Tuesday, November 19, 2019

The Hong Kong Bill

at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

I Agree With Bill Gates On Huwaei

Bill Gates: Paranoia on China is a 'crazy approach' to innovation Microsoft founder suggests 'objective test' of security claims against Huawei ......... Microsoft founder Bill Gates decried the "paranoid" view fueling the current high-tech rivalry between the U.S. and China, telling an audience here Wednesday that trying to stop Beijing from developing innovative technologies is "beyond realistic." ........ "Huawei, like all goods and services, should be subject to an objective test," Gates said at The New York Times DealBook Conference. "The rule that everything that comes from China is bad ... that is one crazy approach to trying to take advantage of innovation." ....... The billionaire philanthropist said the U.S. and China should take advantage of each other's innovations, rather than turn against one another. ....... Microsoft has provided Windows source code to governments in the past, Gates said, and those officials became comfortable with the American company's products after examining the system. Huawei could adopt the same approach ....... When the event moderator said the Trump administration is unlikely to consider that approach as sufficient to solve security concerns, Gates replied: "Anyone with tech expertise would think so." ...... If Washington does not trust Chinese tech equipment, why would Beijing trust American products such as a jet engine, which theoretically could be shut off remotely. ....... "You should use objective measures," Gates continued, throwing up his hands. "There are people born in foreign countries who write software, honest to God."

at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Impeachment Proceedings (I Am Not Watching ... Not Fun)

at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Xinjiang

View this post on Instagram

We obtained 403 pages of Communist Party documents that reveal how China plotted to detain up to a million Muslims in a campaign that it calls a benevolent effort against the pull of extremism. In reality, it is a ruthless, coercive clampdown. The documents — one of the most significant leaks from inside China's Communist Party in decades — show how officials planned to put Muslims and ethnic minorities into camps, and detail secret speeches by President Xi Jinping that laid the groundwork for the crackdown. Tap the link in our bio to read about how the documents show Chinese officials used words like "virus," "infected" and "eradicate" to justify mass detentions, and planned how they would manage and intimidate families that were torn apart.

A post shared by The New York Times (@nytimes) on

at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Monday, November 18, 2019

US Economy: Competitive? (No Market Economy In America)

Why the US economy isn’t as competitive or free as you think “Why on earth are US cell phone plans so expensive?” ...... Over the past two decades, competition and competition policy have atrophied, with dire consequences ....... America is no longer the home of the free-market economy, competition is not more fierce there than in Europe, its regulators are not more proactive and its new crop of superstar companies not radically different from their predecessors......... an inclination not to take free-market platitudes for granted ......... each step in his argument is based on meticulous analysis of the data. ......... “First, US markets have become less competitive: concentration is high in many industries, leaders are entrenched, and their profit rates are excessive. Second, this lack of competition has hurt US consumers and workers: it has led to higher prices, lower investment and lower productivity growth. Third, and contrary to common wisdom, the main explanation is political, not technological: I have traced the decrease in competition to increasing barriers to entry and weak antitrust enforcement, sustained by heavy lobbying and campaign contributions.” ........ Those prices of broadband access in the US are, for example, roughly double what they are in comparable countries. Profits per passenger for airlines are also far higher in the US than in the EU.......... across industries, more concentration leads to higher profits. Overall, the effect is large: the post-tax profit share in US gross domestic product has almost doubled since the 1990s........ This malignant form of increased concentration reflects significantly diminished entry of new businesses and greater tolerance of merger activity. In other words, the US economy has seen a significant reduction in competition and a corresponding rise in monopoly and oligopoly.............. From 1999 to 2017 real GDP per head rose by 21 per cent in the US, 25 per cent in the EU and 19 per cent even in the eurozone, despite the damage done by its ineptly handled financial crisis. Levels of inequality and trends in income distribution are also less adverse in the EU, so increases in incomes have been more evenly shared........ destroys the hypothesis that technology is the main driver of the downward shift in the share of labour incomes ....... “The US has better universities and a stronger ecosystem for innovation, from venture capital to technological expertise.” ....... the EU has established more independent regulators than either its individual members or the US would do (or have done). ....... Lobbying, both against deregulation and for favourable regul­ation, is much fiercer in the US. ........ this lobbying, which is inevitably dominated by big companies, works. Why else would people pay for it? ........

Members of Congress spend about 30 hours a week raising money.

The Supreme Court’s perverse 2010 “Citizens United” decision held that companies are persons and money is speech. That has proved a big step on the journey of the US towards becoming a plutocracy............ Corporate lobbying is two to three times bigger in the US than the EU.

Campaign contributions are 50 times larger in America than in the EU.

........... the cost of intermediation — how much bankers and brokers charge for taking in savings and transferring them to end users — has remained around two percentage points for a century. All those computers have made no difference. This then is a rent-extraction machine. That really has to change.........

There are two things about America that most outsiders will never understand: its gun laws and its healthcare system.

The US spends far more on healthcare (not much below a fifth of GDP) and yet has far worse health outcomes than any other high-income country......... the system creates rent-extracting monopolies from top to bottom: doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and pharmaceutical businesses all feed at this overflowing trough. ........ the “GAFAMs” (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) ....... preventing dominant comp­anies from acquisitions or forcing them to divest; limiting their ability to exploit dominant positions by imposing interoperability with other networks and data portability; and breaking them up........ the rise of monopsony — the monopoly power of buyers — in labour markets, via restrict­ive contracts, occupational licensing and restrictions on entry. Deregulation needs to focus on such barriers.........

business on its own will pursue restraints on competition, and with great enthusiasm.

The outcome is rentier capitalism, which is both inefficient and politically illegitimate........... The answers, suggests Philippon, are: free entry; regulators prepared to make mistakes when acting against monopoly; and protection of transparency, privacy and data ownership by customers. The great obstacle to action in the US is the pervasive role of money in politics. The results are the twin evils of oligopoly and oligarchy......... Donald Trump is in so many ways a product of the defective capitalism described in The Great Reversal. What the US needs, instead, is another Teddy Roosevelt and his energetic trust-busting.

at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

2020



If the Fox News legal analyst has ditched Trump that is a sign the US Senate will also dump Trump. People like Ted Cruz will dump him in a hurry. Marco Rubio. I think the 10 Senators will be found.

Which is curious, because we might be looking at one Indiana man, Pete, running against another Indiana man, Pence. I know the state of Indiana like the back of my hand.

When I rooted for Howard Dean in 2004, I was in Indiana. When I moved to New York a year later and met Dean people in the city, they were like, what was an Indian guy doing in a place like Indiana rooting for a guy like Howard Dean!? Well, now you know.





US election 2020: Obama issues warning to 'revolutionary' Democrats
at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Sunday, November 17, 2019

If Pete Buttiegieg Were To Win Iowa

That changes everything. He would become the immediate frontrunner and might as well clinch the nomination. The country would see the grandest cross-generational handover of leadership in its history. And this would, in symbolism, be bigger than a woman getting elected. Pete is a sexual minority.

He is smart. Like very smart. He is capable. He is promising. And the fact that I can't tell you any one policy position of his that stands out might actually be a plus point. That is how you build great coalitions. That is how you win.



He first won the media primary. Then he did really well in the money primary. And now he reportedly has the best ground game in Iowa. That counts for a lot. That shows you can organize.

Frankly, I have not paid much attention to him. (I have not paid much attention to anyone actually.) I did not think he was a contender. Until now. Now he is looking like the possible nominee.



We have seen time and again that most voters don't really pay attention until after the Iowa caucus results.

If Pete were the nominee, who might be the running mate? Kamala Harris? Andrew Yang? Tulsi Gabbard? In style Tulsi is most in sync. Both are veterans.



Pete Buttigieg: Who He Is and What He Stands For
The Next Phase of Pete Buttigieg's 2020 Campaign back in January, his campaign had to schedule his launch announcement at a hotel a few blocks from the White House to persuade enough reporters to cover it, and that now there’s such a demand for his all-access bus tour this weekend, they have to rotate reporters in between stops ........ he almost delayed his announcement because his father had moved into the ICU the weekend before, and that he made it home just in time before he died ...... in March 2018, he took iPhone photos of the god hates fags sign outside the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and that he has since married another man and cites his own experience as a gay man on the campaign trail to connect with others who face discrimination. ...... a history and literature major at Harvard and former McKinsey consultant ........ “It’s tough to say what it’s like with any kind of meaningful critical distance, because you’re just in it.” ....... When I asked Buttigieg which is more ridiculous, the idea of a black freshman senator winning the presidency in 2008, or the idea of the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, getting elected now, he said, “I would like to argue that neither is ridiculous.” Buttigieg’s response carried a characteristic edge to it: “He had more national exposure sooner than I did. But then I have the benefit of executive experience. So I guess we’re just different.” ....... Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is making some people nervous that she’ll be Hillary Clinton and George McGovern rolled into one, and that nominating her means throwing the election to Donald Trump. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is recovering from a heart attack, and some observers believe that he has reached his ceiling of support. ......... He’s too young, too inexperienced, and unable to draw support from African American voters. They worry about the question that keeps coming up in focus groups and that reporters are beginning to ask: whether he’s struggling to win people over because he’s gay. ........

“Have you ever listened to him speak? He’s got brains, he’s got class, he’s got poise,” Chuck McKinney, a retired carpenter who’d driven in from Lake Lure, North Carolina, told me.

....... This is the point in the 2008 race when Barack Obama began an ascent that never stopped. He broke out at the Iowa Democratic Party dinner in November 2007. ....... the core brilliance of Buttigieg’s campaign is making the carefully planned seem nonchalant, like he’s ambling when in fact he’s in the middle of a plié. Every sentence is precisely arranged, the words weighted, playing off ideas like faith and security and freedom. Operatives on other campaigns grumble that he’s a construction, a “celebrity” who wows reporters looking for the hot new thing, but it’s working. .......... “When it comes to identity, I am very mindful of the privileges that go with being white and being male. I also have the experience of belonging to a category of people in America that would have been assumed to be effectively ineligible for the presidency.”....... “Look, they blew everything up, which means that there is a chance to build something new and better on the rubble,” Buttigieg said. “I mean, not to over-dramatize it, but I think about areas where buildings have been destroyed in the world, and then architecture of a new kind flourishes.” ........ When asked whether he’s scared of Trump’s attack tweets, he says he’s taken “worse incoming.” ..... “My vehicle, to my knowledge, was never targeted,” Buttigieg said, already preparing to turn it into the point he’s making. “So I don’t go around acting like I was out in the Korangal Valley. I’m somebody who did my part. But I think it’s an important contrast to draw with somebody who avoided doing his part when it was his turn.” .........

In September, he released his “Medicare for All Who Want It” plan, which has a policy paper behind it, but is basically appealing wordplay to get a message to people who will never read the whole thing, which is most people: “I’m not for eliminating private plans,” he said, “so I’m glad that we found a way in a headline to explain it.”

.......... She says she voted for Sanders in the 2016 primaries because of his focus on health care, but now she’s backing Buttigieg because she thinks he’s talking about practical solutions to health care........ Each of the four Democratic presidents since World War II (not counting the two who took over for dead men) were young and inexperienced: John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Obama. ....... “He might make it about age and experience, but fundamentally, that’s an argument about judgment and wisdom,” Buttigieg said. “And I think in a judgment and wisdom contest, this president’s on pretty shaky ground.”



This surge might be an admission by Democrats that deep down they know Medicare For All will not fly in America. America has its own political peculiarities.

What I really like about Pete is I had never heard of him before this year.
at No comments:
Labels: ,

I Am Worried For Hong Kong

I am worried about Hong Kong. This is too much violence. The solution is dialogue. The solution is Carrie Lam inviting the protest leaders to sit down and talk.

at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Saturday, November 16, 2019

Hong Kong: What Would Dialogue Look Like?

I want the two sides in Hong Kong to talk: the protestors out in the streets, and the Carrie Lam side. That dialogue is not going to be a grand ideological debate about the two warring ideologies of the past century: capitalism and communism.

America does not have capitalism. Capitalism is a market economy where there is near perfect competition. In the American economy, you can find large pockets of monopoly power. Why do you think Americans pay so much more for their internet access and mobile data? Because there is not enough competition. That is only one example of many.

China has relentlessly injected the market into its economy since 1990. China has been the biggest beneficiary of the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union. It allowed them to gradually ditch the command economy. China is not communism the way Leonid Brezhnev understood communism to be.


I believe the two ideologies are moving towards a fusion. And it does not have to be bloody fusion. There need not be war, only civil debate, and discussion. I look at the 2020 election campaign in the US and I look at what China has already started in Shenzen in the form a political experiment, and I see we are moving towards a fusion. And the protestors in the streets of Hong Kong are hardly best equipped to lead that conversation. They can be part of the conversation, but they are not in any position to lead. For one, they have not been talking much.

Chinese Troops Invade Hong Kong (NOT)
Is Hong Kong Moving Towards A Showdown?
Hong Kong Police Losing Its Mind
I Read Don Junior's Book
The Hong Kong Shenzen Political Song And Dance Could Benefit The World
Hong Kong: The Situation Escalates
China Has Already Started Political Reforms: In Shenzen
Thoughts On The Middle East

I read somewhere, in response to the last protests, Beijing reportedly said, okay, you can elect your own Chief Executive as long we get to decide who those two will be. It is said in America about 50,000 people participate in the "money primary." And once somebody passes that hurdle then the race is opened to the ordinary American voters. What Beijing wants in Hong Kong, the 50,000 money people already seem to have in America.

In recent weeks I have taken great interest in the Middle East as a region, and in the UAE in particular, for business reasons. And being a political person that I am, I have also taken much interest in the politics. I knew the UAE was a monarchy, but there was a lot that I did not know.

But I have also had intimate knowledge at another level: people from my home village, for instance.

When I was attending high school in Kathmandu, at a school founded and run by the British, the best school in Nepal, we were taught there are rich countries and there are poor countries, but thank God for all the aid the rich countries give, the poor are catching up. Then I attended college in America. And the talk gradually shifted to, aid will not do it, we need trade, not aid. And we ended up with Donald Trump, who thinks the entire world is being unfair to America. But remittance from the Gulf countries is the only thing that has really mattered to the people in my home village. Aid and trade have been close to zero as factors.

And that makes me think. I open-mindedly ask questions.
at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Chinese Troops Invade Hong Kong (NOT)

The prevailing opinion, at least in the western media, has been, it is only a matter of time before the Chinese troops invade Hong Kong and start emptying their machine guns. In short, Chinese are animals. But look what they are doing instead. I am touched.




I believe the two sides should talk and desescalate the situation.

at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Is Hong Kong Moving Towards A Showdown?

‘Sliding into an abyss’: Beijing’s top office in Hong Kong urges stronger crackdown against unrest Agency calls for city’s administration and police to use all necessary measures to restore order ...... It calls on the Hong Kong government to do everything in its power to end the turmoil and ‘arrest the criminals and severely punish their violent acts’ ....... The warning comes as the financial hub reels from some of the worst violence since massive anti-government protests started five months ago, with the number of protesters arrested since Monday surpassing the total for the whole previous week.......... This week, a protester was shot by police, a man was set on fire, roads were blocked and university campuses turned into battlegrounds............. Beijing has again thrown its weight behind the city’s administration and police force, urging them to take tougher action...... It called on the Hong Kong government, police and judiciary to “decisively adopt all necessary means to forcefully crack down on various acts of violence and terrorism”. ....... “If the government and citizens cannot work together to end the unrest, Hong Kong’s ability to govern itself will be questioned, and the central government will consider interfering in its own way.”



Blood spilled over political differences in Hong Kong, with six hurt as knife-wielding man attacks family after argument Tensions flare after hundreds of Hongkongers heed online call to take to the streets on Sunday afternoon in unauthorised citywide protest

Tensions flare after hundreds of Hongkongers heed online call to take to the streets on Sunday afternoon in unauthorised citywide protest Mainland Chinese internet users pounce on singer after she posts an image of herself wearing a face mask on Facebook ....... ‘I never thought that a lyric and a selfie … would attract this storm. I am extremely sorry,’ she says

Police shooting exposes deep divide online between mainland China and Hong Kong Mainland social media users come out in strong support for the officer, compounding extensive coverage of vandalism of businesses with ties across the border

China accuses US and Britain of hypocrisy over violence in Hong Kong Foreign ministry says London and Washington did not ‘sternly condemn’ torching of man in the city........ Both Western countries express deep concerns over confrontations and the use of force

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen urges Hong Kong’s leaders to pull city ‘back from the brink’ ‘People’s aspirations should not be responded to with violence, and you should not sacrifice Hong Kong youth’s blood for the sake of decorating Beijing’s face,’ leader says on Facebook...... Comments come after clashes at Chinese University of Hong Kong, which Tsai likened to the ‘white terror’ that gripped Taiwan for almost four decades

Protest chaos leads to the most bank branch closings in Hong Kong’s history other than during typhoons 250 bank branches, 19 per cent of the city’s outlets, were closed the whole day while another 100 closed earlier than usual....... ATMs, online banking remain open

Hong Kong protesters throw petrol bombs into several Cross-Harbour Tunnel tollbooths Protesters continue 'blossom everywhere' approach, popping up across city with police a step or two behind ........ Education Bureau suspends classes on Thursday and all universities in the city announce cancellations
at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)