in this modern age occasional disturbing videos. Because just like us, they find it complicated to bring humans together. It is what makes politics and governing difficult.<br />
<br />
Xi clearly stated that he wants a "country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally
advanced, harmonious, and beautiful." His <i>Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road</i> plan covering 65 nations, about 60 per cent of the world’s population and a third of global GDP, involves the integration of a large region into a cohesive economic area through
building infrastructure, increasing cultural exchanges, and broadening
trade (see more details in the <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/05/xi-jinpings-21st-century-silk-economic.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">May 23 post here</a>). He invited California to participate when meeting with Governor Brown. <br />
<br />
We in California need to understand China and its politics. And we need to understand it without a bias that derives from a mid-20th Century view of communism. As explained in the last post, the folks in charge over there are the ones who were shipped off to rural farms to work after their parents were arrested, imprisoned, humiliated, tortured, and in some cases killed. It's safe to assume that they want far better for the next generations.<br />
<br />
We need to be seeking together in harmony a beautiful China and California with clear waters and green mountains for our grandchildren. Xi and Brown are making the effort. So should all of us.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-22386239076636288532017-10-27T14:58:00.000-07:002018-06-18T14:28:33.384-07:00Xi's team to lead a 21st Century China They want for their grandchildren a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ3VLUWe_6Qw5rXE3S8lVV-XdZLw2XODUQutoUMSk1N6PoZ4jvSkg38tLjzR9gStlUfhppPMOjNwsZohmNAm5JvZrIZ0GgA31eizVekbasMcuFbjbkPvhqRHXOSXJFSKrNmgw-ZFvjr_8/s1600/newleaders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ3VLUWe_6Qw5rXE3S8lVV-XdZLw2XODUQutoUMSk1N6PoZ4jvSkg38tLjzR9gStlUfhppPMOjNwsZohmNAm5JvZrIZ0GgA31eizVekbasMcuFbjbkPvhqRHXOSXJFSKrNmgw-ZFvjr_8/s1600/newleaders.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 90%; font-style: italic;">
The Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee from left, <b>Han Zheng</b>, 63, the Communist Party Secretary of Shanghai; <b>Wang Huning</b>, 62, Director of the Central Policy Research Office; <b>Li Zhanshu</b>, 67, Director of the General Office of the Communist Party of China; <b>President Xi Jinping</b>, 64, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China ; <b>Premier Li Keqiang</b>, 62, Premier of the People's Republic of China; <b>Wang Yang</b>, 62, Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China; and <b>Zhao Leji</b>, 60, Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
</span>
</div>
<br />
For the first time at the end of a National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), all seven Standing Committee members of the Political Bureau were born after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.<br />
<br />
All were born and raised in the <i>People's Republic</i> of China. That means that none of them were WWII veterans and none were part of the Revolution. Instead, all were impacted as children from 1958 to 1962 by Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward and as teens by Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution from 1966 until 1976.<br />
<br />
The Great Leap Forward was intended through the use of persuasion and force to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization but instead caused economic regression, the Great Chinese Famine, and tens of millions of deaths. Welcome to childhood.<br />
<br />
The goal of the Cultural Revolution was to preserve 'true' Communist ideology in the country by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose Maoist thought as the dominant ideology within the Party. Millions of people were persecuted in the violent struggles that ensued
across the country, and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, hard labor, sustained harassment, seizure of property and sometimes execution. A large segment of the population was forcibly displaced, most notably the transfer of urban youth to rural regions during the Down to the Countryside Movement. Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed. Cultural and religious sites were ransacked.<br />
<br />
To understand the meaning of this history to these seven men, one only need to look at the experience of President Xi Jinping.<br />
<br />
After the founding of the Communist state in 1949, Xi's father held a series of posts, including propaganda chief, vice-premier, and vice-chairman of the National People's Congress. Xi was born June 15, 1953. Based on normal expectations, Xi's future looked bright.<br />
<br />
But when Xi was age 10, his father was purged from the Party and sent to work in a factory in Luoyang, Henan. In May 1966, Xi's "high school years" were cut short by the Cultural Revolution, when all secondary classes were halted for students to criticise and fight their teachers. Xi was age 15 when his father was jailed in 1968.<br />
<br />
In 1969, lacking the protection of his father, Xi was sent to work in Yanchuan County, Shaanxi, in Mao Zedong's Down to the Countryside Movement. After a few months, unable to stand rural life, he ran away to Beijing. He was arrested during a crackdown on deserters from the countryside and sent to a work camp to dig ditches.<br />
<br />
In 1981, the Party declared that the Cultural Revolution was
"responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses
suffered by the Party, the country, and the people since the founding of
the People's Republic" Welcome to adolescence.<br />
<br />
Read the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping#Personal_life" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Wikipedia entry on Xi</a> for more details (and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peng_Liyuan" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Wikipedia entry on Peng Liyuan</a> his folksinger wife who until 2007 was more well-known). Also, in 2007 when it became evident that Xi was being groomed to assume the duties of his current job, an article appeared in The Guardian which helps provide some perspective from a British point of view: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/26/china.uknews4" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Most corrupt officials are from poor families but Chinese royals have a spirit that is not dominated by money</a>.<br />
<br />
The following graphic indicates the Party organization.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTrw3Y9jvLpi7g4D53twUkSSiuIcvt-FUCj6Oui_rTTyXy7ftn6EgKKt07q6h26W1nspz8P5t7dvFqyw-lg2R48oWrhLDVKtA5439Q2N_pPE_jxRMS5qpNlW5CN7mHbJVBhu5GzV5qvm4/s1600/china-party-700a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTrw3Y9jvLpi7g4D53twUkSSiuIcvt-FUCj6Oui_rTTyXy7ftn6EgKKt07q6h26W1nspz8P5t7dvFqyw-lg2R48oWrhLDVKtA5439Q2N_pPE_jxRMS5qpNlW5CN7mHbJVBhu5GzV5qvm4/s1600/china-party-700a.jpg" /></a></div>
The seven-member Political Bureau Standing Committee is the center of political power in China. While certainly this year the generational factor is important, it is also important to know that five of the seven are new to the Standing Committee.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe align="middle" border="0" height="420" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="iframe" scrolling="no" src="https://multimedia.scmp.com/widgets/china/ccp-reshuffle-2017/index.html" width="590"></iframe></div>
<br />
It is also true that none are in their fifties, a fact troubling to some American pundits. In more recent times being in that 50's age group would have indicated a Standing Committee member was being prepared to replace President Xi five years from now in 2022.<br />
<br />
Of course, in 2022 only one of the Standing Committee members will be as old as Donald Trump was when he became U.S. President this year. In fact, in 2022 President Xi will be 69, two years younger than Trump is right now!<br />
<br />
For more about these seven men, Hong Kong's <i>South China Morning Post</i> offers this: <a href="http://www.scmp.com/topics/chinas-leadership-reshuffle-2017-profiles" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">China's Leadership Reshuffle: Profiles</a>.<br />
<br />
More troubling to many is that none of these guys are women. In fact, at the next level down, in the 25 member Political Bureau (aka Politburo), the number of from two women members to one after the 19th National Congress.<br />
<br />
Of the delegates to the Party Congress, only 24.1% were women. When
comparing ruling parties, that is about the same ratio as the delegates
to the 2016 Republican Party National Convention. (The 2016 National
Convention of the <i>losing</i> Democratic Party had about 60% women.) <br />
<br />
China's two most senior female politicians a month ago were vice premier Liu Yandong, 71, a scion of a political dynasty -- her father was a close ally of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin -- and Sun Chunlan, a rising Party chief.<br />
<br />
In this week's leadership reshuffle, Liu retired from the Politburo, leaving Sun as the only female member. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Chunlan" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Sun Chunlan</a>, 67, is head of the party’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Front_Work_Department" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">United Front Work Department</a>, the agency that serves as the Party's interface with individuals and organizations that are not Party members that have social, commercial, or academic
influence, or who represent important interest groups, both inside and
outside China.<br />
<br />
Another woman politician better known to the West, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_Ying" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Fu Ying</a>, 64, an ethnic Mongol born in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China, is not a member of the Politburo, although she has held Ambassador posts to Australia and the Philippines and currently holds the position of vice foreign minister after a long career in the Chinese diplomatic service. In 2010 the <i>Financial Times</i> offered an extensive article <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/867f123c-0c78-11df-a941-00144feabdc0" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Lunch with the FT: Madam Fu Ying</a> which included this giving us an insight into her formative years:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
Fu Ying was born in 1953 in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, an “autonomous region” of China. Her parents were bilingual, speaking Mandarin and Mongolian. Her father wrote poetry. She can, she tells me, still remember the day that a tall, ethnically Chinese man arrived at the family home to take her father away. It was 1967 and the height of the Cultural Revolution, the bloody chaos unleashed by Mao to purge the party and consolidate power.
<br />
“The [tall] man looked into my eyes and said, ‘Democracy is great. Do you know what is democracy?’ I shook my head; I didn’t know. And he said, ‘That’s the change of history. You will be swept away by the change of history.’” (Democracy, during the Cultural Revolution, was equivalent to anarchy. No wonder, I muse to myself, it does not carry the same positive connotations in China as in the west.)
<br />
A tear appears in Madam Fu’s eye. She recounts how school was shut down and she was taken away, aged 17, to a remote town in the mountains, Wulashan, five hours distant by train. There she worked in the fields – “very, very physical, really stressful and extreme for a young girl” – before helping to build a new factory where she was employed as an announcer, broadcasting information to her co-workers about the weather and the like through a loudspeaker.
<br />
But then, in 1973, she had her first break. The Cultural Revolution was in its last throes and previously frowned-upon practices such as examinations to test pupil ability were revived. Fu Ying excelled, having squirrelled away first Russian and then French classics from a library in Wulashan. She also excelled in English, having picked up the basics on Chinese radio. She gained a place to study for four years at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
<br />
After the death of Chairman Mao in 1976, China started to open to the rest of the world. Suddenly, interpreters were in heavy demand. Madam Fu joined the elite translation department of the diplomatic service.</div>
</blockquote>
It is clear that the generation now leading China had a less than enchanting experience with Mao's brand of authoritarianism under the name communism. On the other hand, for these and most Chinese people, China has a 7,000 year history, most of which has been as a moderately successful single autocratic state under an emperor. [To learn more about China, its history and culture, watch the six episode <a href="http://www.pbs.org/show/story-china/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Story of China at PBS.org</a>.]<br />
<br />
While most of us who live in the Progressive Pacific states have some awareness of China, it is important to understand how the current Chinese leadership generation sees the world. Among others, Fu Ying has been tasked with assisting us. In 2016 in<i> Foreign Affairs</i> her article <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-12-14/how-china-sees-russia" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">How China Sees Russia</a> she provides clear insight into information we should understand:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
...China has no interest in a formal alliance with Russia, nor in forming an anti-U.S. or anti-Western bloc of any kind. Rather, Beijing hopes that China and Russia can maintain their relationship in a way that will provide a safe environment for the two big neighbors to achieve their development goals and to support each other through mutually beneficial cooperation, offering a model for how major countries can manage their differences and cooperate in ways that strengthen the international system.
<br />
On several occasions between the end of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century, China entered into an alliance with the Russian empire and its successor, the Soviet Union. But every time, the arrangement proved short-lived, as each amounted to nothing more than an expediency between countries of unequal strength. In the decades that followed, the two powerful communist-led countries muddled through, occasionally cooperating but often riven by rivalry and mistrust. In 1989, in the waning years of Soviet rule, they finally restored normalcy to their relations. They jointly declared that they would develop bilateral relations based on “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual nonaggression, noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” Two years later, the Soviet Union disintegrated, but Chinese-Russian relations carried on with the principle of “no alliance, no conflict, and no targeting any third country.”
<br />
Soon thereafter, the newborn Russian Federation embraced the so-called Atlanticist approach. To win the trust and help of the West, Russia not only followed Western prescriptions for economic reform but also made concessions on major security issues, including reducing its stockpile of strategic nuclear weapons. However, things didn’t turn out the way the Russians had hoped, as the country’s economy tanked and its regional influence waned. In 1992, disappointed with what they saw as unfulfilled pledges of American and European assistance and irritated by talk of NATO’s eastward expansion, the Russians began to pay more attention to Asia. That year, China and Russia announced that each would regard the other as a “friendly country” and issued a joint political statement stipulating that “the freedom of people to choose their own development paths should be respected, while differences in social systems and ideologies should not hamper the normal progress of relations.”
<br />
Ever since, Chinese-Russian relations have gradually improved and deepened. During the past 20 years or so, bilateral trade and investment have expanded on a massive scale. In 2011, China became Russia’s largest trading partner. In 2014 alone, China’s investment in Russia grew by 80 percent—and the trend toward more investment remains strong. To get a sense of the growth in economic ties, consider that in the early 1990s, annual bilateral trade between China and Russia amounted to around $5 billion; by 2014, it came close to $100 billion. That year, Beijing and Moscow signed a landmark agreement to construct a pipeline that, by 2018, will bring as much as 38 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas to China every year. The two countries are also planning significant deals involving nuclear power generation, aerospace manufacturing, high-speed rail, and infrastructure development. Furthermore, they are cooperating on new multinational financial institutions, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank BRICS, and the BRICS foreign exchange reserve pool.
</div>
</blockquote>
In the middle of the 2008 financial crisis Xi said: "First, China doesn't export revolution; second, China doesn't export hunger and poverty; third, China doesn't come and cause you headaches. What more is there to be said?"<br />
<br />
This past week Xi reaffirmed that Beijing will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion "no matter what stage of development it reaches" and that "China will never pursue development at the expense of others' interests and its development does not pose a threat to any other country."<br />
<br />
In her 2010 article Fu Ying noted:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
In remarks during [his visit to the United States in 2009], Xi directly addressed the idea that China’s development presents a challenge to the United States’ global leadership. “The path China follows is one of peaceful development, and China does not pose a threat to other countries,” Xi said. Later, he added, “People should give up the old concepts of ‘you lose, I win,’ or zero-sum game, and establish a new concept of peaceful development and win-win cooperation. If China develops well, it will benefit the whole world and benefit the United States. If the United States develops well, it will also benefit the world and China.”
</div>
</blockquote>
If one pays attention to what this new generation of Chinese leadership communicates, we can create a consistent set of China-centered goals that evolve from this 2008 statement:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw1SyV6l3L5Ym37RcFZBzTV9uiScQopH3oathAfpcIgE7mnz5La9WC8jl5D7twmFeemHJEblfCJCO29e8QPef5cZlUc6eBEVEvAefOcZz9HtjJmC67s_5AdEGklc7FUjLrSuxvBvhelQU/s1600/hunger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw1SyV6l3L5Ym37RcFZBzTV9uiScQopH3oathAfpcIgE7mnz5La9WC8jl5D7twmFeemHJEblfCJCO29e8QPef5cZlUc6eBEVEvAefOcZz9HtjJmC67s_5AdEGklc7FUjLrSuxvBvhelQU/s1600/hunger.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
In 2012 Xi's goal for 2020 was made clear:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfnJ80BPFmhwK3LpAOtSejuOLWLdiaDv2z2ck5xl4ySW-1QE6LUxGwQmDp5pHYY8CeBJ1jgnyrVoNFzlShnpe9MpCOUJRZ-8n9O7Zg7FPxyFp6fQoLP9lIiH4j4NmWHZhczVSju_bHSNA/s1600/mod-prosp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="175" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfnJ80BPFmhwK3LpAOtSejuOLWLdiaDv2z2ck5xl4ySW-1QE6LUxGwQmDp5pHYY8CeBJ1jgnyrVoNFzlShnpe9MpCOUJRZ-8n9O7Zg7FPxyFp6fQoLP9lIiH4j4NmWHZhczVSju_bHSNA/s1600/mod-prosp.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
And now, in 2017, Xi set forth for 2049 the goal of achieving "a great modern
socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally
advanced, harmonious, and beautiful."<br />
<br />
We need to know and understand these people.<br />
<br />
<hr align="left" noshade="noshade" style="color: #0a3e0a; width: 45%;" />
<br />
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">This post is the third one of four on the 21st Century political and cultural objectives that have been set by China. Click on the images below to read the other three.</span><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/05/xi-jinpings-21st-century-silk-economic.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="80" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMJpv7zAvqpiMiWA3N5qmuYjvCoxewQcDYnI0NyPLAwW1gmXR-nUUKLnnvoSr1oKqwGnAyinNXzQh_4x6XBMgsbc-DeuEDZ7ch0UqWcF6FSv-FPrjkS-WtDcNoPszbopBdql3klbplQIk/s1600/2017-05-23.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/xi-jinpings-strategy-for-21st-century.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="102" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXPWpZ4Zql6KGOO58vaa4nj44jj9mH_BPpAxeafNpNh3o8un7omf86eNPCgUrfqXp1H3_rv7Dsov-c5NfVKNB2vSdLASvHsggLPvRRDQEWgvAjDE1vyBWIFB5po06o94bpC2t__5cxRAY/s1600/2017-10-23.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/clear-waters-and-green-mountains-are.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="82" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGUHUjJADT-HKgqNCY6ohiwU-UoHUyCRVvYabVuaVe5R90txYBgKBd5aI1PC5FnVaHPrwgHbpiz_9zXrT2Q8sKmCF8ooMA9L752gq3fvTM1s5eco_AvLxENn-gDrz6-0l8zAfHjwPRfvs/s1600/2017-10-29.jpg" /></a></div>
Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-74596926750684051822017-10-23T12:50:00.000-07:002018-06-18T14:21:27.593-07:00Xi Jinping's strategy for a 21st Century China With thoughtful Chinese characteristics a President tends his plan for 1.4 billion people for 2020 ...and 2035 ...and 2049<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikXeVOYiBZSYeOW_LaGsTeJHpySLZf_AL0qm_k5GY5EYtcj6d0AnnR0kGD8ElwgjMFqvFci_E_bDxqirv_bZa9rn6CtCS-z78IofFAy5XoO5SL8t3dtw7YGuTr9v6pQqOcDdsSP7nFKSA/s1600/front-pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="645" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikXeVOYiBZSYeOW_LaGsTeJHpySLZf_AL0qm_k5GY5EYtcj6d0AnnR0kGD8ElwgjMFqvFci_E_bDxqirv_bZa9rn6CtCS-z78IofFAy5XoO5SL8t3dtw7YGuTr9v6pQqOcDdsSP7nFKSA/s1600/front-pic.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was began last week, a once-every-five-years gathering. <br />
<br />
Speaking for three hours and 23 minutes, China's President and Party General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered the opening report to the nearly 2,300 party delegates who represent China's<br />
<ul>
<li>22 provinces; </li>
<li>five autonomous regions, each with a designated minority group; </li>
<li>four municipalities; </li>
<li>two Special Administrative Regions;</li>
<li>plus the central financial system, state-run institutions, the military and the police.</li>
</ul>
The People's Republic of China is the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.404 billion, and at 9.3 million square kilometres (3.6 million square miles), is the world's second-largest state by land area. For comparison, the United States of America has 23% of the population at 0.324 billion people, but at 9.1 million square kilometres (3.5 million square miles) is almost as big geographically.<br />
<br />
As usual, the American press struggled with its coverage of the 19th National Congress (however limited it was, which means <i>very</i> limited). Of course many American "journalists" couldn't even tell you how the government works that is responsible for the contents of their own toilet after its flushed, much less explain how government really works in China. And many bring to the subject of China's government a nationalistic bias of their own heavily colored by mid-20th Century views on communism and socialism.<br />
<br />
Yes, the Communist Party of China provides the leadership of the state. However, to understand <i>government</i> in China one must understand this explanation from Wikipedia:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
Due to China's large population and area, the administrative divisions of China have consisted of several levels since ancient times. The constitution of China provides for three <i>de jure</i> levels of government. Currently, however, there are five practical (<i>de facto</i>) levels of local government: the provincial (province, autonomous region, municipality, and special administrative region), prefecture, county, township, and village.<br />
<br />
Since the 17th century, provincial boundaries in China have remained largely static. Major changes since then have been the reorganization of provinces in the northeast after the establishment of the People's Republic of China and the formation of autonomous regions, based on Soviet ethnic policies. The provinces serve an important cultural role in China, as people tend to identify with their native province.</div>
</blockquote>
As with President Donald Trump, China's President Xi has no direct role overseeing local sewage systems. But unlike an American President, Xi is the General Secretary of the Communist Party in a <i>de facto</i> one-party state and holds ultimate, <i>albeit</i> indirect, authority over almost all government officials through the Communist Party.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, it is important to note that the <i>governmental</i> electoral system is pyramidal. Local People's Congresses are directly elected, and higher levels of People's Congresses up to the National People's Congress (NPC) are indirectly elected by the People's Congress of the level immediately below. The political system is decentralized, and provincial and sub-provincial leaders have a significant amount of autonomy.<br />
<br />
The most recent post here in this blog - in May - was about President Xi, the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, and the California-China Business Summit during ChinaWeek.<br />
<br />
The Belt and Road Forum was President Xi's opportunity to lay out a broad foreign policy with an emphasis on creating a 21st Century China that could replace the United States as the world's preeminent economic power - much like the United States replaced a floundering Europe in the 20th Century.<br />
<br />
This past week's 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China sets the agenda for the future of China beginning with that all-important three-hour “work report” speech by Xi.<br />
<br />
To provide insight into President Xi's zeal to assure a strong future for his country, it is important to remember that on February 11, 2009, while visiting Mexico, then <i>Vice</i>-President Xi spoke in front of a group of overseas Chinese noting that China's task was to keep "its 1.3 billion people from hunger."<br />
<br />
And regarding the 2008 financial crisis affecting the Atlantic oriented world filled with complaints about Chinese foreign trade: "There are some bored foreigners, with full stomachs, who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us. First, China doesn't export revolution; second, China doesn't export hunger and poverty; third, China doesn't come and cause you headaches. What more is there to be said?"<br />
<br />
This week President Xi Jinping reaffirmed that Beijing will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion "no matter what stage of development it reaches" and that "China will never pursue development at the expense of others' interests and its development does not pose a threat to any other country."<br />
<br />
Since the 18th CPC Congress in 2012, in which Xi assumed his current position, China's "two centenary goals" were to<br />
<ol>
<li>build a moderately prosperous society by 2020, one year before the Party's 100th anniversary in 2021, and </li>
<li>develop China into a "fully modernized, socialist nation" by the 100th anniversary of the People's Republic of China in 2049.</li>
</ol>
To accomplish the goals, the "Four Comprehensives" came into being:<br />
<ol>
<li>comprehensively build a moderately prosperous society (put forward at the November 2012 18th Party Congress),</li>
<li>comprehensively deepen reform (put forward at the November 2013 3rd Central Committee Plenum), </li>
<li>comprehensively and strictly govern the Party (put forward at the early October 2014 summary meeting of the Mass Line Campaign), and </li>
<li>comprehensively advance the rule of law (put forward during the late October 2014 4th Central Committee Plenum).</li>
</ol>
Additionally, the "Five Development Concepts" from the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020) of innovation, coordination, green, openness and shared development were to be implemented.<br />
<br />
This week Xi offered in his report a plan to "build on the foundation created by the moderately prosperous society" by implementing "a further 15 years of hard work to see that socialist modernization is basically realized" from 2020 to 2035, and then from 2035 to the middle of the 21st century "work hard for a further 15 years and develop China into a great modern
socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally
advanced, harmonious, and beautiful."<br />
<br />
But Xi warned that it would be "no walk in the park. It will take more than drum beating and gong clanging to get there." He noted how China had "taken a driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change," additionally noting: "Only by observing the laws of nature can mankind avoid costly blunders in its exploitation. Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us. This is a reality we have to face!"<br />
<br />
And thus in three hours and 23 minutes President Xi Jinping under the title <b><i>Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era</i></b> laid out his vision for the Chinese people. “The Chinese nation … has stood up, grown rich, and become strong – and it now embraces the brilliant prospects of rejuvenation … It will be an era that sees China moving closer to centre stage and making greater contributions to mankind.”<br />
<br />
Fortunately, the Xinhua News Agency, the official press agency of the People's Republic of China, a ministry-level institution subordinate to the Chinese central government, provided this post-speech summary infographic:<br />
<br />
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<img border="0" data-original-height="1476" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggK7yYUrsN7bBb9uuu3Vv4-84i_F0EvstXCtSOe0L7SJ4I0gu4vm3Q7WhnH2qcL2KHyEv7BOzJDFPCYaRgfCvYcOs1bcVtznGYFxdl84eXkm6jJauMM6LI6hr0723k7mgTWLEEZzni58s/s1600/report01.jpg" />
<img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="662" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN71lyOOVvyiIA3KDQiXUd1I6kdTSRFqsSxMrZZki8hscr0N0K1NX5n_4KGP2STaz6tPQrQzhKvFdzt9y0GlCgzYD3n7f-Xaf46CbB8xko0sE0zD-k1AvVu1ck_UPpNYQY_lx5-DgVwM8/s1600/report02.jpg" />
<img border="0" data-original-height="1574" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioECABi7zAVYPisJ5KLaXGh7Pd2Io78XNyWWDtdT1q5LpGvxtC_6Xg2fhMybZzoFUXUfm0NO1eUp4mRH29cZZl0SpUflsVF4a0rfpYGgDplZP9VW_AmK3MkJTEAXHJw9P2K7bWOnlR9Xg/s1600/report03.jpg" />
<img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="641" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSfyQOZsdSnCtLdJwglr9Lw4_lX-AV2gtIfbCBXaHs5M8xexCSm-6xZpZZ6Zztdn6dswDgfwlH2NGe2fPh6dTjs85FJw-C5rmC7S1dLfFqbC5pHA8IWmRiqCM_loEUxNqPw8L9mcv75kM/s1600/report04.jpg" />
</div>
<br />
It would be interesting to compare the Chinese President's hopes for his country for the next 30 years, plus the plans for his country to be implemented over the next five years, to those of the U.S. President.<br />
<br />
It would be interesting if it weren't for the fact that the U.S. President's thinking is limited to 140 character tweets. It would be interesting if it weren't for the fact that the Trump Administration thinks in those deplorable American time frames described in the last post as "much of our business activity is controlled by a 5 to 10 week time frame
and generally Americans struggle with a planning attention span of 5 to
10 days."<br />
<br />
Even more troubling is the fact that key members of the Trump Administration are simply uninformed or misinformed about China. <br />
<br />
Which brings us again to author and <i>Forbes</i> Contributor Wade Shepard. As noted in the previous post, Shepard is one of those rare American's who, in addition to being able
to read and write well above a 6th grade level, is a China expert based
upon his travels and study in China. In a post this past Thursday, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/10/19/what-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-is-really-all-about/#4f046d2ae4de" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Shepard wrote</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
On October 3rd, US Defense Secretary James Mattis <a href="https://reconnectingasia.csis.org/analysis/entries/many-belts-and-many-roads/" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">proclaimed at a congressional hearing</a>, "In
a globalized world, there are many belts and many roads, and no one
nation should put itself into a position of dictating 'One Belt, One
Road.'"
<br />
While the defense secretary was ultimately correct -- there are <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/10/14/regardless-of-what-beijing-says-the-new-silk-road-is-not-chinese/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">many different countries who are driving trans-Eurasian integration</a> and China’s international infrastructural, economic, and political engagements do often <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/06/28/watch-out-china-india-is-building-a-new-silk-road-of-its-own/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">overlap with other initiatives</a> --
the style, scope, financial backing, strategy, and underlaying purpose
behind China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) puts it in a category all
its own, and <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKBN18Z1QQ" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">should not be underestimated</a>.
We have perhaps never seen a program of geo-economic positioning quite
like this before, and skeptically framing it in with known practices or
established models is a mistake that political analysts, government
officials, and even investors have been making -- even as they are
encircled by the very initiative they write off or deny.
<br />
If you’re looking for an official, <i>correct</i> map of where
China’s Belt and Road actually goes, good luck. If you’re looking for an
official explanation of what it really is, a list of approved projects,
the amount of actual funding, where this funding is really coming from,
what entities have the authority to engage projects under its name (<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/07/25/xi-jinping-to-chinas-private-sector-go-home-the-belt-and-road-is-not-for-you/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">and what entities don't</a>),
or even a run down of what countries are officially a part of it,
you’ve just jumped down into a very deep hole of misinformation, no
information, and all out propaganda.
<br />
This is an initiative for which there are no publicly-stated KPI [<span class="_Tgc">Key Performance Indicator]</span>, no
overarching institutionalization, no formal membership protocols, no
founding charters, and a timeline for development that is not measured
in mere years, but decades.
</div>
</blockquote>
In a post the previous week <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/10/13/chinas-hunger-for-energy-resources-is-whats-driving-the-belt-and-road/#7048362467ef" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">The Real Reason Behind What's Driving China's Ambitions For A New Silk Road</a> Shepard which describes a natural gas pipeline constructed at a cost of cost $7.5 billion under a 2007 contract negotiated by Xi's predecessor President Hu Jintao which this month will begin <a href="https://caspiannews.com/news-detail/kazakhstan-to-start-gas-deliveries-to-china-2017-10-10-17/" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">shipping natural gas to China</a>. <br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
...China’s appetite for this energy source is <a href="http://www.caixinglobal.com/2017-08-21/101133240.html" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">growing at an impressive clip</a>, and is expected to rise 8.1% annually until 2030, which is far above the 2.1% global annual growth rate.
<br />
If we looked at the entire BRI in terms of China increasing, bolstering,
and securing their energy supply lines alone — without any of the
rhetoric about global prosperity and “win-win” partnerships — it would
still make sense. The economic powerhouse that is China requires energy
to run, and this is something the country has not been able to handle on
its own since at least 1993.
<br />
Diversifying the sources of foreign oil and gas has been of tantamount
importance to Beijing for well over a decade. In 2006, the Brookings
Institute <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/downs20060804.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">pointed this out</a> in no uncertain terms:
</div>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 40px;">
"The Chinese government recognizes that the diversification of China’s
oil suppliers and import routes can enhance the security of the
country’s oil supply. In terms of oil suppliers, China has sought not
only to expand the number of countries and regions from which it imports
oil but also to limit its dependence on the Persian Gulf, which in 2005
provided China with almost half of its crude oil imports… In terms of
import routes, China wants to reduce its dependence on the sea lines of
communication through which almost 90% of the country’s crude oil
imports travel because of their vulnerability to disruption on the high
seas by various modern navies."
</div>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
At this time, the focus of this diversification was mainly on the array
of new China-bound oil and gas pipelines that were being dug across
Russia and Central Asia. What could not be foreseen then was the attempt
to create no less than three multimodal transport corridors that China
would spearhead under the premise of the BRI to enable energy shipments
from the Middle East and to enter the country while bypassing the
heavily US Navy-fortified Straight of Malacca. These three prospective
corridors extend overland from the ports of Bandar Abbas in Iran, Gwadar
in Pakistan, and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-silkroad-myanmar-sez/chinas-10-billion-strategic-project-in-myanmar-sparks-local-ire-idUSKBN18Z327" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Kyauk Pyu in Myanmar</a> up to China, enabling energy shipments to go partway by sea and then the <a href="http://insider.pk/business/gwadar-china-oil-pipeline-underway-future-looks-promising/" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">rest of the way by pipeline</a> or <a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-02/16/c_135100997.htm" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">potentially even rail</a>.
</div>
</blockquote>
It is obvious that Xi sincerely hopes for a moderately prosperous China by 2020, a fully modernized China by 2035, and a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful China by 2049. It is also obvious that he is proud of what China is achieving in the 21st Century.<br />
<br />
Orville Schell, head of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations and a veteran China expert who has been studying Chinese politics since the late 1950s, noted that Xi's "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is a viable counter-model to the presumption of western liberal democracy and capitalism. In a sense, what Xi is setting up here is not only a clash of civilization and values, but one of political and economic systems."<br />
<br />
Xi could comfortably note how China had "taken a driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change." He added: "Only by observing the laws of nature can mankind avoid costly blunders in its exploitation. Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us. This is a reality we have to face!"<br />
<br />
Xi could also note: “No one political system should be regarded as the only choice and we should not just mechanically copy the political systems of other countries. The political system of socialism with Chinese characteristics is a great creation.”<br />
<br />
He could say this because he and those in his administration know that with the election of Donald Trump the United States has...<br />
<ul>
<li>a Republican President who by a large margin lost the popular vote (for the second time since the year 2000);</li>
<li>a Senate in which 60 of the 100 Senators with 60% of the vote in the Senate represent less than 25% of the population, while 18 of the 100 Senators with only 18% of the vote in the Senate represent the majority of Americans, and despite the fact that more votes were cast for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates in the last three Senate elections, Republicans control the Senate;</li>
<li>a House of Representatives in which Democratic candidates received a nationwide plurality but the Republican candidates won a majority of the House seats; and</li>
<li>a nationwide justice system that randomly injures, kills, or imprisons large numbers of non-white American citizens without a trial, creating the highest incarceration rate in the world with about 22 percent of the world's prisoners in a nation that has about 4.4 percent of the world's population.</li>
</ul>
...leaving Americans with no ability at all to respond to Xi's "political system" challenge by claiming their government is a democracy - assuming democracy in any sense means majority rule based on the popular vote.<br />
<br />
China is facing challenges which if covered by balanced reporting in the U.S. would seem familiar to Americans. Today, nearing the end of the 19th Congress, the Minister of Education <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Baosheng" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Chen Baosheng</a>, Minister of Civil Affairs <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang_Shuxian" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Huang Shuxian</a>, Minister of Human Resources and Social Security <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_Weimin" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Yin Weimin</a>, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Menghui" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Wang Menghui</a>, and Minister of National Health and Family Planning Commission <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Bin_(politician)" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Li Bin</a> held a joint news briefing.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1gCXmsbTk7G2IRAqbmXd4eP_S8d1MEAbN9gPw2BV9S5ncYudznTEmx6Z9_j6I5VxgQBu2QFxiH4nrmM1jnsOKzdKx88A1L51H6-unDpd9VU-4U1l0KJ2UJhdKW7CV9ewOymsT-qPtmrw/s1600/press-conf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="650" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1gCXmsbTk7G2IRAqbmXd4eP_S8d1MEAbN9gPw2BV9S5ncYudznTEmx6Z9_j6I5VxgQBu2QFxiH4nrmM1jnsOKzdKx88A1L51H6-unDpd9VU-4U1l0KJ2UJhdKW7CV9ewOymsT-qPtmrw/s1600/press-conf.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Yin Weimin noted that despite the 3.95% registered unemployment rate in China's urban areas at the end of September "raising the capacity to employ workers overall still faces large pressures."<br />
<br />
"We need to create 15 million jobs per year," Yin said, singling out China’s more than 8 million new university graduates that enter the job market each year as one group in need of additional employment.<br />
<br />
Yin also said the low unemployment rate in the face of an overall slowdown in the economy was largely due to the new internet economy and entrepreneurship, adding that the ministry would actively support startups to help them “thrive”. <br />
<br />
He reported "We've helped 8.8 million people in
strained circumstances find jobs," adding that the total number of rural
migrant workers increased from 263 million in 2012 to 282 million in
2016.<br />
<br />
At the two-hour briefing held partly to address what President Xi called China’s “principle contradiction” between the country’s unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing need for a better life, the ministers outlined some of what they consider to be the biggest achievements of the last five years. Among those achievements is the expansion of basic medical insurance to cover 1.3 billion people and educational opportunities for 90 percent of disabled children.<br />
<br />
With 230 million people over the age of 60, making up nearly 1/5 of the population, the challenges grow. Minister Huang Shuxian said they are making progress in providing better facilities for those senior citizens noting “28,000 elderly care homes with nearly seven million beds have been registered across the country. Elderly care service facilities are available in all urban communities and in over half of China’s rural communities.”<br />
<br />
Minister Chen Baosheng noted the continuing unbalance of educational resources between urban and rural areas, and even among different districts of individual cities. “The basic focus of our policies is to provide benefits to rural areas, to poor performing schools, to less privileged areas, and to people with economic difficulties,” Chen Baosheng said laying out goals for 2020: an 85 percent gross enrollment rate in three-year kindergarten, and 90 percent in high-schools.<br />
<br />
While this was a press briefing, not a new conference, the following CGTN America coverage on YouTube provides a video context though it does have to be pointed out that CGTN is the collection of international language news channels run by the China's government-owned broadcaster China Central Television:<br />
<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/d8qYPxWR2pA/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/d8qYPxWR2pA?feature=player_embedded" width="420"></iframe></div>
<br />
In terms of the goals of China's government, this week provided a good opportunity to learn so long as one recognizes in this context that "short-term" means five years while the year 2049 looms on the Chinese culture's visible horizon.<br />
<br />
The year 2049 looms on the California culture's visible horizon also. We might want to give some thought to how China's goals might impact us as we cope with economic and environmental issues.<br />
<br />
To learn more about China, its history and culture, watch the six episode <a href="http://www.pbs.org/show/story-china/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Story of China at PBS.org</a>.<br />
<br />
<hr align="left" noshade="noshade" style="color: #0a3e0a; width: 45%;" />
<br />
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">This post is the second one of four on the 21st Century political and cultural objectives that have been set by China. Click on the images below to read the other three.</span><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/05/xi-jinpings-21st-century-silk-economic.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="80" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMJpv7zAvqpiMiWA3N5qmuYjvCoxewQcDYnI0NyPLAwW1gmXR-nUUKLnnvoSr1oKqwGnAyinNXzQh_4x6XBMgsbc-DeuEDZ7ch0UqWcF6FSv-FPrjkS-WtDcNoPszbopBdql3klbplQIk/s1600/2017-05-23.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/xis-team-to-lead-21st-century-china.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="102" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2eu1ZrCE8Mx8WXj4PA-q3LY0qWrjWfIYrK_Ljns8gC97rVxwF4Z4HUT6fxFncmI5MyZY0yK38QalaYTIcC1gmwxLnxC-WI8AGoICPSI02o4u8zwHeqeb63NnL2Q_r45bEEJkHDUVxps/s1600/2017-10-27.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/clear-waters-and-green-mountains-are.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="82" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGUHUjJADT-HKgqNCY6ohiwU-UoHUyCRVvYabVuaVe5R90txYBgKBd5aI1PC5FnVaHPrwgHbpiz_9zXrT2Q8sKmCF8ooMA9L752gq3fvTM1s5eco_AvLxENn-gDrz6-0l8zAfHjwPRfvs/s1600/2017-10-29.jpg" /></a></div>
Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-4522224013734213792017-05-23T13:29:00.001-07:002018-06-18T15:36:08.834-07:00Xi Jinping's 21st Century Silk Economic Belt and Road About California's future if China becomes the world's 21st Century economic center<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqNPIwSIryIUzh0OPQImRrnRx_YAIWd_F0Q9_gPMMd8iLK-RxrKV3w8Fsj3UJyhgyc9aAaYFFk5higjPHHh_u-GtcidXqxVUIUbK3KrT7H4oZIaLVLuW2qi-QqwOi_Jn6M-cWsBgVwd5s/s1600/chinaweek.jpg" /></div>
<br />
At the beginning of this month, for two weeks an event took place for which I can find no news coverage in the United States - not even California news sources. Here is how the <a href="http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2017-05/10/content_29292238.htm" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">China Daily</a> described it:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
An annual event dedicated to promoting business and cultural exchanges between China and California, ChinaWeek draws industry and government representatives from Guangdong, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shanghai and Chongqing to expand and deepen bilateral trade and investment, said Peter Shiao, chairman of ChinaWeek and its organizer.
<br />
California Governor Jerry Brown, as usual, was upbeat on the state's relationship with China during his keynote speech at Tuesday's California-China Business Summit, an important component of ChinaWeek.
<br />
Brown anticipates closer and deeper collaborations within a wide spectrum of industries and fields between China and California, especially high tech, clean tech, real estate, agriculture, infrastructure and education. "Let's roll up our sleeves to have the work done," said the governor.
<br />
China in the past 16 years has invested $16 billion in more than 370 businesses in California and accounted for 60 percent of international trade activities in the "gateway state", said Shiao, adding that China remains Los Angeles County's biggest trader partner.
</div>
</blockquote>
Not one American news website story on this gathering can be found if you do a Google news search.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, this past week's Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation was given some, albeit mostly dismissive, coverage by the American press, from both mainstream and alt right.<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">
Click on images to see larger versions!
</span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT652Sa2KNhCwKVEdQUSrsFqmY5ZOHEgqqdDm-YluIyR4Fndu40LT1S6LXZ_WbSXLqbbf7tfmWF5PzA6C4XgAyms1QkbCEw2APH7Mok387DBzoMDJVcd2Zvjf7UPApKlfqs7xn-uOdyM0/s1600/beltandroadgroupphoto2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT652Sa2KNhCwKVEdQUSrsFqmY5ZOHEgqqdDm-YluIyR4Fndu40LT1S6LXZ_WbSXLqbbf7tfmWF5PzA6C4XgAyms1QkbCEw2APH7Mok387DBzoMDJVcd2Zvjf7UPApKlfqs7xn-uOdyM0/s640/beltandroadgroupphoto2.jpg" width="690" /></a></div>
<br />
What may have been the most significant political speech of 2017 was a toast at a banquet at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. China's President Xi Jinping in calling for renewing the Silk Road
spirit said:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
More than 2,000 years ago, our ancestors, driven by a desire for friendship, opened the overland and maritime Silk Roads and thus started a great era of exchanges among civilizations. Today, we gather here to renew the Silk Road spirit and discuss the Belt and Road development for international cooperation. This is both a continuation of our shared legacy and a right choice for the future.
</div>
</blockquote>
He also noted that the Belt and Road Initiative embodies the aspiration for inter-civilization exchanges, the yearning for peace and stability, the pursuit of common development and the shared dream for a better life.<br />
<br />
Silk Road? Belt and Road Initiative?? 2000 years??? Where is the all important "<i><b>me</b></i>" in that????<br />
<br />
In considering such a span of human history, it is wise to keep in mind these words from the Polish poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czes%C5%82aw_Mi%C5%82osz" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Czeslaw Milosz</a>:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Love means to learn to look at yourself<br />
The way one looks at distant things<br />
For you are only one thing among many.<br />
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,<br />
Without knowing it, from various ills—<br />
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.</div>
<br />
Despite the fact that "selfies" and self-important tweets are all the rage among the consumers of the world, there is no "<i><b>me</b></i>" in considering 2000 years, even in or particularly in the World Wide Web. Individual fruit flies and individual humans are equally unimportant over time periods measured in centuries.<br />
<br />
Yes there have been individual humans who made a significant continuing impact on humans in time spans measured in thousands of years. It would be fair to say that of the 100,000,000,000± billion folks who have ever lived and are not alive today, 100± individuals made a significant impact that reverberates through history to today. That's 1 out of every 1 billion.<br />
<br />
So it's likely that, out of the 7 billion now alive, there are seven individuals out there who will be recognized as someone who still impacts significantly on human life 2,000 years from now.<br />
<br />
And not that most of us don't contribute to the cumulative gross mess that is human history. But it is likely that when it comes to altering the course of that history in a meaningful way, this guy is probably one of the seven....<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK6lKTKHqsF4coYLJzF_CR9nNz5oPsbiYm4Tg3crKnF54pHZPMG5BUlx2gqyIgGdpAPQBu8vNqgLLG6uHpXigChvNbePvVynY-svy90t_R6uEX-WJQ237aRRdzOCKR95ZMpuWljWWLB-c/s1600/confslide.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="459" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK6lKTKHqsF4coYLJzF_CR9nNz5oPsbiYm4Tg3crKnF54pHZPMG5BUlx2gqyIgGdpAPQBu8vNqgLLG6uHpXigChvNbePvVynY-svy90t_R6uEX-WJQ237aRRdzOCKR95ZMpuWljWWLB-c/s640/confslide.jpg" width="690" /></a></div>
<br />
You probably recognize he is not Donald Trump nor any other American. Nor for that matter is he from any European culture. If you are among 95%+ of Americans, just from the picture below you will not be able to place a name...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfsQsn04DYpIRNQmIjRbIMtbaz3uGoTYaFHzemYvLE4Yi1zLwhIHFzFNnMKrDLyjbXNu4mp8hjvawJRvsZOiadPfJAPys5kUqN1z6-CNTqP7ZTponfJrOuHnweQ_vkcg1_JYWyDeltO5Y/s1600/beltandroadattendees.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="523" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfsQsn04DYpIRNQmIjRbIMtbaz3uGoTYaFHzemYvLE4Yi1zLwhIHFzFNnMKrDLyjbXNu4mp8hjvawJRvsZOiadPfJAPys5kUqN1z6-CNTqP7ZTponfJrOuHnweQ_vkcg1_JYWyDeltO5Y/s640/beltandroadattendees.jpg" width="690" /></a></div>
<br />
...with the face of the man in the middle with is wife, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">China's President Xi Jinping</a>.<br />
<br />
On February 11, 2009, while visiting Mexico, then Vice-President Xi spoke in front of a group of overseas Chinese noting that China's task was to keep "its 1.3 billion people from hunger" and regarding the financial crisis affecting the Atlantic oriented world: "There are some bored foreigners, with full stomachs, who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us. First, China doesn't export revolution; second, China doesn't export hunger and poverty; third, China doesn't come and cause you headaches. What more is there to be said?"<br />
<br />
That helps put a bit of perspective on his visit to Central Asia and Southeast Asia in September and October 2013, when as China's President he raised the initiative of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road.<br />
<br />
Additional perspective (for those who live in a country that is less than 400 years old) comes from China's history where writing began around 7000 BCE, the first empire dynasty emerged around 2100 BCE, and the Shang Dynasty from the 17th to the 11th century BCE created oracle bone script which is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters. To make a long story short, around 220 BCE the state of Qin established the first unified Chinese state. Its King Zheng enacted legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., cart axles' length), and currency. His dynasty also conquered the Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam. The Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world. For more historical detail on the Silk Road click on this image:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">
Historical extent of Silk Route/Silk Road. Red is land route and the blue is the sea/water route.
</span>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="449" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEM01Xxmvw_eoAEl38CXn8HZu5ya3v0YYeznX-cglTjECRRT8_WOq9B-m7VxJcKc7n-BG3rM4W8tCYCQBH-eJqzlRGrAOokNhe7qoBVmEAuH-AymYYLpktbT6pOD2RVYurWa9I2-atv-k/s640/historical_silk_road.jpg" width="690" /></a></div>
<br />
Xi's <i>Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road</i> - also known as the Belt and Road Initiative, the Belt and Road (abbreviated B&R), or One Belt, One Road (abbreviated OBOR) - is a broad international economic development strategy that focuses on connectivity and cooperation among countries.<br />
<br />
The plan covers 65 nations, about 60 per cent of the world’s population and a third of global GDP. China has budgeted $40 billion for the project. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which began operations last year with $100 billion in capital, is also expected to fund Belt and Road projects. <br />
<br />
The Belt and Road initiative is geographically structured along six corridors, and the maritime silk road:<br />
<ul>
<li>New Eurasian Land Bridge, running from Western China to Western Russia</li>
<li>China–Mongolia–Russia Corridor, running from Northern China to Eastern Russia</li>
<li>China–Central Asia–West Asia Corridor, running from Western China to Turkey</li>
<li>China–Indochina Peninsula Corridor, running from Southern China to Singapore</li>
<li>China–Pakistan Corridor, running from South-Western China to Pakistan</li>
<li>Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar Corridor, running from Southern China to India</li>
<li>Maritime Silk Road, running from the Chinese Coast over Singapore and India to the Mediterranean.</li>
</ul>
The initiative calls for the integration of the region into a cohesive economic area through building infrastructure, increasing cultural exchanges, and broadening trade. Apart from this zone, which is largely analogous to the historical Silk Road, another area that is said to be included in the extension of this 'belt' is South Asia and Southeast Asia.<br />
<br />
Many of the countries that are part of this belt are also members of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). North, central and south belts are proposed. goes through Central Asia, Russia to Europe. The Central belt goes through Central Asia, West Asia to the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. The South belt starts from China to Southeast Asia, South Asia, to the Indian Ocean through Pakistan. The Chinese One Belt strategy will integrate with Central Asia through Kazakhstan's Nurly Zhol infrastructure program. (Much of this information is from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Wikipedia entry</a> which offers more.)<br />
<br />
From a movement point of view the B&R historical ties looks something like this:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg6Bv6-_3r5VjNR-esBNSuyMD_ZT53hkFpY-x76RTsAo1eOe7rie32fpaBtrVveT0x5SX6xOjJ2Iy9IVCrm3QtktX6_ltQPscfaau2TeG2nCHlIlf_2JWxTBdbQk-Ol2gGC9GqsY1Zo4U/s1600/One_belt_one_road_map_medium02.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg6Bv6-_3r5VjNR-esBNSuyMD_ZT53hkFpY-x76RTsAo1eOe7rie32fpaBtrVveT0x5SX6xOjJ2Iy9IVCrm3QtktX6_ltQPscfaau2TeG2nCHlIlf_2JWxTBdbQk-Ol2gGC9GqsY1Zo4U/s640/One_belt_one_road_map_medium02.png" width="690" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
But in terms of world impact it could also be viewed this way...<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-sHfMyvDjn3ePWR_1MlNVVV_nYiwk6OoLTsAWn36tBB-4NBcY-ZOlD9f2GpaPs_2xiAg3saIM9QoB2uXobfsxqXgB7Wo2mted6f9POhPS1GY4eIAAGhp74QCa2Dx5lc-tbMb_N1a1H_w/s1600/One_Belt_One_Road.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="477" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-sHfMyvDjn3ePWR_1MlNVVV_nYiwk6OoLTsAWn36tBB-4NBcY-ZOlD9f2GpaPs_2xiAg3saIM9QoB2uXobfsxqXgB7Wo2mted6f9POhPS1GY4eIAAGhp74QCa2Dx5lc-tbMb_N1a1H_w/s640/One_Belt_One_Road.png" width="690" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
...or this way:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">
Click on image to access links to each country.
</span>
<a href="http://china-trade-research.hktdc.com/business-news/article/One-Belt-One-Road/The-Belt-and-Road-Initiative-Country-Profiles/obor/en/1/1X000000/1X0A36I0.htm" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLpbgQWjpoVUIXz19brHSWJ8gL8Nq4QdRJnksvWDF_ZOp68ZiQu4DlUlqZ6r1EtmbJr8WJ_mR7vHdhX_ZYXig7mTIOgE_Hgb7hReSaAmQw8tfDyoXJKiQx4L5qX5crHTfsQg1YloJ_8No/s1600/2017-05_Members.jpg" /></a></div>
Attending the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation this past week were the following representatives of non-member nations:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Heads of State:<br />
<ul>
<li>Argentina: President Mauricio Macri
Chile: President Michelle Bachelet</li>
<li>Fiji: Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama</li>
<li>Greece: Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras</li>
<li>Italy: Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni</li>
<li>Kenya: President Uhuru Kenyatta</li>
<li>Philippines: President Rodrigo Duterte</li>
<li>Poland: Prime Minister Beata Szydło</li>
<li>Spain: Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy</li>
<li>Switzerland: President Doris Leuthard</li>
</ul>
Minister Level:<br />
<ul>
<li>Australia: Trade Minister Steve Ciobo</li>
<li>Brazil: Secretary for Strategic Affairs Hussein Ali Kalout</li>
<li>Finland: Minister of Transport and Communications of Finland Anne Berner</li>
<li>Germany: Minister of Economic Affairs Brigitte Zypries</li>
<li>North Korea: Kim Yong-jae, Minister of External Economic Relations</li>
</ul>
Other:<br />
<ul>
<li>France: Jean-Pierre Raffarin, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Defense and Armed Forces in the French Senate</li>
<li>Japan: LDP Secretary General Toshihiro Nikai</li>
<li>South Korea: Ambassador to China Kim Jang-soo; Park Byeong-seug, National Assembly member for the Democratic Party</li>
<li>United States: Matt Pottinger, National Security Council senior director for Asia (<i>Who???</i>)</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
There is a lot of recent history and current activity involved, not all of which has been successful as explained in Wade Shepard's<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/05/13/i-spent-two-years-on-chinas-belt-and-road-and-this-is-what-i-found-part-1/#4721401b4b68" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"> I Spent Two Years On China's Belt And Road, And This Is What I Found</a>. Shepard also provides a proper perspective:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
China takes a long-term view of these investments, and have show that they are willing to exercise the requisite patience. By long-term view, I mean 30, 40, 50 years down the line, not the 5 to 10 years that is roughly where the west’s nearsightedness kicks in.
<br />
China has shown that it is both willing and able to weather the storms of domestic and international politics in order to get what they want in the end.
</div>
</blockquote>
Shepard is one of those rare American's who, in addition to being able to read and write well above a 6th grade level, is a China expert based upon his travels and study in China. He is currently traveling the New Silk Road doing research for a new book. You can follow his writings through <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/feed/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">this feed</a>.<br />
<br />
Which brings us back to that 2000 year window. As Shepard commented about Americans, we are limited by "the 5 to 10 years that is roughly where the west’s nearsightedness kicks in." That is really generous as much of our business activity is controlled by a 5 to 10 week time frame and generally Americans struggle with a planning attention span of 5 to 10 days.<br />
<br />
So it's probably ok that those selfies and tweets are on some electronic device and/or cloud that will certainly and inevitably disappear over the next hundred years. They don't matter, not even Donald Trumps tweets, nor all the self-important news reporters following them.<br />
<br />
As explained in an <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/white-working-class-trump-cultural-anxiety/525771/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Atlantic article</a> while most post-election analysis cited economic anxiety as the main concern when people chose to vote for Donald Trump, a newer survey paints a different picture - it was cultural anxiety that drove white, working-class voters to Trump. Sixty-eight percent of white working-class voters said the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence and nearly half agreed with the statement, “things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.”<br />
<br />
So, the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence. Members of the alt-right and Trump tweet about it on their smart phones manufactured in Asia by Asians. But then again so do the members of what is now being called "the Alt-Left" led by Bernie Sanders which is working to take over the Democratic Party. <br />
<br />
Meanwhile, The Sydney Morning Herald reported Sunday that <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/eleven-asiapacific-nations-agree-to-salvage-transpacific-partnership-20170521-gw9w1c.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Eleven Asia-Pacific nations agree to salvage Trans-Pacific Partnership</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
Eleven Asia-Pacific nations, including Australia, agreed on Sunday to salvage a massive free trade deal that US President Donald Trump pulled out of days after taking office in January.
<br />
Australia's Trade Minister Steve Ciobo pushed for the agreement at a meeting in Vietnam to "launch a process to assess options" to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership into force.
<br />
New Zealand Trade Minister Todd McClay, who chaired the meeting, left open the possibility of the US rejoining the TPP despite Mr Trump saying he prefers bilateral free trade deals.
<br />
Mr McClay said each country had to consider both economic values and the strategic importance of the agreement "but in the end there is a lot of unity among all of the countries and a great desire to work together to come up with an agreement."
</div>
</blockquote>
As I explained almost one year ago <a href="http://redwoodguardian.blogspot.com/2016/05/sanders-and-trump-to-destroy-pacific.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Sanders and Trump to destroy Pacific Rim states of California, Oregon, and Washington</a> by forcing the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.<br />
<br />
Because the Alt-Left and -Right led American voters (I consider them both among "The Deplorables") wanted their grandchildren to have income and eat, before voting they examined major economic shifts, studying them as much as they possibly could, ignoring their own self-indulgent feelings of stress. So they knew the TPP was a plan to reduce the impact of China on the economies of the Pacific Rim nations and the World over the next 50-100 years - the lifespans of their children and grandchildren. <br />
<br />
Except, of course, that isn't what they did because the ignoramuses leading them, Trump and Sanders, still don't know what's happening. As Bill Maher regularly notes, the American voters mostly are stupid, failing to vote their own self-interest mostly because they don't know what that is.<br />
<br />
At this point we are facing what I call The Deplorables Map of the Future of World Economics because <i>they</i> at election time assured it (click on it for a larger version):<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQl-cfzeuGfyV0pRqcXXFeu45U7B21Cqn8euF6YsaQcja3bagBeuG6LW5ZPiA4HWpcJBGBDkOxV08h60us2gCJgOwL6bnUUiy3nTccx5vVrNpxR55Ti9eLvM3yn0BrOj-8F5_M61vJ9cU/s1600/china-centric-map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="484" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQl-cfzeuGfyV0pRqcXXFeu45U7B21Cqn8euF6YsaQcja3bagBeuG6LW5ZPiA4HWpcJBGBDkOxV08h60us2gCJgOwL6bnUUiy3nTccx5vVrNpxR55Ti9eLvM3yn0BrOj-8F5_M61vJ9cU/s640/china-centric-map.jpg" width="690" /></a></div>
<br />
This economic China-centric world is the future. As the intent of the B&R is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/china-railway-one-belt-one-road-1-trillion-plan.html?_r=1" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">explained by The New York Times</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
[China's President] Xi is aiming to use China’s wealth and industrial know-how to create a new kind of globalization that will dispense with the rules of the aging Western dominated institutions. The goal is to refashion the global economic order, drawing countries and companies more tightly into China’s orbit.
<br />
“President Xi believes this is a long-term plan that will involve the current and future generations to propel Chinese and global economic growth,” said Cao Wenlian, director general of the International Cooperation Center of the National Development and Reform Commission, a group dedicated to the initiative. “The plan is to lead the new globalization 2.0.”
<br />
Mr. Xi is rolling out a more audacious version of the Marshall Plan, America’s postwar reconstruction effort. Back then, the United States extended vast amounts of aid to secure alliances in Europe. China is deploying hundreds of billions of dollars of state-backed loans in the hope of winning new friends around the world, this time without requiring military obligations.
<br />
Mr. Xi’s plan stands in stark contrast to President Trump and his “America First” mantra. The Trump administration walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the American-led trade pact that was envisioned as a buttress against China’s growing influence.
<br />
“Pursuing protectionism is just like locking oneself in a dark room,” Mr. Xi told business leaders at the World Economic Forum in January.
</div>
</blockquote>
As of 2017, China (including Hong Kong) holds $1.324 trillion in U.S. debt derived from our deficit balance of trade. The average American can pretty much figure out where that came from by looking at the stuff around his or her house, cupboards, and closests (as well as staring at that phone in his or her hand). Much of it contains components, or is entirely, made in China. After all it is where the Trump family has their clothing lines made. So President Xi is pretty comfortable loaning a few billion here and there around the world.<br />
<br />
But wait. Didn't I say that while the B&R includes about 60 per cent of the world’s population, it only includes a third of global GDP? And my "Deplorables Map" above doesn't correctly reflect the World as it does not include Europe, particularly the European Union members. After all, the EU is the second largest economy in the world and the world's largest trading block. Of course, Brexit likely will change all that. However, what were talking about here is the area in the square...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ6Va5y-ZM-nnZEsr6zggShyqZNqbTwUs_sOuT2HA8-NP2ELchKD_gggCSIzorh6naglaoWG6QKIg-IXmFb9aGFVExG1PljeF0cSYGFpDoF9U4Qf1eG0OxIABp2SsVkkYeER8C7alVLd0/s1600/worldpoliticaleu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ6Va5y-ZM-nnZEsr6zggShyqZNqbTwUs_sOuT2HA8-NP2ELchKD_gggCSIzorh6naglaoWG6QKIg-IXmFb9aGFVExG1PljeF0cSYGFpDoF9U4Qf1eG0OxIABp2SsVkkYeER8C7alVLd0/s1600/worldpoliticaleu.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
...which geographically isn't perhaps the largest block. But nonetheless, it the following map initially would seem to indicate a meaningful portion of the World's economy...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-cAekKlYjK9VuNRbsYp0tFWLeN_XkeduragaN1hTKBKNXi-Y-gqkkGC54c9J-fhyphenhyphenQ_1k88gYEZb4oIzZeHkNGRF4eTbnsyuRPm5nmPkVHEp0es9iDRA-aoDKgje5sGh2sj-R4XBzMPkI/s1600/EU_map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="668" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-cAekKlYjK9VuNRbsYp0tFWLeN_XkeduragaN1hTKBKNXi-Y-gqkkGC54c9J-fhyphenhyphenQ_1k88gYEZb4oIzZeHkNGRF4eTbnsyuRPm5nmPkVHEp0es9iDRA-aoDKgje5sGh2sj-R4XBzMPkI/s640/EU_map.jpg" width="690" /></a></div>
<br />
...except... notice the round purple dots on all the countries that are <b><i>members</i></b> of China's Belt and Road Initiative and remember as mentioned above that the heads of state of Greece, Italy, Poland, and Spain, plus cabinet ministers from Finland and the United Kingdom attended the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.<br />
<br />
It might not be unreasonable to assume that China's economic policy influence in Europe would increase substantially in the next 50-100 years as the United States abandons its allies like it did in the Pacific Rim.<br />
<br />
When contemplating Europe, we have to remember that it is the same distance between Berlin and Beijing as it is between Berlin and the State Capitol of Illinois, Springfield. Far more Chinese citizens live closer to Berlin than Americans. Denver is closer to Beijing than Berlin.<br />
<br />
The problem is, our history is Atlantic-centered (except for California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska). That made sense when the sailing ship was the primary source of transportation between continents. But since the mid-20th Century aircraft altered the reality for everyone except Americans East of the Mississippi and Europeans who still live in the 18th Century.<br />
<br />
I get it. Sure the Deplorables of the left and right and the Brexiters feel things have changed so much that they often
feel like a stranger in their own countries. But it's long past the time that sailing ships were lobbing cannon balls while Francis Scott Key wrote those sterling versus in the defense of owning slaves. Get over it. There are new problems now. Americans are going to have to adjust or lose out completely by the beginning of the 22nd Century.<br />
<br />
Back in January, California Governor Jerry Brown went to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco to speak at a Lunar New Year celebration to reaffirm what he called the state's "great interest" in working with China. As explained in the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-jerry-brown-1484770008-htmlstory.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">LA Times</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
"There will be a few side arguments in Washington," Brown said. "Don't worry. When it comes to California and China, we're on the right track, and we're going to stay there."
<br />
California has collaborated closely on climate change with Chinese officials, who have studied the state's programs as they formulate their own. Brown said the state also has benefited from China's production of solar panels, helping to drive down the cost of renewable energy.
<br />
"We are working together with China," he said. "Whatever little differences we have, or whatever big differences, the fact is, we have one world. We have one space we're all connected by."
<br />
Brown's brief comments at the consulate weren't all rosy. Often preoccupied with existential threats , he told the audience that he wanted to make sure they "walk out of here with at least three things to worry about."
<br />
First, he said, "you will suffer" if climate change isn't addressed. Second, nuclear bombs could "get used by somebody," which would be "very bad." Third, the global financial system "might collapse again."
<br />
"That's a lot to worry about," Brown said.
</div>
</blockquote>
Next month Brown will be in China to attend a climate change conference. Brown previously visited China in 2013 on a trade policy trip. He makes these trips because he knows that China and the U.S. have to take the lead on climate change. He also knows the most serious threat of nuclear war comes from North Korea. He understands that as was true in 2008 the potential collapse of the global financial system will result from U.S. economic policy, the impact of which China is trying to avert.<br />
<br />
Finally, he understands that while California's economy ranks, depending on year, between #5-#8 in the world, it couldn't without strong foreign trade as represented by this data:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiuW2BTievLPO61YZT0g6DigKKzMUzs6yp767EIvekMN4i-u6r2FqoKJwRPSB4_vGNqOo9TKriiHbXoCdc0LaioMc78paParN_YtO3iJO1fQCgsU41gb8BnJJYc_yhuTPgtczw8R5qdzs/s1600/catrade690.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiuW2BTievLPO61YZT0g6DigKKzMUzs6yp767EIvekMN4i-u6r2FqoKJwRPSB4_vGNqOo9TKriiHbXoCdc0LaioMc78paParN_YtO3iJO1fQCgsU41gb8BnJJYc_yhuTPgtczw8R5qdzs/s1600/catrade690.jpg" /></a></div>
At the end of the 19th Century, bilateral trade relationships between countries dominated which led to the most murderous century in history. At the end of the 20th Century during which 100+ million people died in wars, multilateral trade relationships between countries became the norm to avoid conflict.<br />
<br />
China's leadership understands this world reality and intends to take the leadership role which will be facilitated by the absence of U.S. influence. California's leadership understands this world reality and intends to continue its active role in order to protect the interests of its people, particularly necessary in the vacuum left by the U.S. government.<br />
<br />
And if you don't think there is a potential threat, consider this article that appeared in Asian news sources but not American news sources in March 2017 <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2079648/russian-central-bank-opens-first-overseas-office" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Moscow and Beijing join forces to bypass US dollar in world money market</a> and perhaps you'll begin to understand that isolating the U.S. as Trump touts bilateral trade negotiations could become a disaster for the grandchildren of The Deplorables.<br />
<br />
<hr align="left" noshade="noshade" style="color: #0a3e0a; width: 45%;" />
<br />
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">This post is the first one of four on the 21st Century political and cultural objectives that have been set by China. Click on the images below to read the other three.</span><br />
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<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/xi-jinpings-strategy-for-21st-century.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="102" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXPWpZ4Zql6KGOO58vaa4nj44jj9mH_BPpAxeafNpNh3o8un7omf86eNPCgUrfqXp1H3_rv7Dsov-c5NfVKNB2vSdLASvHsggLPvRRDQEWgvAjDE1vyBWIFB5po06o94bpC2t__5cxRAY/s1600/2017-10-23.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/xis-team-to-lead-21st-century-china.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="102" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis2eu1ZrCE8Mx8WXj4PA-q3LY0qWrjWfIYrK_Ljns8gC97rVxwF4Z4HUT6fxFncmI5MyZY0yK38QalaYTIcC1gmwxLnxC-WI8AGoICPSI02o4u8zwHeqeb63NnL2Q_r45bEEJkHDUVxps/s1600/2017-10-27.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/10/clear-waters-and-green-mountains-are.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="82" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGUHUjJADT-HKgqNCY6ohiwU-UoHUyCRVvYabVuaVe5R90txYBgKBd5aI1PC5FnVaHPrwgHbpiz_9zXrT2Q8sKmCF8ooMA9L752gq3fvTM1s5eco_AvLxENn-gDrz6-0l8zAfHjwPRfvs/s1600/2017-10-29.jpg" /></a></div>
Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-7144104485599029042017-05-13T09:14:00.000-07:002018-06-18T14:48:42.230-07:00California and Kentucky - A tale of two states From Sen. Henry Clay's Compromise of 1850 to Obama's Affordable Care ActCalifornians and Kentuckians have one truth in common - neither State shares a cultural identity with another state based on political history. But Californians and Kentuckians have common interests that were in the spotlight in the last seven days.<br />
<br />
One is the close relationship between some folks in Cupertino, California, and folks in Harrodsburg, Kentucky - specifically at Apple's headquarters in Silicon Valley and at Corning's glass plant in Kentucky.<br />
<br />
Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, explained to a group of Corning employees on the plant floor Friday that the iPhone originally had plastic on the surface, but when Steve Jobs showed a prototype on the stage in 2007, he kept it in his pocket and by the end of the day the surface was covered with scratches. <br />
<br />
Jobs decided that the phone, which was to be released in six months, had to have a glass surface. Every time Apple had tested the iPhone with glass, the glass broke when they dropped it. Shatter resistant glass existed only in Corning's lab. But Corning scrambled and the Harrodsburg plant has been making the Gorilla Glass for iPhones ever since.<br />
<br />
Apple announced Friday that it plans to invest $200 million in the Corning Gorilla Glass plant in Harrodsburg. The money will come from Apple’s new Advanced Manufacturing Fund, which the company says will invest $1 billion with U.S.-based companies to develop innovative production and skilled jobs. <br />
<br />
The previous Saturday was the 143rd running of the Kentucky Derby as noted in newspapers here in the Northern California Redwoods where we celebrate Seabiscuit. This tie to Kentucky goes much further back than 10 years ago. Seabiscuit was foaled in Lexington, Kentucky, on May 23, 1933 and grew up on Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, where he was trained.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuU0R2jctwl3FtfdU10yArxojXNvitr-pskhP80EnJ-uwLqEgH1Otasd9Xo2fwgq0frBbt6guV7JlA0vHwpySC7x7eRKGRnX4-KpD5hcNRIAMCVVsc6zraMgn7l8iRJ-i8PMFZrQVZiXk/s1600/seabiscuit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuU0R2jctwl3FtfdU10yArxojXNvitr-pskhP80EnJ-uwLqEgH1Otasd9Xo2fwgq0frBbt6guV7JlA0vHwpySC7x7eRKGRnX4-KpD5hcNRIAMCVVsc6zraMgn7l8iRJ-i8PMFZrQVZiXk/s1600/seabiscuit.jpg" /></a></div>
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<div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" id="mw-content-text" lang="en">
<table class="vertical-navbox nowraplinks vcard hlist" style="background: #d8d8d8; border-spacing: 0.4em 0; border: 1px solid #aaa; border: 4px double #857047; clear: right; float: right; font-size: 88%; line-height: 1.4em; margin: 0 0 1.0em 1.0em; padding: 0.2em; text-align: center; width: 22.0em;">
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<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="background: #d8d8d8; padding: 5px; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="image" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Clay.png"><img alt="Clay.png" class="thumbborder" data-file-height="360" data-file-width="311" height="87" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Clay.png/75px-Clay.png" srcset="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Clay.png/113px-Clay.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Clay.png/150px-Clay.png 2x" width="75" /></a></td>
<td style="background: #d8d8d8; padding: 6px; vertical-align: middle;"><span style="font-size: 0.75em;"><span style="color: #002466;">This links a Wikipedia series about</span></span><br />
<span class="vcard"><span class="fn"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clay" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Henry Clay"><span style="color: #002466;">Henry Clay</span></a></span></span></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="background: #d8d8d8; padding: 0 0.1em 0.4em; padding: 0.3em;"><ul>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clay#Early_life_and_education" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Henry Clay">Early life</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clay#Early_law_and_political_career" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Henry Clay">Legal career</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<ul>
<li><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Speaker of the United States House of Representatives">Speaker of the House</a></b></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="War of 1812">War of 1812</a></li>
<li><a class="mw-selflink selflink" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_System_(economic_plan)" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">American System</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Missouri Compromise">Missouri Compromise</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bank_of_the_United_States" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Second Bank of the United States">Second Bank of the United States</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1824" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="United States presidential election, 1824">Bid for the Presidency (1824)</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<ul>
<li><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secretary_of_State" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="United States Secretary of State">Secretary of State</a></b></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupt_Bargain" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Corrupt Bargain">Corrupt Bargain</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Dupuy" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Charlotte Dupuy">Charlotte Dupuy</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="United States Senate">U.S. Senator from Kentucky</a></b><br />
<hr />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_Crisis" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Nullification Crisis">Nullification Crisis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1832" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="United States presidential election, 1832">Bid for the Presidency (1832)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_Party_(United_States)" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Whig Party (United States)">Whig Party</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1844" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="United States presidential election, 1844">Bid for the Presidency (1844)</a></li>
<li><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1850" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Compromise of 1850">Compromise of 1850</a></b></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clay#Death_and_estate" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Henry Clay">Death</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_in_state#United_States" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Lying in state">Lying in State</a></li>
</ul>
<a class="image" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Clay_Signature-.svg"><img alt="Henry Clay Signature-.svg" data-file-height="141" data-file-width="189" height="75" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Henry_Clay_Signature-.svg/100px-Henry_Clay_Signature-.svg.png" srcset="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Henry_Clay_Signature-.svg/150px-Henry_Clay_Signature-.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Henry_Clay_Signature-.svg/200px-Henry_Clay_Signature-.svg.png 2x" width="100" /></a><br />
<a class="image" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seal_of_the_United_States_Senate.svg"><img alt="Seal of the United States Senate.svg" data-file-height="1030" data-file-width="1030" height="40" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Seal_of_the_United_States_Senate.svg/40px-Seal_of_the_United_States_Senate.svg.png" srcset="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Seal_of_the_United_States_Senate.svg/60px-Seal_of_the_United_States_Senate.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Seal_of_the_United_States_Senate.svg/80px-Seal_of_the_United_States_Senate.svg.png 2x" width="40" /></a> <a class="image" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seal_of_the_Speaker_of_the_US_House_of_Representatives.svg"><img alt="Seal of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives.svg" data-file-height="501" data-file-width="504" height="40" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Seal_of_the_Speaker_of_the_US_House_of_Representatives.svg/40px-Seal_of_the_Speaker_of_the_US_House_of_Representatives.svg.png" srcset="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Seal_of_the_Speaker_of_the_US_House_of_Representatives.svg/60px-Seal_of_the_Speaker_of_the_US_House_of_Representatives.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Seal_of_the_Speaker_of_the_US_House_of_Representatives.svg/80px-Seal_of_the_Speaker_of_the_US_House_of_Representatives.svg.png 2x" width="40" /></a> <a class="image" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Department_of_State_official_seal.svg"><img alt="US Department of State official seal.svg" data-file-height="101" data-file-width="101" height="40" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/US_Department_of_State_official_seal.svg/40px-US_Department_of_State_official_seal.svg.png" srcset="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/US_Department_of_State_official_seal.svg/60px-US_Department_of_State_official_seal.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/US_Department_of_State_official_seal.svg/80px-US_Department_of_State_official_seal.svg.png 2x" width="40" /></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
California and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Kentucky</a> share some history that goes beyond horse racing. California became a state in 1850 because of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clay#The_Compromise_of_1850" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Kentuckian Henry Clay</a>.<br />
<br />
Tensions between the North and South over the issue of slavery were high
in the 1840's. By 1850, after the Mexican-American War, how to handle
the former Mexican territory occupied by the United States placed a
critical strain.<br />
<br />
The Compromise of 1850 was formally proposed by Clay, then a Senator from Kentucky, and guided to passage by Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, over Northern Whig and Southern Democrat opposition. It was enacted September 1850:<br />
<ol>
<li>California was admitted as a free state;</li>
<li>Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory were organized with slavery to be decided by popular sovereignty;</li>
<li>Texas dropped its claim to land north of the 32nd parallel north and west of the 103rd meridian west in favor of New Mexico Territory, and north of the 36°30' parallel north and east of the 103rd meridian west which became unorganized territory. Texas's boundaries were set at their present form. Senator James Pearce of Maryland drafted the final proposal where Texas ceded its claims to land which later became half of present-day New Mexico, a third of Colorado, and small portions of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming to the federal government, in return for the assumption of $10 million of the old republic's debt. El Paso, where Texas had established county government, was left in Texas;</li>
<li>Slave trade was abolished in Washington, D.C. (but not slavery itself);</li>
<li>The Fugitive Slave Act was strengthened.</li>
</ol>
Of particular concern was California and its gold.<br />
<br />
I would guess that fewer than one-in-a-hundred-thousand of persons raised in California know about Henry Clay and the Compromise of 1850. Unfortunately, the in-depth teaching of American History in public schools has not been a priority in California where creating student self-involvement was once prioritized under the euphemism "self-esteem."<br />
<br />
A failure to understand each other because of a lack of awareness of how historical context alters culture is significant in the United States. The history is reflected in the differences in the populations. Compare California's racial/ethnic makeup...<br />
<br />
<iframe class="census-reporter-embed" frameborder="0" height="300" id="cr-embed-04000US06-demographics-race" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/embed.censusreporter.org/1.0/iframe.html?geoID=04000US06&chartDataID=demographics-race&dataYear=2015&releaseID=ACS_2015_1-year&chartType=column&chartHeight=200&chartQualifier=Hispanic+includes+respondents+of+any+race.+Other+categories+are+non-Hispanic.&chartTitle=&initialSort=&statType=scaled-percentage" style="margin: 1em; max-width: 720px;" width="100%"></iframe><br />
<script src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/embed.censusreporter.org/1.0/js/embed.chart.make.js"></script>
to Kentucky's....<br />
<iframe class="census-reporter-embed" frameborder="0" height="300" id="cr-embed-04000US21-demographics-race" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/embed.censusreporter.org/1.0/iframe.html?geoID=04000US21&chartDataID=demographics-race&dataYear=2015&releaseID=ACS_2015_1-year&chartType=column&chartHeight=200&chartQualifier=Hispanic+includes+respondents+of+any+race.+Other+categories+are+non-Hispanic.&chartTitle=&initialSort=&statType=scaled-percentage" style="margin: 1em; max-width: 720px;" width="100%"></iframe>
<script src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/embed.censusreporter.org/1.0/js/embed.chart.make.js"></script>
Kentucky's population is 85% non-Hispanic White and 8% non-Hispanic Black, which totals to 93% of the population. California is 39% Hispanic and 14% Asian which total to 53% of the population, while 38% of the population is non-Hispanic White and 6% non-Hispanic Black which total to 44% of the population.<br />
<br />
It is almost as if the two states have no history in common. And except for Henry Clay having an important role in their histories, they don't have any important cultural history in common.<br />
<br />
As I've explained elsewhere, California was a Spanish colony/Mexican territory from the late 1500's to 1849. On the other hand, Kentucky was part of the British colony/U.S. State of Virginia during that 300 year period. Kentucky has no sea coastline but has the most navigable miles of water in the lower 48 states and is the only U.S. state to have a continuous border of rivers running along three of its sides. California is on the Pacific Rim with 3,427 miles of measured coastline.<br />
<br />
These different States embraced he Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare") but are now responding to the very knotty public policy problem that (1) it requires additional subsidies by the state government and (2) Congress may replace it.<br />
<br />
Both the State of California and the State of Kentucky jumped into program enthusiastically. Despite that fact that in 2013 Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky railed against the Affordable Care Act, calling it a “catastrophic failure” for people everywhere, Kentucky's then Democratic Governor Steve Beshear responded: “I have a U.S. senator who keeps saying Kentuckians don’t want this. Well, the facts don’t prove that out."<br />
<br />
In Kentucky, more than 400,000 people gained health insurance through the program, with the highest growth rate of Medicaid coverage of any state.<br />
<br />
In late 2013, as McConnell pointed out, it was learned that about 280,000 Kentuckians would have to give up their existing insurance policies and enroll in alternatives that comply with the federal Affordable Care Act. Kentucky Department of Insurance spokeswoman Ronda Sloan said individual policies for about 130,000 people would be discontinued, as would small group policies for about 150,000 more.<br />
<br />
Beshear’s successor, Republican Governor Bevin, was elected in 2015 on a promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law on the view that thousands of Kentuckians had unaffordable premiums and only one health insurer to choose from.<br />
<br />
Bevin explained: “We want this to be a helping hand for people at a time when they need it, but then be able to return to the commercial marketplace.” Last year, Bevin submitted the waiver to restrict Medicaid eligibility by requiring enrollees to work or volunteer at least 20 hours per week and to pay monthly premiums based on income.<br />
<br />
In an ideologically Neoliberal proposal Bevin's plan would take away from Medicaid recipients most eye care and dental benefits but then allow recipients to earn them back based on this chart:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLiKggKJ7A_dUZ9B_4SFtqP2rXlDvZbzc_eFI-fj4wPmjc_nKtyCc6g2EVqaenXFDo03BJ0MTPDKET2b3qPS50GrnJ_BRrQJTaKvnHOiHElsoHxuIrtxu4j2jZsmDRsPG517cbg6UAMCs/s1600/bevnrewards.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLiKggKJ7A_dUZ9B_4SFtqP2rXlDvZbzc_eFI-fj4wPmjc_nKtyCc6g2EVqaenXFDo03BJ0MTPDKET2b3qPS50GrnJ_BRrQJTaKvnHOiHElsoHxuIrtxu4j2jZsmDRsPG517cbg6UAMCs/s1600/bevnrewards.png" /></a></div>
<br />
Californians, on the other hand, now have Socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders telling us "Please make my life easier. The great state of California can send a message that will be heard all over this country and all over the world if you pass single-payer here.” (He doesn't tell anyone that in Vermont the Governor and the Legislature are locked in battle because under the Affordable Care Act, virtually all teacher health insurance plans must be re-done to start a new plan on January 1, 2018. But hey, nobody cares that Bernie is politically useless in his home state when it comes to solving problems.)<br />
<br />
Indeed the "great state of California" is looking at Senate Bill 562, the Healthy California Act, which for all Californians would cover all medical care, including inpatient, outpatient, emergency care, dental, vision, mental health, nursing home care, eliminate co-pays, insurance deductibles and allow Californians to choose their doctor plus referrals would not be required. (It's tempting to say that also for anyone who loses a tooth, regardless of age a State tooth fairy will leave $1,000 under your pillow....)<br />
<br />
A nine-member <i>unpaid</i> board appointed by the governor and Legislature would oversee the health system. An advisory committee, consisting of doctors, nurses, consumers and other health care providers, also would guide public policy.<br />
<br />
The state would seek waivers from the federal government for Medi-Cal (Medicaid), the Children’s Health Insurance Program, <b><i>Medicare</i></b>, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to offset the cost of the program. But how to pay the substantive balance of the cost has yet to be proposed.<br />
<br />
The last California single-payer proposal was introduced in 2007. Estimates indicated it would have cost the state $209.8 billion rising to as much as $252 billion in 2015, according a fiscal analysis by the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The plan included an 8% wage tax on employers and 4% on employees. Based on now known medical care cost increases since 2007, the tax for that plan would have to have been raised substantially, probably some number like 12% on both employers and employees. And the plan was not as comprehensive as the new proposal. It was vetoed by then Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.<br />
<br />
Democratic Governor Jerry Brown when in Washington lobbying about the billions his state could lose on the eve of the House Republican vote to repeal and replace Obamacare said regarding SB562: “Where do you get the extra money? This is the whole question. I don’t even get ... how do you do that? This is called ‘the unknown by means of the more unknown.' In other words, you take a problem, and say ‘I am going to solve it by something that’s ... a bigger problem,’ which makes no sense.”<br />
<br />
The reality is that Social Security and Medicare are mostly funded by taxes on wages, partly paid by employers and by employees. Make no mistake about it, any single-payer plan in California will require additional such taxes. And no it won't come from "the rich" as California already has a billionaire-income-tax supporting its deficit budget in a significant amount.<br />
<br />
It is a deficit budget, worse than expected as Brown’s administration miscalculated costs for Medi-Cal by $1.9 billion in the 2016-17 budget. The Democratic governor called for more than $3 billion in budget cuts in 2017-18 because of a projected deficit he pegged at $1.6 billion for that year. The massive hole in the Medi-Cal budget surprised state lawmakers.<br />
<br />
Since it is likely that California will see reductions in federal support for Medi-Cal within the next few years, it's going to be interesting to watch "liberal" Californian's deal with taxes. Because in 2017 the Democrats controlled <b>⅔</b>'s of the votes in both houses of the Legislature, a very large gasoline tax increase was approved to do badly needed road maintenance. Now a ballot measure has been proposed to have the voters repeal the gas tax increase.<br />
<br />
Without a <b>⅔</b>'s vote in each house of the Legislature any health care taxes, like all California tax proposals, must be approved by the voters.<br />
<br />
Assuming a tax on wages is proposed, because the State has fumbled a lot of programs over the past two decades, it will be interesting to see if the over-65, most of whom wouldn't be taxed, would consider supporting the measure. Or would the Legislature run into a wall old protestors with signs saying "Keep the STATE GOVERNMENT out of my Medicare." My guess is that would happen if the bill continues to propose to interfere with Medicare.<br />
<br />
And of course they would have to get it past voters who have good employer-sponsored health plans. What's the slogan going to be - "Trust Us State Officials to Get Healthcare Right!<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">...even though we risked too much with the Affordable Care Act and now can't even pay that bill."</span></i><br />
<br />
Consider this problem. In order to pay for health care for a child in a poor family whose Facebook page you don't follow, it might prevent you from buying the next iPhone, as you do each year. That could negatively impact workers in Kentucky.<br />
<br />
Which interestingly brings us back to Kentucky's Senator, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who <a href="http://www.kentucky.com/news/business/article150124187.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">according to a newspaper report</a> noted he had nothing to do with Apple’s investment but came to the plant for the announcement to congratulate the company.<br />
<br />
“The last thing I look at at night and the first thing I look at in the morning is my iPhone,” McConnell said. “And unlike most people, I think of Harrodsburg, Kentucky.”<br />
<br />
So do some people in Cupertino, Senator. But why do I doubt you ever think of them?Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-82550120509143243492017-05-03T11:02:00.000-07:002018-06-18T15:28:52.712-07:00The Chilling Trump Civil War Blurt-Blat About that cruel slave owner Jackson and the genocide of Native Americans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
This week's Trumpist is actually President Donald Trump. If he weren't President it would be hard to be critical of <i>him</i> for what he said even though it is easy to criticize what he said. He is just a typical American completely unfamiliar with the facts of American history while repeating the mythology of that history:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
TRUMP: [President Andrew Jackson] was a swashbuckler. But when his wife died, did you know he visited her grave everyday? I visited her grave actually because I was in Tennessee.
<br />
ZITO: That's right. You were in Tennessee.
<br />
TRUMP: And it was amazing. The people of Tennessee are amazing people. They love Andrew Jackson. They love Andrew Jackson in Tennessee.
<br />
ZITO: He's fascinating.
<br />
TRUMP: I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, “There's no reason for this.” People don't realize, you know, the Civil War — if you think about it, why? People don't ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?
</div>
</blockquote>
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First of all, Andrew Jackson may be loved by some in Tennessee, but in fact historically he was the Englishic-American who most successfully advocated for the inclusion of the genocide of Native Americans in U.S. policy.<br />
<br />
Second, Andrew Jackson died in 1845, 16 years before the Civil War started. It is fair to assume he would not have compromised on slavery as this hero of white supremacy was a rabid, cruel slave owner as indicated in this ad to recover one of his slaves who ran away offering an additional "ten dollars extra for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of three hundred dollars":<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
Of course, context is important. When he became President, four of his six predecessors were slave owners even while in office. In fact, of the first 18 Presidents, 8 (in red) owned slaves during their Presidency, 5 (in green) owned slaves some other time in their lives, 5 (in blue) never owned slaves:<br />
<ol>
<li><b><span style="color: red;">George Washington</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: blue;">John Adams</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: red;">Thomas Jefferson</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: red;">James Madison</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: red;">James Monroe</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: blue;">John Quincy Adams</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: red;">Andrew Jackson</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: green;">Martin Van Buren</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: green;">William Henry Harrison</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: red;">John Tyler</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: red;">James K. Polk</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: red;">Zachary Taylor</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: blue;">Millard Fillmore</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: blue;">Franklin Pierce</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: green;">James Buchanan</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: blue;">Abraham Lincoln</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: green;">Andrew Johnson</span></b></li>
<li><b><span style="color: green;">Ulysses S. Grant</span></b></li>
</ol>
And if context is important, compared to the generals on the Union side in 1861, Jackson was a pretty competent general. So perhaps had he been alive and well in 1861 today we might be talking about <i><b>two countries</b></i>. That really would have made him popular in today's Tennessee.<br />
<br />
Trump's belief that Jackson could have negotiated to avoid the war reflects a poor understanding of the difference in the Southern populism that led to Jackson's election and the Northern populism that led to Lincoln's election. In Trump's case the Rust Belt - Deep South populism he rode to victory had much in common with Jackson's victory.<br />
<br />
I hope Trump's blurt-blat only reflects a troubling overall
American ignorance. But I fear that deep-down it reflects a
chilling property-ownership economic slant of Trump which parallels Jackson when
it comes to workers. Perhaps it is both. <br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
It is chilling to me as a Californian because the most recent legalized slavery in the United States is deeply embedded in Trumpist anti-Mexican rhetoric. It brings up memories associated with this 1966 Phil Ochs song:<br />
<br />
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="font-size: large;"> Bracero
</span></b><br />
<br />
Wade into the river, through the rippling shallow waters<br />
Steal across the thirsty border, bracero<br />
Come bring your hungry body to the golden fields of plenty<br />
From a peso to a penny, bracero<br />
<br />
Oh, welcome to California<br />
Where the friendly farmers will take care of you<br />
<br />
Come labor for your mother, for your father and your brother<br />
For your sisters and your lover, bracero<br />
Come pick the fruits of yellow, break the flowers from the berries<br />
Purple grapes will fill your bellies, bracero<br />
<br />
Oh, welcome to California<br />
Where the friendly farmers will take care of you<br />
<br />
And the sun will bite your body, as the dust will draw you thristy<br />
While your muscles beg for mercy, bracero<br />
In the shade of your sombrero, drop your sweat upon the soil<br />
Like the fruit your youth can spoil, bracero<br />
<br />
Oh, welcome to California<br />
Where the friendly farmers will take care of you<br />
<br />
When the weary night embraces, sleep in shacks that could be cages<br />
They will take it from your wages, bracero<br />
Come sing about tomorrow with a jingle of the dollars<br />
And forget your crooked collar, bracero<br />
<br />
Oh, welcome to California<br />
Where the friendly farmers will take care of you<br />
<br />
And the local men are lazy, and they make too much of trouble<br />
Besides we'd have to pay them double, bracero<br />
Ah, but if you feel you're fallin', if you find the pace is killing<br />
There are others who are willing, bracero<br />
<br />
Oh, welcome to California<br />
Where the friendly farmer will take care of you</blockquote>
The term "slavery" in the 21st Century United States is associated with racism. In fact, in human history while slavery frequently is associated with with some variation on tribalism or extended tribalism. But in U.S. history it is ongoing within the competitive private property economic system embraced by Americans and the United States Constitution. From the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery" target="_blank">Wikipedia entry</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
<b>Slavery</b> is, in the strictest sense of the term, any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property. A slave is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalised, de jure slavery. In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against his or her will. Scholars also use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour, to refer to such situations. However – and especially under slavery in broader senses of the word – slaves may have some rights and/or protections, according to laws and/or customs.
<br />
Slavery began to exist before written history, in many cultures. A person could become a slave from the time of their birth, capture, or purchase.
<br />
While slavery was institutionally recognized by most societies, it has now been outlawed in all recognized countries, the last being Mauritania in 2007. Nevertheless, there are still more slaves today than at any previous point in history: an estimated 45 million people remain enslaved worldwide. The most common form of the slave trade is now commonly referred to as human trafficking. Chattel slavery is also still practiced by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. In other areas, slavery (or unfree labour) continues through practices such as debt bondage, serfdom, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, and forced marriage.
<br />
Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many cultures. Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. This, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as the American Indian peoples of the salmon-rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest Coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.
<br />
Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization and society.
</div>
</blockquote>
It is not hard to imagine a modern economic system of several classes which includes a corporate ownership class and a corporate-owned slave class. In such a system if the dominate morality required best-of-care for slaves, the corporations allowed to own slaves would provide adequate housing, food, clothing, transportation, quality health care, entertainment, etc., for every slave from infancy through old-age.<br />
<br />
In a different economic system, we now require the ownership class to pay wages to employees only when profitable work is available. As several economists have determined from the economic modeling of slavery, it is cheaper to let the children of the working class go without healthcare. If you owned them as valuable property, you'd have to adequately provide for them.<br />
<br />
Economists do not model morality, of course. And most certainly, politicians do not, including the Trumpists.<br />
<br />
As I noted in the prior post, Wall Street financiers, commercial shippers, and merchants all had economic interests in the South maintaining its slave-based economy. In the wake of the Compromise of 1850 which resulted in California's admittance to the Union, the Union Safety Committee was created in New York City and pledged “to resist every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest.” As current Wall Street financiers (many of whom are in Trump's cabinet), would say "it's economics, you see...."<br />
<br />
It has been said that Churchill's quote near the beginning of this post paraphrased this one...<br />
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<br />
The difference is that Churchill assumed people might be taught history. Santayana assumed people would notice what's going on around them to learn from the errors of their grandparents' generation, the errors of their parents' generation, and their own accumulating errors.<br />
<br />
Neither anticipated 21st Century American Trumpists....Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-32289299946214376942017-04-26T16:26:00.000-07:002018-06-18T14:39:56.129-07:00The Chilling Blurt-Blats of Trumpists Jeff Sessions' Hawaii Incident reminds us to heed Sun Tzu's The Art of War<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Politics in a democracy is a war, of sorts. Or rather it is a substitute for killing each other in power struggles related to economics (wealth and property) and beliefs (religion, ideology, tribe).<br />
<br />
<i>The Art of War</i> is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the 5th century BC attributed to the Chinese military strategist and philosopher General Sun Tzu. As noted in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#Application_outside_the_military" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>, much of the text is about how to fight wars without actually having to do battle. It gives tips on how to outsmart one's opponent so that physical battle is not necessary. As such, it has found application as a training guide for many competitive endeavors that do not involve actual combat.<br />
<br />
As with too many things in American culture, we kinda, sorta think we know about <i>The Art of War</i>. That is foolish because it is a long philosophical treatise that does not lend itself to the common American understanding limit of 140 characters. For instance, many Americans are aware of "know your enemy" when in fact the wisdom as shown in the image above is:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 90%; font-weight: bold;">
So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be put at risk even in a hundred battles. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.
</div>
</blockquote>
In the context of an "opponent" in a competition outside of a physical battle, "know your enemy" means to understand how they likely will respond to the changing circumstances within which they find themselves. To know your enemy, you must know their <i><a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/frame-of-reference" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">frame of reference</a>, </i>their "structure of concepts, values, customs, views, etc., by means of which an individual or group perceives or evaluates data, communicates ideas, and regulates behavior."<br />
<br />
Everyone has a <i>frame of reference</i> based on a lifetime of
experience which sets their standards for judging the world - their
perspective, their way of looking at things. Among the elements of a lifetime that create a <i>frame of reference</i> in childhood and adolescence are<br />
<ol type="a">
<li>the importance of kinship, lineage, and affinity groups and </li>
<li>the cultural quiescence within the hometown region.</li>
</ol>
These influences can be clearly heard in the blurts and blats
that emanate from the Trumpists - members of Donald Trump's
team. If I as a Californian really listen to them, I find that trumpeting disturbing.<br />
<br />
But, when Trumpists blurt and blat, I know those are an expression of their <i>frames of reference</i> as is my varied and many reactions. In such a case it is important to "know" them and equally important to "know" ourselves.<br />
<br />
Last week the Trump-appointed United States Attorney General Jeff
Sessions made this comment about a federal judge in the state of Hawaii:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
"I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power."
</div>
</blockquote>
Despite the subsequent repugnant (to me) discussions and defenses offered that he was just attacking the judicial branch, his statement clearly sounds like he meant to minimize the place - an island in the pacific, maybe U.S. territory, but surely not a place entitled to membership in the exclusive country club known as <b><i>These</i></b> United States.<br />
<br />
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<br />
It wasn't a comment that would be outside of Trumpist Session's <i>frame of reference</i>. But as a fellow American whose <i>frame of reference</i> is Californian, I must consider Jeff Sessions' <i>frame of reference</i> in the context of <i>his</i> childhood and adolescence from the facts of<br />
<ol type="a">
<li>the importance of kinship, lineage, and affinity groups and </li>
<li>the cultural quiescence within the hometown region.</li>
</ol>
It isn't just that Sessions was born and raised in, and lived most of
his life in, Alabama, a geographic region historically different from California, though that might give a hint. It isn't just
that since the early 1700's no male in his paternal lineage ever called
home a place outside the southernmost part <i><b>These</b></i> United States:<br />
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<br />
Rather <i>it's all that plus</i>
the fact that his great-grandfather died at the Battle of Antietam
fighting for the South in the Civil War, and that his grandfather, his
father, and he are all named "Jefferson Beauregard" Sessions...<br />
<ul>
<li>as in Jefferson Davis was selected as President of the Confederacy at the constitutional convention in Montgomery, Alabama. </li>
<li>as in Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard.</li>
</ul>
Now I know those names were commonly used among white families in the South after the Civil War. And I know that Jeff Sessions didn't name himself. But most other people likely will <i><b>not</b></i> share a perspective, a way of looking at things, with Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III - including most any American whose lineage includes no one from the Slave States indicated in the map below:
<br />
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<br />
However....<br />
<br />
Early 19th Century American history isn't as simple as that. Among many people where Sessions was born and raised, there is a shared belief that any state within the land area not a U.S. state before the Missouri Compromise in 1819 indicated in the map below has a somewhat-less-than-equal standing relative to Alabama...<br />
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...because in 1819 when Alabama became a state, there were 11 Free States and 11 Slave States. The open furious political/ideological debate after 1819 - regarding what would be allowed in the <i>frame of reference</i> in new states not on the map above - ended after about 1 million Americans were killed in the Civil War.<br />
<br />
For many in the South, "These United States" of 1819 was the last map of the nation formed in 1789 pursuant to the 1790 Census Map. The brutal reality of that map is subconsciously embedded in the <i>frame of reference</i> of many who live in those pink states today <br />
<br />
However, while the Civil War as a series of physical battles ended on April 9, 1865, when General Lee surrendered at the village of Appomattox Court House, it could be said that the last battle casualty of the Civil War occurred five days later on April 14, 1865, when President Lincoln was shot.<br />
<br />
As an aside, the last Confederate General to surrender his forces was Cherokee leader Stand Watie, on June 23, 1865 - while many 21st Century Americans think the only issue of the Civil War was black slavery, members of the Cherokee nation, which was subject to the genocide policies of the United States that continued into the 20th Century, would disagree. Anyway....<br />
<br />
So
what gut response would you expect from Sessions about a judge on an island in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean overturning a Presidential Order??? Particularly when the response is from
someone like Sessions who was in elementary school in Alabama when former California Governor Chief
Justice Earl Warren ordered an end to desegregation???<br />
<br />
Think about this <i>frame of reference</i>.When the land that makes up most of Alabama became part of
the nation under what we know first 13 States pursuant to our Constitution in
1789, slavery was legal in 8 of 13 states, including 87% of the new nation's land area and holding 63% of
the population.<sup>1 </sup><br />
<br />
When you look at that 1790 map, you may not realize that <i>of the states shown</i>,
75 years later the strongest support in the North for going to war came
from New England states and Pennsylvania. Further, consider the irony in the fact that Donald Trump's New York
City <a href="http://lostmuseum.cuny.edu/archive/a-city-divided-new-york-and-the-civil" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">historically</a> liked to sell stuff to the Sessions and their neighbors:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
...From Wall Street financiers, to commercial shippers, to merchants
selling manufactured goods to a South that produced little of its own,
the New York City economy depended heavily on southern cotton. In
response to the divisive Compromise of 1850, a group of merchants formed
the Union Safety Committee, which pledged “to resist every attempt to
alienate any portion of our country from the rest.” During the war
years, Mayor Fernando Wood, a “Peace Democrat,” led opposition to the
war in the city, which grew as the wartime economy floundered and
casualties mounted.
</div>
</blockquote>
Based on their <i>frames of reference</i>,
it's a given that Jeff Sessions and his boss don't
understand Californians with their legal pot and their immigrants and
their (at least from many like me) constant doubt that the United States is anything more than a fraudulent spin when it comes to liberty and justice for all, much less when it comes to equality.<br />
<br />
That some non-white judge from
Hawaii overturned the travel ban against some non-Christian brown people must be particularly galling to Trumpists even
though the Senate, including Sessions, unanimously confirmed Derrick K.
Watson. Maybe when he voted then Senator Sessions didn't know that the "K" stood for the middle
name Kahala reflecting Judge Watson's <i>frame of reference</i> differences from a
Southerner whose middle name is Beauregard.<br />
<br />
When the
judge was confirmed
it was noted that he became the fourth person of Native Hawaiian
descent to serve as an Article III judge in American history. Also the
District of Hawaii became the first federal court in U.S. history with a
majority of Asian Pacific Americans, as Judge Watson joined Chief Judge
Susan Oki Mollway and Judge Leslie Kobayashi on the bench. At the time
of Watson’s confirmation, Hawaii Congresswoman and Chair of the
Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Judy Chu said:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
I
am thrilled that the Senate has voted to confirm Derrick Kahala
Watson’s nomination to the U.S. District Court. This decision continues a
significant trend of working to ensure that our federal judiciary
reflects the diversity of the American people. Judge Watson is a strong
addition to the federal bench, and will surely be a great public servant
for the people of Hawaii.</div>
</blockquote>
Watson, whose mother
worked in a bank and father was a Honolulu police officer, after
attending the the Kamehameha Schools became the first in his family to
attend college getting his undergraduate degree at Harvard. Like
Sessions in his native Alabama, Watson has deep roots in Hawaii, growing
up in a multi-generational household on Oahu. Of course, Watson's
Harvard Law graduating class included Barack Obama and Neil Gorsuch.<br />
<br />
An interesting non-Sessions perspective on Watson's ruling was offered in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/16/derrick-watson-hawaii-judge-trump-travel-ban" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">this article</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
There are indications, though, that Watson’s viewpoint may have been
further influenced by his Hawaiian heritage and his long record of
advocacy for immigrant rights and civil rights. While with a San
Francisco law firm in the early 2000s, he devoted hundreds of hours to
pro bono cases defending the rights of Mexican restaurant workers being
held in slave-like conditions and to landlord-tenant disputes.
<br />
The complaint filed by Hawaii’s attorney general against the
Trump travel ban contained an explicit reference to some of the most
painful chapters in the islands’ history – the Chinese Exclusion Acts
and the imposition of martial law and internment of Japanese Americans
following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. At the time, the US supreme court
upheld the government’s argument – similar to Trump’s – that it had the
executive authority to defend national security as it saw fit. But the
court’s ruling in <i>Korematsu v United States</i> has since been
described as a “stain on American jurisprudence” and has been widely
repudiated in federal court rulings if never explicitly overturned.
<br />
“If you have an order taking us back half a century to a time
when there was discrimination on the basis of national origin or
religion,” Hawaii’s attorney general, Doug Chin, told reporters after
Watson’s ruling, “that’s something we have to speak up against.”
</div>
</blockquote>
Jeff Sessions is two years younger than me. The fact is I too have a <i>frame of reference</i>
based on the culture of my home state, California. Also I
was heavily influenced by the fact that while my Irish Catholic family
members were serving in WWII, when stationed in the South they
suffered discrimination from Sessions family compatriots. We understood the reality of the 1881 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=00sEABCBm74C&pg=PA242&lpg=PA242&dq=Edward+Freeman+a+grand+land+if+only+every+Irishman&source=bl&ots=9BLYB-5QzN&sig=sQ-Ub7uijf0fnTcs_CSNso08aoc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiP9Lrww8DTAhUQ-2MKHY_rC58Q6AEIQjAG#v=onepage&q=Edward%20Freeman%20a%20grand%20land%20if%20only%20every%20Irishman&f=false" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">observation written in a letter</a> by British historian Edward Freeman on his return from America:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
This
would be a grand land if only every Irishman would kill a Negro, and be
hanged for it. I find this sentiment generally approved - sometimes
with the qualification that they want Irish and Negroes for servants,
not being able to get any other.
</div>
</blockquote>
When I was 2 years old, then California
Governor Earl Warren supported the integration of Mexican-American
students in California school systems following <i>Mendez v. Westminster</i>. I was in elementary school when then Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Earl Warren wrote the opinion for <i>Brown v Board of Education</i>. Some of my
California high school classmates were born in Japanese-American
internment camps. A lot of my
California high school classmates were Mexican-Americans.<br />
<br />
Why
anyone would care about a 19th Century American Civil
War in the 21st Century is a mystery to me. The South lost. Get over it.
But I also recognize the depth of feelings in Sessions <i>frame of reference.</i> <br />
<br />
Most Americans today do not live in the states indicated on the 1790 map above. But wherever they live, what
Americans need to learn from history is that our American progenitors screwed up,
a lot. They got a lot wrong, more than they got right. We need to
forgive our American ancestors, but not make mistakes based on their
stupidity. That particularly goes for Trumpists who have acquired political power, such as U.S. Attorney General Jeff
Sessions.<br />
<br />
California Senate Majority Leader Kevin de
León when challenging Sessions' threats against Sanctuary Cities was partly
correct when he stated:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
It
has become abundantly clear that Atty. Gen. [Jeff] Sessions and the
Trump administration are basing their law enforcement policies on
principles of white supremacy — not American values. Their constant and
systematic targeting of diverse cities and states goes beyond
constitutional norms and will be challenged at every level.
</div>
</blockquote>
He is right that the policies reflect white
supremacist values. What he fails to openly recognize is not that Sessions and Trump and the
Deplorables are white supremacists, but that they are Americans reflecting their
values as Americans - American values that consistently go back to 17th Century America. It is clear to me that Sessions' <i>frame of reference</i> retains in him a concept of America that is chilling. <br />
<br />
That's a problem for 21st Century residents of Hawaii and
California. When a country permits persons with this <i>frame of reference</i> to hold
office because of a failed democratic election that gave such persons power not only with less than a majority vote but with fewer votes than the other candidate, the result may be legal but it is a
literal threat to non-white Americans.<br />
<br />
When "the other" appears on their radar, the Trumpists would be as
comfortable as their 1940's predecessors carrying out a racist act under the color of law.<br />
<br />
It would be a racist act similar to
putting Japanese-Americans in
concentration camps because their ancestors lived in a country with which America is at war, while not imprisoning German-Americans nor Italian-Americans.<br />
<br />
We so spin this in our
history classes that we don't recognize that this happened not because of any danger to our country but because Germans and Italians are white Europeans while the Japanese are Asians.<br />
<br />
By spinning it in our grade school and high school classes by not noticing what we didn't do to German-Americans and Italian-Americans, we won't recognize as our core beliefs the tenants of white supremacy when we do it again, such as that Trump immigration order which is clearly a white supremacist act carried out under the guise of threat from "the other."<br />
<br />
Not
only that, but it is likely that today's Supreme Court full of white Catholic men would uphold
it in the name of safety and security despite facts to the contrary.<br />
<br />
That's
the country Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump and the Deplorables want to live in and actually live in.<br />
<br />
As
a Californian I have a problem with that kind of America. It was less
than 100 years ago, in 1881 when British historian Edward Freeman made
his observation about America quoted above, from <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/10/opinion/falco-italian-immigrants/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">When Italian immigrants were 'the other'</a> we learn:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
The
largest mass lynching in U.S. history took place in New Orleans in 1891
— and it wasn’t African-Americans who were lynched, as many of us might
assume. It was Italian-Americans.
<br />
After nine Italians were tried and found not guilty of
murdering New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy, a mob dragged them
from the jail, along with two other Italians being held on unrelated
charges, and lynched them all. The lynchings were followed by mass
arrests of Italian immigrants throughout New Orleans, and waves of
attacks against Italians nationwide.
<br />
What was the reaction of our country’s leaders to the
lynchings? Teddy Roosevelt, not yet president, famously said they were
“a rather good thing.” The response in The New York Times was worse. A
March 16, 1891, editorial referred to the victims of the lynchings as “…
sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and
assassins.” An editorial the next day argued that: “Lynch law was the
only course open to the people of New Orleans. …”
<br />
John Parker, who helped organize the lynch mob, later went on
to be governor of Louisiana. In 1911, he said of Italians that they
were “just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in
[their] habits, lawless, and treacherous.”
</div>
</blockquote>
If you think Sessions' and Trump's America is different, the writer of that article points out:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
...In
earlier centuries, Catholics in America were in a position similar to
today's Muslims. In 1785, when Catholics proposed building St. Peter's
Church in the heart of Manhattan, city officials, fearing the papacy and
sinister foreign influences, forced them to relocate outside the city
limits. In this incident, it's easy to hear echoes of the Murfreesboro
protests where there is opposition to the building of a mosque, as well
as the ongoing protests against an Islamic center proposed for 51 Park
Place in contemporary Manhattan.
<br />
On December 24, 1806, two decades after St. Peter's was built
on Church Street, where it still stands, protesters surrounded the
church, outraged by mysterious ceremonies going on inside, ceremonies we
now commonly understand to be the celebration of Christmas. The
Christmas Eve 1806 protest led to a riot in which dozens were injured
and a policeman was killed.
</div>
</blockquote>
When in 2016 San Francisco 49ers quarterback
Colin Kaepernick in protest of racial oppression and inequality in the
United States knelt during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner,
Session's and Trump's America went on the attack in outrage. At no time
did, or would, the Deplorables ever wonder why because they and Trump
revel in ignorance. As I <a href="http://redwoodguardian.blogspot.com/2016/10/about-that-star-spangled-banner.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">explained elsewhere</a>,<i> The Star-Spangled Banner</i>
is something we should know about but don't because its pro-slavery
verse written by a racist slave-owner who thought the British would take
away his slaves is deliberately hidden from us.<br />
<br />
Read this post <a href="http://redwoodguardian.blogspot.com/2016/10/about-that-star-spangled-banner.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">About that Star-Spangled Banner....</a>
Remember that this occurred in 2016, not 1816 or 1916, and it was a
Californian who came under attack, the same year Donald Trump was
legally elected President.<br />
<br />
My <i>frame of reference</i>
created in me values demonstrated by the actions of Watson and
Kaepernick. I know that we are in a political war with "another America" over those
values. So when I hear...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 135%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">
THE CONSTANTLY TRUMPETING TRUMPISTS
</span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJyGehPP7tioJ3v23uce5zUV1iOVBo3OMvKwgy1deC_BvU1Pvh9gum3oNZmwnviFwPpM2B3szeRIc6NQ1S6nKfdHC4kLSYs60COVCBiIofbQDrnS8GHtRrJSezZE_jiGsuDghQ_nkRlIU/s1600/trumpeting_elephants.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJyGehPP7tioJ3v23uce5zUV1iOVBo3OMvKwgy1deC_BvU1Pvh9gum3oNZmwnviFwPpM2B3szeRIc6NQ1S6nKfdHC4kLSYs60COVCBiIofbQDrnS8GHtRrJSezZE_jiGsuDghQ_nkRlIU/s1600/trumpeting_elephants.gif" /></a></div>
...I know the effect will be chilling. meaning those blurts and blats will create a feeling of sudden fear, anxiety, or alarm. It is the threat that underlies my statement in the prior post here <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/02/when-we-rise-how-history-repeats-itself.html#attack" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Regarding "When We Rise" - How history repeats itself and why we must protect "San Francisco Values"</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
How much does middle America respect San Francisco Values? It appears that answer is "not at all." When one realizes that San Francisco Values include love, peace, tolerance, diversity, creativity, freedom, spirituality, prosperity, community, truth, justice, and care for the environment it is a little hard to understand why anyone would not respect San Francisco Values.
</div>
</blockquote>
But if we understand a
<i>frame of reference</i> that is structured around 1790 Christian Old Testament tribal values (not the teachings of Jesus) and 1990 Selfish Capitalism tribal values, we do understand the enemy as recommended by Sun Tzu.<br />
<br />
__________________________
<br />
<blockquote style="line-height: 14px;">
Footnotes:<br />
<span style="font-size: 85%; line-height: 5px;"><sup>1</sup>Any time you don't understand American politics, remember that some 75 years after the ratification of the Constitution in order to amend slavery out of the Constitution, the North under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln decided to take the risk to kill 1 million Americans, more than half from slave states including Jeff Sessions great-grandfather. And there is nothing factually untrue about that statement.<br />
<br />
Many feel that strong evidence exists that Americans on both sides did not understand that hundreds of thousands would die. That is true. As with every truth about the general population in a democracy, the voters were basically ignorant about what was at stake, so they voted with their ignorance. The fact is, in 1860 most would not have read the poem <i>The Charge of the Light Brigade</i> an 1854 narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson about the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. Nor would they have seen the photograph titled <i>Valley Of The Shadow Of Death</i> snapped by British photographer Roger Fenton in 1855:<br />
<br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiobaJaqBnnsMA7JeifGXjx07aiWZD0U6QD73xdzTYjPPpPBwY_tUfRPBygKV3jVezHoPHIKgyahJplwCEmjNzoCHN18VQUWBK1bl4aAR0o7uSHqn69mQiCck7jncdtOcR0ZDFVoJmxn78/s1600/690-Valley_of_the_shadow_of_death.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="462" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiobaJaqBnnsMA7JeifGXjx07aiWZD0U6QD73xdzTYjPPpPBwY_tUfRPBygKV3jVezHoPHIKgyahJplwCEmjNzoCHN18VQUWBK1bl4aAR0o7uSHqn69mQiCck7jncdtOcR0ZDFVoJmxn78/s400/690-Valley_of_the_shadow_of_death.jpg" width="590" /></a><span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 85%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Cannon to right of them,<br />Cannon to left of them,<br />Cannon in front of them<br /> Volleyed and thundered;<br />Stormed at with shot and shell,<br />Boldly they rode and well,<br />Into the jaws of Death,<br />Into the mouth of hell<br /> Rode the six hundred.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 85%;">
<br />
One of the truths of American history is that many leading American politicians were well aware of the Crimean War, one of the first conflicts to use modern technologies such as explosive shells, railways, telegraphs, nursing, etc. They knew <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weapons_in_the_American_Civil_War" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">the likely future reality</a>:<br />
</span>
<br />
<blockquote style="line-height: 14px;">
<div style="font-family: serif;">
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> The Civil War is often to referred as the first "modern" war in history as it included the most advanced technology and innovations of warfare available at the time. Some of the innovations and advances of the Civil War included mass production of war material, rifling of gun barrels and the use of the Minié ball, the advent of repeating firearms and metallic cartridges, ironclad warships, advances in medicine, communication (especially the telegraph), and transportation (railroads), and the gradual decline of tactics from previous centuries.
</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 85%;">
Because, of course, too many Americans today choose their ignorance of history, most are not aware that in 1863, when the Russian Baltic fleet arrived in New York harbor, the Russian Far East fleet arrived in San Francisco. This was probably the most important Civil War related event to occur in California.<br />
<br />
Late in the Civil War, the Confederate cruiser <i>CSS Shenandoah</i> was operating in the Bering Sea, where the unarmed, unsuspecting New Bedford whaling fleet hunted the gray whales. Over the course of a few days, 24 vessels were captured – most burned, the rest loaded with prisoners and sent into San Francisco. American whaling never recovered. Without a reliable supply of inexpensive whale oil as a smokeless lamp fuel and premium lubricant, there was now a vast new market for kerosene distilled from that nasty black stuff that oozed out of the ground in Pennsylvania: petroleum.<br /><br />When an attack on San Francisco by the <i>Shenandoah</i> seemed to be imminent, the Russian admiral there gave orders to his ships to defend the city if necessary. There were no major Union warships on the scene, so Russia was about to fight for the United States. The attack never came as the bloodiest war in history up to that time came to a close.<br />
<br />
The point here is American politicians and generals on both sides of the dispute in 1860 were not ignorant of the risk demonstrated by the Crimean War. In fact, John Basil Turchin, a Union army brigadier general in the American Civil War who led two critical charges that saved the day at Chickamauga and was among the first to lead soldiers up Missionary Ridge, was Ivan Vasilyevich Turchaninov. He was a Russian immigrant and former Colonel of Staff in the Russian Guards who fought in the Crimean War.<br />
<br />
They well understood that hundreds of thousands of Americans would die in a Civil War.
</span></blockquote>
Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-38427217118723876152017-04-16T16:48:00.002-07:002018-06-18T14:32:15.100-07:00Slowing the 21st Century Disruption Way-of-Life Emperical Egalitarian Progressives act to rebuild California infrastructure and jobs<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOa-_rNpDW9VCulIa-Oxg-d5OecULBih6rJqiX6A_TiWIx4oYmdwYfeVz4iNX80gKKYIkg-sGh325e7eeI4tcxBW1lcQwzsI4E29x-F7t7WFsARmc4DPNlh1QbIbmhwgPBJ5IXbP88IbE/s1600/disruption_way_of_life.jpg" />
Disruption, of course, is just change at a higher speed. Humans have always had disruption - the death of someone important to you is an instant disruption. We had rituals, better than those we have today, to deal with a death of someone you love and the process of moving forward in time.<br />
<br />
But a way-of-life means "the typical pattern of behavior of a person or group." The above definition of "disruption" in the context of a way-of-life creates <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_trauma" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">psychological trauma</a> which is defined as follows:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
<b>Psychological trauma</b> is a type of damage to the mind that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event. Trauma is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one's ability to cope, or integrate the emotions involved with that experience. A traumatic event involves one's experience, or repeating events of being overwhelmed that can be precipitated in weeks, years, or even decades as the person struggles to cope with the immediate circumstances, eventually leading to serious, long-term negative consequences.
</div>
</blockquote>
The thing is, somewhere around 2012-13 researchers began to notice a change in death age patterns among Americans. The media began to catch on to it in 2016 and <i>The Washington Post</i> did an extensive set of stories <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/04/10/a-new-divide-in-american-death/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.b125132cbac0" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">beginning with this</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
White women have been dying prematurely at higher rates since the turn of this century, passing away in their 30s, 40s and 50s in a slow-motion crisis driven by decaying health in small-town America, according to an analysis of national health and mortality statistics by The Washington Post.
<br />
Among African Americans, Hispanics and even the oldest white Americans, death rates have continued to fall. But for white women in what should be the prime of their lives, death rates have spiked upward. In one of the hardest-hit groups — rural white women in their late 40s — the death rate has risen by 30 percent.
<br />
The Post’s analysis, which builds on academic research published last year, shows a clear divide in the health of urban and rural Americans, with the gap widening most dramatically among whites. The statistics reveal two Americas diverging, neither as healthy as it should be but one much sicker than the other.
</div>
</blockquote>
California is not an exception as made clear in this<a href="http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article127339944.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"> Fresno Bee article</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
Young and middle-aged whites in the Southern Central Valley are dying at an increasing rate, researchers said Wednesday at the release of a <a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3366916/MORTALITY-BRIEFING-FINAL-011817-FINAL-FINAL.pdf" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">preliminary report</a> that they said reveals a “health crisis of white death.”
<br />
The report for the California Endowment found that in four counties – Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern – the death rate for whites was almost 40 percent higher than the overall white death rate in California from 2010-14.
<br />
“The deaths are occurring among a population struggling with unemployment, wage stagnation and poverty rates,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, lead author of the study and director of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “The economy is literally costing lives.”
</div>
</blockquote>
That confirms the opinion Laudy Aron, a Senior Fellow at Urban Institute who co-authored a 2013, a sweeping study, “Shorter Lives, Poorer Health,” from the National Research Council and the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine, who noted for the Washington Post article:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
I think we are undergoing a change that’s comparable to the Industrial Revolution - those of us who are lucky enough to have jobs are sort of clinging to them for dear life.</div>
</blockquote>
For California it is has been easier to deal with disruptive Climate Change, a subject which lends itself to advancing adaptive cool new technology for power generation and cars and trucks, plus despite bickering ending municipal treated water wasting in urban areas. In fact, these are part of the California tradition of economic discontinuity and displacement <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-21st-century-disruption-way-of-life.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">as explained in the previous post</a>.<br />
<br />
When you see this, though, you know...<br />
<ol type="a">
<li>the images below represent the women who are our "canaries in the coal mine" warning as the impacts of economic disruption are not limited to rural white women, and </li>
<li>therefore California must mitigate the impacts the inevitable economic disruption brought about by the Digital Revolution</li>
</ol>
...which despite the comparison, is moving much faster than the 200 years of the Industrial Revolution:<br />
<br />
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNqxIY7Xv13i6DVRY9hudpMH0AA1fRTRRsEe4RizyCUXsjEzuoB0hPv2mxquxyQxt_wgTOGKCYwIX4HJ6LSVoiGPXKx2gvrXCdnmsHAbuz10eT8pg98gKNqMOELoUDzQblwm9KFR4XuMo/s1600/690-MORTALITY-BRIEFING-FINAL.jpg" />
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2UTtvBTcfDHLfznVr6VQaQzIxm6lbrtlClCRioM4SpjR0mbLMVGuiMpK8LSNSuS1rIGCvKnjw5lfwdSW53Zgt2NrIL8bmBzjd8mgoubgvymZF1rZFJRApWcvPwfY15JAvEoFkcJUNseI/s1600/690-MORTALITY-BRIEFING-2.jpg" />
<br />
<br />
Sure, increasing the awareness of the problem will help those canaries. So would better physical and mental health care.<br />
<br />
But creating "blue collar" jobs and modernizing agricultural jobs must be a serious goal for the rest of the 21st Century in California. We must lean heavily on our tradition of <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-counter-ascendancy-of-california.html#CEEP" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">California Empirical Egalitarian Progressivism</a>.<br />
<br />
In fact, these active disruptors will have to get over their Neoliberal tendencies....<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/19/business/gargiulo-google-workplace-empowerment/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjHTCxfpXkGBJ7UWS6SgJXk9-gX87ofzAmaP6B9VjATDIYeEVSykCCAzmZ7cAqdHaknvf-7zcbI95_NvXqU21t04UBghgTEK6ndyZ3lvL9EEZqQoGVpwiaJRaLRgERGL_XQnwSiM6ERTM/s1600/google_disruptors.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
...and be happy that a <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article143237054.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Gas-tax increase to pay for road repair clears California Legislature</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
The legislation will raise the money to pay for the plan over 10 years. It raises the base gasoline excise tax by 12 cents, creates a transportation improvement fee based on the value of a vehicle and raises diesel excise and sales taxes.
<br />
“This bill will provide hundreds of thousands of jobs for poor people who need work and it will stimulate the economy,” said Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, who introduced Senate Bill 1. “For me, this is a wise plan that’s a modest plan.”
<br />
Republican lawmakers criticized the deal for putting a burden on ordinary Californians to pick up the bill for the Legislature’s failure to prioritize spending on roads without raising taxes.
</div>
</blockquote>
In addition to the fee based on value, electric car owners will pay their share through a $100 vehicle fee for zero emission vehicles as outlined in <a href="http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-pol-sac-transportation-plan/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">What Californians need to know about the state’s $52-billion transportation plan</a>.<br />
<br />
Senator Beall is correct about the plan. In addition to fixing our roads which are a mess, the taxes and fees will be putting people to work in construction over a decade, mostly in blue collar jobs. If Donald Trump can get Congress to spend some money on an infrastructure program, that would create blue collar jobs.<br />
<br />
We need to become job creators in a creative way. Many ways to give people blue collar jobs in California exist.<br />
<br />
For
instance, At the end of the drought, the Sierra Nevada contained 102
million dead trees. We could, a probably will, let them burn in
catastrophic fires. Catastrophic fires don’t stimulate regrowth, as
lesser fires do: The hotter temperatures they generate scorch the
landscape and destroy the seeds needed for plant regeneration. That
leads to severe soil erosion, landslides and devastated wildlife.
Megafires also blanket large areas of the state with sooty black carbon,
which is toxic to humans and a notorious climate pollutant, with a
global warming potential 3,200 times more potent than carbon dioxide.<br />
<br />
As the Los Angeles Times points out some clever folks have thought of <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-leslie-what-to-do-with-dead-trees-in-the-sierra-20170317-story.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">A beneficial way to dispose of the Sierra's lost trees: Use them for energy</a>. But the political and bureaucratic stumbling blocks will probably blanket large areas of the state with sooty black carbon, sort of a metaphor for 21st Century political bickering.<br />
<br />
I hate to say this, but even Trump's wall will create blue collar jobs if it actually gets built. And just maybe it isn't quite as awful as the media and politicians on the left tell us.<br />
<br />
First we need to rename it as the <i>California Border Barrier Replacement Program</i>. As I said <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-second-american-civil-war-begins-in.html#thewall" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">in a prior post</a>, "Regarding 'The Wall' we might want to look at a picture or two before we get all hot and bothered by that publicity." If you look at that pictures in that post you might discover we have a wall, an ugly wall, built by the Bush and Obama administrations which Trump's Deplorables may not have known about.<br />
<br />
And now we learn from <a href="http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/california/la-me-san-diego-border-wall-20170410-story.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Trump's border wall will get its start in San Diego County</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
President Trump’s proposed wall with Mexico will kick off in the San Diego border community of Otay Mesa, U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed Monday.
<br />
The community is home to one of two border crossings in San Diego and will be the site where 20 chosen bidders will erect prototypes of the envisioned wall. Winners will be selected around June 1, the agency said.
<br />
Of the possible border locations in the region, building the prototypes near the Otay Mesa crossing makes the most sense because it allows companies to test out designs in a heavily trafficked area that still has room and flexibility, according to Eric Frost, director of San Diego State University’s graduate program in homeland security.
<br />
Frost added the wall could be a benefit to both nations if, for example, it helps alleviate notoriously slow wait times for trucks crossing through Otay Mesa. He envisions an “intelligent wall” with sensors and wireless technology that can start tracking trucks before they reach a border guard, speeding up the process to move goods between the two nations.
<br />
“There’s a positive in here, if you can design a wall that works way better,” Frost said.
</div>
</blockquote>
"If you can design a wall that works way better" in this context means not buiildng a new wall but replacing the following mess at Otay Mesa where where volumes reach over 55,000 vehicles daily and annually more than 700,000 trucks carrying more than $20 billion in goods pass through the northbound border crossing after being inspected:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid1b-t_87atuvfM1BO8q2y5mNpK49BImZM8UrL6kwBaqvSpD1rxrG4nvFrYxRZPYZPxJYZk0z3I8RbFo8WWa3d3ndy3qk3B45xW32z96S_Ad-_XoCYfHCi_tWP1kP2LJZvyJl79IZv_dc/s1600/otayborder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid1b-t_87atuvfM1BO8q2y5mNpK49BImZM8UrL6kwBaqvSpD1rxrG4nvFrYxRZPYZPxJYZk0z3I8RbFo8WWa3d3ndy3qk3B45xW32z96S_Ad-_XoCYfHCi_tWP1kP2LJZvyJl79IZv_dc/s640/otayborder.jpg" width="690" /></a>
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidygftbgPqNEF6P_3HHzwtFd5Ynj-BVnI_HZc40v8-XIPqPKiLWPAA_G1Vv5Yx-R8zL_zE3nXFmAI68LAQACxKiI2IBis5NdEMQS48JaAll0S6y4ZVpOGJ6aMk4HkeaTka2LgbjxAySrs/s1600/690-Otay-cars.jpg" /><br />
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfLFfB88CczaYo13RnKWZSopptaJ6ty4F4ralqu6ZKVfVgBkA8-nJhxLnRViEJMsMvXOkl6LVA_EHP8YMPbA7N-w9w1_Bz3xRvgi1S19gvHNagIcNvF6z5F28qc7KjqqY20vtFJ2XQU98/s1600/690-Otay-trucks.jpg" />
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh35UUj-ahcskknHkg7KL8cdwd7E50fmLkl3hE7pC9e1BxZNbvOPcgZzf6V9ZuQ4hTEhTUXLl4GZGXpqXTRECkUGBESEQ03xVeJnUq3eYecFrPf1uvuOUbeXkqfVovFWClfPsW9xRX11zw/s1600/690-Otay-trucks2.jpg" />
<br />
<br />
Whether Trump gets any other element of his own infrastructure plan approved, it strikes me that sometimes California's Democratic politicians and media need to become a little more cynically self-serving on behalf of the state. That <i>Border Barrier Replacement Program</i> could put a lot of blue collar Californians to work.<br />
<br />
Of course, as I've noted before self-driving vehicles such as the tractor-trailer rigs shown in the pictures will start to eliminate positions for drivers in the next decade. And that "'intelligent wall' with sensors and wireless technology that can start tracking trucks before they reach a border guard, speeding up the process to move goods between the two nations" will reduce employee hours at the borders.<br />
<br />
California, the home of Silicon Valley distributive technology, must continue to work to slow the 21st Century Disruption Way-of-Life enough to soften the blue collar disruption trauma. Creating road maintenance jobs over the next 10 years is a good start, but it is just a start.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-52804258046729780522017-04-11T16:41:00.000-07:002018-06-18T15:30:03.697-07:00The 21st Century Disruption Way-of-Life The California tradition of discontinuity and displacement needs to be mitigatedBy the mid-20th Century Californians had become pretty much responsible for <i>The 21st Century Disruption Way-of-Life</i>.<br />
<br />
In this context, "disruption" means a series of events that result in <br />
<ol type="a">
<li>"discontinuity" meaning an interruption resulting in a permanent break in the expected flow of events <b><i>and</i></b></li>
<li>"displacement" meaning moving, shifting, or forcing people from the
usual place or position, especially from a job and/or a place of
residence and/or a homeland.</li>
</ol>
Economist Joseph Schumpeter's corollary to this is <b><i>the new does not come from the old, it appears next to the old and competes with it up until it replaces it.</i></b>
Of course he observed that in 1911 when the agrarian society was being
displaced by an industrial society over a period of 200 years from the
mid-1700's to the mid-1900's.<br />
<br />
By the mid-20th Century, unlike the folks in The Rust Belt, far more of Californians regularly migrated from employer to employer or entrepreneurial opportunity to entrepreneurial opportunity and, because of that, from community to community. In 1950 California's divorce rate was double that of Pennsylvania. Being a resident who was born in California was a rarity - meaning that most adults lived a "far distance" from their birth families.<br />
<br />
In the five years after 1940 beginning with WWII, California's population grew by 2.5 million or 30%. Some of that was due to military movement of personnel, but many people came for the jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, which even then were "high tech."<br />
<br />
In Southern California, some of the key employers (with peak WWII numbers of employees where available) were Douglas Aircraft (40,000) in Long Beach, Santa Monica, and El Segundo; Hughes Aircraft in Culver City; Lockheed Corporation (94,000) in Burbank; Northrup Aircraft in Hawthorne; North American Aviation in Inglewood; Consolidated Aircraft (45,000) in San Diego and Vultee Aircraft in Downey in 1943 merged to become Convair.<br />
<br />
There was Aerojet, an American rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer based primarily in Rancho Cordova, California. Aerojet developed from a 1936 meeting hosted by director of Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology Theodore von Kármán, including rocket scientist and astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky and explosives expert Jack Parsons, all of whom were interested in the topic of spaceflight. Their first design was tested on August 16, 1941, consisting of a small cylindrical solid-fuel motor attached to the bottom of a plane. Takeoff distance was shortened by half, and the USAAF placed an order for experimental production versions. Aerojet employment in California peaked at around 10,000 in the early 1960's.<br />
<br />
Perhaps most the important happening was when IBM opened its San Jose Research Laboratory in 1952. One of its first developments was the IBM 350 launched in 1956 with the first commercial moving head hard disk drive. As noted <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/2011/02/03/cassidy-ibms-big-influence-on-silicon-valley/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">in this article</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
IBM is often overlooked in the valley. It’s seen as an East Coast outfit, despite the fact that for years it’s been among the valley’s largest private employers. (Today those employees work primarily at the Almaden center and IBM’s Silicon Valley Lab, a software development operation.) IBM is seen as stodgy — a suit-and-tie company in shorts-and-sandals Silicon Valley.
<br />
But in fact, IBM brought an innovative fury to the valley long before the founders of Facebook and Google were even born. In 1952, the company sent senior engineer Rey Johnson west to open a lab in San Jose. Years before Steve Jobs launched nimble and independent skunk works to kick-start innovation at Apple and decades before Google launched its “20 percent time,” hours set aside for engineers to think big thoughts, IBM was experimenting with open-ended invention.
<br />
“When I came out here you either worked at Lockheed or IBM,” says [Howard} Bell, 75, who started with IBM in 1958 and eventually managed the utility plant at Almaden. His father had already worked at IBM for 13 years when Bell started at the company. Eventually, his son, two daughters and his daughter-in-law also went to work for IBM in San Jose. Collectively, the Bells put in 127 years at the 100-year-old company.
</div>
</blockquote>
As a child who was born in California during WWII, I was aware of the growth, but not really of the "dynamic" of life. But by 1970 I first worked with a "room sized" IBM 360 and by 1980, with my wife, started a computer services business. Yet, I wasn't fully aware of the socioeconomic impacts of the digital revolution. It just seemed like we had some better tools.<br />
<br />
In reality, of course, disruption was occurring around me. Previous to 1970 I had worked has a reporter for a newspaper, the paper kind. This disruption was happening in the typesetting process:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZBvaNlIQ644TJoS38wEQHG6mpudGnUDMisTOjsv18wpyl0iyUFcpWnLrCy4xRyCd1LEPM4dFUsJNHs8h5h94vHCnHlQ-QNBG7itLyOue5ryHfRvkvadIJqkz1ryth33Vgs-tIEm9Ap_c/s1600/typesetters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZBvaNlIQ644TJoS38wEQHG6mpudGnUDMisTOjsv18wpyl0iyUFcpWnLrCy4xRyCd1LEPM4dFUsJNHs8h5h94vHCnHlQ-QNBG7itLyOue5ryHfRvkvadIJqkz1ryth33Vgs-tIEm9Ap_c/s1600/typesetters.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Still it wasn't until 1999 in the Sacramento Valley when a supervisory employee in his late 20's who had young children observed that he thought his kids might not be able to have the life he had - for instance, they wouldn't be able to buy a home or stay with an employer to gain promotions and seniority.<br />
<br />
He could see the economic and social disruption surrounding the beginning of the 21st Century. <br />
I responded noting that the one mandatory skill for his kids' generation will be to <i>adapt readily to change</i> which will require a quality education creating a solid foundation in the basics - reading, math, science, and history.<br />
<br />
And then, I noted, they will have to lower their expectations to a life comparable to that of the middle-class in Mexico in 1999 not the middle-class in the United States in 1969.<br />
<br />
After I said that, I realized my ongoing awareness of the impending <i>21st Century Disruption Way-of-Life</i> had heightened.<br />
<br />
In 2005 the <i>New York Times</i> published an article headlined <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/business/in-silicon-valley-job-hopping-contributes-to-innovation.html?_r=0" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">In Silicon Valley, Job Hopping Contributes to Innovation</a> examining studies about the relationship between frequent job changing and technology exploring the reality of the change in the work culture, but most of the data was over the prior decade. By 2015 in the <i>Harvard Business Review</i> article <a href="https://hbr.org/2015/07/setting-the-record-straight-on-switching-jobs" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Setting the Record Straight on Switching Jobs</a> this is offered:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
Stay in a job for at least two years.” “Never leave a job until you have your next one lined up.” Everyone from your mother to your mentor has advice about the best way to switch jobs. But how can you know whom to trust? Especially since what was true in the job market 20 years ago — even two years ago — is not necessarily gospel now. And the market is constantly changing.
<br />
Consider the power dynamic between candidates and employers, for example. Though it differs across industries and regions, and is dependent on the health of the economy, in the past few years, experts have described the current labor market as “candidate-driven.” Job seekers hold more power than employers, a trend that seems to be deepening.
<br />
...Fernández-Aráoz points to the advice in The Alliance by Reid Hoffman (the cofounder and chairman of LinkedIn) and his coauthors that life-long employment is no longer realistic but being a completely free agent isn’t perfect either. “The alternative is what they call a ‘transformational alliance,’” explains Fernández-Aráoz, “where through honest conversations you explicitly agree on a temporary alliance, clarifying expectations regarding your contribution to the organization and what the organization will provide you in return, which may well be the support to continue your career elsewhere.” This is popular in Silicon Valley now, and “is probably showing the way to talent and career management over the next decades.”
</div>
</blockquote>
While the concept of a "transformational alliance" with your employer appears not unreasonable, what is actually meant is a focused employment period where you are drained of your creative skills and ideas. It is not unlike the insurance agencies that hire someone to be a sales person to drain them of possible leads from their friends and family. <br />
<br />
In fact in 2015 <i>Business Insider</i> offered this article <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stressful-lives-of-older-tech-workers-2015-11" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Some tech workers over 50 are literally working themselves to death — and other things we discovered about their careers</a>. And then this year there is this <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3055035/you-should-plan-on-switching-jobs-every-three-years-for-the-rest-of-your-" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">You Should Plan On Switching Jobs Every Three Years For The Rest Of Your Life</a> which explains:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
Patty McCord, former chief talent officer for Netflix (and responsible for the company’s current innovative work culture), says job hopping is a good thing, and young people should plan to do so every three to four years.
<br />
“I think that the most important, critical change in people’s mental outlook is to view employees as smart contributors from the beginning,” advises McCord, who now coaches and advises companies and entrepreneurs on culture and leadership. ...She adds. “You build skills faster when changing companies because of the learning curve.”
<br />
Why the high learning curve? Because job hoppers are constantly placed outside of their comfort zones. They join companies, know they have to learn fast, make great impressions, and improve the bottom line—all within a couple of years before moving on to their next conquest. As a result, they’re usually overachievers and learn a lot in a short span of time.
<br />
According to Penelope Trunk, serial entrepreneur and author, life is actually “more stable” with frequent job changes. ...She adds: "... I read a lot of research about what makes a good employee . . . and people used to think that the longer you kept an employee, the more worth they are to you, because you train them and they get used to their job and then they do it. But, in fact, an employee who stays on the job and isn’t learning at a really high rate is not as engaged, so they’re not doing as good work. So it turns out, the employee who stays longest, you get the least work out of, and the employees that job hunt are the most receptive of becoming extremely useful, very fast."
<br />
But what about companies? We all know how costly it is to train employees. If companies have to keep training new employees, how does this affect their business objectives?
<br />
This is a concern McCord is asked about regularly by the companies she consults. Employee retention is a big issue, and “it scares the hell out of” employers, says McCord. They’ve invested a lot in hiring big talent. To that, McCord has some advice: In 15 years, when your company is growing rapidly because of all the high, job-hopping achievers that have come and gone, unless you’re an institution, don’t worry that no one has any institutional knowledge of your company.
</div>
</blockquote>
Then there is this Forbes story <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employees-that-stay-in-companies-longer-than-2-years-get-paid-50-less/#67d0707ee07f" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Employees Who Stay In Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less</a>. Economic opportunities pretty much drive the way we live, at a minimum because we need food, clothing, shelter, health care, and Netflix subscription. It would appear that the best economic opportunities come with biennial discontinuity and displacement.<br />
<br />
So far, the <i>21st Century Disruption Way-of-Life</i> is pretty much as expected.<br />
<br />
This is not the discussion of "disruption" seen in 2017 media evaluation of technology business innovation, a positive view of the role of destruction and creation of businesses and even whole industries within a decade. That discussion too often ignores the fact that the process destroys communities and regions, and the people therein.<br />
<br />
By the year 2000 the inevitable future seemed obvious. But even for someone who had lived in the Salinas Valley and was aware of this...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr7gQh3EngOmLq1Zgq5r5lDOEVBKZ7t1JR_LHyxZ6ig8mDGE4GCclJR8Hqwz4Up_THJk3nBp5QYq5D25Xq01NDHiO6C5pHqpWOfNuk4qBjIDwinvfgNWGPlinyF-xJJG13G16YJgMw1JU/s1600/farmjobs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr7gQh3EngOmLq1Zgq5r5lDOEVBKZ7t1JR_LHyxZ6ig8mDGE4GCclJR8Hqwz4Up_THJk3nBp5QYq5D25Xq01NDHiO6C5pHqpWOfNuk4qBjIDwinvfgNWGPlinyF-xJJG13G16YJgMw1JU/s1600/farmjobs.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
...these pictures of technology affecting California's agricultural economy in the 21st Century still boggle my mind even as the jobs on that graph that existed in 2012 are disappearing:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd5ZnVLt_GrbFEg0NYxgpjoIH-c461r-PEd_dflgIS1Q-j7zX17N7-W0uwsxMPOn0L0HqwDDFLRFJJtEUrDr42tmv1lvjk70BtMOompwkYj8RkX7DKcZ_YtdpNHam7HL3pr1dl9Y62y7Y/s1600/690-picking_robot4.jpg" /><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibQbJcW9dQ3CoPYDPEmWyygpYYTTf2uKkj9sooOM709tG_Bh7rhTTg3j6GnMQpjST6nEdhTAWcWcpKd43RKL0UvyXKM1dIIxvoLHbi6-wLlPsXecLtjbjrWxf3IYJm0VMyq8-i-T5LWfU/s1600/690-picking_robot5.jpg" /><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioFRag513IxAHHuQSvpWRNkTPPOmLa8BB_DmNTi3S7w8S_wHVwgPR19h6hToAkI8gbhr-EMYg5534enbUD1cE7b2gu9kJPmGHbdhgDG6Lon2LSihmDX23sW0d5TWP-XulGFyuDNa0JUXs/s1600/690-picking_robot.jpg" /><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYPcNnDFzeiVdy_fDHgl5YL-LxoEzRxXAyunbOmR19ZL41tmd_OnqqMUTN0MSzg2WMn2_jE66RT7dqYyv_Z4JdAYR2uqdgbZLOU8zkE8FkjbOcq9QYOtO09XZyO3ryPYpq3uv4lJNa1GU/s1600/690-weeding_robot.jpg" /></div>
<br />
The pictures provide a more directly informative image than graphs by economists. But most Americans understand the meaning of this graph:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr8tQ73xm7cQ9xJfdTddP9jjAfsOFzxIUw3V3AferV5e6xu6UQw-ELKyjOw5Koaja8Z5BTVbpsag0OS3L8Dt1jXvpBSHOByhyphenhyphenW6CUpgUOvX2tVJQxEPaGf0iwv_APVGK3iIxXB-5JSydA/s1600/employment-share-by-sector.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" /></div>
<br />
But that doesn't mean that we understand the 21st Century employment picture. This graph from economists provides some further understanding with the explanation below it:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyf8oIsAGScyE1uXSN6a2DjBC1V91QbuZCUJB3yR0T3EmZwkkn0m92RK8W57zvo3ef8CfyioZHBK7oN6kO-EweHer2dyW78xUx3Q6DD7WNhVQ2kexaijlUXOs9_qdO0NVDvGKK64HCwaE/s1600/employment+clark+sectors.jpg" />
</div>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 90%; font-weight: bold;">
The <i>primary sector</i> of the economy is the sector of an economy making direct use of natural resources. This includes agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining. The manufacturing industries that aggregate, pack, package, purify or process the raw materials close to the primary producers are normally considered part of this sector, especially if the raw material is unsuitable for sale or difficult to transport long distances.
<br />
The <i>secondary sector</i> includes industries that produce a finished, usable product or are involved in construction.
<br />
The <i>tertiary sector</i> of industry involves the provision of services to final consumers and other businesses. T</span><span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 90%; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 90%; font-weight: bold;">he focus is on people interacting with people and serving the customer rather than transforming physical goods.</span> Services also may involve the transport, distribution and sale of goods from producer to a consumer, as may happen in wholesaling and retailing, or may involve the provision of a service, such as in pest control or entertainment. The goods may be transformed in the process of providing the service, as happens in the restaurant industry.
</span></blockquote>
But somewhere around 2000 people became aware of a change which led to consideration of a fourth "sector":<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidNGTNGL3pbkKD2W662f2RAqNiUx4ZEtSvFTIYWKOibKTnEC2onFw1_ZPilryGgVkHPlPUDZvutlD8inCKFh470Nvl2FCLeG5L0pnwkg451A5LSswwa0f2ucZiXeEurqN280DQdtvNAMo/s1600/employment+clark+quat.jpg" />
</div>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 90%; font-weight: bold;">
The <i>quaternary sector</i> of the economy is a way to describe a knowledge-based part of the economy - which typically includes services such as information technology, information-generation and information-sharing, media, and research and development, as well as knowledge-based services like consultation, education, financial planning, blogging, and designing.
</span></blockquote>
The problem is not everyone is in agreement on what are quaternary activities and some are now breaking things down into five activities. An then we don't have adequate statistics that have been graphed but <a href="https://omega7geo.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/characteristics-of-industry/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">one source</a> has offered this for the United Kingdom which offers some hints about the future:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxQDsjJQYqZQRzm9CMue-dn6yXZxyqygFYASPwHjYSkwkD13dkGR-xLnbVToYC6mTQ9aWu8OISl43L7Gop_4TbIkAuOTX_KdWEKYFQqR_Z16lsRfeU0fnExj3kEBIDCEsDznZl-GomfYg/s1600/employmentwith+quat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxQDsjJQYqZQRzm9CMue-dn6yXZxyqygFYASPwHjYSkwkD13dkGR-xLnbVToYC6mTQ9aWu8OISl43L7Gop_4TbIkAuOTX_KdWEKYFQqR_Z16lsRfeU0fnExj3kEBIDCEsDznZl-GomfYg/s1600/employmentwith+quat.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Looking at the curve on the tertiary line it appears that it peaked around the year 2000 much as secondary activity employment peaked in the 1930's. As we know self-driving vehicles are going to be disruptive for those who drive trucks for a living and retail sales employees are already being displaced by auto-checkout systems and internet sales.<br />
<br />
The disruption in the primary and secondary activity employment is still being felt in areas of the United States such as the Rust Belt. Contrary to political rhetoric, those trends will not reverse. Americans who worked in agriculture (consider the pictures above), plus mining, and industry are delusional if they expect a change.<br />
<br />
One of the realities is that a Tesla auto assembly plant looks like this:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK-e8cI58rzQrHy293mRqVE7B2S6VRUhdMYp2h4hUBihXkkON-Oodl_xXzZ2EDObfAuAxPXlHUs69q9qSqoY-HM3gzdj5Xh82swbsJmLtKWRz7UchStmvatXzl8_0QFchbzJepPiMWxds/s1600/690teslaautobotsjpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK-e8cI58rzQrHy293mRqVE7B2S6VRUhdMYp2h4hUBihXkkON-Oodl_xXzZ2EDObfAuAxPXlHUs69q9qSqoY-HM3gzdj5Xh82swbsJmLtKWRz7UchStmvatXzl8_0QFchbzJepPiMWxds/s1600/690teslaautobotsjpg.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Perhaps "Trump The Deplorable" would assure you that Tesla is a special case and that workers in auto plants in Mexico stole all the jobs. That is both stupid and a lie, because in that Tesla plant you can actually see some humans doing things because some things are experimental or custom, while in this Kia plant in Mexico there are no workers pictured:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii0RgMJdVTy_io7elsWmFSqXK6si7Ys3kiCu72OrYIvNJjPT0v7qTUyeUzbCVpPJDaonbvU-UJYDHP4tYgxI5Vabvm3OJQfe4OeS4iUgpULlk0LzoX7IMjTY1Og3aY2CiZ_Uz-LVi7mg8/s1600/690kiaplant02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii0RgMJdVTy_io7elsWmFSqXK6si7Ys3kiCu72OrYIvNJjPT0v7qTUyeUzbCVpPJDaonbvU-UJYDHP4tYgxI5Vabvm3OJQfe4OeS4iUgpULlk0LzoX7IMjTY1Og3aY2CiZ_Uz-LVi7mg8/s1600/690kiaplant02.jpg" /></a></div>
I''m sure they must employ people there, but my guess is most would be involved in quaternary sector activities keeping those robots working properly. If you're skill is operating a wrench, to work in one of these plants in the future you will have to get additional education and training requiring that calculus you fortunately took in high school because, as I said in 1999, you got a quality education creating a solid foundation in the basics - reading, math, science, and history. <br />
<br />
The reality is that much of the technology creating the disruption came from California's aerospace industry and California's Silicon Valley. It cannot be undone nor can those businesses that created the technology employ those who have lost their jobs. There just aren't enough jobs in Silicon Valley. But even if there were, there aren't enough qualified workers - let me emphasize the important word <i>qualified</i> - to fill the millions of vacant jobs. As recent stories noted <a href="http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-north-pinellas/clearwater/cyber-security-jobs-in-high-demand-currently-1-million-job-openings" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Cyber security jobs in high demand, currently 1 million job openings</a> and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/03/28/tech-skills-gap-huge-graduates-survey-says/99587888/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Businesses say they just can't find the right tech workers</a>.<br />
<br />
Oh, and if you want to work in retail consider this March 2017 story <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/13/walmart-com-adds-san-bruno-sunnyvale-tech-workers/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Walmart.com hiring hundreds of tech workers in San Bruno, Sunnyvale to challenge Amazon Prime</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
The hiring is expected to more than offset recent job cuts of about 175 Walmart.com workers on the Peninsula.
<br />
The retailing giant also has bought e-commerce firms Jet.com, Shoebuy and Moosejaw in a series of transactions in September 2016 and January and February of 2017.
<br />
“We are shifting our investments and building up teams that can launch two-day shipping and other customer-facing initiatives that further enhance the digital shopping experience,” [said Ravi Jariwala, a spokesman for Walmart.com, the digital arm of the Arkansas-based retailing titan].
<br />
“Every traditional retailer is trying to come up with a winning formula for its online channel,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist with Wells Fargo.
</div>
</blockquote>
What possibly would make someone write that the hiring of tech workers would offset retail jobs lost by these folks in nearby Walmart stores?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlwsZMEyU7t-MBjAxof6_ToN6bIveKPhR8kSTk1StOPrqUI4-US4nabnh0UZ0_ePsaL49qbi2P2C5b9jddfz-Q_CSUKLalWuPQAwC4AbY5Hp-xdpRDMRr-wEZ0wIA6tQprgOFQRD5kyME/s1600/1377145700000-AP-WALMART-UNION.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlwsZMEyU7t-MBjAxof6_ToN6bIveKPhR8kSTk1StOPrqUI4-US4nabnh0UZ0_ePsaL49qbi2P2C5b9jddfz-Q_CSUKLalWuPQAwC4AbY5Hp-xdpRDMRr-wEZ0wIA6tQprgOFQRD5kyME/s1600/1377145700000-AP-WALMART-UNION.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
How many of those WalMart workers will be able to slide right into the tech jobs remains to be seen. But certainly most likely will face stressful displacement and discontinuity in their lives. And for many it will not be the first or last time they will experience <i>The 21st Century Disruption Way-of-Life</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>The 21st Century Disruption Way-of-Life</i> is not going to be limited to economic disruption. There is what Obama Administration White House science adviser John
Holdren called "global climate disruption" which admittedly is a slower process, though by the middle of the century many places Americans live will not be very "desirable" or even "livable". Unfortunately, the term climate "disruption" was not picked up by the media. Nonetheless combined with economic disruption, it will help form <i>the 21st Century Disruption Way-of-Life.</i><br />
<br />
Scenes like this will become more frequent and, in many cases, will cause displacement and discontinuity, sometimes extreme displacement and sometimes inconvenient permanent discontinuity:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJm9bp1uv4H2KuZHd7TlPpUTIqXNpsRL605on-ZxW4q2lCemMHDszMbTVrXD0XnXKNc9dHABxCyUvL8k7Wp4VyObrhtAf3AOTdMlHfruDAmKRYYJS9QZGpgRsMO5VzN39oHevW7cixlvA/s1600/Pacifica_homes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJm9bp1uv4H2KuZHd7TlPpUTIqXNpsRL605on-ZxW4q2lCemMHDszMbTVrXD0XnXKNc9dHABxCyUvL8k7Wp4VyObrhtAf3AOTdMlHfruDAmKRYYJS9QZGpgRsMO5VzN39oHevW7cixlvA/s640/Pacifica_homes.jpg" width="690" /></a>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj93KJzwMmmK-QtL_5_18do8FBypQt16jdXCtzl2tSZNmOoLoGnQnp37VwCMbNzwUShIWrjsJzJHHca5MzX5qH090h0jjlA8730-Yg9dHteDb61-p9a4MVecEM5hQ1rkMUI7flqqXBSg6Q/s1600/Capitola3.1.14SabineDukes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj93KJzwMmmK-QtL_5_18do8FBypQt16jdXCtzl2tSZNmOoLoGnQnp37VwCMbNzwUShIWrjsJzJHHca5MzX5qH090h0jjlA8730-Yg9dHteDb61-p9a4MVecEM5hQ1rkMUI7flqqXBSg6Q/s640/Capitola3.1.14SabineDukes.jpg" width="690" /></a></div>
As <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/02/this-week-bannon-promises-dystopian.html#environment" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">noted previously in these posts</a>, Californians have their own environmental program working with people in other Pacific Rim, European, African, and Asian nations and states they hope will make the next 100 years of climate disruption less disruptive for their children and grandchildren. We Californians should be doing that because the 20th Century California addiction to the automobile is at least partly responsible for climate disruption.<br />
<br />
Now Californians have begun an effort to make the economic disruption less disruptive. We will explore that in the next post.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-54399349305726855312017-03-18T15:41:00.000-07:002018-06-18T14:37:23.114-07:00Manifest Destiny versus those babies The culture war threat to California's history, folklore, identity and people<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">
Click on image to see a larger version!
</span>
<a href="http://3cals.phrelin.com/Calexit/language-map-1800-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh_uhyphenhyphen8N4cDgqOwWpOa1sPXcgVGZ93J67Zl0keiyufHd_40gGz_FlF05cexbtIDoqC8dX5tcUenfhrWN_IE8I6IY9WwHJQ1sOrwELg6O1Wg7hgg84ezW9vB4TWazutAbUH6P6s102aDzA/s640/language-map-1800-2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
The
Neoliberal war with multiculturalists in the U.S. gained headlines this
week when Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) supported extreme nationalist Dutch politician Geert Wilder with this not so eloquent tweet:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvejYQ3YlKh4dlwBBT9AbIUojohZ3CGxHznYPwSIWdXkeulp78LuKiWYETeKNMMR8jYu8TK9LXw2cfr1hIgI_koJ9ml7P5mKkiEDed-r00PDtnyV26bB9O2cBnA11cdfDDkgz5tnKR3MI/s1600/wilder-tw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="986" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvejYQ3YlKh4dlwBBT9AbIUojohZ3CGxHznYPwSIWdXkeulp78LuKiWYETeKNMMR8jYu8TK9LXw2cfr1hIgI_koJ9ml7P5mKkiEDed-r00PDtnyV26bB9O2cBnA11cdfDDkgz5tnKR3MI/s400/wilder-tw.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
King
set off a firestorm of
simplistic accusations about his racism from the left while other Republicans tripped
over themselves to disassociate with King. But King says he is not a racist and he was tweeting on behalf of policies supported by all Republicans.<br />
<br />
In response to the firestorm he started, Representative King<a href="http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/03/13/steve-king-clarifies-tweet-that-set-the-internet-on-fire-its-not-about-race/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"> defended himself on CNN</a>. King argued:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 40px;">
It’s the culture, not the blood.<br />
<br />
And if you can go anywhere in the world and adopt these
little babies and put them into households that were already assimilated into
America, those babies will grow up as American as any other baby with as much
patriotism and as much love of country as any other baby.<br />
<br />
“It’s not about race,” he added. “It’s never been about
race, and in fact, the struggles across this planet, we describe them as race.
They’re not race — they’re culture-based. It’s the clash of cultures, not the
race.”</div>
</blockquote>
King is almost right. In the United States it has become a dispute between those who embrace the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melting_pot#United_States" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><b><i>American Cultural Melting Pot</i></b></a> concept versus those who would prefer the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad_bowl_(cultural_idea)" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><i><b>American Cultural Salad Bowl</b></i></a> concept. The Wikipedia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melting_pot#United_States" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">entry</a> outlines the origins and history of the <i>American Cultural Melting Pot</i> concept, but all we need to know is:<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
The first use in American literature of the concept of immigrants "melting"
into the receiving culture are found in the writings of
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Hector_St._John_de_Crevecoeur" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur">
J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur</a>. In his <i>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_from_an_American_Farmer" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Letters from an American Farmer">
Letters from an American Farmer</a></i> (1782) Crevecoeur writes, in response to
his own question, "What then is the American, this new man?" that the American
is one who "leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives
new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the government he obeys, and
the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap
of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are <i>melted into</i> a new
race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the
world."</div>
<div style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 40px;">
"…whence came all these people? They are a mixture of English, Scotch,
Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes... What, then, is the American,
this new man? He is either an European or the descendant of an European;
hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other
country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an
Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and
whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an
American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners,
receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new
government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. . . . The Americans were
once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the
finest systems of population which has ever appeared."<br />
— J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, <i>Letters from an American
Farmer</i></div>
</blockquote>
What the son of the Comte and Comtesse de Crèvecœur and former French Army Lieutenant who fought the British in the French and Indian War doesn't include in his
description are Native Americans or Moors or Asians, just Northern
Europeans. Nonetheless, seven years before 1789 and the adoption of the
Constitution, we see the term "melted into" to refer to the term
"American."<br />
<br />
Arguing in 1789 for the adoption of the Constitution, Founding Father John Jay - descended from Protestant Huguenots who had
come to New York to escape religious persecution in France - notes in Federalist Papers No. 2:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 10px;">It
has until lately been a received and uncontradicted opinion that the
prosperity of the people of America depended on their continuing firmly
united, and the wishes, prayers, and efforts of our best and wisest
citizens have been constantly directed to that object. But politicians
now appear, who insist that this opinion is erroneous, and that instead
of looking for safety and happiness in union, we ought to seek it in a
division....<br /><br />With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice
that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to
one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors,
speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to
the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and
customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting
side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established
general liberty and independence.<br /><br />This country and this people
seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the
design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a
band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should
never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien
sovereignties.<br /><br />Similar sentiments have hitherto prevailed among
all orders and denominations of men among us. To all general purposes we
have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere
enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.</span></blockquote>
In
this argument intended to create support for one united country, Jay notes the
similarity among Americans in ancestry, language, religion, manners and
customs as evidence of the strongest ties to avoid splitting our
society. But then he notes similar attitudes "among all orders and
denominations" among Americans, maybe because he is of French Huguenot descent not English.<br />
<br />
What
exactly did he
mean? For honest multicultural advocates, it's impossible to bury the
reality that the Founding Fathers greatly feared a split within the former
colonies. The first Congress of the United States of America in its
Second Session, wanting to make the intent very clear, passed the
Naturalization Act of 1790 which said (<i><b>emphasis</b></i> added):<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
<b>Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled,</b><br />
<br />That any Alien <b><i>being a free white person</i></b>, who shall
have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United
States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen
thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of
the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at
least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a
person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed
by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or
Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court
shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and
thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United
States. And <i><b>the children of such person so naturalized</b></i>,
dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty one
years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as
citizens of the United States. And the children of citizens of the
United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the
United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided,
that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers
have never been resident in the United States: Provided also, that no
person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen
as aforesaid, except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which
such person was proscribed.
</span></blockquote>
Gradually, this fear of a split because of a lack of
common heritage was overcome by those teaching about the <i>American Cultural Melting Pot</i>
effect. But that was to be undone by the end of the 20th Century by militant advocates for the <i>American Cultural Salad Bowl</i> concept who argue that only their view represents the affirmative moral value of "toleration."<br />
<br />
As usual, it is far more complicated. When one fast forwards through 200 years, from 1789 to
1989, we find this eloquent Republican President from California explaining
how he saw an America:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxFqcQ5cpBo_ND86XnoOJqBb9JBk140NjqihkZfPkVClCpDYT7OGQedXKUhCOZ5AteiPic7R-_99H8VVsVaSJkrHULYqbf6euI7jJQ-CdxIlKbR7AlCDadEM9gtStGE_8qkMeIbQN9aLk/s1600/shiningcity.jpg" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/khi08rq3oI4?feature=player_embedded" width="420"></iframe></div>
As you can hear in the video above, in his "Farewell Address" given from the White House, President Ronald Reagan said (<i><b>emphasis</b></i> added):<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">The
past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a
bit of the “shining city upon a hill.” The phrase comes from John
Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he
imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom
man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat;
and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be
free.<br /><br />I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I
don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But
in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than
oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and <i><b>teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace</b></i>; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. <i><b>And
if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were
open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.</b></i> That’s how I saw it, and see it still.</span></blockquote>
Was Reagan referring to a Melting Pot or a multicultural America? There is no doubt...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqu4igR5aCHltMnCWG9Gih5kkYjOGHdGj72dTtnoa9gRy-ImOrLHFIvOF0E1DcZkZlKCai2IiI1YZpKhvu7IBvMuP6wfGigGzQtjRy3INwUoa7OZSNyiFxRm9pO4BDX2Jv7Fb3b3WcCkQ/s1600/reagan-melting-pot.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqu4igR5aCHltMnCWG9Gih5kkYjOGHdGj72dTtnoa9gRy-ImOrLHFIvOF0E1DcZkZlKCai2IiI1YZpKhvu7IBvMuP6wfGigGzQtjRy3INwUoa7OZSNyiFxRm9pO4BDX2Jv7Fb3b3WcCkQ/s1600/reagan-melting-pot.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
So there is some irony in this statement from the Democratic President from Georgia he unseated...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyEtrgeiKLJBU1zFmcn1ro8sUTxQ7Z4JbLkPlisC9cUSdofOIf_SkKIh5_Z9Fx0Ye0ale8jppl3HpgZLkrDaWzlN2PQ2n7NHcuSQFFMID3MDsyxFlUrB4C3lHgKr_klkDNqTzrSiSODsI/s1600/Carter-Mosaic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyEtrgeiKLJBU1zFmcn1ro8sUTxQ7Z4JbLkPlisC9cUSdofOIf_SkKIh5_Z9Fx0Ye0ale8jppl3HpgZLkrDaWzlN2PQ2n7NHcuSQFFMID3MDsyxFlUrB4C3lHgKr_klkDNqTzrSiSODsI/s1600/Carter-Mosaic.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Carter used the term "mosaic" used in Canada instead of "salad." I would ask Carter what
do you do when within the salad that looks like this...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0FS8syRXyZ8SqFJ-viJQ6JfgwWgmAt1WHHmfy1N4o2XMzLTq-gK2dmhVdmyKjvGaihjZJxpNk1iKWPwj8gqlpTm-GI8XEqKZ35PEL_axNP7D5fg6zwELdlkz3yqOxDFmOqRFhtd74ZYE/s1600/fresh-vegetable-plate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0FS8syRXyZ8SqFJ-viJQ6JfgwWgmAt1WHHmfy1N4o2XMzLTq-gK2dmhVdmyKjvGaihjZJxpNk1iKWPwj8gqlpTm-GI8XEqKZ35PEL_axNP7D5fg6zwELdlkz3yqOxDFmOqRFhtd74ZYE/s320/fresh-vegetable-plate.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
...and some of these different vegetables
believe that <i>their community</i> on the American plate should implement Sharia Law, and
others believe our laws should be based on the Christian Old Testament,
and both are proposing to stone to death any jalapeño chili peppers that might appear on the plate?<br />
<br />
That
is, of course, the inherent problem with uninhibited multiculturalism.
It is one thing to advocate offering equal respect to people from
various ethnic and racial cultures. It is quite another thing to
embrace policies<br />
<ol type="a">
<li>in which people of various ethnic and religious groups are addressed
by the authorities as defined by the group to which they belong and</li>
<li>that promote maintaining the distinctiveness of multiple cultures
rather than policies such as social integration and cultural
assimilation.</li>
</ol>
In other words, American history expects social integration and
cultural assimilation, though the act of recognizing America's multicultural history
is also expected. Consider this <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4931534.stm" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">BBC News article</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 9.5px;">Americans take pride in their "melting pot" society (a term
coined by an immigrant, Israel Zangwill) that encourages newcomers to
assimilate into the American culture.<br /><br />But the melting pot imagery
has been contested by the idea of multiculturalism, the "salad bowl
theory", or as it is known in Canada, the "cultural mosaic", whereby the
immigrants retain their own national characteristics while integrating
into a new society.<br /><br />Some go further. Harvard political scientist
Samuel Huntington says that large-scale Latino immigration poses a
threat to American identity.<br /><br />He sees the gravest threat to American identity in Mexican immigration which, according to him, is splitting America in two.</span></blockquote>
Apparently the late Harvard Professor
Samuel Huntington - who lived in the former British Colonies of Massachusetts and New York with their "Little Italy" neighborhoods - <b><i>was unaware of California</i></b> when he wrote that Latino immigration would "divide the United States into two peoples, two
cultures, and two languages" Because he also wrote:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;">
Would America be the America it is today if in the 17th and 18th
centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French,
Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no. It would not be
America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil.
</span></blockquote>
<i><b>Or perhaps it would be California!</b></i>
In fact using the criteria of before the 19th century, here is the
truth about the portion of America settled (or stolen from Native
Americans) by Huntington's British Protestants versus the portion of America settled by Spanish Catholics:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ePrmc5-nHk-gZYj0itVa-uLvudkfjdfyPvecRUpIMcf8NkHwkK3WOf-LByRGCdvsJMkZctNrBnO9xk8xHaQKOSHTjj_a-Qkkdm94alP5n42e4HaigrorD4lPv8hCIsrFj8e16M7hdk4/s1600/language-map-1800.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="451" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ePrmc5-nHk-gZYj0itVa-uLvudkfjdfyPvecRUpIMcf8NkHwkK3WOf-LByRGCdvsJMkZctNrBnO9xk8xHaQKOSHTjj_a-Qkkdm94alP5n42e4HaigrorD4lPv8hCIsrFj8e16M7hdk4/s640/language-map-1800.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
The
fact is if you believe Professor Huntington, only
the states indicated above in blue have any serious claim to a 17th and
18th Centuries historical British Protestant cultural heritage.<br />
<br />
While
some are careful to make the "English-only" language as a legal argument
there are those who, apparently ignorant of American history, offer a
cultural argument without any historical foundation whatsoever.<br />
<br />
For instance, while ICE Agents and bigots are
attacking the Hispanic neighborhoods in California, no one is attacking
the many "Little Italy" communities in the United States as indicated in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Italy" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>:<br />
<ul>
<li>Several Little Italies exist in New York City, including:
<ul>
<li>Little Italy, Manhattan</li>
<li>Italian Harlem
<ul>
<li>Pleasant Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Little Italy, The Bronx</li>
<li>Morris Park, Bronx</li>
<li>Country Club, Bronx</li>
<li>Pelham Bay, Bronx</li>
<li>Bensonhurst, Brooklyn</li>
<li>South Brooklyn
<ul>
<li>Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn</li>
<li>Cobble Hill, Brooklyn</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Bay Ridge, Brooklyn</li>
<li>Dyker Heights, Brooklyn</li>
<li>Williamsburg, Brooklyn;</li>
<li>Howard Beach, Queens</li>
<li>Ozone Park, Queens</li>
<li>Astoria, Queens</li>
<li>Middle Village, Queens</li>
<li>Rosebank, Staten Island</li>
<li>Many Staten Island neighborhoods (44% of Borough Residents claim Italian ancestry)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Little Italy, Chicago, in Illinois
<ul>
<li>Elmwood Park, Illinois</li>
<li>Melrose Park, Illinois</li>
<li>Norridge, Illinois</li>
<li>Berwyn, Illinois</li>
<li>Grand Ave, Chicago</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Little Italy, Altoona, in Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Little Italy, Baltimore, in Maryland</li>
<li>North End, Boston, in Massachusetts</li>
<li>Little Italy, Bridgeport, in Connecticut</li>
<li>Franklin Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut</li>
<li>Little Italy, Buffalo, in New York</li>
<li>Little Italy, Rochester - Gates Ny - Lyell Ave &amp; Spencerport Rd</li>
<li>Little Italy, Cleveland, in Ohio</li>
<li>Little Italy, Connellsville, in Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Little Italy in Erie, Pennsylvania, an area centered on West 18th Street between Sassafras and Liberty Streets.</li>
<li>Little Italy, Kansas City, Missouri – Now defunct and mainly inhabited by South East Asian migrants.</li>
<li>Little Italy, Los Angeles – a defunct neighborhood now part of New Chinatown</li>
<li>Wooster Square, in New Haven, Connecticut</li>
<li>East Haven, Connecticut (40% of residents claim Italian ancestry)</li>
<li>Little Italy, Omaha, in Nebraska</li>
<li>Little Italy, Paterson, in New Jersey</li>
<li>South Trenton, New Jersey</li>
<li>South Philadelphia in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Federal Hill in Providence, Rhode Island</li>
<li>North Providence, Rhode Island (small town with high number of Italians; about the size of most Little Italies in big cities).</li>
<li>The Hill Little Italy in St. Louis, Missouri</li>
<li>Little Italy, San Diego, California</li>
<li>North Beach, San Francisco, in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California" title="California">California</a></li>
<li>Little Italy, Schenectady, in New York</li>
<li>South End, Springfield, in Massachusetts</li>
<li>Little Italy, Syracuse, in New York</li>
<li>Little Italy, Waterbury, in Connecticut</li>
<li>Little Italy, Clay County, West Virginia</li>
<li>Little Italy, Randolph County, West Virginia</li>
<li>Little Italy, Wilmington, in Delaware</li>
<li>Brier Hill in Youngstown, Ohio</li>
</ul>
Those who believe as Huntington should be wondering why ICE agents are not deporting American citizens
of Italian descent back to Italy. Of course, on the map above there are no Italian 17th-18th Century
settlements Huntington could worry about.<br />
<br />
Which brings us back to Representative King. Despite the fact that his tweet makes him sound like an Alt-Right idiot, when you look back at a<a href="http://offenburger.com/index.php/our-2002-column-on-how-iowas-steve-king-the-controversial-congressman-got-his-political-start/" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"> 2002 column written by someone who opposed King's first run for Congress</a>, you get a fair picture of King's views (you should really read the whole article to get a good idea of Congressman King):<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 10px;">The large number of Southeast Asian and Latino people who came to Denison and Storm Lake, first as refugees and then later to work in meat packing plants, came after King was out of school, in business and living on a farm between Kiron and Odebolt.<br /><br />Is he aware that he is often labeled as being “anti-immigrant” now?<br /><br />“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I know that.”<br /><br />But he said that’s inaccurate and unfair.<br /><br />I reminded him of his “Official English” bill, the “God and Country Bill” and his harsh comment in a letter to western Iowa editors after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: “Preferential treatment and the obsession with the elevation of every third world culture to the status of our American Civilization are silenced for now and hopefully forever.”<br /><br />So, how does he feel about immigrants?<br /><br />“Anybody who comes to this country legally, I’m all for,” he said, “and I think we should all support legal immigration. But I do think we need to secure our borders. I think we need to take a serious look at our immigration policy.”<br /><br />How does he view those from other cultures and countries, if they are here legally?<br /><br />“I have a very strong, profound belief that we are all God’s children,” King said. “And I believe that God doesn’t draw distinctions between us to favor one race over another, or to favor men or favor women. We are all equal in God’s eyes.<br /><br />“That has led me to advocate equal rights for everybody, and by virtue of that, no special rights for anybody.”<br /><br />He said he enjoys “all the different cultures we have here now. Just look at it in terms of food alone, if you want to. I was raised pretty much on plain meat and potatoes. The variety of all the different kinds of food that other cultures have brought here is great.<br /><br />“The cultural differences we have add to the richness of our life, and we should study them and celebrate them. But I come into this thing from the viewpoint that there are a lot of things that divide us as Americans, and a lot of multi-cultural efforts seem to divide us rather than unite us.<br /><br />“When we first started to see multi-culturalism, I was in favor of it. But I now see it often being used as a political tool to divide us, and that concerns me. I like diversity of cultures and peoples, but we also need to recognize there is a greater American culture that unites us. It’s fine to celebrate the individual cultures we come from, but it can’t hinder the greater American culture.”<br /><br />King said much of his understanding of immigration today, and the way Americans are reacting to it, has come from the writings of Thomas Sowell.<br /><br />Sowell is a senior fellow at The Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. He is African American, was born in the South and grew up in Harlem. He is a graduate in economics from Harvard, earned his master’s in that field at Columbia University and his doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago.<br /><br />He is a widely known and quoted conservative whose books include a 1996 work, “Migration and Cultures: A World View.”</span></blockquote>
Congressman King's views curiously bring us back to California. The Hoover Institution, in which the source of King's opinions Thomas Sowell is currently Senior Fellow, is one of California's 13 organizations which are members of the Neoliberal <a href="https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners/global-directory/united-states/4" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Atlas Network</a> as I explained here in the post <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/01/21st-century-california-vulnerabilities.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">21st Century California vulnerabilities to active Neoliberal political opportunists</a>.<br />
<br />
If King and other Neoliberals are concerned that the American Cultural Salad Bowl concept is "being used as a political tool to divide us" and a danger to "a greater American culture that unites us" and specifically are targeting Hispanic and Asian immigration through government policy, then Congressman King and friends are engaging in a culture war against California's history, folklore, identity, and people.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-counter-ascendancy-of-california.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">California Empirical Egalitarian Progressivism</a>,
which has the goal of assuring the long term survival and success of
California and Californians, includes a social compact recognizing the
common needs of a disparate peoples. As I explained in <a href="http://redwoodguardian.blogspot.com/2016/11/calexit-perhaps-170-years-of-invidious.html#migration" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">#Calexit. Perhaps 170 years of invidious doubtful scorn is enough</a>
we Californians live in a state of migrants. California has been called
the land of sunshine and opportunity in the context of migrants. In
fact people have been migrating here for 10,000 years, and still are
today from East of the Sierras, West of the Pacific, and South of the Border. That's fine with
us.<br />
<br />
You see California was part of Spain, then part of Mexico. <i>
It never was part of the British Empire, <b>never, never</b>.</i> It became part of the United
States through a war of occupation by the United States and a treaty imposed on Mexico. California's heritage is Hispanic. Let me make sure this is clear, the heritage of the State of California is Hispanic, not like Massachusetts or New York with their "Little Italy" neighborhoods. Want to visit California from your home state of Iowa....<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6oiL2UlNuk6-66awyr65Bh76dVoUgxwwvOk9cwqvRN07gqlOp3G-N_z713BPv0p6QnbCVLvM5YMrsT-tGmtI5Z5FlYkNT7JUN4PaU-3TLk5VHotv7JUFuzie5cVi2sipt2gpSXduddY/s1600/missions2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6oiL2UlNuk6-66awyr65Bh76dVoUgxwwvOk9cwqvRN07gqlOp3G-N_z713BPv0p6QnbCVLvM5YMrsT-tGmtI5Z5FlYkNT7JUN4PaU-3TLk5VHotv7JUFuzie5cVi2sipt2gpSXduddY/s640/missions2.jpg" width="436" /></a></div>
<br />
... you should see the Spanish Missions established by Catholic priests of the Franciscan order between 1769 and 1833. You can travel the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Camino_Real_(California)" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">El Camino Real</a>.<br />
<br />
After touring the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, in Carmel, California, you should visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium in the City of Monterey, which was the capital of Alta California under both Spain and Mexico. That's the Alta California shown on this map:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJm14lWh0btn4vnZzgPbU_w7fVvH8-ttUmbBqG8uSoG96SnenxhB0R-lEwOTNTtB8LRrZV2OhaJPft1U0CG7PsLWAJsslDBh-2yd9VhLLHoUXOzagZxvt9uwdK13WnvWCGs5JdCNRbjkM/s1600/Alta_CA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="656" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJm14lWh0btn4vnZzgPbU_w7fVvH8-ttUmbBqG8uSoG96SnenxhB0R-lEwOTNTtB8LRrZV2OhaJPft1U0CG7PsLWAJsslDBh-2yd9VhLLHoUXOzagZxvt9uwdK13WnvWCGs5JdCNRbjkM/s640/Alta_CA.jpg" width="690" /></a></div>
<br />
Since Monterey was the only port of entry for taxable goods in California you should visit the <a href="https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=954" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Custom House State Park</a>.<br />
<br />
You won't see any sites associated with the Founding Fathers because they were in English colonies thousands of miles away when the fastest travel was by horseback.<br />
<br />
I won't repeat all the history of California covered
in prior posts. But American California history begins with a war of occupation as indicated on this map....<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHsnpCfgGWQaRscvp9yXM1sacAHkfjW2f-LfW4GtpfrFaC_A7b4tArSAgspNGW8Boc9RZJvR0m4ZIgAjFCBPUhkOghqdO2iAbbav8V2svTItMPRAismrf1E2whMm8t1DiDhpbNVducrRU/s1600/Mexican-American-War2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHsnpCfgGWQaRscvp9yXM1sacAHkfjW2f-LfW4GtpfrFaC_A7b4tArSAgspNGW8Boc9RZJvR0m4ZIgAjFCBPUhkOghqdO2iAbbav8V2svTItMPRAismrf1E2whMm8t1DiDhpbNVducrRU/s320/Mexican-American-War2.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
...which ended on
February 2, 1848, with the signing in Mexico of the <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/guadhida.asp" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo</a>.
The treaty added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States
territory, including the land that makes up all or parts of present-day
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.<br />
<br />
The
Treaty has no direct impact on
Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii,
Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine,
Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri,
Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York,
North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont,
Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.<br />
<br />
But
it clearly does apply to California. Among many other things to be
settled after the Mexican-American War, the Treaty provides:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%;"><b>ARTICLE VIII</b><br /><br />Mexicans
now established in territories previously belonging to Mexico, and
which remain for the future within the limits of the United States, as
defined by the present treaty, shall be free to continue where they now
reside, or to remove at any time to the Mexican Republic, retaining the
property which they possess in the said territories, or disposing
thereof, and removing the proceeds wherever they please, without their
being subjected, on this account, to any contribution, tax, or charge
whatever.<br /><br />Those who shall prefer to remain in the said
territories may either retain the title and rights of Mexican citizens,
or acquire those of citizens of the United States. But they shall be
under the obligation to make their election within one year from the
date of the exchange of ratifications of this treaty; and those who
shall remain in the said territories after the expiration of that year,
without having declared their intention to retain the character of
Mexicans, shall be considered to have elected to become citizens of the
United States.<br /><br />In the said territories, property of every kind,
now belonging to Mexicans not established there, shall be inviolably
respected. The present owners, the heirs of these, and all Mexicans who
may hereafter acquire said property by contract, shall enjoy with
respect to it guarantees equally ample as if the same belonged to
citizens of the United States.<br /><br /><b>ARTICLE IX</b><br /><br />The
Mexicans who, in the territories aforesaid, shall not preserve the
character of citizens of the Mexican Republic, conformably with what is
stipulated in the preceding article, shall be incorporated into the
Union of the United States. and be admitted at the proper time (to be
judged of by the Congress of the United States) to the enjoyment of all
the rights of citizens of the United States, according to the principles
of the Constitution; and in the mean time, shall be maintained and
protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty and property, and
secured in the free exercise of their religion without restriction.</span></blockquote>
There
are a lot of words in those two Articles, but from my point of view the
United States did agree to respect the culture and heritage of the
Mexican-Americans (and presumably their heirs) then remaining in that
525,000 square miles within which California is wholly located.<br />
<br />
Further,
when California's first constitution was drafted in 1849, despite the
fact that the state's Spanish-speaking population was already a
minority,
delegates to the constitutional convention without opposition approved
recognition of Spanish language rights: "All laws, decrees,
regulations, and provisions emanating from any of the three supreme
powers of this State, which from their nature require publication, shall
be published in English and Spanish."<br />
<br />
You see, even the Nazi's after they occupied France recognized the language of the natives living there. In fact in 2010 in <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/6952462/English-invasion-threatens-French-language-more-than-Nazis-did.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">English invasion 'threatens French language more than Nazis did'</a>
we are told: "The invasion of English words poses more of a "grave
threat" to French national identity than the imposition of German under
the Nazi occupation, according to a group of self-styled guardians of
the French language." <br />
<br />
Anyway, one might think this
treaty-based legal history should ameliorate the tension between the
Melting
Pot traditionalists and the multicultural advocates when it comes to the
issue of Hispanic people in the Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, but it does not.<br />
<br />
What I want to say to both the Neoliberals nationalists like King and the rabid
multiculturalists who are still debating is "get over it." But what I will
say is keep your nose out of California's business. We don't do Cultural Melting Pots or Cultural Salad Bowls. We do stews where you can taste everything...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMDVsIgD-4u-Bsmx6E-RsrYI0YYlgyjwQkZchSln0N-XdBMtYxNe0TogIHCGZ9m9PXMwcCxUAREMjfPevXsALZRlkq-A4bkyH_3WQqHdIiYJucN2JkuAtxLEnaxSnheaXo23Daxf404Kc/s1600/greenchilestewpic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMDVsIgD-4u-Bsmx6E-RsrYI0YYlgyjwQkZchSln0N-XdBMtYxNe0TogIHCGZ9m9PXMwcCxUAREMjfPevXsALZRlkq-A4bkyH_3WQqHdIiYJucN2JkuAtxLEnaxSnheaXo23Daxf404Kc/s1600/greenchilestewpic.jpg" /></a></div>
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We don't find this insidious and if Carlos O'Brien wants to put
potatoes and carrots in, fine.<br />
<br />
Yes, Carlos O'Brien. For more on relevant history read about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick%27s_Battalion" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Saint Patrick's Battalion</a>, highly revered in Mexico. You see in the mid-1840's Irish and other Catholic immigrants had the impression that the those now revered descendants of English immigrants shouldn't be forcing members of the Army to worship in Protestant services and those Irish had the impression that there was little difference between<br />
<ul>
<li>British colonial bigotry as they had experienced it in the Ireland they were escaping and </li>
<li>the American <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Manifest Destiny</a> movement bigotry as it affected Mexicans and Native Americans.</li>
</ul>
Embracing their English Protestant heritage must have seemed to the Irish immigrants like an odd choice for people living in the home of the first revolution against British colonialism. But like all things American, it was confusing. Some of the folks in the 13 Colonies did not like some British taxes and military policies. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1JwjceS5HLg/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="236" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1JwjceS5HLg?feature=player_embedded" width="420"></iframe></div>
<br />
But the United States is still fighting wars in places like Iraq, in the process standing in for the British colonial bigots whose descendants just voted for Brexit mostly to keep out war refugees from places like the Iraq they created from whole cloth bigotry.<br />
<br />
It is exactly the attitude the Irish encounted in the America of the 1840's that has resulted in Neoliberalism controlling the United States government. It is good that Twitter exists because without the bumbling tweets, we might not know just how much the Republicans have embraced the tradition of Manifest Destiny bigotry at the core of Neoliberalism.<br />
<br />
And we might not understand just how dangerous this is to California's history, folklore, identity and people. But we need to, and then fortify our defenses.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-71555415286071031192017-03-10T16:14:00.001-08:002018-06-18T14:33:28.981-07:00The 115th U.S. Congress aims for budgetary chaos in California public services by 2020<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #aa0004; font-family: serif; font-size: 130%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">
DON'T READ THE CAPTION - QUICK, WHO ARE THESE THREE GUYS?
</span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisFCYw2QdRytDjsWQeCxKZ07FqVE2Flr6Qv0FXvHTtYpkkQ4vCNOrlM6YgNICUwtXaV-W8nWPZq8yneJxNB613ZvKG3pfQOwoREc9tbsc0uQJ8BGn6NYbP9IWltlAxYSOlXplcL7wVL1o/s1600/healthcare_congress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisFCYw2QdRytDjsWQeCxKZ07FqVE2Flr6Qv0FXvHTtYpkkQ4vCNOrlM6YgNICUwtXaV-W8nWPZq8yneJxNB613ZvKG3pfQOwoREc9tbsc0uQJ8BGn6NYbP9IWltlAxYSOlXplcL7wVL1o/s640/healthcare_congress.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
At the federal government level, the U.S. House of Representatives has the most impact on determining the direction domestic policy - not the President or the Supreme Court. And while the U.S. Senate participates equally with the House in approving legislation and budgets, House members usually set a course by voting first on budget matters and measures that impact the budget significantly.<br />
<br />
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZYthkEUuv5GieKeQUkT-LwbciEqLFN-j-BhKnvcaYiN2hL9v-kXKPvpyItNHPjE3emjg2q-fJRCi6VlelZqz6BCwMHOEvHrbDE5h0VpfdSdPAgPdCBCaE-f_Ta7mHHjPLACX_TLr9hUU/s1600/trump_110.jpg" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;" />Unlike the guys in the picture above, you probably have no trouble identifying the President of the Rust Belt in the photo to the left. That is because you have been taught in school and by the media that he's the most important man in the World. On the other hand, if you read the U.S. Constitution you may be surprised to learn that the only powers assigned by the Founding Fathers to the President with regard to domestic policy (which is established by laws adopted by Congress) are as follows:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 10px;">
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; ...he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed....
</span></blockquote>
As it turns out, over the centuries Congress has adopted laws that give the President additional roles in the policy process. For instance, the current budget creation and spending implementation process was established by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and by other budget legislation.<br />
<br />
The process of the President submitting a formal annual budget request to Congress was authorized by the 1921 Act adopted by Congress. While that shifted leadership momentum, that could be eliminated tomorrow by Congress (though it would probably require a veto override vote).<br />
<br />
Looking at that picture at the top you probably had trouble identifying Representatives Greg Walden of Oregon and Keven McCarthy of California who are flanking House Speaker Paul Ryan. In fact even if you are a resident of Oregon or California you probably did not recognize either one. It is ironic that both had more influence on the details of the proposed American Health Care Act (AHCA) than the guy in the little picture above left whose activities the media (and maybe you?) pay attention to all the time.<br />
<br />
The AHCA as written today would cost California $20 billion in federal subsidies lost that support healthcare for the working class and the poor. To replace that money, the State of California personal income tax revenue would have to be increased by about 25%. The voters of California would have to approve that. That would be resisted.<br />
<br />
Still <a href="http://www.dailydemocrat.com/article/NI/20170218/NEWS/170219822" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">many are suggesting we "go it alone"</a> with regard to healthcare policy by implementing a California "single-payer" plan.<br />
<br />
Speaking of the voters, there was an election this week in the City of Los Angeles. About 11% of the voters turned out. Fortunately, the few that voted turned down a ballot measure that would have prevented development in a City already struggling with skyrocketing housing costs.<br />
<br />
And they approved a measure that would fund modernization and expansion of public transit. Pushed by the reelected Mayor Eric Garcetti, the $121 billion transit initiative would fund hundreds of miles of new rail connections, bus-rapid transit lines, and robust bike infrastructure improvements over the next 40 years. But the plans would need ongoing additional transit funding from the federal government.<br />
<br />
As explained in <a href="https://www.citylab.com/commute/2017/03/hey-transit-frans-worry-about-congress-not-trump/519144/?utm_source=nl__link3_031017" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Hey Transit Fans: Worry About Congress, Not Trump</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 10px;">...President Trump has threatened to defund any cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities; L.A. remains a magnet for immigrants, and nearly one in ten people living in the county is believed to be undocumented. Though [Mayor Eric}Garcetti has refused to use the term “sanctuary city” outright, he has pledged to make “all Angelenos feel safe, secure and welcome in our community” and has criticized Trump’s travel bans and immigration policies. o accomplish his “signature initiative,” ...the mayor will need to negotiate a delicate relationship with the White House.<br /><br />...Legally speaking, the president probably can’t withhold infrastructure funds on the basis of local immigration policies. More importantly, it’s Congress that deals with how transportation is funded....<br /><br />...Rather than anticipating retribution for clashing with Trumpian ideology, cities should just prepare for serious transit funding cuts in general. Unless longstanding federal formulas are changed, the threadbare Highway Trust Fund will still pass onto states a handful of dollars to be used for public transportation. But ... signature grant programs that have supported transit—such as TIGER and TIFIA—may get cut. After all, the Republican Party’s official platform calls for a total elimination of federal subsidies to public transportation.</span></blockquote>
Healthcare and public transportation are only a part of the Congressional budget iceberg threatening the California ship of state.<br />
<br />
Over the next four years Congress will grin, accept, file, and consider the budget requests from the President as they always do. Those three guys in the picture above will not only determine what will happen to the President's requests, it will determine the future success of Garcetti's transportation vision and the future as envisioned by other California governmental leaders.<br />
<br />
And things don't bode well for that future.<br />
<br />
Literally, across California's state and local governments, there are billions of dollars of future infrastructure improvement and operational governmental expenditures that will be hampered if not eliminated by a lack of federal funding.<br />
<br />
This will begin somewhat in the federal fiscal year that runs from October 2017 to September 2018. By the 2019-20 fiscal year, without significant leadership from California officials we may be looking at State and local budgetary chaos.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately it may be the result of <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-counter-ascendancy-of-california.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">California Empirical Egalitarian Progressivism</a> which has the goal of assuring the long term survival and success of California and Californians. Consider the desire to prevent Californians from dying unnecessarily because of lack of access to healthcare, a goal contrary to the <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/01/worldwide-ascendancy-of-neoliberalism.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Neoliberal ideology</a> of the guys in the pictures above.<br />
<br />
In June 2013 Governor Jerry Brown signed bills radically implementing Medicaid Expansion. That did away with many of the barriers that prevented people from enrolling in Medi-Cal by, among other things, eliminating an asset test for enrollees and allowing childless adults to enroll instead of forcing them to seek subsidized private coverage through Covered California, California's Obamacare health insurance exchange.<br />
<br />
Last year the LA Times noted:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 10px;">California, however, wholeheartedly embraced the Affordable Care Act.<br /><br />“The ACA has not been perfect, there have been challenges,” said Sabrina Corlette, a senior research professor at Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms. But “if there was one state where it was really working well ... it was California.” <br /><br />The state enrolled millions in Medi-Cal, and 13.6 million people — one in every three state residents — is covered by the program. Insurance premiums have not increased here as much as they have elsewhere, and the exchange still offers many options so consumers can shop around.<br /><br />The percentage of uninsured working-age adults in California had dropped by more than half to 11% last year, according to federal data. Beyond signing up large numbers for coverage, state officials had also started improving the way medical care is delivered to patients, Corlette said.<br /><br />When considering what the Affordable Care Act could accomplish, she said, “California was held up as the gold standard.” </span></blockquote>
Perhaps being one of only five Democratic states among the 50 (as <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/01/why-california-first.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">noted in the first post</a> in this blog) should have made us a bit more cautious.<br />
<br />
Being so Democratic in elections and policies, we sometimes forget that without California the U.S. voted Republican in the 2016 Congressional and Presidential elections. There is a certain irony that two of the three Republican Representatives pictured at the top are from California and Oregon, two of the five remaining Democratic states.<br />
<br />
It's almost as if Paul Ryan was making a point on behalf of the <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/01/worldwide-ascendancy-of-neoliberalism.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Neoliberal movement</a>. reminding us that the California delegation to the 115th United States Congress may include 39 Democrats, including minority leader Nancy Pelosi, but it also has 14 Republicans who are among the House Republican majority, including majority leader Kevin McCarthy. In his mind, it's all about that House Republican majority.<br />
<br />
Maybe in the end we should "go it alone" but as discussed in <a href="http://redwoodguardian.blogspot.com/2016/11/calexit-perhaps-170-years-of-invidious.html" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">#Calexit. Perhaps 170 years of invidious doubtful scorn is enough</a>, not just on healthcare.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN5x2j3cyQX4qedeVL-M9Pf2H3oVjXY2HGc-aGppkqfrRn5NYQRxw-OViTfg2KE97ZDtU_RTC7c1J8PwiTEQIghoCVHKGGKqU1tjDiagJaBnUukjZw6G3K4VfUmh8rNMY-76o8e-x4yC0/s1600/cuthere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" property="og:image" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN5x2j3cyQX4qedeVL-M9Pf2H3oVjXY2HGc-aGppkqfrRn5NYQRxw-OViTfg2KE97ZDtU_RTC7c1J8PwiTEQIghoCVHKGGKqU1tjDiagJaBnUukjZw6G3K4VfUmh8rNMY-76o8e-x4yC0/s640/cuthere.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-657807182871269059.post-73475932333696254562017-03-03T10:51:00.001-08:002018-06-18T15:26:06.971-07:00Blundering into war with North Korea Fools in the White House are dangerous to California, Oregon, and Washington<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhidgUWr7QcfVfyVYsiB0rjgFnnPKaPmZkMvsNDoJiezkOH9nLLJJNyaUglvoULTq1bpiV-LN8oNWWeWPzInkInW-cnCk8eH0ZJUI9-jSh2UV1gCCExxPrwPIhhmwZKhjY4kmoS7Lt9ADc/s1600/NkICBM_range%252BSTATES.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhidgUWr7QcfVfyVYsiB0rjgFnnPKaPmZkMvsNDoJiezkOH9nLLJJNyaUglvoULTq1bpiV-LN8oNWWeWPzInkInW-cnCk8eH0ZJUI9-jSh2UV1gCCExxPrwPIhhmwZKhjY4kmoS7Lt9ADc/s1600/NkICBM_range%252BSTATES.jpg" /></a></div>
As noted in <a href="http://california1st.blogspot.com/2017/01/why-california-first.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"> the first post</a> in this blog, "What Trump's 'America First' speech means to Californians is that to continue to survive and thrive, we must embrace a 'California First' attitude for the next four years."<br />
<br />
I said that because the Rust Belt President was elected by people in states not "within arms reach" of North Korean strategic or tactical nuclear weapons as indicated on the map above.<br />
<br />
For some reason those folks seem afraid of brown skinned people from 3000 miles away carrying out a Oklahoma-City-type bombing, which was actually done by white-skinned Irish American Timothy McVeigh and Michigan farm-boy Terry Nichols.<br />
<br />
Californian's need to shift the nation's focus off of some petty thugs in the Middle East and onto real nations in the Pacific Rim, nations that have real war capabilities, nations that are a threat, before our children can only be remembered like we remember the <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/155844/the-shadows-of-hiroshima-haunting-imprints-of-people-killed-by-the-blast/" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">shadows of Hiroshima</a>.<br />
<br />
As I <a href="http://redwoodguardian.blogspot.com/2016/05/sanders-and-trump-to-destroy-pacific.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">noted</a> in May of last year "the wild card for us [California, Oregon, and Washington} is North Korea which currently has nuclear warheads and missiles." And as I explained:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 10px;">For us, the nation of North Korea which is working on longer range missiles is the potential threat to millions of Pacific Rim lives, not some ragtag groups of Middle Easterners that seem to dominate the political discussion in this Presidential election year.<br /><br />And the economic and military power People's Republic of China is of far more concern than Putin's Russia.</span></blockquote>
And so Donald Trump got elected by spreading fear of ISIS and the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) among the ignorant.<br />
<br />
It is 42 days since he was sworn in and the headlines that follow are not about a rag-tag bunch of Middle Eastern thugs, they are about Pacific Rim nations:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1yX1OcLzxCALTmqNYEDUGVJ_fopFmf1BmXh60f7FwXPcZpuD0rwbNL5VjBUqztixDncQaxBkE8BF3bWMuvgi2nxzwbRbnCHlp9rdGw3C1nqyPcmY0d7AVEK488laLUiMRXlPoBTSNyIc/s1600/trump-war%253Dnk%253Dheadlines.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1yX1OcLzxCALTmqNYEDUGVJ_fopFmf1BmXh60f7FwXPcZpuD0rwbNL5VjBUqztixDncQaxBkE8BF3bWMuvgi2nxzwbRbnCHlp9rdGw3C1nqyPcmY0d7AVEK488laLUiMRXlPoBTSNyIc/s1600/trump-war%253Dnk%253Dheadlines.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Were these the headlines you saw today leading to stories you read this week?<br />
<br />
Or maybe you are a follower of Steve Bannon's <i>Breitbart News</i>:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhplxqi0QM4rVE8hifPHsdLGd5gOghJ9_zosmVMXg68LWOZLnxC5_14on_PWWfc_PUj8AsvXWqga1vOZF7e1eLKoy3QurNDicHHD1AMB1TuTk6_MRalyM3-zIj9Lketon1vlsJd-ZZjnSE/s1600/breitbart_nk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhplxqi0QM4rVE8hifPHsdLGd5gOghJ9_zosmVMXg68LWOZLnxC5_14on_PWWfc_PUj8AsvXWqga1vOZF7e1eLKoy3QurNDicHHD1AMB1TuTk6_MRalyM3-zIj9Lketon1vlsJd-ZZjnSE/s1600/breitbart_nk.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
But most Americans probably did not read the <i>Breitbart</i> stories either.<br />
<br />
Almost no Americans read the story above from the Yonhap News. In fact, almost no Americans would know that the "Yonhap News Agency plays a central role in the South Korean press by delivering news to its customers as well as newspapers, broadcasters, government agencies, businesses and Internet portals on a real-time basis."<br />
<br />
So you missed these headlines from people who live next door to North Korea:<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">
Click on headline image to read the story!</span>
<a href="http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="header" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYStapkcZrrIYfDoLbKIj7_Qn9kEIVLGPboY1VSEQNsq4_UBML08FlA7tcrAwvTDC2ka1kL6WmQszJWR9aC64ZLZ03znIYXtL0Gib7RQLslDQQfCOxRmF4yerLOEHjVPyjL-gPieeEhhI/s1600/Yonhap00.jpg" title="" /></a>
<a href="http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/search1/2603000000.html?cid=AEN20170302005755315" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Malaysia" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiup3fUEdij0jz2S3utZh44OwFDbNDAALmfMkbphRDojVcDsUPQpBwvbLLfNOuzJP9-5jgu-QPYenwuQup_JmizOEkhfl4MozrChZAqtOQTDH2vl0p9i6PxxebHhjpgtGPdxYe4QAfeSUc/s1600/Yonhap01.jpg" title="" /></a>
<a href="http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/search1/2603000000.html?cid=AEN20170302010653320" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Lotte" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxMlIG3ofrhSKHtNOi6PbpJNFJTJZ6_6yYzxuXJ30k4H8Yg7pCudx2XWM83kc7BjkFWAAMw0nA81MSAFXl12b1bLWE_6Z-8T7xw8PtQKIvuza09ZRBuw6QDTs40WhSaoL3zJeuUvBpkEA/s1600/Yonhap02.jpg" title="" /></a>
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In November <a href="http://redwoodguardian.blogspot.com/2016/11/calexit-perhaps-170-years-of-invidious.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">I offered</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 95%; font-style: italic;">
I only mention my background as a native Californian because here is a list of nations of the world (and in some cases their states, provinces, or other political subdivisions) that have Pacific Ocean (or adjoining seas, bays, etc.) beachfront properties plus a map designed to give one a graphical feel for this world view:<br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 95%; font-style: italic;">Click on image to see a larger version!
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRXF_4s46QwxpT9k-ui5Cir0PLulyZabFRdz2jttX8tC8qN5vjRG1YhZJQX1gCzQQJcdGUW62qg-8EADUTo-DpW00rZ007CmBS414mx6vTdHP9ZSdv0Xxkfmv2_1gMLdbECIKkmGPXs5cT/s1600/USSSCentered_countries.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="567" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRXF_4s46QwxpT9k-ui5Cir0PLulyZabFRdz2jttX8tC8qN5vjRG1YhZJQX1gCzQQJcdGUW62qg-8EADUTo-DpW00rZ007CmBS414mx6vTdHP9ZSdv0Xxkfmv2_1gMLdbECIKkmGPXs5cT/s640/USSSCentered_countries.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 95%; font-style: italic;">
<br />
Notice there is no Europe or Africa or Middle East or Indian Subcontinent on the map. It is absolutely necessary to show this reality - it is a reality. The narrowest distance between mainland Asia and the United States -
specifically between Russia and Alaska - is approximately 55 miles. <br />
<br />
The narrowest distance between Europe (Ireland) and the United States is approximately 2,600 miles, about the same distance between North Korea and Alaska's Aleutian Islands. The distance between the United States and Syria is double that.<br />
<br />
Would it be troubling to know that at least 15% of the world's Muslims live in areas on this map as opposed to knowing less than 20% live in the Middle East-North Africa region? It isn't very troubling to me. Here's why....<br />
<br />Three nations on this map which are not friendly to the U.S. have submarines, missiles, and atomic weapons. At least one of these nations, North Korea, is run by a crazy despot....<br />
<br />
Yes, it is troubling to me that millions of U.S. Pacific Rim citizens are within striking range of those nuclear weapons but Americans living east of the Rockies think the international threat to the U.S. is a bunch of Middle Eastern thugs who have mastered the internet.<br />
<br />
On October 12 an opinion piece written by Ohio Governor John Kasich on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) appeared in the <i>Washington Post</i>.... I was surprised when I read <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-kasich-refusing-to-ratify-tpp-risks-americas-role-as-the-world-leader/2016/10/12/a8f8d6fe-9092-11e6-9c52-0b10449e33c4_story.html?utm_term=.8761df6cb40b&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">his opinion</a>:</span>
<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 10px;">Don’t be fooled by divisive talk in the presidential campaign that the TPP is only a debate about trade. At its very core, this agreement is about making sure the United States continues to strengthen its essential alliances and is willing to sustain its standing as the global leader — something we have done for more than half a century.<br /><br />While China and Russia — and dangerous client states such as North Korea and Iran — jockey to outmaneuver everyone else and gain a dominant hand for their global schemes, there are fast-growing, independent nations looking to partner with the United States and thereby bring their strategic, economic and political values into alignment with ours. That list begins with the initial TPP partners, but as many as 10 additional economies have expressed interest in joining.<br /><br />The last thing we need is for these thriving markets to come to believe they can’t count on U.S. support, pushing them instead into economic and geopolitical relationships with China or Russia. In the event of our inaction and loss of resolve, the United States will surrender global leadership to our most aggressive rivals, dictators who have the most to gain: Vladimir Putin, Russia’s latter-day Stalin; and Xi Jinping, the most repressive Communist Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 95%; font-style: italic;">
Does it bother me that the likes of Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Donald Trump from New York City - unlike Governor Kasich - failed to tell Americans that the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement among twelve of the Pacific Rim countries was specifically designed to reduce the economic and geopolitical influence of China and Russia in the Pacific Rim region, plus continue to fence in North Korea?<br />
<br />
You're damned right it does because Vermonters and New Yorkers are an additional 3,000 miles from these risks. So are the Ohio and Georgia voters who elected a Presidential candidate who has financial interests in Russia and China....</span>
</blockquote>
Which bring us to this map, the initial version of which was actually published by the East Coast/Atlantc oriented <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-warns-north-korean-nuclear-threat-is-rising-1429745706" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><i>Wall Street Journal</i></a> but the second, modified version emphasizes reality assuming the missiles would be aimed at significant strategic targets in the U.S:<br />
<br />
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipjqTbtOW0Ujt2swYu79x-IgxogFThTztfUz8mGvwvJCdCN9wYCXElQmO0VjQo-21v52FiBwU67OPbYALLQQa94PU1F3KoIr4ZftqZ0XzXg8vGCOEcnGGx3O0sMzXYyoMzpgef41EtXbk/s1600/NkICBM_range.jpg" /><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNwtltPnSl8HeDoTn9uRbx9-56An0-PIfwflTV4zpClvT7lMq2Ip649DTp4HcSSAPzZ2FISww4nEgKDGQidDmLiLw2UKdYyNekXswqG1uDqIgA1rMITHhwDd5kmRtUPy1OpYUgRre25L4/s1600/NkICBM_range%252BSTATES.jpg" /></div>
<br />
There is some speculation about the progress of North Korean missile capabilities which ends up giving us a graphic that looks like this:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhIYITZQcUueMuSvP8-Zope8qGFQqGOVVSfMJcfl-Q-GDEtmf2TJC2YVJV0aAorxBRF8b9SGKkENrCp4aHWPWG2XZMefIH7-jvXH2RIZDRjtPUOIgCF66UKmreVb2vf2RpbQccl86_npY/s1600/ms-2016-north-korea-missiles-map-675.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhIYITZQcUueMuSvP8-Zope8qGFQqGOVVSfMJcfl-Q-GDEtmf2TJC2YVJV0aAorxBRF8b9SGKkENrCp4aHWPWG2XZMefIH7-jvXH2RIZDRjtPUOIgCF66UKmreVb2vf2RpbQccl86_npY/s1600/ms-2016-north-korea-missiles-map-675.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="submarine"></a>That, of course, ignores the fact that North Korea has submarines.including six ballistic missile submarines. As noted in a recent <a href="http://www.popsci.com/north-korea-testing-intercontinental-missiles-icbm" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Popular Science article</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 10px;">North Korea is currently pursuing a submarine-launched ballistic missile, which went from a spectacular failure of a test in December 2015 to a modestly successful 300-mile flight in a test in August 2016.</span></blockquote>
Such a 300-mile flight would allow a submarine to sit comfortable 150 miles offshore to strike every major city and port on this map located west of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-thHWPsEQ2ZJCvTKToS0WY6O1i4Gi0WbdV4VbTOlUlHHPCrdS93nvKxAJl-56r_QZbAV-2ALLD728NARboAxqOfQAgRcEj9ZVe2Llnf3NaQ52aCxNDonFRL_K-TI0D_Q06-D2AvphzvA/s1600/west-coast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-thHWPsEQ2ZJCvTKToS0WY6O1i4Gi0WbdV4VbTOlUlHHPCrdS93nvKxAJl-56r_QZbAV-2ALLD728NARboAxqOfQAgRcEj9ZVe2Llnf3NaQ52aCxNDonFRL_K-TI0D_Q06-D2AvphzvA/s1600/west-coast.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
What is not within range of any North Korean nuclear weapons is any Rust Belt, East Coast or Gulf Coast state or the people therein. While naturally people fear strategic nuclear weapons mounted on intercontinental missiles, North Korean submarines and warships can carry tactical nuclear weapons. As explained in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> (emphasis added):<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 10px;">There is no precise definition of the "tactical" category, neither considering range nor yield of the nuclear weapon. The yield of tactical nuclear weapons is generally lower than that of strategic nuclear weapons, but larger ones are still very powerful, and some variable-yield warheads serve in both roles, for example the W89 200 kiloton (1/5Mt) warhead armed both the tactical Sea Lance anti-submarine rocket propelled depth charge and the strategic bomber launched SRAM II stand off missile. Modern tactical nuclear warheads have yields up to the tens of kilotons, or potentially hundreds, several times that of the weapons used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki [both estimated at 18± kilotons].</span></blockquote>
It is difficult to overemphasize the complexity of the situation in the Pacific Rim. It could easily become a Cuban Missile Crisis level situation. Donald Trump and Steve Bannon are not Jack and Bobby Kennedy. Donald Trump's Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who since the age of 16 has been a politics nerd, is no Kenneth O'Donnell who spent World War II in the US Army Air Corps (1942–1945).<br />
<br />
China, which has plenty of ICBM's that can hit anywhere in the United States plus their own submarines with nukes, is disturbed about our plans for placing Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles, a United States Army anti-ballistic missile system designed to shoot down short, medium, and intermediate range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase, in their backyard. Per <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 10px;">In May 2014, the Pentagon revealed it was studying sites to base THAAD batteries in South Korea. In February 2016, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressed concerns that deployment of THAAD in South Korea, despite being directed at North Korea, could jeopardize China's "legitimate national security interests." The major controversy among Chinese officials is that they believe the purpose of the THAAD system, "which detects and intercepts incoming missiles at high altitudes, is actually to track missiles launched from China" not from North Korea. In July 2016, American and South Korean military officials agreed to deploy the THAAD missile defense system in the country to counter North Korea's growing threats and use of ballistic missile and nuclear tests; each THAAD unit consists of six truck-mounted launchers, 48 interceptors, a fire control and communications unit, and an AN/TPY-2 radar.</span></blockquote>
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is crazy, of course. The Chinese know this. They also know the American THAAD system is not designed to defend against ICBM's - we have no defense for that. They also know the reliability of the THAAD system in warfare conditions has not been tested.<br />
<br />
But they do have disputes with neighboring countries involving the South China Sea as explained in the <a href="http://redwoodguardian.blogspot.com/2016/11/calexit-perhaps-170-years-of-invidious.html" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">November post</a> previously mentioned. It's complicated.<br />
<br />
Most of Trump's supporters don't understand the Pacific Rim. If they did, they would not have opposed the TPP. The Rust Belt and most of the other states whose Electoral College
members voted for Trump have put fools in charge of protecting the Pacific Rim including California and Oregon and Washington.<br />
<br />
It's as if Americans are ignorant of the fact that WWI, which led to the European theater of WWII, began as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Crisis" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">July Crisis</a> with incompetents blundering their way into creating the worlds most violent century killing 160± million people. Along with East-of-the-Rockies-Americans ignorance of the Pacific Rim which has been continuous since California was admitted to the Union, there is almost no chance of adequate monitoring of the fools in the White House. The President of the Rust Belt said Thursday while standing on an aircraft carrier:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 10px;">We will give our military the tools you need to prevent war and, if required, to fight war and only do one thing. You know what that is: Win. Win! We’re going to start winning again!</span></blockquote>
What exactly the voters in the Rust Belt and The South have in mind for the 21st Century is unclear, but if they care about the next generations they had better become familiar with the Pacific Rim. Because there are no winners when you kill 160± million people.Michael O'Faolain -http://www.blogger.com/profile/08206888737951629317noreply@blogger.com