Author Archives: jsh54

Erdogan in 2017.

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Donald Trump is not a fascist, but there is good reason to think that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, is a fascist.  He became prime minister as leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002; then became president; then campaigned for much stronger powers for the president; then, in June 2015, saw the AKP blocked from winning an outright majority for the first time; then played the anti-Kurdish/antiterrorism card to regain a majority for the AKP in November 2015 elections; then ruthlessly exploited a failed in July 2016 to purge Turkey’s civil and military institutions of purported supporters of the coup; and then proposed a referendum on greater powers and time in office for the president.

One of Erdogan’s closest advisers told the Wall Street Journal that “In these lands [i.e. the Middle East], if you need to survive, you need a very strong system.”  The proposed constitutional changes include getting rid of the prime minister and transferring powers from parliament to the president.  If the voters in the referendum–tentatively scheduled for June 2016–approve his plan, Erdogan could remain president until 2029—or until the cows come home.[1]

The AKP has 316 seats in the legislature.  It needs 14 more have number required to win parliamentary approval for the referendum.  Where will Erdogan find the votes he needs?  One theory is that the conservative MHP party will support the legislation in hopes of gaining a voice in the new government.  However, between May and November 2015, Erdogan refused to form a coalition government when his party lacked a majority.  Why would the MHP view the offer of a vice-presidency in the new government for its leader as anything other than a short-lived transaction to get the referendum approved?  The MHP would soon find itself discarded.  Erdogan seems more likely to use national security issues to stampede support.

In the mellow, holiday-induced state of mind, it might be possible to view the prospects for the Middle East in 2017 with a certain optimism.  The horrible Syrian civil war appears to be grinding to an end with an Assad victory in western Syria.  In Iraq, the Shi’ite majority, with the backing of Iran and a lot of American airpower, are battering at the eastern borders of the ISIS caliphate.  The caliphate seems likely to collapse entirely in the coming year.[2]  The Iranian nuclear agreement has muted the drum-beat for a new war for the time being.

However, Erdogan’s justification for strengthening the powers of the president rests on a belief that things are going to get worse, not better in the Middle East.  First, there is the Kurdish problem.  With American backing, the Kurds of Iraq created an autonomous proto-state in northern Iraq.  With American backing, the Kurds of Iraq and Syria have played an important part in the containment of ISIS.  Turkey sees Kurdish nationalism as a grave threat to its national existence.  The Shi’ite majority in Iraq takes a similar view.  The Kurds are likely to rise to the top of their opponents’ To Do list once the fate of the Assad regime is settled and ISIS is defeated.  Attacks on the Kurds will pose problems for American diplomacy.

Second, there is the problem of Turkey’s future orientation.  Will Turkey remain in NATO and continue to press for membership in the European Union (EU)?  In 2016, Erdogan unleashed a flood of refugees and economic migrants on the EU in a bid to extort financial aid and revived negotiation on Turkish entry into the EU.  On the other hand, recently Turkey has patched up its several quarrels with Russia.  What real inducements can Vladimir Putin offer Turkey to shift its alliance?  Aside from the psychological affinity of two authoritarian leaders?

[1] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Violence Bolsters Erdogan’s Power Play,” WSJ, 23 December 2016.

[2] Surviving fighters are likely to flee abroad.  Many of these refugees will become a counter-terrorist policing problem in Europe and elsewhere in Arab countries.  ISIS itself will cease being a military problem.

Emeralds.

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Celts[1] (pr. Kelts, not Selts) often have red hair and green eyes.  If a man is involved with a woman of Celtic descent, then he starts thinking about buying her stuff that is red or green.  A dark green dress, for example, or a Mandarin red silk wrap with gold and black dragons embroidered on it.  Or jewelry, if you’re at that stage of life (i.e. career, i.e. income) that allows you to go beyond the basic clear white diamond engagement ring.  Rings, ear-rings (clip or post depending on whether you’ve been smart enough to notice if she’s had her ears pierced), and necklaces.  Green or red jewelry means emeralds or rubies.

Here’s where things get complicated.  The best rubies come from Myanmar (Burma).  Mostly the mines are in central and northern Burma.  These regions fell under British control after the Third Anglo-Burmese War (1885).  In 1948, Burma became independent of Britain as a republic.  Subsequently it took the name of Myanmar. It has had a military dictatorship for decades and, more recently, there has occurred the whole unfortunate genocide of the Rohingyas thing.  But that’s another story for another time.

The best emeralds come from Columbia.  The tectonic plate movement (up-thrust and subduction) along the western edge of South America pushes hot rock and gases up through yielding sedimentary rocks.  Those gases include beryllium, chromium, and vanadium.  They flow into gaps in the sedimentary rocks, cool, and harden into emeralds.  As it happens, most of these deposits are found in the Boyaca (pr. Boy-yaka) and Cundinamarca districts, which lie on the eastern slopes of the Andes.  Much of this territory was first explored by Spaniards under the command of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada (1496-1579).  (Jimenez led several disastrous-to-catastrophic expeditions into the interior, then died of leprosy.[2])  Much later in the bloody history of Columbia, a conventional civil war between left and right[3] molted into a decades-long struggle between the government, leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitary groups, and drug cartels.  Tens of thousands of people have died.  The leader among the left-wing rebels is the “Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia” (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia or FARC).  They started off as peasant Communists sponsored by Fidel Castro’s Cuba back when it was trying to export its own revolution.  Communism didn’t work out, so they turned to Capitalism[4]: dealing drugs and kidnapping people for ransom.  Not that FARC was alone in the resort to drug dealing.  Columbia soon became the major source of cocaine imported into the United States.[5]

Nor was FARC alone in the kidnap and ransom trade.[6]  They were just very good at it.  The movie “Proof of Life” (dir. Taylor Hackford, 2000) examines the business.  The movie is about Columbia, thinly disguised at the fictional country of “Tecala.”  During the filming, Meg Ryan had a steamy interlude with Russell Crowe.  Her eyes are blue, not green.  He would have given her sapphires.  So much for the hoped-for symmetry in my little essay.

Control over the emerald mines has become a key source of wealth for all the combatants.  A black market has developed.  Hence, Columbian emeralds are considered “conflict gems.”  Tiffany’s and Cartier don’t sell emeralds.  Hard thing to learn at Christmas.

[1] People who trace their distant ancestry to Ireland, Scotland, Wales.

[2] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Jim%C3%A9nez_de_Quesada

[3] See, La Violencia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Violencia  A version of this appears in the novel by R.M. Koster, The Prince, as “La Rabia.”

[4] Kind of like post-Communist Russia and the Peoples’ Republic of China avant le fait.

[5] For one aspect of this issue, see Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw (2015).

[6] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnappings_in_Colombia and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnap_and_ransom_insurance

Sequence.

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Can Bashar al-Assad win the Syrian Civil War?  The answer depends on definitions.  What does “win” mean?  What does “Syria” mean?

Aleppo and Palmyra are two ancient cities in Syria.[1]  One of them is today a major population center and the other is a mere tourist trap.  If Syria were at peace, the distinction wouldn’t matter.  Both would be income-streams.  However, Syria is at war and the distinction does matter.   The Syrian government of dictator Bashar  al-Assad has concentrated its military forces and received important foreign assistance —Russian air-power and Iranian fighters—to capture the rebel-held eastern sections of Aleppo, the population center.  In the meantime, he has yielded territory to ISIS forces around Palmyra, the tourist trap.  Probably to be able to claim that the regime was fighting ISIS, the Syrian army recaptured Palmyra in March 2016.  However, they didn’t put in the resources to hold it.  In mid-December 2016, while the Syrians and their allies concentrated on the capture of Eastern Aleppo, ISIS forces managed to retake the city.

How should we interpret this mixed outcome?  The main point to take away is that Aleppo matters to the Assad regime, but Palmyra—and most other ISIS-held territory–doesn’t matter to the Assad regime.  The regime has been most threatened by the rebellion in the much more heavily-populated western parts of the country.  Rebels there have received support from Sunni Arab countries.  In contrast, ISIS holds vast swathes of the less densely populated—and less important –eastern parts of the country.   Moreover, ever since its invasion of western Iraq, ISIS has been targeted by the Americans, the Kurds, and the Iraqis.  The Syrian Army has been at war for a very long time.  Both its current manpower and its ability to recruit new soldiers are close to exhaustion.  Russian aircraft and Iranian troops abruptly have dragged the regime out of a dire situation.  Why would the hard-pressed Assad regime devote scarce resources to the lesser enemy when other countries are willing to do the work?

Now Eastern Aleppo has fallen to the regime.  What further action will the regime take after this costly victory?  Wishful thinking abounds.  One conspiracy theory holds that the Assad regime sand-bagged the defense of Palmyra so that ISIS jihadis would appear in the news to distract the ADHD-prone Western media from the brutal final assault on Aleppo.  One Egyptian diplomat speculated that “unless the regime opens up negotiations with the opposition in finding a proper reconciliation, the guerrilla warfare will spread all over the place.”  The U.S. government urged the Syrians and Russians to divert their energies from pursuing final victory over the rebels in Aleppo to resisting ISIS in an inconsequential place.

More practically, the Assad regime may concentrate on consolidating its victory in western Syria.  It seems wise to anticipate a further flood of refugees into Turkey and—soon thereafter—into Greece.  Then, the regime, and the Russians and Iranians, will contemplate what further action to take.  Will they really want to embark on a costly new offensive to retake desert wastelands?  Will they want to imperial their existing substantial gains in order to fight ISIS?  Will they leave ISIS to the Americans and their allies?  Will they decide to wipe out the remnants of resistance in western Syria, then turn to dealing with the Syrian Kurds?  Given the alliance between the Russians and the Shi’ites of Iran and Iraq, all parties may be willing to sit and wait for a time before deciding the fate of ISIS.

So, “Syria” may mean western Syria and “win” may mean a localized victory followed by a period of watchful waiting.  Then, a new round in the unraveling of Sykes-Picot Agreement.  First one thing, then another thing.  Sequence.

[1] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Assad’s Choice: Fight Rebels but Cede to Islamic State,” WSJ, 16 December 2016.

The hacked election.

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In 2015 and again in Spring 2016, Soviet–sorry, Russian—intelligence agencies “hacked” into the e-mail servers of the Democratic National Committee.[1]  In addition, they gained access to the e-mail account of John Podesta.  Furthermore, they hacked into the e-mails servers of the Republican National Committee.  In Summer 2016, they passed these ill-gotten gains to WikiLeaks and to a blog called Guccifer 2.0.

Before the presidential election, the consensus seems to have been that the Russians were just trying to sap Americans’ confidence in their democracy.  Immediately after Donald Trump’s up-set win over Hillary Clinton, however, the Central Intelligence Agency immediately concluded that the Russians had been attempting to shift the election in Trump’s favor.[2]  Part of the reason for this analysis lies in the fact that the Russians released only material that cast an unfavorable light on Clinton, while not releasing anything gleaned from the Republican servers.[3]

Did the e-mails stolen by the Russians harm Hillary Clinton’s chances of being elected president?  The stolen e-mails showed that the Clinton campaign considered taking contributions from foreign governments; that Clinton told a Wall Street audience that politicians “need both a public and a private position”; that the campaign had friendly contacts in the media; that the Democratic National committee had, contrary to its public professions, sought to obstruct the campaign of Bernie Sanders and to favor that of Clinton; and that the fire-wall between Secretary of State Clinton and the Clinton Foundation had not been so tight as had been promised.[4]

Since the election much attention has focused on so-called “fake news” that favored Trump.  However, there is little evidence of any attempt to use “fake news” to favor Trump or harm Clinton.  The bulk of “fake news” stories appear to have been generated in non-Russian Eastern European countries where entrepreneurs were pursuing profits, rather than a political agenda.  Apparently, the Russkies believed that “real news” would do enough damage.

Why would the Russians want to affect the outcome of the election?  Possibly, they wanted to see Trump in the White House.  Possibly the Russians hoped for someone more tractable in the White House.  Possibly they wanted to erode American confidence in democracy over the long run.[5]

Possibly Vladimir Putin doesn’t care who is President of the United States so long as it isn’t Hillary Clinton.  It’s only conjecture, but while Clinton served as Secretary of State, she had participated in a “re-set” of relations with Russia.  However, part of this effort took the form of an effort by President Obama to slime-up to Putin’s assistant, Dmitry Medvedev, in the ill-conceived expectation that he could supplant Putin.  Furthermore, while Clinton served as Secretary of State, the United States won Russian assent in the U.N. Security Council for the use air power to defend anti-government rebels in Libya.  The Russian price had been an American promise not to overthrow the Libyan government itself.[6]  Finally, Putin saw the work in Russia by the U.S. government-funded National Endowment for Democracy as foreign meddling.[7]  After the December 2011 parliamentary elections in Russia were “won” by Putin’s party, substantial anti-Putin protests took place.  Immediately, Clinton publicly endorsed the position of the protestors by describing the elections as “neither free, nor fair.”[8]  Pay-back.

[1] Max Fisher, “Russia and the U.S. Election: What’s Known and What Isn’t,” NYT, 13 December 2016.

[2] “[N]ot all intelligence agencies share the C.I.A.’s view.”  Ibid.

[3] Perhaps nothing embarrassing could be found on the Republican servers.  Perhaps pigs have wings.

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podesta_emails#Contents;  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Committee_email_leak#Contents; https://waroftheworldblog.com/2016/12/04/the-e-mails/

[5] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtparSnQhFc

[6] See: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2014/09/28/obama-versus-putin/

[7] On the NED, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy#Russia

[8] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_legislative_election,_2011#Alleged_foreign_involvement

The Wall.

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The border between Mexico and the United States runs for almost 2,000 miles from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.  Most of that border is delimited by a simple barbed-wire fence (easily cut or trampled down) or by nothing at all.  In the late 1990s and early 2000s there occurred a huge increase in the number of illegal immigrants from south of the border.  Thus, in 2005, an estimated 1.7 million people tried to enter the United States illegally and more than 1 million succeeded.  In 2006 Congress responded with the Secure Fence Act.  This led to the construction of about 700 miles of razor-wire-capped concrete walls in places where the border adjoined dense urban areas.  Such areas allowed illegal immigrants to quickly disappear, while wilder, more remote areas provided a sort of back-stop area in which it was more difficult to disappear.  In these areas the Border Patrol uses drones, motion sensors, and vehicle patrols.[1]

How well do these methods work?  Either pretty well or not well at all.  On the one hand, the success rate at entering the United States has fallen from 64 percent in 2005 to 46 percent in 2015; the total number entering the United States has collapsed from more than 1 million a year to an estimated 170,000.  On the other hand, an average of 465 illegal immigrants per day succeed in entering the United States.  The walls merely divert illegal immigrants around the walls and into other channels.[2]  Moreover, the 46 percent success rate suggests that only about 350,000 people try to enter the United States.  This, in turn suggests that either the “push” factor driving Mexicans into the United States or the “pull” factor attracting Mexicans to the United States have declined.  Certainly, the “push” factor from Mexico has declined.  First, Mexican birth-rates have been dropping from 7 children per woman in the 1960s to 2.2 children per woman today.  Second, in spite of the horrific drug war underway in Mexico, the economy is doing pretty well.  So, there are fewer “surplus” Mexicans with less of a motive to leave.  Third, most of the captured illegals are actually people in flight from the murderous violence plaguing Central American countries.[3]  Also, the stagnant American economy since the financial crisis has exerted much less demand for cheap foreign labor.  However, should either the “push” or “pull” factors be heightened, then it seems reasonable to conclude that illegal immigration would increase in spite of any existing barriers.

Then, an estimated 40 percent of the people who become illegal immigrants actually enter the country legally.  They get regular time-limited visas, then just overstay those visas and disappear into the community.[4]  Whether anything can be done in the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) remains to be seen.  President-elect Donald Trump has said that he wants to re-negotiate NAFTA.  Most people focus on the commercial aspects of this, but travel to the United States could also be included in any new talks.

Much of the discourse around Donald Trump’s “build a wall” proposal centers on its impracticality.  For example, the Border Patrol itself opposes much construction.  Instead, it favors a huge increase in spending on a “virtual wall” (drones, sensors, and—of course—many more Border Patrol agents) that has already proved a costly failure.  Opponents of immigration control and the deportation of illegal immigrants often take a similar line.  How convenient.

[1] “Securing the border,” The Week, 16 December 2016, p. 11.

[2] The problem will be familiar to any home-owner who has ever tried to find a water leak.

[3] See: “Halloween on the Border.”  https://waroftheworldblog.com/2014/08/13/halloween-on-the-border/

[4] The government could just slam the brakes on visas for Mexicans coming for something other than official business or demonstrable commercial reason.  The State Department did this with visitors from Saudi Arabia after 9/11.  Consular officers, acting on orders from Secretaries of State Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry, have cut Saudi Arabian visitors by about 80 percent of the pre-9/11 figure.

Control-Alt-Right.

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Multi-Culti Political Correctness is on the March!  It targets whitemales!  So say the mainstream media and the liberal hate groups (whose stock-in-trade is panic) when describing the “alt-right.”[1]  Still, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.[2]

Is that the case with the “alt-right”?  The movement that called itself the “Alternative Right” sprang from disillusionment with mainstream conservatism in the 2000s.  Mainstream conservatism seemed to some people to be nothing more than compromise with liberal fascism.  Richard Spencer (1978- )[3] became the champion/lightning-rod of the movement.  In 2008, Spencer founded a magazine called Alternative Right to criticize mainstream conservatism.

Once upon a time, Jeffrey Herf wrote a fascinating book about the Nazis called Reactionary Modernism.[4]  According to Herf, German reactionaries combined a “great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of liberal democracy.”  Perhaps the same analysis applies to the Alternative Right: Rebranded as the “alt-right,” the movement’s members are particularly adept at using modern social media and on-line sites to propound its message.  Breitbart.com is the leader of the pack,[5] backed up by postings on Reddit and 4chan.

It appears that many conservatives are fed-up with the sacred cows created by orthodox liberalism.  Hillary Clinton’s notion that “half” of Donald Trump’s followers fall into the category of “deplorables” wildly over-states their numbers.[6]  However, some of the people who are fed-up also really are repellant: anti-Semites, white supremacists, and Islamophobes.  As a result, racist and anti-Muslim incidents occurred.  Donald Trump told one television interviewer who asked about offenses committed by his supporters, “If it helps, I will say right here to the cameras: Stop it.”[7]

Meanwhile, liberal hate speech continued to pour forth after the election just as it had before.[8]  Trump is “openly contemptuous of democratic norms”; he’s a “misogynist, xenophobic bully.”[9]  Some post-election anti-Trump demonstrations turned violent.  One poll reported that 23 percent of those who voted for Hillary Clinton did not accept Donald Trump as the president.[10]  One accused Trump supporter was beaten by some enraged citizens of the “Windy City.”  It’s worth pointing out that such extremists are only a tiny, loud, fringe of Hillary Clinton’s supporters.  (Indeed, apparently some of them didn’t even vote in the election whose results they now protested.)

[1] Why is ISIS the “so-called Islamic State,” while “alt-right” is just “alt-right”?

[2] “The rise of the alt-right,” The Week, 7 October 2016, p. 11.

[3] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Spencer

[4] Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (1984).

[5] God, I’m old!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO_brEreGLw

[6] Her denunciations of Trump and those in the media (where journalists tilt overwhelmingly toward Clinton), may have fed into a nervous panic by liberals.  A story in Slate.com reported anecdotal evidence that the prospect of a Trump victory had sent many people to therapists.  See: Michelle Goldberg, “A nervous breakdown over Trump,” The Week, 7 October 2016, p. 12.

[7] “After election, protests and a spike in hate crimes,” The Week, 25 November 2016, p. 5.

[8] Trump is a “crude, shallow, sneering dissembler” and a “showboating huckster.”  “Driving away young voters for decades,” The Week, 2 September 2016, p. 12.  Media coverage of Trump’s many scandals is “not having the predicted effect” because “we’re a nation of idiots,” “The media: guilty of ‘false equivalence’?,” The Week, 30 September 2016, p. 16.

[9] “After election, protests and a spike in hate crimes,” The Week, 25 November 2016, p. 5.

[10] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 25 November 2016, p. 17.

Internal Migration.

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If you go, well, Donald Trump scored big in the areas hollowed out by Chinese competition against “old industry,” Hillary Clinton did OKish in the areas marked by “new industry,” then the problem facing Democrats is how to expand the ranks of those employed in those new industries.

In theory, the internet and high-tech industry should allow people to work from anywhere in the country.  Omaha, Nebraska should be as good—if not a better— place to live as Seattle, Washington.  This should reduce the need to migrate.  In fact, it hasn’t worked out that way.

In zee old days, earlier old industries got replaced by new industries.  Moreover, American workers moved in pursuit of job opportunities.  Before the Second World War, about 15 percent of Americans lived outside the census division in which they were born.  By 1970, 25 percent of Americans lived outside the census division in which they were born.  Thus, under-paid Southern farmworkers could get better-paying assembly-line jobs.  All you had to do was move from Fordyce, Arkansas to River Rouge, Michigan.  So, lots of geographic displacement.[1]  Then this trend began to slow down during the 1980s.

Instead, for decades now, workers with more education have been streaming toward the great cities on the coasts, while less educated workers have been left behind.  During the first decade of the 21st century (2001-2010), the migration rates for the college-educated were about 2 percent per year; the migration rates for those with only a high-school education were 1.2 percent per year; and the migration rates for those with less than a high-school diploma were 1 percent per year.

Regionally, the “Rust Belt” states (Iowa, Michigan, Ohio) and the Plains States have shown the greatest out-migration of college-educated people.  In contrast, California, Maryland, Texas, South Carolina, New York, and Massachusetts have witnessed the greatest in-migration.  So, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Baltimore, Washington, New York City, and Boston offer a certain cachet.  One puzzle here is that Michigan and Michigan State, Ohio State, and Iowa are all major research universities surrounded by “blue townships.”  The same goes for Stanford and Washington, but less so for Oregon. Brigham Young, .

Why do younger, better-educated people move?  One Michigan State economist suggested that “lots of talented young people all over the country are eager to see new sights…”  So, give them interesting cities, with lots of youth culture.  Whatever “youth culture” means.  It appears to mean talking to non-company people over coffee; lots of chances to co=operate.

[1] See: “The Grapes of Wrath” (dir. John Ford, 1940).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M9fJMqhlZY

The illegals.

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Much in life and government is refined guess-work[1].  Thus, huge numbers of illegals entered the United States in the years before the financial crisis and “Great Recession” slammed the brakes on the economy.  Thus, in 2000, Border Patrol agents arrested 1.6 million people trying to cross the Mexican-American border.  An estimated 12 million entered in 2007.  Then the economic slow-down greatly reduced job opportunities in the United States, so illegal immigration slowed precipitously.  Only an estimated 188,000 entered in 2015.

Since the economic slow-down, illegal immigration has slowed.  Generally, estimates on the number of illegal immigrants currently in the United States converge around the figure of 11 million.  Of these, an estimated 8.1 million are working or looking for work.  Another estimate holds that two-thirds have been in the United States for at least 10 years.  Yet another estimate holds that 60 percent of the illegals are to be found in California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York.  Basically, where there is work for lots of industrious, low-skill people.[2]  Farms, construction sites, and the hospitality-industrial complex provided a lot of work.

About 5.5 million are Mexicans; about 40 percent over-stayed a legally-obtained visa.

In 1992 the US had about 4,000 Border Patrol agents along the frontier with Mexico.  The rest made the dangerous crossing of the border.  A fence now blocks about one-third of the 1.954 miles-long border.  In 2010 the US had about 21,000 Border Patrol agents along the frontier with Mexico.

Proof of citizenship is required for Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare, so the illegals don’t qualify for these taxpayer-funded benefits.  On the other hand, the children of illegals do attend the public schools, and—if they themselves were born in the United States—as American citizens, they qualify for some medical care and welfare benefits.   The Heritage Foundation calculates that the illegals cost American taxpayers almost $15,000 a year.

The illegals have become a political football.  Democrats want them to be granted a “path to citizenship” without any further hindrance.  Oh, sure, there are the “criminal immigrants” who should not be granted citizenship.  About 7.5 (NOT 75 percent) percent of the illegals are criminals.  Virtually all of these—91 percent—were deported.  However, under the Obama administration, “your chances of getting deported are close to zero” if you have not committed a serious crime.  In contrast, Republicans demand a “securing of the border: before any legalization occurs.

[1] “The illegal immigrant population,” The Week, 30 September 2016, p.11.

[2] Personally, I think that trying to run this broke-ass country without illegals is just like trying to run it without fat black ladies.  It can’t be done.  As the witchy thug girl says to Marcus in “About a Boy,”  “Are you taking a piss?  ‘Cause if you are, your gunna get a slap.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lssgt-nJ2sY

The e-mails.

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When she agreed to accept the Secretary of State job as consolation prize from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton pledged that she would separate the Department of State from the Clinton Foundation.  How well did she keep that pledge?  Law suits by the conservative Judicial Watch group and hacking of computers by Russian intelligence groups have cast some light on the question.[1]

In August 2016, the Associated Press reported that 154 non-governmental individuals had either spoken face-to-face or by phone with Hillary Clinton during the time she served as Secretary of State (2009-2013).  Of those 154 people, 85 had either made donations to or had promised to give money to the Clinton Foundation.[2]  For example, Bono requested an up-link to the International Space Station for a concert.  Initially, the Clinton campaign/foundation claimed that the “quid” rarely received a “pro quo.”  All the same, Clinton Foundation officials brought the concerns of the donors to the attention of the State Department.

Thus, in 2009, Bahrain sought State Department approval for the purchase of $630 million in American-made weapons.  This marked a 187 percent increase over purchases made in previous years.  Bahrain’s Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Defense Forces, sought an interview with Secretary of State Clinton.  Doug Band, at the Clinton Foundation, e-mailed Huma Abedin to ask for the meeting.  The Crown Prince, he wrote, was a “good friend of ours” and had contributed $32 million to a Foundation program.  He got the meeting and Bahrain got the arms purchase approval.[3]  It has been argued that the Crown Prince would have received a meeting with Clinton as a matter of course, so no impropriety occurred.  If the Crown Prince would have received a meeting anyway, why did he contact Band about a meeting and why did Band contact Abedin?

Between 2001 and 2015, while his wife was Secretary of State and then the heir-presumptive to the Democratic presidential nomination, Bill Clinton earned $132 million in speaking and consulting fees.[4]  Did companies and institutions set that much value on his wisdom?  New York is not a community property state, so Hillary Clinton cannot be accused of having enriched herself.  Still, the optics are bad.

She did enrich herself with a series of post-State Department/pre-presidential campaign speeches to private groups.  These groups included Goldman, Sachs.  In one speech, she had told bankers that in politics, “you need both a public and a private position.”  Her private position was that “my dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.”  Later, locked in a surprising primary battle with democratic socialist challenger Bernie Sanders, Clinton refused to release the texts of these speeches.  So, in October 2016, the Russians did it for her.[5]  Her statements were pretty much in the mainstream when given, but conditions had changed by the time the texts were released.  Again, the optics were bad.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy

[2] “Clinton faces ethics questions over foundation,” The Week, 2 September 2016, p. 5.

[3] “Clinton Foundation: Was there a quid for the pro quo?”  The Week, 9 September 2016, p. 16.

[4] “Clinton Foundation: Was there a quid for the pro quo?”  The Week, 9 September 2016, p. 16.

[5] “Clinton: What the WikiLeaks emails reveal,” The Week, 28 October 2016, p. 8.

Rigged.

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Foaming at the mouth before the election, Donald Trump asserted that if he didn’t win it was because the election was “rigged.”  He did not specify how the election might be “rigged”; he just asserted that it was rigged.  Then Trump won Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan by a total of 100,000 votes.  These narrow victories gave him a majority in the Electoral College.  If he had not won them, then Hillary Clinton would have been elected president.

“What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”  Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president in 2016, called for a re-count of the votes in the three states.  If all three states could be “flipped,” then Trump would lose the vote in the Electoral College just as he had lost it (by better than 2 million votes) in the popular vote.  She argued that Russian hackers might have messed-with the voting machines and that there had been voting irregularities.  She did not identify any specific irregularities; she just asserted that there had been voting irregularities.  Stein, who had raised $3.5 million for her presidential race[1], suddenly received $6.6 million in donations.  Then the Clinton campaign, after having conceded the election, joined the Stein campaign.[2]

“What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”  Once Hillary Clinton joined the effort to overturn the results of the election, Trump responded.  Trump tweeted that “serious voter fraud” had taken place in California, New Hampshire, and Virginia.  “Millions of people who voted illegally” had pushed Clinton to a nominal victory in the popular vote.  Trump’s claims were widely denounced  as ridiculous, but they’re not more ridiculous than the Clinton-supporter financed allegations that the Russians might have hacked voting machines or that un-specified “irregularities” had occurred.

[1] See: https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=N00033776

[2] “[Trump] rages as recounts advance in three states,” The Week, 9 December 2016, p. 5.