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Illegal voting in the US is rampant because voter eligibility is never checked

January 28, 2017

UPDATE! 

Why Trump’s probe of voter fraud is long overdue

All industrialized democracies — and most that are not — require voters to prove their identity before voting. Britain was a holdout, but last month it announced that persistent examples of voter fraud will require officials to see passports or other documentation from voters in areas prone to corruption. 

The real problem in our election system is that we don’t really know to what extent President Trump’s claim is true because we have an election system that is based on the honor system.  …….. The Justice Department has also opposed every effort by states—such as Kansas, Arizona, Alabama and Georgia—to implement laws that require individuals registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship.

It is politically incorrect to question the US voting system. After all, it is the greatest democracy in the world!

But what is notable among all the various politicians and the media who claim there is no significant ineligible voting is that they all just make bald assertions or state “that there is no evidence of illegal voting”. Of course there isn’t. But there is no evidence that ineligible voting is not happening – or that it is not happening on a large scale. First, data on eligibility is never published and, in most cases is not even collected. The onus is surely on the election commissions to check and ensure that voters are all eligible, not for others to prove that some voters are or were ineligible.

Only citizens are supposed to vote in federal elections. Even “green card holders” are not eligible to vote in federal elections. Since 1996, a federal law has prohibited non-citizens from voting in federal elections, subject to punishment by fines, imprisonment, inadmissibility, and even deportation. But while voter registration forms require that a box for citizenship be ticked (a self-declaration), the immigration status for non-citizens is rarely – if ever – checked. There are virtually no prosecutions and even then, only if someone complains against a particular individual.

American Immigration Center:

Non-U.S. citizens are not allowed to vote in the federal elections. Non-U.S. citizens include Green Card holders, those in the U.S. on nonimmigrant visas, undocumented immigrants, refugees and asylees. These categories of immigrants do not have the right to vote for the President of the U.S.

Natural born U.S. citizens and naturalized citizens can vote in the Presidential Elections. U.S. citizens have more rights than legal permanent residents. Green Card holders can remain in the U.S., work here and also bring certain categories of relatives to the country. But they are not granted all the rights granted to U.S. citizens, including the right to vote, serve on juries and work in certain government positions. Though the immigration status granted to legal permanent residents is permanent, they might lose their Green Cards if they commit deportable crimes.

Green Card holders who misrepresent their status as a U.S. citizen and vote in the federal election are more likely to lose their immigration status in the U.S. This misrepresentation can also make them deportable from the country.

Federal law does not prevent non-citizens from voting in state or local elections.

I have heard many anecdotes of green card holders (by definition non-citizens) who did vote in the 2016 US elections. This is not definitive evidence of course but suggests that very little checking is done. What is even more remarkable, and quite amazing, is that neither identification nor proof of status as a citizen is required as a matter of routine when voting.

Plain stupidity.

The bottom line is that no non-citizen is eligible to vote. The opposition to having ID to vote is primarily from politicians who wish to make use of ineligible voting. A large number of the voters – especially in States like California – in the 2016 elections were non-citizens. A significant number were green-card holders.

Stupidity

Stupidity

Add to this that even citizens are permitted to be registered in more than one state. They are not supposed to vote more than once, but there is no check that they do not.

It is not just likely – but is highly probable – that as many as 5 million voters in the 2016 presidential election were ineligible to vote.

As William Campenni writes in American Thinker:

lllegal Aliens Really Do Vote – a Lot

………. A voter registration form was thrust in my hands.  The very first item on these forms, in Virginia and the rest of America, was “I am a citizen of the United States of America,” with YES and NO blocks to check.

“Don’t I need to show you some proof of citizenship?” I asked. She replied “no.”  I asked her how she could verify that I wasn’t lying. Sensing she might be on a slippery slope, she called over a supervisor from the Registrar’s Office and told the woman of my concern.  The official told me they never checked citizenship status because I would be penalized if I lied. Really? So I asked her how she would verify my truthfulness, or those of the dozens of new voters being registered that day.  Defensively, she replied that they checked all registrations for accuracy at the Registrar’s Office when they were turned in.

I called the Registrar Monday, and asked if they do indeed verify citizenship status.  I was told that they didn’t unless someone made a specific complaint against an individual applicant.

……… nobody at the Registrar’s Office is checking citizenship.

The brutal truth is that illegal aliens vote, and in large numbers.  Voter fraud is not exclusive to illegal aliens.  There are also legal aliens (green card, H1B visas, tourist visa holders, etc.) who vote illegally.  And it’s not just Latin Americans.  The non-citizen demographic includes South Asian tech workers, Irish overstays, West and Horn of Africa immigrants, and Asian students. Then there are dual-state voters (college kids, snowbirds, transients), reincarnated voters, and un-purged voters long moved from their precincts.

While few cases are prosecuted, it’s not because few crimes are committed.

So much for the greatest democracy in the world where – in my estimation – upwards of 5% of the votes cast are ineligible.

 

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Seeking “asylum” in Europe carries a whiff of fraud

January 26, 2017

It is hardly surprising that “asylum seekers” in Europe are perceived as including many fraudsters. This article is from the Basler Zeitung in Switzerland:

Eritreans enjoy their “home leave”

Many Eritreans regularly return to their home country where they are supposedly “threatened with life and limb”. The refugees, who mostly live on social welfare, are a good source of foreign currency for the home country.

The scene took place in July 2016 at Zurich-Kloten Airport. It’s a holiday season. Thousands of people fly for their summer vacation. Among them are numerous people from Eritrea, men, women, whole families. They have travel documents as refugees or as temporary residents, who can stay in Switzerland despite a rejected asylum application. The cantons have issued the documents after the Eritreans have submitted a request and this has been examined by the Confederation.

Many of them do not fly to Italy, Germany or Sweden, where there are a large diaspora of Eritrean communities.  They fly to their homeland. Thus, to the very country in which, according to the refugee policy, they are “threatened with life and limb” , and therefore can not at any time be returned after a rejected asylum application, says Councilor Simonetta Sommaruga.

However, the trip does not go directly to Eritrea. Such flights are not available from Zurich at all, but, according to BaZ research, via an intermediate station, for example via Istanbul. From there to the Sudanese capital Khartoum or to Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. This is shown by the boarding cards of the Eritreers, which have been seen by BaZ in Zurich. Up to fifty people leave daily from Switzerland and fly to a neighboring country of Eritrea. A return flight via Istanbul costs around 650 francs during the high season in summer. At present they are available for 599 francs.

In Sudan or Ethiopia, the Eritreans finally get buses, which bring them home in a few days. From Khartoum there are also flights, which after an hour’s flight lands in the Eritrean capital, Asmara . Four out of five Eritreans in Switzerland receive social welfare. This is evidently generous enough that it is possible for many to travel to their homeland.

So far, the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM), said it was difficult to determine who was going to Eritrea through a neighboring country because there are no direct flights. It was merely a few persons who were abusing the status of asylum. At the end of May 2016 the SEM , as reported by BaZ , claimed that every year about 20 suspicious cases were tested, less than half as many as flew daily just from Zurich-Kloten to Sudan, ……

…. This means, in the plain text, that many Eritreans, who are mostly unable to present their Eritrean passports when seeking asylum, suddenly have travel documents, when they go on home leave, either from the Swiss authorities or from the Eritrean consulate in Geneva or elsewhere. New papers. … (It was) revealed  already three years ago that the Eritrean representation in Switzerland not only participated in tax drives from the Eritrean diaspora but also organized travels to Eritrea. Refugees are a source of revenue for the home country. ……. 

No doubt there are genuine asylum seekers, but the many cases of fraud mean that the seeking of “asylum” has lost both credibility and value.

 

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The agenda for the daily news show

January 25, 2017

It is early morning in Europe and the US is still asleep.

Another news cycle has started. (The world news cycle is de facto on US time). But the agenda for this cycle – apart from unforeseen events – is being set by Donald Trump’s late night tweets before going to bed (sent at around 10pm EST). In fact, in my morning sweep of news from around the world, usually starting with New Zealand and Japan and working westwards, I have now started to look first at the Trump tweets.

The tweets this morning:

trump-tweets-20170124

From the New Zealand Herald to The Australian, through the Indian papers and in the European media Trump’s tweet on the immigration wall is picked up universally to make prominent headlines. The gratuitous remark about CNN (though it is well deserved) is not picked up to the same extent. The comments about Chicago (and the wall, of course) are prominently covered by the US media. CNN also covers the wall and Chicago but refrains from adding fuel to the raging feud they currently have with Trump.

The US (and some European media) also cover the current ban on public statements by US State agencies.

But the Trump tweets are driving the news cycle.

 

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Highly likely that at least 3 million illegal voters voted against Trump

January 24, 2017

A study carried out in 2014 and reported in the Journal of Electoral Studies concluded that in the 2008 and 2010 elections, a large number of non-citizens voted illegally. In 2008 and 2010 the researchers estimated that 2.8 million votes were cast illegally. It is highly likely therefore that in 2016, where Obama and Clinton were trying specifically to mobilise the illegal votes, that this number was well in excess of 3 million votes.

The main stream media are stating (not suggesting) that Trump’s claim about illegal voters has been debunked. But it hasn’t. The “debunking” consists entirely of pointing to the the lack of hard evidence from Trump. They have no evidence to show themselves that it was lower. The “debunking” story itself is little more than Fake News. In fact, considering the influx of illegal immigrants since 2010, there is a high probability that the number of illegal voters could have been closer to 5 million rather than 3 million.

Jesse T. Richman, Gulshan A. Chattha and David C. Earnest, Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections?, Electoral Studies, Volume 36, December 2014, Pages 149–157, dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2014.09.001

  • Some non-citizens cast votes in U.S. elections despite legal bans.
  • Non-citizens favor Democratic candidates over Republican candidates.
  • Non-citizen voting likely changed 2008 outcomes including Electoral College votes and the composition of Congress.

 

Abstract: In spite of substantial public controversy, very little reliable data exists concerning the frequency with which non-citizen immigrants participate in United States elections. Although such participation is a violation of election laws in most parts of the United States, enforcement depends principally on disclosure of citizenship status at the time of voter registration. This study examines participation rates by non-citizens using a nationally representative sample that includes non-citizen immigrants. We find that some non-citizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections. Non-citizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.

A Harvard paper claimed that the authors were biased but themselves had only their own speculations based on their own biases and no evidence to back up up their claims.

Most of the 3 – 5 million illegal voters were concentrated in heavily Democratic areas and while they boosted Hillary Clinton’s vote totals, probably did not impact the electoral college results very much. Trump won the Electoral College handily and won 30 of the 50 states. In California alone, Clinton won by 4.2 million of the votes. In New York she won by 1.6 million. In the country as a whole she won by 2.9 million, which means that outside of California alone, Trump won the rest of the country by 1.3 million votes, and outside of the two states, Trump won the rest of the country by as much as 2.9 million votes. It seems fairly obvious that most of the illegal voting was probably in California. Clinton spent some $1.6 billion while Trump spent some $600 million.

There are probably some richer illegal voters around.

 

 

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Bilateral is always preferable to multilateral (and the EU is not smart)

January 24, 2017

This continues my thesis that the age of global, multi-lateral agreements is counter-productive (see previous post). Multi-lateral agreements are part of a centralisation paradigm which is becoming obsolete. It is time to shift to smart, distributed, networks which build on bilateral agreements.

An agreement with the EU as a whole (28 countries, or 27 after Brexit)  is always more rigid and less flexible than making individual bilateral agreements. Over time, in a changing world, the mutli-lateral deal always ends up as a barrier to growth. It is my contention that since 2008 when the financial crisis was triggered, the rigidity of the EU has been a brake not only on the recovery of individual member countries, but has also acted as a brake on other countries having agreements with the EU.

The Canada – EU trade agreement (CETA) is an illustrative example. Negotiations started in 2004. The terms were agreed in 2014. It was signed in October 2016. It has still to be ratified by all the EU parliaments. It has taken that long because of the differences between the EU member countries. What has been signed is already obsolete since the world has moved on. But the agreement cannot be changed without all the EU countries agreeing. The possibility of renegotiation is an essential requirement for any agreement, but for CETA it is virtually impossible. Canada, and each of the EU member countries would have been far better off, with 27 bilateral trade agreements. Instead of a faceless Brussels negotiating for all 27 as a group (lowest common standards and minimum level of internal disatisfaction applying) each country could, instead, have used a common core agreement as a basis for variations for each country and being negotiated by its own representatives. It would have taken less time than the 13 years for CETA.

GATT was and the WTO is equally inflexible and unfriendly to changes. The WTO rather than allowing free trade has ensured that some countries (mainly the rich countries) can maintain high import duties and quotas in certain products, blocking imports from developing countries. The injustices are enshrined and renegotiation (for example by a country moving from developing to developed status) is virtually impossible. The WTO ensures that there is inbuilt protection of agriculture in developed countries while developing ones are pressed to open their markets. The less developed countries have neither the expertise or the money to fully participate in the negotiations which is dominated by the developed countries. The developing part of the world would have been – and still would be – far better off with making bilateral agreements only as needed with relevant partner countries, rather than being coerced to sign up to grandiose, global agreements.

It is good that Trump has withdrawn the US from the 12 country (China excluded) Trans-Pacific-Partnership (TPP). Apart from being another inflexible multi-lateral agreement it was actually just a political response to the  Asia-Pacific-Trade-Agreement (APTA) and the RCEP which China was putting together, both excluding the US. APTA started with Bangladesh, China, India, Lao PDR, Mongolia, South Korea, and Sri Lanka, but has all the disdavantages and inflexibility of multi-lateral agreements. The “Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a proposed free trade agreement between the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) and the six states with which ASEAN has existing free trade agreements (Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand)”.

There are many multi-lateral agreements in Asia Pacific and are more talking shops than any real promoters of trade:

  • ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA)
  • South Pacific Regional Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement (SPARTECA)
  • South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA)
  • Pacific Islands Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA)
  • Bay of Bengal Initiative for MultiSectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC)
  • Commonwealth of Independent States Free Trade Agreement (CISFTA)

The divide between developing countries and the developed world is blurring. Intelligence is available at each sovereign country. Each country, individually, is best placed to know and to look after its own interests. With a bunch of “idiot” elements, there is strength in “unity”, but when each entity is intelligent, forcing the intelligences to join groups and comply with the lowest common standards is counter productive and “not smart”.

In the EU, for example, forcing the member countries to forego their sovereignty, ignore their own intelligence in favour of some bureaucratically defined “common intelligence” is definitely “not smart”.

 

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Globalisation has to shift from centralised control to smart, distributed control

January 23, 2017

I am expanding on an earlier post since I find that there is much loose thinking when it comes to what people perceive as the sins or benefits of globalisation. The globalisation pundits forget that without local there can be no global

Where “globalisation” should have been “think global, act local”, it has instead degenerated to become “decide globally, impose locally”.  It is part of the classic balance between centralised and distributed, between society and the individual. What should have been an increase in local decision-making in the light of being better informed about global consequences, has instead become decision-making at the global level with consequences being imposed on or coerced from the much smaller local entities. The “anti-globalisation wave” currently ongoing is the reaction from the “local” entities which feel imposed upon. It applies as much to individuals in America’s rust belts to the Indian engineers being laid off in a multi-national corporate because avoided costs (not actual costs) are lower in Europe. It applies to the UK view of the EU which fuelled Brexit as much as to the protests in the state of Tamil Nadu against the banning of Jallikattu. This degeneration applies to the UN, it applies to the EU or the WHO or the IMF or the WB. It applies to “global” or “multi-national” corporations, to central governments, to multi-lateral trade agreements and even to scientific endeavour.

There are many analogies and examples available for the balance to be struck in the centralised control of distributed intelligences. Central power generation has given way – somewhat – to smarter, more distributed power generation. Main frame computing has given way to distributed smart devices as the intelligence and capability of each device has increased. Central telephone exchanges have given way to mobile telephony also as the mobile devices have become smarter. In health care, central hospitals will give way to distributed clinics as the capability and intelligence (by automation and AI) of smaller clinics increases. In Sweden for example, health care is still being centralised to the detriment of the local and lags in this evolution towards smarter, more distributed systems. But the move – globally – towards smarter local clinics is inevitable.

In modern power generation systems, which is what I am most familiar with, we used to have centralised controls ruling over individual, “idiot” pieces of equipment. But nowadays we have intelligence at the point of each piece of equipment and a centralised control which only determines policy at the highest level. It is distributed control which has revolutionised not only the efficiency of generation but also the health and life of each piece of equipment, and above all, the performance of individual plants in an inter-connected grid.

From central to distributed

From central to distributed

“Centralised” – as in the diagram above, is imposition of central power on local entities(UN, EU, Central government …), “decentralised” gives groupings of multi-lateral arrangements (NAFTA, NATO, ASEAN …). “Distributed” is the obvious choice when having a multitude of smart entities and consists of developing and emphasising the natural (adjacent) bilaterals. Swarms of birds or shoals of fish are good examples of  decentralised swarms or shoals, where within each shoal a distributed but highly effective network applies, where each individual is only connected to, and responds to, its immediate (bilateral) neighbours.

The key for decentralisation is, of course, that sufficient intelligence resides at the local entities. Then the network becomes “smart”. This shift back towards smarter, more local decision-making is now overdue in international relations, in politics and in the corporate world. This is perhaps the main hope I have for the new Trump administration. With all his faults and all his bombast, if Trump helps reverse the current unsustainable trend and gets it to move towards smarter, distributed local entities, then he will have exceeded my expectations. In all international organisations (UN, EU etc), agreements and trade deals there is far too much decision-making at the global level. The local entities (say in African countries or Indian States or insular communities in Europe) are not necessarily smart enough yet, but that is no excuse to continue with the imposition of “global” decisions made very far away.

A smart world is not one with a global government as many Marxists and socialists dream of, imposing the lowest common standards on everyone and every thing. It is one where the individuals, the local factory or the local government, is smart enough and intelligent enough to make its own decisions for its own position within the global world it exists in. That would give the freedom and flexibility – which I judge absolutely necessary for the future of humans – for the local entity to fit into the global society it lives in as it thinks fit and is capable of.

Globalisation has to shift from centralised control to smart, distributed control. That will give “smart” globalisation.

 

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Now even Merkel starts adjusting to the Trump realities

January 22, 2017

Angela Merkel gets it. With Trump it is all about negotiation.

The Democrats still don’t get it. Hillary Clinton supporters still seem to be in denial but European leaders are beginning to adjust their positions. Teresa May was first out with her Brexit speech. She will even meet Trump on Friday next week for his first meeting as President with a foreign leader. About 8 days after the election a German weekly published a joint article by Obama and Merkel warning Trump not to disturb US/EU trade in particular and globalisation in general. A week ago Trump was castigating Merkel for her disastrous refugee policy. But things have moved on. Now much to the disgust of her Social Democrat partners in government Merkel has signaled that compromises are possible with regard to trade and military spending.

(European Social Democrats and left parties are so self-righteous and so convinced of their moral superiority that they may have some difficulty in adjusting to the new game).

Reuters:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed on Saturday to seek compromises on issues like trade and military spending with U.S. President Donald Trump, adding she would work on preserving the important relationship between Europe and the United States.

“He made his convictions clear in his inauguration speech,” Merkel said in remarks broadcast live, a day after Trump vowed to put ‘America first’.

Speaking at a news conference in the south-western town of Schoental, Merkel struck a more conciliatory tone toward Trump than Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, who on Friday said Germany should prepare for a rough ride under the new U.S. president.

Relations with the United States, Germany’s biggest trading partner, are likely to be a hot topic in electioneering in coming months leading to a general election in September.

“I say two things with regards to this (speech): first, I believe firmly that it is best for all of us if we work together based on rules, common values and joint action in the international economic system, in the international trade system, and make our contributions to the military alliances,” Merkel said.

The conservative German leader, who is seeking a fourth term and enjoyed a close relationship with former president Barack Obama, is seen by liberals across the Atlantic as a voice of reason that counterbalances rising populist parties in Europe. 

Trump has criticized Merkel’s decision in 2015 to throw open Germany’s borders to asylum seekers fleeing wars and conflicts, and has said he believes other countries will leave the EU after Britain and that the NATO military alliance was obsolete.

……….. “And second, the trans-Atlantic relationship will not be less important in the coming years than it was in past years. And I will work on that. Even when there are different opinions, compromises and solutions can be best found when we exchange ideas with respect,” added Merkel.

German government sources told Reuters this week that Merkel was working to set a date this spring for a meeting with Trump.

Under fire from Trump for not meeting NATO’s goals of spending two percent of national output on defense, Germany said this week that it would meet that goal and demanded that the new U.S. administration map out a consistent foreign policy. ……

Image result for trump merkel

from Twitter

It will take some time before the European Social Democrats, in France and Sweden for example, to swallow their overweening pride and adjust to reality. But I expect Norway, Finland, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic States and even Italy to find a highly pragmatic approach to the new US administration.

Even the Pope is adjusting.

 

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The pushback begins

January 21, 2017

There are those who take Donald Trump literally and are terrified. I am not one of them. I am not sure where he might go but I am very glad that the Obama/Clinton, politically correct, platitudinous politics will not continue in the US. In my view Trump is the ultimate pragmatist. He is at heart a “deal-maker”. Everything he says is a negotiable position. Everything he does is part of a negotiation. My expectations are not sky-high, but I am pleased that he represents part of the pushback against the sanctimonious and misguided liberal/left thinking that has reached an extreme position after some five decades. It may have been needed after WW2 but it has gone too far. A globally uniform world consisting of uniformly cloned humans is a nonsense. The blind pursuit of a meaningless “equality” – irrespective of human variations and difference in behaviour – is a barrier rather than a help to fairness and justice.

The pendulum needs to swing back in many areas.

Universal human rights: The concept itself is heavily flawed. That the same “rights” can be enjoyed by and applied to every human, regardless of inherent differences of abilities and behaviour, is fundamentally unfair to good guys and protects the bad guys. The issue here becomes whether there is a difference between “good” and “bad”. The liberal/left position has become, effectively, a denial of the difference between good and bad behaviour. Movements for women’s rights, black rights, LGBT rights and minority rights have all forgotten that enforcing “equality” when natural (and desirable) differences exist, is only a recipe for unfairness. Denying gender difference or denying racial difference or denying behavioural difference is just wrong (and stupid). It is seeking fairness and justice – not equality – which is the goal. These “rights” movements have become vehicles, rather, for spreading injustice because they try to use a reverse discrimination to try and correct for some other perceived discrimination. Behaviour of an individual cannot be divorced from the rights of that individual.

Globalisation: The slogan used to be “think global, act local”. But that has degenerated over the years to ignore the local component. Global rules are now being used to coerce and suppress the local. The EU makes rules in Brussels and forces them, “equally”, down the throats of the labour intensive olive groves in Sicily and the highly automated Scandinavian dairy farms. Global corporations make decisions in their headquarters far away from the factories where their wealth and profits are produced. The UN has become representative of no one and no country. The balance between local and global, states versus central government, EU countries versus Brussels, bilateral deals versus global agreements has become badly skewed towards the global or centralised entities. It is a classic fight between centralised versus distributed. A balance is required and this balance is dynamic. This balance needs to shift back towards a distributed  – rather than a centralised – world.

Wealth and wealth distribution: The poor are not poor because the rich are rich. The focus has shifted too much in favour of taking away from the wealth creators and giving to wealth consumers – regardless of what is deserved. This has been a disincentive for wealth creation to the detriment of all. The distinction between poverty and being poor is being forgotten. A fight against poverty is laudable and desirable. There are two ways of attacking poverty and both are needed. There is a compassionate element and there is a sustainable element. The two are well illustrated by the saying “give the hungry man a fish or teach him how to fish”. Any attempt, however, to eliminate the poor is futile and meaningless. There will always be a distribution (thank goodness) and the bottom end will always be called “the poor” even if everybody is well above the “poverty line”. The traditional liberal/left line is focused on redistribution (deserved or undeserved) while the traditional conservative view is to promote wealth creation (and which assumes a trickle down). Here too the balance has to shift back towards “to each as he deserves” rather than “to each as he needs”.

Taxation: Ultimately taxation is always the confiscation of private property for the good of the majority as determined by the majority. The confiscation is always accompanied by an implied coercive element. It is the society versus the individual. There is nothing inherently wrong with that since any society can determine its own rules for individuals to be members of that society. Here too there is a balance to be struck and a pushback is needed. The balance needs to shift back towards promoting wealth creation and taxing wealth consumption. Taxation needs to shift back closer to the point of sale and further away from the production of wealth. In simple terms, more as sales taxes and less as income tax, more tax on sales of services and less on production of goods.

It is wait and see with Donald Trump. However the world does need a shift back towards the local interest guiding the global engagement rather than global rules being imposed on a local environment. Sovereign interests have to gain a greater sway in global organisations (UN, EU, IMF, WB ….), local manufacturing has to have a greater sway within multinational corporations, states have to have greater sway within central governments and towns have to have a greater sway within their states.  Effective bilateral deals are needed rather than grandiose, global, multi-lateral ones.

Maybe Trump can help with that.

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If Trump’s negroes are “mediocre”, CNN’s negroes must lie under the first quartile

January 17, 2017

CNN is plumbing the depths and scraping the barrel!

No further comment needed.

PJmedia:

CNN’s Resident Racist Called Steve Harvey and MLK III ‘Mediocre Negroes’

CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill has had a record of racial divisiveness and partisanship, but nothing compares to what he said today. He actually uttered these words about Steve Harvey and Martin Luther King III: “It was a bunch of mediocre negroes being dragged in front of TV as a photo-op for Donald Trump’s exploitative campaign.”

Can you even imagine if a conservative had said that?!? The outcry would be so extreme. CNN needs to fire this man for the outlandish racism that he has demonstrated! Marc Lamont Hill is a disgrace!!

trumps-mediocre-negroes

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By responding to Trump, China blunders and ensures that “One China” is on the table

January 16, 2017

In the business world one of the first lessons we used to pound into our deal-makers (salesmen, contract negotiators, purchasers, …. ) was that it was “silence” that defined what was really “non-negotiable”. Bringing up such matters or even responding to any mention about what was “non-negotiable” was self-defeating and, in itself, put that matter on the table. Merely saying that something was “non-negotiable” was, in itself, sufficient for the opposing party to always try to keep it on the agenda.

Trump is bringing a business, deal-making approach to politics which even veteran diplomats are finding uncomfortable and incomprehensible. China’s Foreign Ministry has just declared that “One China” is “non negotiable”. That is a massive blunder by their conventional diplomats and bureaucrats. They have just ensured that in any future US/China talks, “One China” will always be present, even if only in pre-talk talks where China tries to keep it off the agenda.

By responding to Trump’s acceptance of a phone call from Taiwan’s president after his victory and a few tweets which followed his attacks on China’s economic “cheating” during the campaign, China has effectively just put “One China” on the table.

The Guardian: 

China has warned Donald Trump that he has no chance of striking a deal with Beijing involving Taiwan’s political status following the US president-elect’s latest controversial intervention on the subject.

The Chinese foreign ministry told Trump that the US’s longstanding “One China” policy, by which it does not challenge Beijing’s claim over the self-ruled island, was the political basis for all Sino-US relations.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Saturday Trump said all options were on the table as he considered how he might reshape Washington’s relations with China, a country he accused of deliberately devaluing its currency in order to hamstring US businesses.

“Everything is under negotiation, including ‘One China’,” Trump said, referring to the US’s longstanding diplomatic decision not to challenge Beijing’s claim that Taiwan, an independently and democratically-ruled island, is part of its territory.

China’s foreign ministry hit back in a statement advising Trump, a billionaire property tycoon who has claimed “deals are my art form”, that he would never be able to achieve such a deal.

“There is only one China in the world, Taiwan is an inalienable region of China, and the government of the People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate government representing China,” spokesperson Lu Kang was quoted as saying.

“The ‘One China’ principle, which is the political foundation of the China-US relations, is non-negotiable.”

If this was a chess game, Trump’s tweets are giving him the first move with the white pieces. In chess parlance he has the “tempo”. So far, the Chinese – who are more conservative than is sometimes thought – have not quite caught onto the game that is being played. It is negotiation by tweets. They may well get the US to continue to accept “One China”. But it is going to cost them something else.

Trump has not even entered office and negotiations have started.

 

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Posted in Behaviour, Business, China, US | Comments Off on By responding to Trump, China blunders and ensures that “One China” is on the table

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