Trans Pacific Partnership

 Take notice here that Pacific Rim nations are forming an trading alliance that does not include the United States.  They are doing this in order to create a hedge against rising Chinese influence in the South China See and environs.  You may (or may not) recall that late in the Obama administration there was an effort to create the Trans Pacific Partnership that included all of these countries plus the United States.  During the Presidential campaign Democrats were forced to abandon this effort due to reactionary comments from the opposition.

 It was not just a trade association but was also a military one in the sense that trade ties make for a larger bully pulpit.  One that would be able to counter Chinese influence and their "Silk Road" initiative.  But, as is often the case with the United States, petty politics interfered to the detriment of national security.

 I sincerely hope that the Biden administration is able to align the United States with these other nations to accomplish the purpose of controlling Chinese hegemony in the Pacific. 

This from the Lexington Herald-Leader.

 

 

Asia-Pacific nations to sign big trade deal

dpa

HANOI, Vietnam Asia-Pacific nations are set to sign on Sunday the world’s biggest free-trade agreement at a virtual summit hosted in Hanoi, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said.

“The signing of the regional comprehensive economic partnership tomorrow is a concrete action that shows the determination to cooperate and integrate in the region,” Phuc told regional leaders and businessmen at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting on Saturday.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership covers 2.2 billion people and 29 per cent of global economic output. Having been negotiated since 2013, it is expected to be signed during an online ceremony on Sunday at the 37th ASEAN Summit in Hanoi.

The world’s biggest trade agreement will include 10 ASEAN member states – Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei – along with Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

Prior to finalizing the agreement, 31 rounds of negotiations and 18 ministerial meetings took place, while self-imposed deadlines for the deal were missed on six occasions.

A Recent Histor of Presidential Elections

 

A brief history of presidential elections this century includes several in which the winner did not score a majority but claimed the prize anyway.

In 2000 with Vice-President Al Gore running against George W. Bush, Gore stupidly did not want to be linked with the most popular president in our lifetime, Bill Clinton. You may recall that the count went on forever in Florida with the race yet undecided. Bush's brother was governor, the Florida Secretary of State was Republican and they pulled the plug on the count in West Palm Beach County which was heavily democratic. Guess who the lead attorney was for the Republicans? Bill Barr, the current Attorney General. The courts upheld the stopping of the count and Gore conceded rather than drag the country through a constitutional crisis. But think of how things could have been different. The Bush administration disregarded the warnings from the Clinton Administration regarding Al Qaeda and the September 11^th and we were at war. A Gore administration would have carried on the policy of the Clinton administration and there is a high likelihood that 9/11 would not have happened. No Afghanistan, no Iraq.

In '04 Bush took on John Kerry who was leading nearing the election when a scurrilous group launched a series of commercials alleging that Kerry had failed in his duty and that his military record was false. This of the man who commanded a Swift Boat and earned the Bronze Star but it was enough to tip the scales.

Hallelujah, the world became aware of Barack Obama over the next eight years but our own Senator Mitch McConnell thwarted most of Obama's legislation and refused confirmation of hundreds of federal judges. See where we are now?

Then in '16 Hillary Rodham Clinton took on Donald Trump. HRC is likely the most qualified person to run for president in our lives. She was leading up until the time the FBI director announced they were reopening the investigation into her e-mails 10 days before the election. She won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. The difference was in 3 rust belt states with a total vote difference of 80,000 votes over 3 states.

This makes 3 elections since 2000 where Republicans have used nefarious means to win an election. I call them stolen. This is the difference in our country now. We must take nothing for granted this time. If they can steal the election you can bet they will.

Say Her Name

 

Say Her Name

Breonna Taylor

One of our friends posted the other day that sometimes the law just does not give us what we need. She said that is the fault of the law and the law needs to be changed. She is right. AG Cameron said one thing the other day that I can agree with. He said (I'm paraphrasing) that sometimes the Criminal Code is insufficient to bring justice. It is hard to grasp but that is so.

According to the law it appears that the warrant was lawfully obtained although it contained erroneous information. In this the Metro Police said they will be instituting more careful oversight of the warrant process. Maybe that is enough, maybe not. A civilian witness testified that the police did knock to announce themselves. I don't know what the interval was between the announcement and the breaching but it is ludicrous to think that someone is awake at all hours to hear it. It seems apparent that more time is needed between announcement and breaching. Maybe no breaching at all. It was alleged that it was a “no knock” warrant but that appears to not have been so.

After breaching the man in the apartment opened fire on what he took to be intruders as is his right. The police returned fire as is their right under existing law. They are trained to fire until the threat is eliminated which usually means dead. In this case their fire was misdirected and the threat lived on but Breonna Taylor was eliminated.

Police almost everywhere enjoy limited immunity from prosecution for their actions. I can understand that but that should be more limited but it can't be more limited until their training changes and the rights of citizens are strengthened.

This is where “Defund the Police” comes in. Police have been gifted with military armaments and vehicles and use military tactics. This is wrong. Police are not military, they are not even para-military. They are citizens with the job of enforcing the law. Training must change to reinforce this ideal. The funding for para-military operations needs to be diverted to training social workers and other mental health professionals to attend to calls where deadly action may be required. All members of law enforcement need to be trained in de-escalation of tensions even if it means that they must back off and wait. Police must not be allowed to be something other than a regular citizen doing a dangerous job.

The tactics they use fall the heaviest on disadvantaged and minority populations. They would not use the same tactics in a high rent or gated community. That is wrong and should be corrected. That is discriminatory application of the law.

Often police recruits are people who only want the badge and gun so they can bully people and those recruits need to be weeded out. It is obvious that we need new codes for police conduct and we need them now but you can bet when that effort gets underway there will be those who cry that the police need those abusive techniques in order to protect themselves. I say they can protect themselves and the citizens they serve by being better trained. In addition, they need to know that when they fail their training and use deadly force inappropriately they will be subject to the weight of the law like everyone else.

Some say the police are outgunned and that may currently be true but that can be solved by instituting some common sense gun laws including registration, restrictions on who can carry a weapon and what type and (in my opinion) by requiring insurance on each weapon sold just like we do vehicles.

Breonna Taylor should not have died and a grave injustice has been committed with no one being held responsible for her violent death. As a nation, we cannot allow that to happen. Yes, the AG was right. The criminal code has proven insufficient to bring justice and we have seen it happen time after time after time. And we have seen it happen in more significant numbers in minority populations. That should cause someone in power to recoil in horror. The President (who couldn't care less) says that we kill more white people than we do African-Americans and that is true but we kill African-Americans in far larger percentages that we do others.

My Take is this. Tyler Childers asks us what we would do under similar circumstances. We should ask that of ourselves before we condemn Black Lives Matter.

 

 

 

The Cooperation of Societies

 

The Cooperation of Societies

The reptiles and dinosaurs appeared on this planet during the Mesozoic Age which began some 225 million years ago. They were a durable bunch and persisted until they were taken out by a visitor from outer space that made landfall (or sea fall) just off the Yucatan Peninsula some 65 million years ago. They had a run of almost 200 million years. They were splendid in their variety and it seems there was one to fit every niche in the existing ecology. Likely, they would still be dominant had that asteroid not come to us. It is also likely that humans would not have risen to the current status had they survived because they were marvelously adapted to their surroundings.

But their demise gave room for mammals to begin their long climb to superiority. It took another 77 million years for our genus, Homo, to take root. Through the many permutations of evolution it took another 7 or 8 million years for our species, Homo Sapiens, to take root. That is less that 1 million years that our species has existed out of the 4.5 billion years of the earth.

Other variations of our family tree stayed in the trees or on the mountains where the environment afforded some margin of safety. One of the things that has differentiated our genus from others is the habit of forming communities. As a matter of fact, one could argue that it is our reliance on communities that allowed our genus to grow and proliferate. As far back as anyone can deduce primates have lived in groups. It is through reliance on those complex relationships that the group prospers. Those which lose the contact of the group find themselves in desperate straits because it is nearly impossible to find protection and adequate food without the group. It was from such groups that the genus homo began to prosper. First as opportunists gathering enough food and protection to survive by taking the leftovers from other animals and the fruit and other food that nature offers then beginning to use tools and learning how to use the group to hunt. Other mammals use groups to hunt and maybe the early proto-humans took an example from that. Whatever the case they proved to be very good at using the group to make up for the lack of overwhelming physical characteristics. They went from being the prey to preying upon other species but no other species experienced the accompanying growth of the brain. That greater brain allowed them to devise strategies, develop tools and use fire. As their diet improved so did the growth of that brain and the genus homo branched into several sub-species. We are now discovering that they did not remain separate but interbred and preserved the best characteristics of each species.

Then about 10,000 years ago one of the most important events in evolutionary history happened. The hunter-gatherers learned how to farm. This meant they could stay in one spot, raise families, build permanent shelters and develop more complex and larger societies. The downside to this is that rules became necessary to maintain a semblance of peace and to distribute the products of their labors. Millenia passed with rules being made by a strong man, priests and by inheritance. Godly intervention was sometimes construed to appoint a person to be the ruler thereby reinforcing the right of the ruler to dominate. Sometime shortly prior to the third millennium past there began to arise the thought that people should be able to govern themselves. Of course, it wasn't for all people and usually didn't include women. Maybe it was applicable only to land owners or people of wealth but philosophers had quite a time of it deciding who would be the righteous possessors of the right to make laws that would govern all. That was an odd notion and any form of democracy had a difficult time taking root but still instances occurred that tried this or that form.

But then, some 800 years ago some English subjects decided that the King had too much power and that power included making war which impacted them directly. They demanded that the King grant some amount of power to the nobles and such. Of course, the common serf still had no rights. The King was still allowed to hold power because he was obviously appointed by God who ordained the right to rule. None of this allowed the common people to prosper.

It was into this milieu that the American colonies were formed and it only took a hundred years or so before they decided they should form their own societies and their own laws to govern them. Those treasonous people followed the thoughts of the philosophers of the enlightenment period and declared that certain rights were endowed by the Creator whoever that was. Somehow they missed the fact that women and those enslaved were people so it took a while longer to extend the right to vote for their leaders.

Since then it has been almost 250 years and participation in this democracy is almost universal having been extended to all men, finally all women and we are still working on making sure that everyone has the expectation that their votes will be counted.

All of this leads to the laws that govern us and their purpose. In 1789 after a bloody war with Great Britain our United States of America was formed with a Constitution enumerating the rights and responsibilities of citizens. It is worth noting that the prime consideration and basis for all rights relied on property rights. This group of laws was created by our legislature and submitted to the individual states for ratification which was forthcoming thereby creating a contract between the governed and those who govern. That contract is still in force having never been negated by a successful Constitutional Convention.

Over the decades the courts have held that, according to our Constitution, all people are created equal and endowed with certain rights. Also that each person had the right to an expectation of being treated equally under the law. As populations increased strains began to show in the fabric of society and our courts have rendered decisions that impacted interpretations of the intent of our Constitution as the needs of society grew ever more complex.

Today we find ourselves in a heated discussion over exactly what the Constitution intended for its citizens. It is difficult to determine sometimes since there are conflicts in interpretations. But it is certain that without rules to keep the peace and prevent disruptions that would threaten the republic our existence as a free people would be endangered. Our social contract has held us together all these years by encouraging cooperation and compromise. Until there is a successful constitutional convention the contract binds all citizens of this republic. It seems plain that as population increases and resources become more precious that a more cooperative nature is going to be required. Some are resisting this with every fiber of their being claiming to not be bound by the Social Contract but they are wrong.

My Take is that the human race, not just our country, will require more cooperation and sharing of resources rather than less. Without this enmity is guaranteed and the republic is endangered.

BUSTED

I got a cow that went dry

and a hen that won't lay.

A big stack of bills that gets bigger each day,

The county's gonna haul my belongings away

Cause I'm busted.

Ray Charles

Yes, folks, we are in a world of hurt. We can't go to work the way we used to or we stand a good chance of getting sick and, after that, a fair chance of dying. That is really not a big deal to a lot of folks especially those who aren't going to have to work that assembly line. They are far more interested in the financial end of things and, truthfully, we should be also. But we need not be so troubled that we are willing to give up our lives and leave our families without any hope going forward. Any government that asks you to do this is a government that has failed in its main purpose and does not have your welfare at heart.

I'm probably not in as bad a shape financially as some of you. We don't have much but what we have is paid for. We survived long enough to qualify for Medicare and Social Security which isn't much but it is more than a lot of people in big houses and driving new SUVs have. I know how to grow a garden and have done so for at least half my lifetime now but there is no way that today's world will allow you to subsist on that alone. But if you are a person who cares about this country and cares about what kind of future you are leaving your children you should be terrified.

Here is the issue. With very few people working our government is going to experience a sharp drop in revenue. We already spend a third more than we receive for various reasons that do not include people unwilling to work. After the crash of '08 we used about $2 Trillion to bail out the banks and for stimulus. We've spent about $6 Trillion on wars that we needn't have fought and can't win. Now, we are spending Trillions more to try to keep America from turning into Somalia. Where is the money coming from? Well, it's kind of a win/win situation because all we have to do is print up some more money. We can't trade it for gold or silver any longer so it is a financial medium that depends on itself for reliability. The only way it can fail is if enough people begin to see it as a currency that is no longer reliable. Since it is the global standard that means if the dollar goes down so does the world's financial markets. It is faith in the United States and the dollar that keeps the world's financial markets in motion. Can the dollar fail? Who wants to find out?

I want you to consider what would happen if, for some reason, people quit accepting the dollar as payment for goods and debts. I also want you to consider how government gets money to pay for things to be done. For instance, how does Social Security get paid for? How does our military get paid for? Have you ever thought about who gets that money that we spend on our military? What happens if we can't pay for the fuel to keep ships and planes moving? Or to pay our men and women in the Armed Forces. Necessarily we would be required to pull our forces out of service and bring them home. What if we can't pay to have our roads and bridges maintained (which apparently we can't)? I'm sure you don't need me to provide the answers to these questions but think about it.

So, here we are (and the rest of the world also) with a virus threatening to kill or make ill almost half of us. We can't work if we're too sick to work. We can't go around infecting everyone else. That's what the Bubonic Plague did and that set civilization back 400 years and brought on what we refer to as “The Dark Ages.” Pandemics have plagued mankind that we know of as far back as history goes but in the past century we became able to fight them back. Now one has arisen that we don't know how to fight but we do know some things that work to alleviate the symptoms.

What I want you to do is to consider the amount of disruption that this virus, a tiny thing we can't even see, has caused. It has totally disrupted global trade, financial markets, energy production and every other facet of our lives you can think of. What do you think would happen if we jumped the gun to return to our endeavors only to create a larger pandemic than we now have? That is what we did a hundred years ago with the Spanish Flu and the second wave was much larger than the first. Many find that to be an acceptable outcome. Right now we are existing on government debt providing us with the currency that is necessary in today's lives. Can that government sustain that obligation to it's citizens through another wave of infection and death or would we be left to our own devices? Can we maintain medical services or would we be left to die with bodies placed at the front door for pickup as they were in times past? Perhaps the answer to that lies in what is happening in nursing homes.

Those wanting us to return to work are being short-sighted and betray their allegiance to money rather than people. These things have the ability to bring down governments and the next one we get may not be so considerate of it's citizens. We must continue the distancing until we arrive at some way to lessen the effect of the disease or a vaccine to immunize us or we risk losing it all. Yes, it is that desperate.

My Take is that this is bad but there is an enemy in the wings already on the move to hit us again and it has the potential to make Covid 19 look like a walk in the park. We not only need to get back to work, we need to restructure our society so that we will be better prepared when, not if, it comes. Be smart.

The Hammer

The Hammer

If we take nothing else from this catastrophe we should at least realize that having a national health care service that could be quickly mobilized to deal with the increasing risk of viral and bacterial pandemics would be a good thing.

Just as the 1918 Flu epidemic, Sars, Mers, H1N1 and now Covid 19 all jumped from animals to humans this virus is aided by the increasing pressures for land and food forcing humans into closer contact with animals and in closer contact with each other. We haven't seen it yet but there are viruses and bacteria thawing in what used to be permafrost. Tiny enemies that have been in the deep freeze for millenia. Climate change will force humans to live in ever closer surroundings that will maximize transmission of any disease and especially those for which our species has not developed resistance.

I don't know that Climate Change contributed to this outbreak but other pressures brought on by increasing populations and demands for food certainly did. We fool ourselves if we think that our globally sourced food supply has been vetted in the same manner that our domestic supply has. In Southeast Asia food production and humans exist in the same space. Many places use human waste to fertilize crops and serve as food for animals. In our own country the use of inspections has been drastically reduced and in many cases left up to the producers themselves to decide whether or not their product gets to market. Upton Sinclair, who wrote The Jungle in 1906, would be horrified to see the worker abuse and lack of food preparation still rampant in the United States food industry. It is getting worse, not better.

After the Wall Street crash and the onset of The Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt was elected President in 1932 and took office in 1933. It took him and the Democratic Party two more years to enact the Social Security Act. It was passed over the objections of the Republican Party and their howls of socialism. It was far more limited than today in its scope but it provided some help to the elderly destitute people. Soon the ideal of a National Health Care plan began to take shape with the support of both Republican and Democratic administrations but it took until 1965 for Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Party to pass the National Medicare Plan, again over the howls of the Republican Party and cries of socialism.

Presidents as diverse as Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton advocated for a National Health Care Plan to cover all citizens with President Clinton failing to do so over Republican objections during his administration. Finally, with the Presidency of Barack Obama some semblance of what was to be a National Health Care plan was passed, again over the howls of the Republican Party and cries of socialism. The plan came under immediate attack in the courts and some key provisions of the act were held to be either illegal or unconstitutional which decreased the number of citizens covered leaving several million without access to medical care.

And here we are today. In the throes of uncertainty and calamity, not knowing what our risk is or how we may be affected. In the middle of a Presidential campaign where health care is a key issue and, still, the Republicans are howling and crying socialism. One Democratic candidate wants to do away with all private insurance and enact a Medicare for all while the other wants to reinforce the Affordable Care Act as a transition to a National Health Care plan. Republicans would prefer to do away with all forms of government intervention except to support business. In my opinion, strengthening the Affordable Care Act is the most likely to get done but, make no mistake, my goal is National Health Care.

In the flu epidemic of 1918-1919 50 million people died globally out of a population far less that what we have now. Yes, medicine is vastly improved but population is far greater and we still don't know what we are facing with this virus. The fatality rate for flu is one tenth of one percent. .1%. For Covid 19 it is somewhere between 2% and 4%. At least 20 times greater. It is projected that 60 million to 150 million of our citizens will be exposed. Depending on the infection rate that is 1,200,000 to 3,000,000 fatalities. In Italy, one of the hardest hit countries so far, they have come to the point of being unable to treat all their sick and are having to make decisions on who gets treated and who doesn't.

Does it sound like I'm angry? Well, I am. I don't blame President Trump for Covid 19. He didn't have anything to do with that. I do blame him for his inept and corrupt administration and his incessant lies in an effort to diminish the importance of early testing and treatment. I am angry that he rejected using the already available test from the WHO. I am angry that he disbanded the agencies that were established to protect us from these types of things. I am angry at what this is going to do to our economy and the lost lives. I am angry at his Republican enablers that have known all along what kind of threat he is to our republic. And I am very angry that all he is concerned with are his polling numbers. It is my sincere prayer that the President and his enablers bear the burden of their infamy heavily and without cease.

My Take is that the only way this can be made useful is to elect a Democratic wave as was done in 1932, 1964 and 2008. A wave large enough to push National Health Care over the finish line.

HEROES

I wouldn't take nothing for the experience but I wouldn't give a dime to do it again.

Guy Sumpter

I went to church with Guy Sumpter. He was a tank captain during WWII and once told me that he had three tanks shot out from under him and they would always put him in another one and send him back. I'm not certain due to memory but I believe he said this was at the Battle of the Bulge. He wasn't the only veteran of WWII that I have known. I have known many. L.C. Henry also went to church with me. He was wounded at one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific Campaign, Iwo Jima. My father whose name I share, had a ship sank that he was on in the harbor at Casablanca. He served the rest of the war in the Pacific on a destroyer and was part of the occupying force in Japan. He walked through Nagasaki just some weeks after the second atomic bomb was dropped there. These men have become known as part of The Greatest Generation. I seriously doubt that any one of these men would
have accepted being called a hero. They just did their duty. I met a man who lived at Shopville who, once he found out that Dad was a Navy man, told me of his experience in the war. He was a driver of the boats that landed troops on the beaches. He said that there were times that when the ramp dropped not a man made if off the boat. We spoke of the nightmares that had stayed with him and my Dad and then he began to cry. Do you think he thought he was a hero?

I remember back in high school being taught about the beginnings of Western Democracy and Philosophy. (Do they teach that stuff any more)? One of the lessons was to contrast the modes of government between the city states of Sparta and Athens. Since then I have learned that it was much more complex that we were taught but one of the lessons was on the warlike nature of Sparta. It is said that Sparta would take the male children when very young and inculcate them in the arts of warfare. When they went to battle they were expected to come back either carrying their shield or being carried on it. The ethic of doing battle to the death for the city/state was made part of their persona and their heroes were lionized. We still do that but a little differently now. Did you know that Hero is a word from the ancient Greek and was the name of a priestess of Aphrodite?

I don't recall the 58,000 men and women who lost their lives in Vietnam being called heroes. The combatants of that war were called many things but I don't think Hero was one of them. So, why do we now refer to all who serve in combat roles as heroes? They may deserve the title but that isn't why we call them that.

After the debacle of Vietnam and the wholesale disapproval of that war our military leaders, now faced with an all volunteer force, resolved to never again go into battle without a clear directive from the nation, a plan for victory and overwhelming force. Secretary of State and General Colin Powell made that point just prior to the Iraqi invasion but the political desire of our elected leaders rejected that and the nation has paid a price and is still paying it.

Why do we go to war in places that seem to hold no special interest for us? Our country has not come under direct attack since 1812 and yet we are always talking about defending our homeland. Yes, 9/11 was in New York and killed some 3000 people but that was not an attack leading to an assault on the homeland. Those who committed that act had no ability to continue as outright warfare. The response in Afghanistan was proper and then we took our eyes off the ball. I'm not going to try to discuss that at this time because that is not the point that I am coming to.

We go to war or involve ourselves in military action about 30% of the time to pursue some national interest or to prevent some competing nation from achieving superiority. The remainder of the conflicts that we become involved in are largely in order to keep markets open for our corporations. The giant multi-national petro-chemical industries, our war-making industries that have to sell their instruments of death so that they can make money and employ Americans, our leadership in
cybernetics and information technology is marketed around the globe and often in places that, were it not for the threat of sanctions or military action, some other major competitor would be in a more advantageous place. Think of the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf. We even use these threats to support our agricultural industries. There are many more examples but we won't go there. You get the idea.

How can we get our young men and women to put themselves in harms way for less than they could make in industries?

We tell the people they are heroes who gave their lives so that we could live freely in this country protected on both sides by oceans. When our dead come home they are in new aluminum boxes each covered by an American flag. They are shown great honor through salutes and rituals to express the gratitude of a thankful nation. A thankful nation that sends .4% of its men and women to serve the interests of the other 99.6% that sacrifice little.

That is My Take on why they are called heroes. How else could you manipulate a nation into sending its sons and daughters. Do not mistake me. Every person who puts on the uniform of our nation is deserving of honor. The ones that do not deserve honor are those who send them in harm's way for profit.