60 Years Later

August 13th will be the 60th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall. To commemorate this there are a number of programs and films currently bring run on German TV reflecting on the history of the 20th century in Germany in general and the rise and fall of the Wall more specifically. One of the most powerful comments was from a West German born in 1944 who made the decision as a 16 year old to emigrate to East Germany to help fulfill the Socialst ideal. He became disenchanted but after the construction of the Wall and so was trapped in a One-Party state. His dislusionment eventually led to his imprisonment for political dissent. He recalled how he was brutally beaten and his crying out to his tormentors, "but you are Socialists, not Nazis!" The moral of the story is that brutality and repression are not specific to the left or right, but rather is much more a question of which political group is in power under a One-Party state. Regardless of the political affliation any and all opposition must be repressed in order to preserve the party in power. The less legitimate the ideals of the powers that be- the more violent the repression of the "other". The Trump Republicans want a One-Party state predicated on inequality in terms of race, gender, religion and economics (taxes/regulation). They will employ the brutality common to all police states to protect their position. I can only hope they are unsuccessful in their current attempt to overthrow our democracy.

Why Do Progressives Keep Coming Up With Terrible Names For Good Ideas

As a child of the 50's growing up in a government town built in 1943 we had 7 school districts- 6 white and one black. Because of that same government in 1954 when the federally mandated desegration laws came into effect the High School became integrated as did one of the two junior high schools. The High School one town over was burnt to the ground rather than allow it to be desegrated. This is a simple example of systemic racism. It is an objective observation of segragation at the national level in 1943; of desegragation at the federal level in 1954; and the fight against desegration at the State level, also in 1954. So why let a discussion about these historical facts get mired down in the term Critical Race Theory? Who does the marketing for the progressive forces? How did they come up with a term so easily open to intentional misinterpretation? Not to mention that it isn't a theory. It is part of the history of the United States- it's not always pretty- but it is necessary. Then move on to Black Lives Matter. Of course in the context it is to be understood there is an implicit Black Lives Matter "too". But by leaving it out they have created a narrative that is immediately transformed into White Lives Matter, and by so doing have left the door open for white racists to turn themselves into the victim, something at which they and their Republican supporters are very adept. Again who is in charge of marketing here. My last pet peeve is Defund the Police. Of course if you have the time to explain the idea behind the slogan there is some sense to be found, but only barely. But Defund the Police is so easily manipulated and once again an important idea is appropriated under a completely different narrative. What is wrong with Reform the Police. Recent analysis of complaints against individual police officers across major cities in the US show that a small minority make up the majority of the complaints- the so-called bad apples. The problem is that the bad apples have been protected by the police forces thus altering the the proverb: some bad apples do spoil the bunch. There is a pressing need for police reform, especially in light of the historical racial biases, but frankly across the board. There should be much more emphasis on training, and retraining- and a reevaluation of what we are actually asking our police forces to do. To often they are asked to deal with members of the public who would be better seved by medical rather than law enforcement personnel and that is a direct result of defunding social services. I for one don't want to defund the police. I do want to increase funding to many other services and let a reformed police department focus on law enforcement.

Time to Start Thinking About the Revolution

Forget about the challenges in Thuringia and the upheaval caused on the back of it.

Is anyone watching the systematic destruction of democracy in the USA?

It is true that the Democrats only have themselves to blame by removing the requirement of 60 votes to approve executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments to a simple majority. By so doing they opened the door for the Republicans to extend the simple majority to nominations for the Supreme Court.

This was the beginning of the attack on the judicial branch of government.

The failed impeachment process- and frankly the result was never going to be anything but an acquittal- has now allowed Trump through his minion Barr in the Justice Department to essentially remove the rule of law as regards anyone Trump wishes to protect.

By extension, I have to assume that the Justice Department can just as easily remove the rule of law for anyone Trump wishes to attack.

The next question is whose side are the police on?

On whose side are the military?

And why is it that just the right wing arms itself and forms militias.

Thuringian Fall-Out

The continuing self-destruction of the major parties in Germany has been accelerated by the shenanigans in Thuringia.

There are many who blame the collapse of the CDU on Merkel's migration policy in 2015 although her decision to let over a million refugees in had been long in coming. For years the EU had hidden behind a ruling holding the country in which a refugee arrived responsible for the refugee. This meant that Greece and Italy in the main received the majority of refugees despite the fact that they were least prepared financially to manage the influx, and that was before the civil war in Syria really took off.

The Greeks and Italians generally had to deal with refugees risking crossing the Mediterranean. The hostilities in Syria opened a new avenue through Turkey into the Balkans creating a land route directly into the center of Europe. By the time the EU, primarily through the Germans, had negotiated a pact with the Turks whereby the Turks were paid to house the Syrians, it was too late.

The fear of immigrants, initially racially motivated as most of the economic migrants risking the sea route were Africans, was then exacerbated by the arrival of Muslim Syrians crating the perfect breeding ground for anti-muslim/anti-immigrant parties to prosper reaching their apex with the victory of the Brexit Party in the EU referendum of 2016 and the rise of openly right-wing authoritarian parties of Eastern Europe.

Despite the fact that Merkel's opening the door to the refugees was justifiable on many levels, she somehow didn't understand the need to explain her actions in a coherent fashion, leaving a vacuum for the right-wing to fill.

The AfD, was waning in 2015, only to be reinvigorated to the point that they are now the 3rd largest party in the Bundestag and have created the mess in Thuringia. Today, the chairperson of the CDU, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK) announced her resignation as Party Chair and that she will not stand as Chancellor candidate in the next national election.

This has thrown all of Merkel's plans out the window. Her vision of the CDU as a solid party of the "middle" is now unclear. The right wing of the CDU might not be as adverse to working with the AfD.

This would not be the first time a Party of the Middle thinks its salvation lies to the Right. It would not be the first time a Party of the Middle thinks it can absorb a party from the Right without giving up its soul.

The next steps will be incredibly important.

The Saga Continues...

The FDP Minister President for Thuringia has indeed resigned although will run a caretaker government until a decision is made as to how to go forward.

It is not a good story.

The FDP continues to blame everyone but themselves for having accepted the poisoned chalice.

The AfD makes noises that if the Linke candidate, former Minister President Ramelow, is put to another vote they will get behind him and so put the Linke into the same position as the FDP (although with 22% of the vote the Linke has a claim)in that they will vote for Ramelow.

This is classic National Socialist disruption. Bjoern Hoecke should know. It has been legally cleared that he can be called a fascist. This has quickly morphed into him being openly called a Nazi. The trouble with this is that it has taken the entire discussion to the level of Nazi propaganda which is exactly where they want it to be. Fascists revel in crude, vile language- something we have experienced in the USA-while the rest of us try and reason and point out inconsistencies and outright lies.

You can't fight bloody-mindedness with lectures. People who base their decisions on emotion don't care about the "truth" because for them they are the truth.
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The traditional parties of the center had better get a grip on this or Germany too will descend into a hell of fascists on the one side, and socialist/communists on the other fighting it out in the streets.

We have seen this before, and again, the fascists not only embrace violence in their speech, but have also never been known to be shy to escalate their language in physical intimidation.

There is a reason we study history and this seems to be rapidly turning into the late 20's.

The Decline of the West Part II

The saga in Thuringia continues. Thomas Kemmerich has realised that his attempt to sell his manoeuvre as a win for the middle was met with overwhelming scorn and scepticism so he backtracked at first saying he would resign and then instead wiggled around to say that he can't just resign as that would leave Thuringia without a Minister President. He then announced he would hold office while a solution was found to either have a new election, which requires a majority in the Thuringian parliament, a vote of no-confidence which again requires a majority in the parliament, or he declares no confidence in himself basically hiding behind some technicalities of Thuringian parliamentary law.

Sound obtuse.

It is.

But it has thrown the FDP into a tailspin from which them may not recover on a national level as well as dragged the CDU through the mud opening up the possibility that AKK be replaced, perhaps by Mr Merz who is slippery as an eel and is definitely blind in his right eye.

All of which takes us back to the fallout of the impeachment that wasn't.

Fully recognising that hindsight is 20-20 it was always clear that the Senate was never going to convict Trump. Even if Alexander Hamilton hammered away in the Federalist Papers about the dangers of partisanship in the impeachment process he did not really come up with a solution other than to rely on the moral fortitude of the Senate to jump over their own shadow and do the right thing.

In the end Mitch Romney, for all his faults, was the only Republican member of the Senate who had the moral fibre to stand up and vote against Trump. The rest of the Republicans couldn't stand up because that effort requires backbone which is something the rest of them don't have.

What concerns me however are the next moves by Trump.

Having already embraced Hitler's quote to "make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it" (Mein Kampf 1923) he has gone a step further and foreshadowed a Night of the Long Knives by getting rid of those who opposed him.

In the first instance Gordon Sondland and Alexander Vindman, but in keeping with true Nazi dogma, didn't stop with
Alexander, but went after his brother too- "one must eradicate the entire clan...".

The light of liberty is flickering.

How do we wake America up to the danger?

The Decline of the West

I have watched the slow motion carcrash known as the US Senate impeachment hearings. It was not a pretty picture.

But if the truth be told the only surprises were that even the red-state Democrats and still somewhat surprisingly Mitt Romney showed that they have a moral compass and are willing to put their beliefs ahead of their personal gain.

If only that could be said of the shenanigans in the former East German State of Thuringia.

Since the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany the main conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)has been accused of being blind in their right eye ie could only see danger from the left and actually absorbed many ex-Nazi's into their ranks, as long as they had gone through the miracle of the Persilschein- the certificate which "washed" (ex)Nazis of their Nazi past. For those of you who are a little hazy on this I recommend Uli Edel's "Baader Meinhof Complex or Giulio Ricciarelli's "Labyrinth of Lies".

But I digress.

The State of Thuringia has 1.7mm inhabitants and has a history of being left of center. In 2014, Bodo Ramelow, a former West German who was investigated by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, (wouldn't it be great to have such a ministry in the USA) for alleged contacts in the 1980's with the German Communist Party who are outlawed in Germany, became Minister President for Thuringia.

This caused quite a stir as Ramelow had moved to Thuringia after the fall of the wall in 1989 to join the successor to the former East German Socialist Unity Party (SED), the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) which then morphed into a new party called The Left.

Ramelow required the backing of the left of center Social Democrats (SPD) which caused quite the furore as the SED was the East German Communist Party and left many (former) West Germans wondering just what had they incorporated into their Federal Republic.

As it turned out, Ramelow was anything but a left wing radical and ran the government fairly well and was expected to be returned in the next election, again requiring support from the SPD. At the 2019 elections he won 31% of the vote. Because he did not achieve a majority there was something akin to the Iowa caucuses where Ramelow ran against the rightwing Alternative for Germany AfD who had garnered 23% of the vote. In the first two rounds of voting amongst the delegates no one achieved a majority so in the third round, Thomas Kemmerich, the one of the delegates for the Liberal Democrats of Germany (LDP) which had won 5% of the vote decided to stand for Minister President between the left, Bodo Ramelow, and the right, the faschist Bjoern Hoecke.

In a clever move, knowing that the CDU who had garnered 21% of the vote would vote for Kemmerich as they couldn't vote for that "left wing wacko" Ramelo, the AfD with their 23% of the vote switched over to Kemmerich thereby becoming the "kingmakers".

This smelled very much of how Hitler came through the backdoor during the Weimar Republic.

It has disgraced the FDP, called the CDU into even more question then they already were under their new party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), and demonstrated that even though they haven't yet become the largest party at the State or National level that the AfD if nothing else is definitely politically astute- aren't most authoritarian populists- and left Germany reeling.

Stop press. As I am writing this Thomas Kemmerich, the FDP Minister President for Thuringia (for a day) has just declared new elections.

Tune in tomorrow.

All You Need to Know About Brexit

Brexit is probably the single most important undertaking that the UK will decide upon effecting every individual in the British Isles not to mention having a meaningful impact on the European Union.

After a referendum which rivals the election of liar-Trump to the presidency of the United States in the extent of lies, half-truths and general intentional misinformation the British public voted to leave the EU without any clear indication of just what that meant and under what terms they should go. Now, almost 2 years later the British Prime Minister has been able to negotiate what is essentially a soft Brexit requiring the UK to adhere to all the rules and regulations of the EU; pay the EU as if they were members; but have no vote as they would no longer be members.

Annoyingly this was obvious from the moment they triggered Article 50 although the Brexiteers in their Elizabethan fantasy land thought they would just walz away from the EU and dance back into the time when Britannia did indeed rule the waves.

So now everything is narrowing down to a vote in Parliament on Theresa May's Brexit deal on December 11.

As a precursor to that vote Prime Minister Theresa May has offered to debate on BBC the leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, head of the Labour Party, on Sunday 9 December, two days before MPs vote on her deal.

So how did the wannabe Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn respond?

"...Labour sources say the party has not yet agreed to take part, with Jeremy Corbyn telling 'This Morning' he preferred ITV's offer out of "respect" for viewers who wanted to watch the 'I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!' final on ITV the same evening - 9 December. I want to watch it myself," he said."

And you wonder how the Brits could have voted to leave the EU....

Democracy in Chains

It is not my normal approach to let someone else do my writing but in this case I think the Introduction of Nancy MacLeans' "Democracy in Chains" is the best explanation of the challenge facing democracy in the United States I have seen.

Please find it on: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073Q7VMB1/ref=pe_3105880_264906480_pe_kc_recs_em.

Go to the page.

And read it.

Then forward it to everyone you know.

Democracy in Spain

I have been carrying on a running argument with an Indian colleague of mine about what he considers to be the unfair handling of the Turkish coup and the Catatonian bid for independence.

His baseline, as it turns out, is that the major difference is that Turks are "people of color", and Spaniards are white, and therefore Spanish police brutality is overlooked and Turkey is condemned for being barbaric. To him that explains why the Germans are so aggressive about the Turkish handling of the coup.

My counter has been that the Germany has been less concerned about the Turkish response to its own population (although the wide ranging imprisonments under the auspices of the coup seem to be more politically motivated as opposed to dealing with real security concerns) but rather with the imprisonment of German journalists under the guise that they are foreign agents "spying" on Turkey fomenting unrest.

They are also concerned about threat that Erdogan poses to democracy in that he is using autocratic means to change laws to position himself to be able to claim the mantle of "operating within the law".

The Germans have a history with this and so are perhaps especially sensitive about putting into law actions which are actually criminal.

Furthermore, I have argued that it is incorrect to compare the Turkish coup with the situation in Catalan and a better comparison would be how the Spanish are going about dealing with Catalonia versus the Turkish handling of their Kurdish minority.

I haven't made much headway.

This despite the fact that the Kurds haven't even ventured to hold an independence referendum in Turkey. The recent response to the Iraqi Kurdish plebiscite is perhaps a good indication of why not. The Iraqi central government responded quickly and remorselessly with military force.

And we shouldn't forget that a referendum in Turkey on Kurdish independence, as in Catalonia, is against the law.

It is an imperative of central or federal governments to ban referendums as they would go at the core of the state's central powers. Even if the Scottish referendum had been won by those wishing to leave the UK it was not a legally binding referendum although it had been countenanced by the central government.

This morning a spokesperson for the Catalan independence movement was quoted that this was not a question of legality but rather of democracy.

I think that might be where the problem begins.

One of the first tenets of democracy is the rule of law.

I would suggest that the Spanish government has been clear regarding the illegality of a referendum and how they would respond to it. Incarcerating the Catalan government and calling for a new election is not something they thought up overnight.

They have Article 155.

Spain's Senate voted 214 to 47 to invoke Article 155 and seize control of the region immediately after it had declared its independence. This marks the first time since the fall of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 that the central government has taken direct control of one of Spain's 17 semi-autonomous regions.

Despite the fact that I think the Spanish government was a bit heavy-handed with their police actions against the referendum, the basic response was the correct one.

All the plebiscites in the world, if they are against the law in the country in which they are held are actually anti-democratic. If you want to have a legal plebiscite then you have to win enough votes at a national level to legalize a referendum, especially on independence.

Democracy is a two-edged sword.

The View from South of the River

Yesterday I went out to the pub with one of my business partners and his father 'John'.

It was an interesting experience.

The father is in his early 70's, a bit of a self-made man which means he dabbles in a number of things with a strong bent towards residential real estate and as he would say he's "doin' awright".

Bromley generally votes Conservative although the margins of victory have been slowly reducing. Essentially they fit into the left wing of the Conservative party which in American parlance would mean "Republicans with a heart".

Bromley voted Remain, as did 'John'. He voted Conservative in the June 8th election, but actually was voting against Jeremy Corbyn of Labour as opposed to for Teresa May of the Conservatives.
When his son, who voted remain and voted Tory heard the results of the June 8th election he called his father to moan about what a disaster it was. To his surprise, his father was almost euphoric.

His rationale was that Teresa May, although a tepid Remainer, was indeed a Remainer. He also said she had no scruples coupled with a consuming desire for power and so she happily jumped into the leadership battle after the Brexit vote, taking up the Leave standard and embracing wooden phrases such as "Brexit means Brexit"- whatever that means- and the equally inane "no deal is better than a bad deal", without ever engaging with the idea that no deal could indeed be the worst deal.

So when Ms May called the snap election claiming it was to achieve a crushing majority in Parliament thus stiffening her back for the coming battles with the EU 'John' thought the election was actually a chance for a second referendum on Brexit. He was concerned that there was even more at stake in this second referendum as he was concerned that Mr Corbyn would have a much stronger showing on the Brexit wave. This despite the fact that if he were not an outright Leaver he was basically an abstaining Remainer and could still garner those young voters who had failed to show up for the actual Brexit referendum.

And, according to 'John', despite the risk, this explains the abysmal campaign run by Ms May.

So on the morning of the 9th he was confident that Ms May would work out a way to remain prime minister and would actually have a 'soft' Brexit mandate, and would no longer have to pretend that no deal was an option.

The dalliance with the DUP is still unclear as they represent the far right and the far left of the Conservative party and have a pork barrel list on top. Their anti-abortion and homophobic anti same-sex marriage goals will find no support in Westminster but their open-border demands between Ireland and Northern Ireland actually plays into the hands of Ms May and all the soft Brexiteers regardless of party affiliation.

So, if politics makes for (very) strange bed partners a Conservative/DPU majority is the epitome of that phrase.

Enter the Liberal Democrats.

The Liberal Democrats won 12 seats, 2 more than the DUP.

They are a recognized party and were part of the last coalition with David Cameron's Tories.

They ran a poor campaign with their leader, Tim Fallon, an evangelical Christian who spent most of his campaign trying to deny that he was anti-gay refusing to deny that homosexuality was a sin. He has since resigned and it looks as if the new leader of the Liberal Democrats will be Vince Cable who is pro-Europe, was Business Minister under Mr Cameron. Mr Cable lost his seat in the 2015 elections and therefore although his predecessor had declared that the Liberal Democrats would not do a deal with the Conservatives Mr Cable feels no responsibility to uphold that pledge.

This was all last night.

It remains to be seen who Ms May goes with but I believe one thing is for sure: Brexit may mean Brexit, but what Brexit means is a much broader church today than it was 2 weeks ago, and that can only be a good thing.

To Save the EU Germany might have to Change

I get into a lot of arguments about Germany's current account surplus which this year is around 8.6% of GDP. That is a huge number. It has drawn criticism from primarily the US claiming currency manipulation. It has also come under attack because of the German propensity to save. Lastly, the other old chestnut rolled out is Germany's ruthless efficiency (in manufacturing).

Germany carries an almost hysterical fear of inflation predicated on its experience of hyper-inflation in the 1920's. This has resulted in a national consciousness which focuses on financial stability with a strong tendency to save on a private as well as on a public level.

But Germany's current account surplus is only partially a result of trade. It doesn't subsidize its exports and only indirectly controls the level of the Euro by virtue of its economic might. Under the current structure the independence of the European Central Bank (ECB) remains as sacred as that of the Bundesbank with the caveat that politically there is monetary but not fiscal union which means Germany, like every other EU nation looks to its own house first.

Because there is no overt currency manipulation nor are there any subsidies paid to support exports the problem appears to boil down to excess savings at the expense of investment.

The Financial Times(FT) recently attacked the Germans suggesting that Germany should tackle its saving surpluses which they went on to blame on over-regulated service industries; low growth level of public and private sector investment; and damaging and unnecessary fiscal surpluses.

Hmm.

Damaging and unnecessary fiscal surpluses.

Just what is it that they would like Germany to do?

I believe they are referring to calls from some corners for a fiscal union, or at least the first steps to a fiscal union giving the EU/ECB the right to impose policies on member states to influence the relationship between savings and investments. But this would be a major step to a federal Europe. It requires relinquishing aspects of sovereignty that no one seems to be willing to do because they think Germany will run a federal Europe.

Sounds like a rock and a hard place.

What it really requires is a German politician- either Merkel or Schulz to admit domestically that although Europe has benefited from the EU and Euro, Germany has benefited even more. It might be time to spread some of the German benefit (ie surplus), and to do so will require more rather than less union.

The argument somehow always ends with someone yelling at me that the Germans run Europe.

I don't argue. I refer to their complaints about Germany's ruthless efficiency.

I ask would they prefer they were building tanks instead of cars.....

Of Nepotism and Ethics in a Banana Republic

The following is a quote from the New Yorker:

"Having sent Tillerson home from Beijing spouting Communist Party mantras, Xi’s envoys have turned their attention to the representative they really care about: Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. From a Chinese perspective, Kushner’s role in the White House is a clannish arrangement that they know well. Many of Trump’s current courtiers may be gone in a year of two, but the members of his family will remain. For a while, China appeared to be preparing to endear itself to Kushner in a way that only it can: Anbang, a financial conglomerate with close ties to the Party leadership, was nearing a deal that would have unlocked billions of dollars to help Kushner save a troubled investment in a skyscraper on Fifth Avenue. Last week, the Kushner family announced that talks had broken off, for reasons that were not clear. It’s certainly possible that a surge of negative publicity was making one side or the other uncomfortable."

Let me repeat part of that: "Anbang, a financial conglomerate with close ties to the Party leadership, was nearing a deal that would have unlocked billions of dollars to help Kushner save a troubled investment in a skyscraper on Fifth Avenue."

So let me get this straight. Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to his father-in-law Liar Trump is in China negotiating a deal with a Chinese financial conglomerate to protect one of Jared Kushner's investments?

I expect to read articles like this concerning the antics of third world dictatorships (or corporate CEO's), but not about members of the president's inner circle, and especially not if they are related to the president.

From the cabinet of billionaires to the buffoons masquerading as counselor to the president and presidential press secretary it looks like a ridiculous sitcom parodying a tinpot dictatorship.

Unfortunately it is not a TV show despite the best efforts of Trump in conjunction with various outlets of the media who are determined to push their view that news in general and politics specifically are just another form of entertainment to be used by Liar Trump for self-enrichment and by the media to increase ratings in order to sell commercials.

It is real life geopolitics.

I can only hope that Liar Trump might be learning the lesson that despite his desire to phrase everything for the benefit of third graders the real world is a lot more complex. Cue Health Care, Tax Reform, Syria, China and just about everything else he will encounter.

While he's on that learning curve I have to maintain my faith in the integrity of the American form of governmental checks and balances to save us from HL Mencken's "narcissistic moron".

Little Britain

I have been so overwhelmed by the cascade of garbage emanating from the White House and certain parts of Capitol Hill that I have found it difficult to reflect on anything else thus putting what I view to be one of the most self-destructive acts undertaken by a sovereign state into the shadows.

Of course I am referring to brexit.

I am not going to go over all of the inanities of the the referendum. I am not going to fall into the category of a "remoaner" as the brexiteers like to tar anyone who was against brexit from the beginning and is still incredulous at the we've drunk the kool-aid and brexit means brexit brigade.

No.

I am going to quote Tony Blair, who, for all his faults, came out with a concise description of where we are.

The brexiteers have made the decision that they don't like the house they are currently living in because the "utilities" are somehow controlled by people who don't live in their neighborhood. Their solution is to sell their homes without ever having looked at what their new home will look like, how much it will cost, what repairs will be necessary and whether the "utilities" will be any better once they are controlled by their neighborhood.

But I can report that the brexiteers tell me that I am wrong, that Tony Blair is certainly wrong, and then continue to bleat their brexit means brexit refrain.

I therefore now have chosen a different tact.

I tell them how happy I am that brexit means brexit and that now the NHS will finally get the funding it requires as brexit means Britain will save £350 million a week which will be put into the NHS.

You guessed it. They look at me with a perplexed look and tell me that I can't possibly believe that the NHS is really going to get £350 million a week.

And I can't possibly believe that they really voted for brexit.

Throwing the Baby out with the Bath

I recently read William Cohan's "Why Wall Street Matters". It was a good explanation of all the good things banks do: finance governments, finance corporations; provide credit which is the grease that makes the economy run. It was all good stuff with one major problem.

His argument is that with all the negative press the banks garner everyone seems to forget all these good things that banks do.

Really?

Is there something inherent in banks that in order to do good they have to also be rife with immoral if not criminal behavior?

It's not that I'm expecting banks to be populated by saints. But I am puzzled by this idea that if you punish the bad bankers then the good one's won't be able to function.

Maybe Mr Cohan should spend less time praising bankers for doing what they are supposed to do and come down a bit heavier on those bankers who knowingly abuse their knowledge and position to game the system in a 'heads they win tails we lose' casino.

That might have been Bernie Sanders point.....

A Perfect Storm

I recently got into a somewhat heated exchange with two friends over my equating of Trump with Hitler. For the record I must state that neither of them are Trump supporters. One is a staunch Democrat and Hillary supporter and the other a Libertarian with Republican leanings, but as I mentioned, aggressively anti-Trump.

To be fair my foray into the comparison was predicated on an article I had read (http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wissen/michel-houellebecq-und-der-untergang-des-abendlandes-13373949.html). The article was actually an analysis of Michel Houellebecq's novel "Submission" in conjunction with Oswald Spengler's "The Decline of the West".

What got the exchange started was my quoting Spengler's "Caesarisim"- his theory that democracies are susceptible to populism and as such subject to an inherent tendency to dictatorship. Spengler was writing in 1918 and his hypothesis found its realization in Hitler and Mussolini.

That is when the discussion went ballistic.

How could I possibly compare Trump to Hitler? He would never murder 6 million people.

That was my mistake. Hitler was an extreme version of autocracy. They were right. I am unsure how far Trump will go in his pursuit of power. To equate him with Hitler is somewhat disingenuous on my part. It moves the discussion from the rational to the emotional.

So I will rephrase my statement.

The United States is at a tipping point. We are closer than at any other time in our history to fall prey to a populist with autocratic ambitions that could dismantle our democratic institutions and replace them with a dictatorship in all but name. To resist this temptation takes a person of staunch republican values. Someone who recognizes the limits of power as proscribed under the constitution. And someone with the moral fibre and integrity to understand that the office of the presidency is not a platform for personal aggrandizement but rather an almost sacred seat from which one rules for the benefit of the nation.

Trump has done nothing to demonstrate that even if he were aware of the intellectual, personal and moral discipline required to maintain the presidency that he would submit his own ego and narcissism to the requirements of the office.

So I was wrong to compare Trump to Hitler. Hitler is but one in a long line of despots who rode into power on the coattails of some semblance of a democratic process and then systematically destroyed that very same process to wrest absolute power for themselves.

The founding fathers were fully aware that they were on the cusp of something not really ever seen before. They were following on from the ideas of the Enlightenment where the concept of the rights of mankind were understood and well defined. They were creating a land where personal freedoms would be protected by law and where the power of the people would be measured and moderated in a representative government that itself would be controlled by a series of checks and balances intended to guard against absolutism.

But these checks and balances were predicated on a statement, while fraught with all sorts of baggage given the position of the Native Americans, slaves and women just to name a few, still sang out: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Let me repeat that. "We hold these truths to be self-evident...".

They don't require any further discussion. They were written to explain why they were declaring their independence from absolutism. They were planning to put in its place a system predicated on the rule of law with a rash of freedoms enshrined in the document by which they would rule.

One of the things I kept hearing during the presidential campaign was that in the separation of the judicial, legislative and executive offices we have a carefully crafted system of checks and balances that would keep Trump in check.

I have seen nothing to suggest this is happening.

I also heard after the election that Trump was elected and it was his responsibility to fulfill his mandate granted by that electorate.

What everyone seems to forget is that Hitler too was elected to power. He too had a popular mandate, provided by the same barbell that catapulted Trump to power: the disaffected mob and the industrial complex.

But neither was elected to dismantle the democratic state. Neither was elected to trample over the rule of law in creating their autocracies.

Trump has entered the White House in a whirlwind.

He is following a time honored method to segue from democracy to autocracy.

Muzzle the press.
Rule by decree.
Find a scapegoat.
Dismantle the organs of government:
The Judiciary
The Intelligence Agencies
The Central Bank


Trump has declared the press the enemy. He and his staff are working hard to undermine their role as an organ of opinion and analysis and to replace them with "Alternative Facts".

Trump has essentially declared a state of national emergency, sidestepping the standard procedures of state and ruled by executive order.

Trump has declared immigrants, refugees and Muslims as all members of an undesirable group, the root of all evil, and under the mantra of national security is systematically removing whatever vestige of human rights they might have. For the record he is also going after women.

He is replacing independent "civil servants" with his own people. Trump has removed the Director of National Intelligence and the Chief of Staff from the National Security Council and has replaced them with Steve Bannon who I have not yet decided if he is Josef Goebbels or Martin Bormann. by his own admission he himself draws inspiration from Leni Riefenstahl so I can't be far off.

The next assault will be on the judiciary. It will begin with the nomination for the Supreme Court that the Republican Congress refused to even entertain under the Obama Administration.

I also expect the independence of the Federal Reserve to come under pressure when Janet Yellen's term ends in February 2018.

So perhaps I was a bit overzealous with my comparison of Trump with Hitler.

Let it please be so.

You Reap what you Sow.

Although I have not read the recent 35 page dossier published by BuzzFeed and actually think it was poor judgement to release unverifiable material somehow I can't dismiss the report out of hand.

First and foremost, according to the Politifact scorecard Trump was True 4%; Mostly True 11%; Half True 15%; Mostly False 19%; False 33% and Pants on Fire 18% of the time. This means he blatantly lied 51% of the time and was very judicious with the truth 34% of the time. For him to suddenly find religion and denounce others for lying seems very much in tune with what I would expect from Trump.

Making unverifiable accusations was meat and potatoes to his campaign, so his denouncing this dossier as lies and slander doesn't help in discovering the truth. He denounces everything he doesn't agree with as lies.

I am interested however that the material made it into a classified briefing from the intelligence agencies to the President and President-Elect. I am sure the intelligence community sees a lot of bizarre material, but I would doubt that they include it all in their briefing material.

Somewhere there must be a concern that there are at a minimum parts of this report that merit disclosure, at least at a classified security briefing. Otherwise it would have been dismissed out of hand.

Still, I think BuzzFeed was wrong to publish it. There is more than enough garbage being spewed daily by Fox News, Breitbart and the like that I would have thought BuzzFeed wouldn't want to be put into that category. They actually have lowered themselves to the level of that bastion of journalistic endeavor and one of Trump's favorite sources the National Enquirer. But that is their cross to bear.

Trump has helped introduce and relished in the post-factual age and then complains when it is turned against him.

He should grow up.

Is it Treason?

Over New Year I had an interesting conversation with an M&A lawyer who is deeply concerned about President-elect Trump and that his allegiance apparently lies not with the United States but rather with the Trump empire as personified by himself.

My friend went on to discuss Trump's disregard for the establishment framing him as an anti-political agitator, indeed that he is in denial of politics itself which in essence means he is against the democratic process which is the only alternative to government by coercion and the tyranny of the majority.

This last point is important. Trump's approach is to constantly harp on about the will of the people while trampling not only on the rights of minorities but actually on the rights of the minority. Anyone who raises objections to the "will of the people" is branded as an enemy of the people.

Such an anti-democratic stance I would suggest is diametrically opposed to the Constitution which Mr Trump will be swearing to uphold on January 20 but I am also aware that it would be very difficult to prove until it is too late. What appears to me to be less difficult to prove is Trumps response to charges that Russian cyber attacks on the United States intentionally interfered with the democratic process during the election. Mr Trump has chosen to come down decidedly on the side of Wiki-Leaks and the Russian Intelligence community against the 17 US Intelligence agencies, outside cyber experts, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill and even at least one Trump adviser all expressing either misgivings or outright accusations about Russia's cyber activities in the context of the election.

The definition of Treason in Article III of the Constitution states that "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court". (The bold type is my own).

I would maintain that Trump is flirting with treason: I question that he indeed intends to uphold the Constitution and I feel strongly that he is adhering to enemies of the United States.

The Ghost of Saul Alinsky

Last August I attended a dinner with the CEO's of a number of major US corporations who unsurprisingly were staunchly Republican but in the main had not yet jumped on the Trump bandwagon with one vocal exception.

She was rabidly for Trump and equally ferocious in her denunciation of Obama, roundly criticizing him as a disciple of Saul Alinsky.

To be fair I did not know Mr Alinsky. When I questioned just what it was about him that she objected to she accused him of being a radical organizer. When pushed, she could not substantiate her accusations as she had never read anything written by him and it was obvious she was just parroting what someone else had said.

Given the setting I decided not to indulge in what would certainly be a difficult discussion about someone that neither of us had read and chose instead to purchase one of his books and try and understand what all the fuss was about. The next day I duly went to the bookstore and bought a copy of the "Rules for Radicals", published in 1971.

He is essentially a community organizer with a Marxist/socialist bent believing that our society could be transformed for the better. This of course explains why he is on the receiving end of so much abuse.


For the record the book was a great read. It had a list of 12 rules which Glen Beck thought so powerful he put them on his website.

His rules are not left or right wing. They are simply how to go about achieving your goals. They are opportunistic. They believe the end is more important than the means. They are harshly realistic and yet simple. But most importantly they require that the leaders of a movement understand what they want to achieve and how to mobilize a constituency in reaching their targets.

Glen Beck, annoying as he might be understood what Alinsky was about. He also understood how dangerous these rules for radicals could be in the wrong hands. Bizarrely I would posit that Beck was equally distraught that Obama had used the rules so effectively to get elected twice, and that Trump, or at least his advisers had also read the rules and appeared to understand how to apply them.

Obama, like most left of center politicians/democrats, had focused on the demographic shifts taking place in the USA and was able to mobilize the myriad minorities into a coherent block paving the way to the presidency as well as a democratic election the first time round.

But that is where Obama made his gravest error. The single largest "minority" in the USA are women. But women are not monolithic. And just as the largest group in the USA are ethnically white, approximately 50% of that majority are women.

And when push comes to shove white women vote with white men. The Tea Party saw this.

Alinsky foresaw it in 1971.

He realized that the middle class college radicals were rebelling against their parents, taking up the banner of the minorities in confrontation with the "silent majority". That backlash brought us Nixon, Reagan and eventually Trump.

But I get ahead of myself.

Throw into the mix the decline of the middle class towards working class at the same time that the captains of industry and their lieutenants are busy feathering their nests and you suddenly find the white "majority" circling their wagons against the encroaching minorities and the economic and political elites. Trump understood this. He understood that the silent majority had lost faith in the economic and political elites. They felt threatened that they were being squeezed in the middle and that no one had their (white American) interest at heart.

Of course neither does Trump. But that is irrelevant.

The liberal establishment thought demographics would win the day. The populists knew to exploit the (in part valid) concerns of the white middle/working class knowing full well that they would not be able to make good on half of what they promised. Indeed, an analysis of Trump's campaign by the German Public News agency found that 70% of his rhetoric was untrue, although they failed to recognize that this was irrelevant.

While the liberal elites focused on the inanity of Trump, belittling his support base, Trump happily followed one of the main tenets of Alinsky- the end justifies the means.

If your lies feed into the desires of the electorate you need to win an election, why tell them the truth?

We can't castigate every Trump supporter as an uneducated white racist. Some are. But many are truly filled with existential fear.

Trump believes it is a zero sum game and so has embraced the white majority at the expense of basically every minority.

The challenge is to create a policy that understands there is enough room in the boat for everyone and minorities are not the problem....

Trump

I know it sounds extreme but I find it difficult not to equate voting for Trump with voting for Hitler.
No. I am not suggesting that he is Hitler. He at least had a platform and was relatively coherent in presenting it.
And I am not really that concerned with Trump's economic plans. I think the system has enough checks and balances both within the government and outside of it in the form of bond and equity markets to temper his actions.
I am however seriously concerned with his social agenda.
Trump has unleashed strains in the USA which are definitely proto-fascist. He has not distanced himself from the KKK or the Alt-Right neo-Nazis. Indeed he has chosen the ringleader of this mishmash of white Christian supremacists, Steve Bannon, to be his Chief of Staff thus ushering him directly into the corridors of power.
So I have to ask myself how did the Republican Party become the vehicle of Mr Trump.
I think the answer is two fold.
On the one side stand educated white men making short-term, selfish decisions focused solely on their desire for even more power and influence. Hollow captains of industry willingly selling their souls in a Faustian pact.
Standing right next to them is the disaffected white working class, left to fend for itself, easy prey to populist exhortations that their's is the kingdom and that they will be returned to the land of milk and honey.
Put these two together and you have the perfect storm of national populism, which is just one step away from its sister national socialism.
Just as with Hitler there is the hope that the institutions of constitutional democracy will tame him and his bark will be much worse than his bite.
I could say this is because Trump contradicts himself so consistently that one could pretend that he doesn't mean half of what he says- but that begs the question which half.
He certainly said all the right things to the white supremacists and their potential storm troopers the WWC. He said the right things to the educated Captains of Industry who chose to sell their souls.
Last week he tried to show the same lip service to the other half of America personified by some editors, columnists and reporters at the New York Times. In a meeting, despite a campaign of relentlessly bashing the NY Times he suddenly flipped to trying to flatter them, telling them of his "tremendous respect for the New York Times" and that is was"a great American jewel".
His exhortations to "White America" on the one hand and to the NY Times on the other are mutually exclusive.
The Americans who believe in a constitutional democracy, who believe in a multi-ethnic liberal society didn't vote for Trump.
That leaves the National Populists.