This week's topics: "Optimist" column; reading, non-fiction; Pope Francis in Myanmar; nuclear fission; China's end game; AIDS; CO at the Supreme Court; political comedy; where's the money?; tax cuts; alien life; "so;" finally, a hopeful note on Congress.

Optimist, Dec 3.  Link here. Articles on dinosaurs, AIDS survivors, Lionel Richie, Max the library cat, documenting dementia, and more.

Reading, non-fiction. Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, 2015 Brookings Institution Press. The authors look closely at this man, Russia's unquestioned leader. More than many may have discerned, Putin is very much steeped in -- and motivated by -- Russian history.

Pope Francis, Myanmar and the Rohingya. In the speech on his recent trip, the Pope was advised by Catholic clerics to not even utter the word, Rohingya, "lest he set off a diplomatic incident that could turn the country’s military and government against minority Christians." Perhaps a valid possibility, but also a missed opportunity?
     It is sad to see Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, in such a seemingly untenable position, obviously fearful of the consequences were she to speak out against the apparent ethnic cleansing that has taken place.
     A portion of the PBS News Hour segment on the Pope's visit was with Priscilla Clapp, the former US Head of Mission in Myanmar from 1999 to 2002. When asked about the impact of Pope Francis's general, non-specific message about the need for tolerance, she noted, quite truthfully:

1. There is no "magic bullet" in this crisis. 
2. Aung San Suu Kyi leads a civilian government under a military constitution.
3. The military, which has led the country since a revolution in 1962, is not going to go away.
4. There are various disparate ethnic groups within the majority Buddhist community who are only now beginning to interact, (5) readjustment and amelioration will be a generational task.

An unlikely historical site, Amos Alonzo Stagg Field. Seventy-five years ago, on 2 December 1942, the world's first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved beneath the football stands at the University of Chicago. The officially dubbed the Chicago Pile 1 experiment began America's Manhattan Project, the world's first step on the road to the atomic and, later, hydrogen bombs. (Factoid: Chicago University's Division III football team plays on the nearby second Stagg field with the re-located original field's gate.)

Beijing's influence. This Foreign Policy article leaves little doubt about China's drive to increase its influence through a program at John Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) . What is less well known is that is that "the money for the new initiatives came in part from the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), a Hong Kong-based nonprofit. CUSEF is a registered foreign agent bankrolled by a high-ranking Chinese government official with close ties to a sprawling Chinese Communist Party apparatus that handles influence operations abroad, known as the 'united front.'...The Chinese government has sought to repress ideas it doesn’t like and to amplify those it does, and its efforts have met with growing success.”
      With Russia's Putin striving to reestablish his nation's influence (last week's blog) and China's surging influence in south east Asia, one cannot but feel dispirited about our own disjointed and anemic efforts to deal with our two major foreign policy and military adversaries.

AIDS. Last week's blog noted th possible federal cuts in the funding for so-called  "orphan" diseases. This week, Michael Gerson writes about possible cuts that would "gut America’s progress against AIDS." Dispiriting, to say the least.

CO, cake, and the Constitution. On Tuesday (5 Dec), the Supreme Court heard a case in which a baker in Littleton, CO, alleges that his religious liberty was violated if he were forced to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. George Will discusses the case in his Sunday column. Jack Phillips, the baker-artist, opposes gay marriage and says baking a wedding cake presents the problem; a gay birthday cake would not be a problem. Is baking a cake "protected speech?" Will says, "It is difficult to formulate a limiting principle that draws a bright line distinguishing essentially expressive conduct from conduct with incidental or negligible expressive possibilities." Stay tuned.

Political comedy. This  link  from the New Yorker about the state of political comedy in today's highly politicized, partisan world. Would that these were not such late night programs.

Off-shore dollars. According to this article from The Nation, $2.1 trillion is stashed off-shore accounts to avoid US taxes. [A]ccording to William Galston, writing for The Wall Street Journal, “the 15 companies that repatriated the most” profits during the 2004 tax holiday “raised salaries for senior executives, cut more than 20,000 jobs, decreased investment in research, and expanded dividends and stock buybacks. All this happened despite the letter of the law, which specified that the funds be used for investing in research and the workforce and prohibited their use for compensating executives and repurchasing stock.” 
     One researcher offered an example: “Google moved its IT, its intellectual property in 2003 before even being listed as a public company to its Bermuda subsidiary and since then all the profits that are generated by these search technologies accrue to its Bermuda operation. In 2015, Google made $15.5 billion dollars in profits in Bermuda, where the corporate tax rate is 0 percent.” That’s almost three times the island nation’s entire economic output.

Tax cuts in North Carolina. This article examines what has occurred since NC cut state taxes on corporations. Things are not working as advertised and portend poorly for similar promises made about the forthcoming Republican-backed bill.
 
[As Eric]Henry drove through the conservative, rural county he’s called home all his life, he had trouble seeing many benefits of the tax cut. Business was good, but it wasn’t good enough that he could give his 20 workers significant raises. And there were growing worries that the lost tax revenue — estimated at $3.5 billion this year alone — was beginning to significantly hurt core public services such as schools.

Another recent article noted that American businesses had approximately $2.1B stashed in offshore  tax shelters and when these profits were occasionally "repatriated" it mostly went to increased executive bonuses and stock buy-backs. There was very little -- if any -- "trickle-down" to the middle class.

Meet ET. But, what if that extraterrestrial life form turns out to be a microbe? Earth scientists have been probing humans' probable reaction. "Psychologists at Arizona State University studied how humans are likely to respond to the discovery of alien microbes." Weird? Unusual? "You betchum,' Red Ryder."

"So." Not long ago many adults seemed to have adopted the ubiquitous teen word "like". You know, "Like ..... Well, like...."  Now the go-to word adults seem to have adopted is "so." For example, when a reporter asks a question, the respondent inevitably answers, "So....." So, like, life goes on."

Congressional hopefuls. In his recent Washington Post column, Fred Hiatt relateses a recent conversation with an Illinois congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (a Democrat and Hindu) which gave him hope. Indeed, if there were more representatives like Mr. Krishnamoorthi one could feel really hopeful. Alas, he is part of a distinct minority on Capitol Hill.

Thank you for reading.