This week's topics: North Korea; immigration; the NEA; reading, non-fiction; early deaths; Russian revolution; free speech and YouTube; a colony in our nation?; nature and health; rural Americas; American workers training; finally, the blame game and Trump Care.

North Korea. It seems increasingly possible that Pyongyang, desperately poor, but nuclear-armed, may present President Trump with his first very real international crisis.

President Donald Trump is a reckless bully with authoritarian leanings and a craving for attention. Kim Jong-un is a reckless bully with dictatorial powers and a craving for attention. Oh yes, and both have fingers on nuclear triggers. That's why so many national security experts of both political parties struggle to think of a scarier pair....Trump has called Kim a "madman," one of the few things he has gotten right about North Korea. Dealing with him, though, requires measured patience and smart diplomacy -- not Trump's forte -- and a reliance on alliances and relationships that he has dismissed.

North Korea 2. On Monday (27th), the Washington Post's Anna Fifield discussed the relative rationality of Kim Jong Un. The online title of the article was "North Korea’s leader is a lot of things — but irrational is not one of them." Senator McCain (R, AZ) and current UN ambassador Nikki Haley lean towards the "unhinged" characterization.  Perhaps, but if that is true, then we have an unstable leader with access to nuclear weapons. Talk about scary!
     The other side of the coin: “He’s still in power,” said Benjamin Smith, an expert on regime change at the University of Florida. “He and his father and grandfather have stayed in power [since 1948] through a series of American presidents going back to Truman.” (Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama)
     Consider: USSR 1917 - 1989 (72 years and done), Communist China 1949 - 2017 (78 years), the Un family 1948 - 2017 (69 years). Author Fifield: "Kim has rid himself of 300-plus officials during his five years at the helm. He notably had his own uncle, Jang Song Thaek, executed [at relatively close range with explosive anti-aircraft shells] for disobeying orders and building his own power base." (emphasis added)

    At least last Wednesday's rocket test was blew up on the test stand.  Sleep well tonight?



Immigration. While it may seem counter intuitive, it seems that immigrants may fare better in smaller villages or towns, not in major metropolitan areas. At least this seems to be the case of one German study. "WIMBERG, Germany — The village of Wimberg, population 1,800, is on the northeast edge of the Black Forest. In 2015, with great trepidation, it absorbed 300 refugees — one refugee for every six people." Interesting.
     As we know, President Trump said Germany was "crazy" to take all those refugees. While the numbers may be thinning, there are still Germans who remember those initial, terrible post-WW II years when refugees flooded into a devastated Germany from Poland and other areas overrun by the Soviet army.

NEA, National Endowment for the Arts. Mike Huckabee, sometime politician, amateur  musician, presidential candidate, and former governor of AR, makes the case for the budget allotments for the NEA. He says this money, 0.004% of the total federal budget, is essential in furthering creativity, and "those things that civilize and humanize us all," especially among children at the local level. Even though President Trump and his minions may not realize it, creativity, musical and otherwise, is one of civilization's essential driving engines.

Reading, non-fiction. In a recent email, an Irish-American friend mentioned a little known fact about the US - Mexican War. Peter Stevens tells the story of The Rogue's March: John Riley and the St. Patrick's Battalion, 1846-1848. (Brassey's Publishing, 1999) After arriving in the promised land, many Irish-American men flocked to the US Army where, they were told, they would find a better life.
     What they too often found were officers (especially the young, including many "West Pointers") who were virulently and ruthlessly both anti-Catholic and anti-Irish. The book tells the story of John Riley who led a group of American-Irish dissidents across the line to fight for Mexico. Of course, in the end, the Mexicans lost, the American dissident survivors were court-martialed for treason, found guilty, and many hung. Given that many of the future Civil War luminaries (both North and South, including future president Grant) were involved, the US Army did its best to cover up the entire affair.

Dying too young in America. At first Anne Case and Angus Deaton, husband and wife authors, were sure their data were wrong. Mortality rates has always been going down. Then, suddenly, for middle aged (non-Hispanic) whites (45 to 54) it all went into reverse. Why? Especially since the unexpected downturn seemed disproportionately high only among middle aged whites who were not college graduates. Also, why was this trend happening in the US more than in other developed countries? (The article has a chart showing the contradictory, ever-lower trends in Germany, France, Sweden, Canada, UK, and Australia.)
     Slowly, investigators have been looking at what they are labeling "deaths of despair." The data show "the [mortality] trends are identical for men and women with a high school degree or less...There's not a part of the country that has not been touched by this." One possible cause: social dysfunction caused by shrinking incomes and far fewer good paying, "meaningful" jobs. Puzzling and disheartening reading.

The Russian Revolution, 100 years on. In this week's London Review of Books, Sheila Fitzpatrick reviews five books, all of which reflect back on that momentous 1917 event and what has followed. Interesting reading which gives you a "feel" for what is new -- and not so. She writes, "Representing the new consensus, Tony Brenton calls it probably one of ‘history’s great dead ends, like the Inca Empire’. On top of that, the revolution, stripped of the old Marxist grandeur of historical necessity, turns out to look more or less like an accident." Quite the accident!

YouTube. In The Federalist, Ben Domenech opines that "The real danger to Free Speech is Corporate." He continues, "Fear of crackdown on free speech is a bipartisan thing these days." Google and YouTube are feeling major pressure, advertisers are deserting for their failure to "root out" extremist hate-related content. Social media do indeed present ever-changing areas of concern.
      "What is religious speech in some parts of the world will be hate speech in some other parts of the world..." — you can see where this is heading. Domenech closes with, "You have the right to free speech as an American – you have no right to use YouTube to do it. And the mobs that exist can form very quickly if they are offended by your presence there. Be mindful of this in the years to come."

America's colony and the "new" ACA? In A Colony in a Nation, Nick Romero takes a candid, often unflattering, even frightening look across our urban divide -- the poor, more challenged urban areas vs. the "good side of the city" (Credence Clearwaters Revival") Looking back at 2014 and 1776, Romero notes, "[The] cops in Ferguson....sought to boost municipal revenue by writing as many tickets as possible, however trivial the offenses. [In the 1770s,] the British, broke after the Seven Years’ War, sought to replenish their coffers by aggressive enforcement of all tax and tariff laws in the American colonies."

     In No One Cares About Crazy People, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Donoghue examines the plight of America's many mentally-troubled souls. Difficult reading, especially as the  Congress debates how much -- and from whom -- to cut affordable medical care.
     Donoghue notes, "According to the World Health Organization, fully a quarter of the world's population will experience some kind of mental illness; “two thirds of these,” Powers writes, “either do not recognize that they are ill or simply refuse treatment.” As the world surveys the multitudes fleeing from terror and starvation, that could well be true and, if true, that amounts to a staggering 1.8 billion people, one-half billion more than the current population of India.

Health and nature. In this episode of West Obsessed, High Country News Managing Editor Brian Calvert talks with author and HCN  board member, Florence Williams, on her new book, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative. Together they discuss the power of nature to affect mental health, and how a river trip in the Idaho wilderness helped a group of female veterans address their trauma. Ms. Williams also notes that in the 1850s Florence Nightingale reported much the same observations. Calvert and Williams discuss the suggestive notion, "Nature on the brain." Including suggestions that being in nature aids us in being emphatic and caring. If true, it is no wonder that Thoreau wrote so well. 

The many rural Americas. Mara Casey Tieken discusses the many rural Americas that you do not read much about. 

  

Last year’s earthshaking election brought new attention to rural America. This attention is overdue — rural America has long been largely ignored by reporters, researchers and policymakers — and much of it is useful, as this increasingly urban-centric country tries to understand and reconnect with those living far from cities...But so far, the narrative emerging about rural America has been woefully incomplete, because so much of the media coverage has focused on only one slice of it: rural white America....This rural America has a different history from rural white America: a history of forced migration, enslavement and conquest...separate and unequal [impoverished areas].

     These other impoverished areas are going to be much impacted by the President's proposed budget cuts. The picture will not be pretty.

American workers. An article in Foreign Policy details how European companies are paying to train the young workers they need; in the end, it is money well spent. American companies have similar complaints, but have been slow to solve our labor shortages.

No Trump-care. You have seen/heard/read the news. Obviously, too many House members thought Trump Care would be no better than Obama Care. As the stories have cascaded out of the White House, you cannot help but wonder how many people/groups can the President find to blame. He always succeeds, he is never to the reason something fails. He has obviously banished (burned?) Harry Truman's famous desk top ultimatum: The Buck Stops Here.
     Last, one personal thought: America's health care system is free market, profit-driven and until that changes, our well being will always be #2 -- just below the company's bottom line considerations. It is very simple: if the insurer cannot make a profit from you, they do not want you as a client.
     Ann Telnaes, Washington Post cartoonist had a recent tag line "The Republicans aren’t talking about health-care access; they’re talking about buying health-care insurance."

 Thank you for reading. Enjoy the week ahead.

Topics for the week: down Texas-way; "a few good men;" an angry volcano; North Korea; China; American commissars; Standing Rock; Sean, Molly, and Martin McGuinness; finally, King Chuck.

TX and Trump. This article, from, of all places, the Irish Times. I have blogged before about the problematic placement of President Trump's wall along the long, undulating, meandering Rio Grande River on the Mexican - south TX border. It appears that President Trump is about to find out that, if nothing else, Texans tend to be independent and unpredictable. If Ms. Mullally's election statistics are correct, those living in the counties along the border do not, as they say, have much truck with The Donald's proposed wall.

"A few good men." Not all that long ago this was the bold recruiting slogan for the USMC. Now the Corps and other service branches find themselves involved in a sex scandal that can only badly hurt their efforts to recruit women.

Mt. Etna. Last week tourists hiking Etna's slopes were bombarded with rock and ice hurled up as the volcano erupted with a burst of highly pressurized steam. Of late, Etna has laid claim to being the world's longest continuously erupting volcano. The pictures are grainy, the lens well splattered, but  the lights of the nearby down-slope town are clearly visible.

North Korea. Secretary of State Tillerson visited Japan, South Korea, and China, proclaiming that twenty years of talking have produced no results viz a viz North Korea's nuclear program and it is time to move on. But, move on to what? In response, North Korea says that self-defense demands that it continue building its nuclear capability. This situation is the first true military crisis that Japan has faced since the end of WW II. A US-led military response might well place the close-by South Korean capital under    Hopefully someone in the Trump administration understands the long history of Korean -- Japanese -- Chinese animosity. Ya' sure.

China and Andrew Jackson. Could columnist Fareed Zakaria be right? That for all his bluster and posing, President Trump does not see that China would love to become the de facto world leader? That for all of his "make America great again" bluster, he is really signalling our retreat on the world stage? If so he is also ceding our power to deal with North Korea and its nuclear arsenal.
     Zakaria also takes note that coincident with our withdrawal,  China has increased its engagement in Africa and Asia.

An Asian head of government recently told me that at every regional conference, “Washington sends a couple of diplomats, whereas Beijing sends dozens. The Chinese are there at every committee meeting, and you are not.” The result, he said, is that Beijing is increasingly setting the Asian agenda.

Seemingly just as the President Trump appeared to champion President Jackson, the populist "hero" of New Orleans, he signals our withdrawal to the edge of the world stage. Confusing messages and times.

Reading and leadership. By his own admissions we know that President Trump is not a thorough  reader. Here are the relevant thoughts of Trump's Secretary of Defense, General James Matthis.

….The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s
experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a
better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of
incompetence are so final for young men. (emphasis added)

The president might do well to remember that the vulnerable young men (and women) to whom the General refers are on the front lines, not safely seated in a secure office doing some "great,, beautiful deal."


American commissars. Lenin and Stalin must be smiling. It has been reported that the Trump administration has put its very own "eyes and ears," i.e. loyalty monitors, into every important federal cabinet and agency. At Defense, Secretary( General) Mattis' well-read staff, have taken to calling their "watcher," the Commissar. Reportedly, the head of the EPA has shut his watcher out for being too persistent, an unwanted interrupter.
     Beware any staffer who wants to speak an inconvenient truth to his boss. A serious threat to whose definition of "democracy"?

Native Americans take a back seat, again! Regarding the hotly contested Standing Rock pipeline, Gundars Rudzitis (professor emeritus, Geography, University of Idaho) notes,
 
When the citizens of Bismarck objected to putting the [Standing Rock] pipeline 10 miles from their city, fearing the possible contamination of their water supply, the route was simply moved to within one half-mile of the Standing Rock Reservation....A full EIS is required under the National Environmental Policy Act whenever the government undertakes a “major federal action. Yet the new Donald Trump administration wasted no time in canceling the required environmental impact statement and giving the easement that is required by law in order to finish the pipeline.

What followed was, of course, seen on nationwide TV: the forced, less than peaceful end to a year-long standoff, which Professor Rudzitis likened to Selma, March 17, 1965.

The Irish in America and Martin McGuiness. The death of Martin McGuinness was announced this week, a death well noted and hotly debated. Martin never denied being a party to more than few IRA-inspired bombing and shootings in Northern Ireland. Nor could it be ignored that his was a pivotal role in arranging the Easter Peace and the quiet that followed. Some forgave, some did not. Some diehard IRA members who lament the Peace live on.
    In the US there are reportedly 33,000,000 Seans and Mollys, Americans of Irish ancestry -- seven times the population of the Old Sod. Here, too, McGuinness had both his sympathizers and detractors.

Last and sadly, heaven gained another Rock and Roll legend with passing of Chuck Berry. Indeed, "Roll over Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news" that the first inductee to America's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has arrived!

Thank you for reading. Enjoy the first full week of spring.

This week's stories include: health care; higher education; Sunday's talking heads; cancer; North Korea; climate change and immigration; connecting the dots; demographics and economics; day time TV podcasts; finally, moose on the loose.

ACA Republican-style. Long ago the Republicans used the label "Obama-care" for the ACA, hoping the public would forget that the first "A" was for "Affordable." Question #1: Can/should you really expect that any health care system using for-profit corporations would have your best interests as the primary goal? Question #2: Would you not be amazed if the corporate bottom line (profit) was not all the corporations' first and most important consideration? Question #3: Would you not like to be able to sign up for the same health care available to your US representative and senators? At the same price?
     I have emailed Representative DeGette (D, CO 1) and Senators Bennett (D) and Gardner (R)  that I would like to sign up for their plan. To date there have been no instructions how to accomplish that task. Gardner says he is concerned about those medicaid-eligible constituents who were able to sign up under ACA. It remains to be seen if he has the cajones for the impending fight.
     The president's pronouncements about a "beautiful," "wonderful" system are so much smoke-blowing political poppycock. Rest assured that whatever plan lands on the president''s Oval Office desk will most certainly have been examined bottom-line first.
     A not knowledgeable friend observed that people he had talked to did not realize that repealing "Obama Care," actually meant repealing the ACA. Words do have meaning.
     Newt Gingrich on replacing the ACA. While you may not agree with Newt, he is by far on the brightest bulbs in Fox's hen house. A carefully planned health care is important because, he alleges, it accounts for 20% of the US economy.

George Will on university diversity. Will often takes higher learning to task for its intellectual rigidity, sclerosis of the brain, abetted by our progressive era.   He notes "[s]omething Woodrow Wilson actually got right...that a university should be an 'organ of recollection' and a 'seat of vital memory,' lest we “become infantile in every generation.” He goes on to talk about Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.

Face the Nation et. al. Sunday's program with John Dickerson's provided as good an example as any of the problems with this short of show. Not wanting to "cut themselves off" from future guests, these hosts (1) do not ask short, blunt, pointed questions; (2) refuse to follow up evasive, non-answers with more repeated sharp questions. I have suggested to my representatives and senators that they not waste their time on TV. I will read their emails and ask my own follow up pointed questions. Questions for which, by the way, they, too, usually provide evasive answers and do not reference specific programs and their reasons for supporting/opposing said legislation.

Cancer. CBS's past Sunday Morning program was devoted entirely to cancer, its past and present research projects. It is well worth a look, especially if you are, or know,  a survivor. Amazing progress in certain areas.

North Korea. This may be the President's first and scariest crisis. A young, inexperienced leader of nation with little to loose facing an older, equally inexperienced leader of a nation with much to loose. Whether it was with or without outside assistance, Kim Jong Un recently watched as his military simultaneously salvoed four missiles into the Sea of Japan. President Trump's response? Hastening the deployment in South Korea of THAAD, our most advanced anti-missile defense system.
     This is no longer about a lonely dictator crying for attention or demanding negotiations,” said Victor Cha, a former adviser on North Korea to the Bush administration and the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “This is now a military testing program to acquire a proven capability.

Climate and immigration. This article from the High Country News discusses the impact of a warming climate on migration patterns worldwide.
 
Connections. McDowell County, WV, has many poor, sick residents who have what medical care they can get because of the ACA. Nevertheless, they voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. What medical care will they be able to get if the ACA is replaced with what the Republicans are offering? Not wanting to sound like a presidential tweet, but "Hard to tell. Sad." might be their best guess. 

Demographics, culture, and economics. This article looks at how American society is being re-shaped as it grows, changed by birth rates, economics, and immigration. Iowa Republican US Representative Steve King recently wrote, “[The nationalist Dutch politician] Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny...We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies." King's exact definition of "our civilization" and "somebody else's" babies is not spelled out. (emphasis added)
     The article continues, "The idea that national identity and racial identity overlap entirely is the crux of white nationalism; King’s formulation above toes close to that line, if it doesn’t cross." One wonders, though, "What did Representative King really mean to say?" King's other remarks on a MSNBC program mentioned the "footprint of Christianity [that] settled the world" and "all of Western civilization.” He also tweeted that “Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end.” He conveniently forgot Christianity's Dark Ages, when western civilization's enlightenment was firmly rooted in the Moslem world. Then, too, there were those dastardly Chinese in the Far East.
     Americans of King's ilk must simply begin to have much larger families!

Daytime TV. Care to guess which day time podcast is reportedly more watched than either "General Hospital" or "The Bold and the Beautiful?" None other than Sean Spicer's daily White House press briefing.

Loose moose. The video clips of moose hustling down a ski run at Breckenridge has gone viral. One young videographer can be heard shouting she "doesn't know what to do!" The advice of most who've read about/seen/encountered moose in the wild: get as deep into the trees as possible, climb up if need be, never get between a mother and her calf, and know that you cannot possibly outrun a moose. Also, to any moose any dog is a wolf, take Fido out with care if moose are in the area.

Thank you for reading. Enjoy St. Pat's Day sensibly and the first day of Spring.

This week's offerings: rust belt snake oil; defense spending; 2008 and 2020; vacationing in America; 1787, again?; heels are optional; a nice story to end the week.

21st century snake oil. Columnist David Ignatius correctly notes that "Trump is selling snake oil to the rust belt," where he was very popular. The majority of the lost manufacturing jobs will not return, at least not in their past form; workers will have to retrain or continue to be un- or under-employed with lower, stagnant wages. There was no mention in the President's speech about retraining. Even if an American manufacturer keeps products and jobs in place, they will use whatever new technology is available. Too, jobs may shift as American cities, counties, and states vie for manufacturing jobs by offering "better deals," incentives to move an upgraded plant.

      The President's invocation to the contrary is "a palliative that has raised false hopes. He implies that a few good trade deals will refurbish the Rust Belt and restore the good old days of manufacturing. It won’t happen, and to pretend otherwise is a hoax...Trump campaigned on a false argument that global trade was taking away American jobs...but the major reason is automation, not trade. Robots, not foreign workers, are taking most of the disappearing American jobs....Despite the Great Recession, [US] manufacturing grew by 17.6 percent, or about 2.2 percent a year, from 2006 to 2013. That was only slightly slower than the overall economy. But even as manufacturing output was growing, jobs were shrinking. The decade from 2000 to 2010 saw “the largest decline in manufacturing employment in U.S. history,” the Ball State economists concluded. What killed those jobs? For the most part, it wasn’t trade, but productivity gains from automation.

Money vs savvy. In a recent column Fareed Zakaria noted a statement on the Iraqi situation, one that still plagues the region. David Petraeus: “I wish we had more Foreign Service officers, aid professionals and other kinds of non-military specialists....The heart of the problem the United States was facing in Iraq, he noted presciently, was a deep sectarian divide between Shiite and Sunni, Arab and Kurd. “We need help on those issues. Otherwise, we’re relying on 22-year-old sergeants to handle them.

2008 and 2020, Democrats' future. It looks as if the tables have been turned and unless something very untoward occurs, the Republicans will "lengthen their lead," i.e. capture even more governorship and state legislatures.

Vacation at home. It might be a good thing to plan your next few vacation trips here at home. If the Trump budget produces the proposed cuts in funding for the EPA and National Parks Service, relatively "clean and pristine" may not be all that applicable to many of our out-of-doors locations. Not unless a lot of civilian money and effort are applied. The government might want to consider a 21st century CCC-like employment program.
     Interestingly, the new head of the EPA and his assistant, Gina McCarthy, are not all that thrilled with his boss's announced cuts. A fight may well loom on the horizon: EPA vs OMB. From the HCN story: "The Western governors’ unanimity is striking in an era of intense partisanship and reflects the commitment they have to work together through the Western Governors’ Association. The breakfast was an annual event of that group, a rare hub of bipartisanship and consensus building in a polarized nation."

Another French revolution? There is an presidential election scheduled 23 April 2017, one with the potential to shake France's Fifth Republic,; indeed, the entire European Union. "The revolution’s proximate cause is voters’ fury at the uselessness and self-dealing of their ruling class....One poll last year found that French people are the most pessimistic on Earth, with 81% grumbling that the world is getting worse and only 3% saying that it is getting better....A victory for M. Macron [leftist] would be evidence that liberalism still appeals to Europeans. A victory for Madame Le Pen [rightist] would make France poorer, more insular and nastier."
    As the election approaches, France's economy and society are both badly strained, the citizenry very much on edge after repeated terrorist attacks and strident political parties on both the left and right. Stay tuned.

Ladies, find your "flats." As noted in an earlier blog, the British parliament was "petitioned" (i.e. forced) into considering, "Can an employer's dress codes force women to wear high heels?"

 Monday’s debate was triggered by the experience of Nicola Thorp, who was told in December 2015 that her smart flat shoes were unacceptable for a temporary assignment in London with finance firm PwC....Her employment agency, Portico, had a dress code specifying that female workers must wear non-opaque tights, have hair with “no visible roots,” wear “regularly re-applied” makeup — and appear in shoes with a heel between 2 and 4 inches high. For Thorp, that was a step too far.

The answer from Britain's august House of Commons: "No way!" One wonders, if word spreads to the White House, will we see a Donald Tweet on this bashing of an employer's prerogative?

PBS and PP&M. It is pledge week on KRMA, Denver's PBS station and during this money-raising period, one of their audience-attracting shows is "Fifty years with Peter, Paul, and Mary." Somehow, with all the planned and unplanned chaos in Washington, many of their songs of the earlier protest days seemed appropriate and, strangely, calming. Content aside, PP&M just sound good! Just three good voices, two guitars, and a minimum of on-set distractions.
     The nation survived the tumult of the late 1970's Johnson/Nixon/anti-Vietnam era. Hopefully, the same will be said in 2077 about the Obama/Trump/Middle East times. Find some PP&M songs online, sit back, enjoy, and, by all means, sing along!

Thank you for reading. Get out into your community. Walking, protesting, supporting, because as the 2017 Nobel Man said, "The times they are a'changing."