Leaving the Foreign Service

My Foreign Service career was not going well in Rome.  The embassy did not want me there.  There was a civil service employee in the State Department in Washington whom they wanted for the job.  I'm not sure why, but I think maybe the Ambassador or my predecessor who was forced to leave by the State Department, had picked him out.  The Ambassador wanted him and my boss the Economic Minister wanted to please the Ambassador by getting him.  Or maybe the Economic Minister was the one who wanted him. 

When the State Department told my predecessor in Rome that he had to leave because he had served the maximum eight years as a Schedule C political appointee, I think the Embassy tried to get the civil service employee to replace him, but the Foreign Service balked, because it was a Foreign Service job which should be filled by a Foreign Service officer.  Thus, I got a call in Warsaw from the State Department personnel office, asking if I would be willing to move to Rome and take the job. 

My job was not going well in Warsaw.  I had been assigned there primarily to oversee a joint science cooperation program, named after Madam Curie, the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund.  The US and Poland had signed an agreement to fund the program for five years, starting the year before I arrived.  The first year it was funded with $2 million from each side, and received the same amount the second year, the first year I was in Poland.  Bill Clinton was President, but after the second year, the Republicans under Newt Gingrich took over Congress and refused to fund future years, despite the agreement between the US and Polish governments.  I still remember my last meeting with the Assistant Secretary of the Polish Foreign Ministry who was responsible for the entire Western Hemisphere, and who upbraided me as the representative of the United States for dishonestly failing to fulfill formal promises that we had made.  I was ashamed of my country and myself. 

In addition, one of my policy responsibilities in the Embassy was the environment.  As part of the USAID program to assist Poland after the fall of Communism, the US undertook a number of envonmental projects to help clean up Poland.  One was to build a scrubber on an old coal-fired plant generating electricity for the Krakow area.  The pollution had been so bad under the Communists that rain was turning into sulfuric acid and eating away some of the old statues and buildings in Krakow.  USAID had a big dedication for the scrubber when it was completed; it was supposed to remove most of the sulfur from the smokestack emissions.  After a while, one of my Polish contacts came to me and said the scrubber was not working.  I didn't really want to know that, because I did not want to interfere with the AID mission's programs, but I felt like I had to look into it.  When I did, it turned out that he was right.  The scrubber design worked fine in the United States with the limestone found in the US, but it did not work with Polish limestone, which was a poorer quality.  It would only work if limestone were imported from another country, which was logistically and financially impossible.  To make matters worse, my contact had me visit another power plant with a scrubber build by the Netherlands, but using General Electric technology.  It worked well. 

I was reaching the end of the second year of my three-year tour in Poland.  The Ambassador had said that since the cooperation program had been cancelled by Congress, the embassy did not need a science counselor; so, I would not be replaced, but I could stay on for the third year.  About that time, the personnel office in Washington called and asked if I would be willing to go to Rome.  That sounded like a great job, while the one in Poland was self-destructing; so, I said yes. 

Rome wanted me to come right away, but I had one good thing going in Warsaw.  As part of the US assistance program for Poland after the fall of Communism, we (my backstop in Washington and I) got the US Treasury to agree to forgive $10 million of US debt, if the Poles would agree to use it for environmental purposes.  I worked with a Polish NGO, the Ekofundusz (Ecofund), to get this money for them to use.  I wanted to attend the first meeting of the Ecofund after they got the money to make sure that everything was in order.  The reason they wanted me in Rome so quickly was that Italy was about the assume the rotating presidency of the European Union, with meant an increase in work for the embassy in Rome, because it had to deal with Italians on all EU matters as well as on all bilateral Italian matters, more or less doubling the workload.  It worked out that the annual meeting of the Ecofund was a week or two before Italy assumed the EU presidency, which gave me the opportunity to do both things. 

The Ecofund meeting went smoothly, but it turned out that day I was planning to leave for Rome was the day Newt Gingrich shut the government down.  All of our household effects had been packed; the car was packed with two dogs and suitcases for the drive to Rome ready to leave at 5:00, when Rome called and said, "Don't come."  It meant I had no job, no place to live, no idea what to do next.  It turned out that in Rome the Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM, deputy to the Ambassador) was someone I knew from a previous assignment.  He said to go ahead an leave for Rome; he would work something out. 

When we arrived in Rome, everything was pretty much a mess, because the embassy was closed except for a skeleton staff.  I turned out that I was part of that skeleton staff, because that was the only way my travel had been approved.  Of course I knew nothing about the embassy or my new job.  To make matters worse, the Administrative Minister, the person responsible for running the day-to-day activities of the embassy, was a woman literally dying of cancer.  As she was a long time Foreign service officer, the State Department had agreed to let her stay in Rome as long as she could.  This meant, however, that she was hardly working and was very seldom in the embassy.  During the government shutdown, all of her assistants were working their little fiefdoms -- housing, personnel, finance, etc. -- but without supervision.  

The first sign, other than the government shutdown, that something was wrong, was that the embassy had no housing for my wife and me.  My predecessor had obviously lived somewhere, but the embassy would not tell me anything about it.  My impression was that because he had been a political appointee and a confidant of the Ambassador, he had had a much nicer apartment than he would have ordinarily received for his position, and they were not willing to let me have it.  There as a rumor that there was one empty apartment the day we arrived, but that it had been given to a DEA agent who had arrived a few hours earlier than we did.  I thought this was strange because the State Department runs the administration of the embassy, even for other agencies like DEA.  Thus, I thought normally State Department officers would have assigned the empty apartment to a fellow FSO and let the DEA wait for an apartment.  I was surprised to see the State Department give precedence to a DEA officer over a fellow State Department officer.  We ended up in a temporary apartment for months as the embassy said it could find nothing available for us on the Roman rental market. 

In addition, after my predecessor left, the office had been remodeled.  The embassy is an old palace where every room opens on to a central hall, but because of embassy security, some of the doors had to be locked.  As a result, there was no way to get to my assistant's office except by going through my office.  I suppose I could have switched offices with her, but it seemed silly and petty to do so.  Nevertheless, it bothered me that it looked like I was her receptionist when she had visitors. 

Just about the day I arrived, my office was being sued in New York by four environmental organizations for failing to force Italy to comply with UN resolutions regarding fishing for swordfish in the Mediterranean.  The Italians often used long driftnets which had been outlawed.  The environmental organizations won the case, with the result that a Federal District Judge in New York had ultimate responsibility for approving any actions taken by my office with regard to fisheries to assure that they complied with UN regulations.  In theory he would run every action by my office by the environmental organizations for their approval.  In practice this usually meant they would ask the Greenpeace office in Rome for its approval. 

Despite the fact that I had worked on scientific and environmental issues for years at the State Department, I had never worked on fisheries issues before.  Fisheries had its own bureaucracy, laws and regulations which were unfamiliar to me.  My assistant had worked on fisheries issues in previous jobs, and had been working on the issue since she had arrived in Rome.  I was happy to leave the issue to her, although it was a big part of the office's responsibilities. 

We had a big bilateral meeting in Rome with a delegation of 10 or 20 officers from Washington meeting in Rome with their Italian counterparts.  My assistant and her Italian counterpart worked out a plan, which was ratified by the meeting.  In a few months, however, the issue blew up again.  Most of the fishermen lived in Sicily and resented the new restrictions under which they were supposed to work.  They hired Mafia assassins who threatened to kill the Italian officials who were supposed to enforce the agreement, and they organized big protests in downtown Rome that tied up traffic for miles.  When this blew up, my assistant became very sick.  The Agriculture Minister called in the Ambassador because he was afraid some of his officials were going to be killed by the Mafia, and said we had to relax the restrictions.  My assistant could not brief the Ambassador or work on a solution, which fell to me.  The Ambassador was very unhappy about being called in by the Minister.  My main job was to tell the Ambassador that he could not agree to anything without first getting the approval of the judge in New York, which further angered him, since he felt that as the Ambassador he should have been able to speak for the US, which would have been true except for the lawsuit.  One of my last acts in Rome was to work out a compromise that was accepted, although I don't know long it lasted after I left.  I left with the Ambassador mad at me, although the fisheries problem had been going on for years before I arrived in Rome, and I had had no role in the lawsuit.  However, I had agreed to the original solution worked out at the big bilateral meeting after I arrived, which had led to the Mafia threats. 

While I was in Rome, the Italians flew a joint mission on the Space Shuttle to test a tethered satellite which was released on a wire from the Shuttle while it was in orbit and then was supposed to be reeled back in so that it could be used again.  While the satellite was deployed, the wire broke, and the satellite drifted off into space.  I had worked with NASA on space issues in other jobs before, and was much more familiar with these issues than fisheries.  In general NASA was a great selling point for the US.  Everybody loved NASA and the Shuttle and wanted to work with us.  Thus, this mission was unusual because it appeared to have failed, although part of the reason for it was to experiment with the method.  The Shuttle crew came to Rome to brief Italians scientists on the mission, but unlike most NASA visits, this one was sort of an apology tour.  It was awkward for me, the Shuttle crew, and my Italian contacts. 

In a different space matter, the US had agreed to launch a communications satellite for the Italians.  They had a big cocktail party timed to coincide with the launch.  At the party, one of the Italian telecommunications officials came up to me and said something like, "Your government must really hate me."  I was taken aback and asked him why he thought that.  He said that he had wanted to give his daughter a trip to Disney World, but that the US had denied her a visa to travel to the US.  I said I would look into it.  When I did, I found that the Italian communications ministry has some connection with the Cuban telecommunications ministry and because of that the Helms-Burton Act prohibited that official or any members of his family from traveling to the US. 

Sometime in the past, I had read Herman Wouk's "Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance."  In that story, the Jewish heroine who was living in Rome during World War II wanted to travel to Israel, but the Nazis in Rome would not give her child an exit visa, which effectively prevented her from leaving. I found the parallels uncomfortable and disturbing, but it was illegal to give the daughter a visa. 

As the science officer in Rome, I handled nuclear non-proliferation matters.  Thus, I was the responsible officer when the US was unable to meet its obligations to North Korea under the 1995 Agreed Framework that set up the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) to oversee North Korea's agreement to end its nuclear weapons program in return for two light water nuclear power reactors that would not produce bomb grade nuclear materials.  While I was in Rome, the Republican Congress refused to fund the US payments for its part of the agreement.  As a result, I had to go hat in hand to ask Italy, as the Presidency of the European Union, if it would fund the money the the US Congress refused to provide.  This was too much like my experience in Poland when the US Congress refused to fund the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund despite a formal agreement to do so.  In addition , the failure to fund KEDO would give North Korea an excuse not to abide by the agreement and to revert to its production of nuclear weapons.  I was unhappy to once again be part of an American failure to meet its international commitments. 

I had joined the Foreign Service to see how the government worked.  After college, I had been drafted and sent to Vietnam, where I served in an artillery battery in the A Sau Valley, on the Laotian border, and on the DMZ.  I came home to be classified as a baby-killing war criminal, simply because I had not tried to get out of the draft.  I wanted to see what had plucked me out of my comfortable life and sent me into combat in Vietnam.  Once in the Foreign Service I wanted to do good -- be part of the solution and not part of the problem.  My last two assignments, in Warsaw and Rome, had not made me feel part of the solution.  So, I decided to retire, since I was eligible to do so. 

When I decided to retire and the embassy had to replace me, it became obvious that they did not want me to be replaced by a Foreign Service officer. The embassy had identified a Civil Service officer at the State Department whom it wanted in my job.  Apparently, the embassy had tried to get him to replace my predecessor, but the State Department had tried to keep the Foreign Service position filled by a Foreign Service officer.  That was why I had gotten that unexpected call in Warsaw asking if I would be willing to go to Rome.  The State Department was trying to force Rome to fill the position with a Foreign Service officer.  Apparently that was why Rome did not welcome me and resisted providing me with an apartment and in general making my assignment there difficult. 

The odd thing was that the person they wanted in my position worked in the State Department office that was supposed to support and backstop science officers in the field.  In my Washington assignment before Warsaw, I had worked on environmental issues in an office across the hall from his office.  It appeared that the office that was supposed to have my back had actually stabbed me in the back.  Because I was retiring outside of the normal summer assignment cycle the embassy was able to manipulate the system to get the man they wanted.  I was so disgusted with the whole system that I did not protest.  On the day before I was actually set to leave Rome and return home, the State Department retirement office informed me that they had miscalculated my retirement pension and that I would receive less than they had promised when I was negotiating my retirement.  That was like a last insult from an organization that for some reason seemed to have turned against me. 

Unfortunately, my service in the Army in Vietnam and my twenty-five years in the Foreign Service left a bad taste in my mouth about the integrity and decency of the United States government.  I felt that I had served my country patriotically but had been abused because of it.  I guess I think (to paraphrase Churchill) that the US is the worst of countries, except for all other countries.  I try to love it, but I look at it with a jaundiced eye. 

Separating Immigrant Mothers from Children

Letter sent to Congressman and Senators:

I am writing to alert you to an even bigger problem than the children of illegal immigrants who are being held in immigration child care facilities along the Mexican border.  This is the existence of a huge private child care industry spread across the entire United States, much like the narcotic drug industry. 

Every day, millions of mothers and fathers are separated from their children who are placed in day care facilities so that the parents can go to work instead of caring for their own children.  I have it on good authority that every day some of the children in these day care facilities cry and ask for their mommies and daddies.  Sadly, in many cases the children do not cry for their parents because they spend so little time with them that they don’t miss them. 

I hope that Congress will act to end this blight on American civilization.  You should make separating mothers from children at day care facilities a federal crime and station federal officers at the doors of these facilities to arrest the parents who attempt to drop off their children and thus separate them from their natural familial bonds.

Please let me know when you will introduce legislation to stop this horrendous crime that is being committed daily across this country. 

Mexican Immigration and a Dominica Visa

All the hoorah about immigration on the Mexican border reminds me of an immigrant visa case I had as vice consul in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  A woman who was boon on the island of Dominca and who lived in Brazil was applying for an immigrant visa to join her mother who lived in the United States.  At this time, the 1970s, the US quota for immigrant visas for people born in Dominica was quite small, about 200, I think. 

This woman was on the list when she first applied; there were still available visa numbers.  However, she was slow in getting her visa application together, which involved taking a medical exam, proving that she could support herself in the US, so that she would not be a public charge, getting a labor certification proving that she would displace an American worker, and so on. 

When she finally got her application together, all the visa numbers for the Dominica quota had been used up, and she was no longer eligible for an immigrant visa.  She went into hysterics in my office.  She was crying, screaming, and trashing around.  I thought I was going to have to call the police to take her away.  After an hour or so of trying to calm her down, she finally left. 

Today, if she lived in Mexico or Central America, rather than Brazil, she could just walk into the United States, join her mother and go to work.  Whether she would receive welfare, take an American's job, or even go into the drug business, is irrelevant.  Public opinion just wants her to be happy.  So, the favored immigration policy seems to be "Don't worry, be happy!"  America is an open country.  Anybody who wants to can come.  If it turns out you are a murderer or a drug dealer, we can worry about that later. 

I don't buy it.  I think the US should and can choose who it wants to move to this country permanently.  We don't have to take everybody.  We can set limits and standards and enforce them.  I feel badly for the immigration officers who are charged with enforcing the existing laws.  The public portrays them as heartless villains for doing their jobs.  It reminds me of when I came home from the war in Vietnam and the general depiction of Vietnam veterans was as baby killers.  This is a country that vilifies public servants for doing their job. 

I support the enforcement of immigration laws, but I appear to be in the  minority.  If we want no immigration laws, repeal them all and abolish the Department of Homeland Security.  I have never like the name "Homeland" anyway; to me it has a Nazi connotation because of its similarity to "heimat" which Wikipedia says is equivalent to "Vaterland," the homeland of the German nation, people or tribe.  

Trump's Foreign Policy

David Brooks NYT column, "Donald Trump Is Not Playing by Your Rules," is interesting, but gives Trump too much credit for thinking, or at least for having a basic idea that he is implementing.  It contrasts with Jeffrey Goldberg's article in the Atlantic, "A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: 'We're America, Bitch,'"  which says there is no underlying Trump foreign policy: America does whatever it wants.  Both analyses lead to the same conclusion: Trump doesn't care what the world thinks. 

I am disappointed that these are both Jews who are criticizing Trump for breaking with generations of foreign policy ideals, but I agree with them.  There is no excuse for Trump's attack on Justin Trudeau.  What Trudeau said after the G-7 summit ware not the "false statements" that Trump said it was.  Trudeau's saying that Canada will not be pushed around is not "dishonest and weak."  It's a simple statement of fact. 

Larry Kudlow made the argument that Trump needed to look strong before going into his meeting with Kim Jong Un, but as it turned out, he did not look strong when he met Kim, and didn't really get anything significant from the meeting with him.  The Iran deal Trump denigrates had much more substance and did much more to limit Iran's nuclear program than Trump's deal with Kim. 

I have tried to defend Trump, mainly because he represents white men who are increasingly being displaced by almost everyone else, blacks, women, Hispanics, but especially by Jews.  Brooks and Goldberg are representative of the Jewish intellectual establishment, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Bloomberg, and Adelson represent the Jewish financial and wealth establishment.  Schumer, Feinstein, Blumenthal, Schiff, and Polis represent the Jewish political establishment at the national level.  While there are still white men at the top of some of these lists -- Buffet and Bill Gates, McConnell and Ryan, they are getting older. 

Increasingly, though, I am displeased to have Trump as a leading example of white men in power.  I have looked the other way at many of the boorish things he has done, but I am getting tired of it -- his personal peccadillos and his professional faux pas.  His tweets are terrible, often mean and nasty with poor grammar.  The good side of his character is that he has the tough hide to take the criticism from the left.  I support him on immigration, for example, but so far he has done almost nothing on that issue.  He has tried, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as won most of the showdowns on immigration. 

NYT Article Inadvertently Confirms Trump's Claims

In the article "With 'Spygate,' Trump Shows How He Uses Conspiracy Thories to Erode Trust," the NYT actually strengthens Trump's claims and undermines its own credibility.  The article seems to emphasize the difference between a "spy" and an "informant."  To most people, including me, this is not an important distinction.  In fact most descriptions of Halper's activities by the liberal press (NYT), claim that he was investigating Russia's activities (spying on a foreign power), not the Trump campaign (informing on political activities).  Thus, from the liberal viewpoint there is more justification for calling him a spy that from the conservative viewpoint. 

So far, press reports have not made clear what Halper was doing.  There was a big meeting between the administration and Congressional representatives to discuss what he was doing.  The Democrats objected to Trump's lawyer's presence.  This objection seems inappropriate to me.  The Democrats seem to be arguing that Trump as a defendant against possible charges of treason has no right to hear the charges against him.  They seem to believe the prosecution process should be some kind of star chamber persecution process which blocks the participation of Trump's lawyers.  To me, this makes the liberal Democrats look more authoritarian than Trump.  They give credence to Trump's claim of a "witch hunt," just as the NYT article justifies his claims of a "spygate." 

If the liberals was to accuse Trump of bad conduct, they have to behave themselves better than he does.  Labeling this article "news analysis" does not prevent it from being pure tabloid mud-slinging that plays loose with the facts.  

Is Electing More Veterans the Solution?

This NYT op-ed by Allison Jaslow muddles the issue of veterans in politics.  After World War II being a veteran was a necessary, but not sufficient condition to being a politician.  You almost could not be a politician at any level -- local, state or national -- unless you were a veteran.  You just couldn't get elected.  But the fact that you were a veteran did not mean that you were a good politician or that you would get elected.  There were so many veterans after that war that there were many to choose from.  The percentage of veterans in Congress grew as veterans from Korea and Vietnam became politicians.  In the 1970s about 73% of the Congress were veterans.  In 1970 veterans made up almost 14% of the population.  Today veterans make up 20% of Congress and about 7% of the population. 

In addition, because of the draft, World War II veterans were a genuine cross section of America -- rich, poor, educated, uneducated.  Today, the rich and educated make up a very small proportion of the military.  Thus, there are fewer well qualified veterans to serve in political office.  Thus, if you simply increase the number of veterans in political office, you are likely to get more bad politicians.  Education and wealth are not necessary to be a good politician, but they help.  

Being a veteran should be a plus on a politician's resume, but there are other factors that may be more important, intelligence and character, for example.  Electing a stupid veteran over a wise non-veteran would be a poor choice. 

So, in essence I agree with the op-ed, but I think it grates on me as a Vietnam veteran. Vietnam veterans returned to such hatred and contempt from the population that did not serve, that I find it odd that now simply serving is somehow a wonderful thing that makes you a leader in the community.  Her column implies that today the populace belives that simply being a veteran is a sufficient condition to serve in high office.  It is not.  Today being a veteran is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to serve in office, and it should not be. 

If in the future, we find the United States' continued existence threatened by war, then military service may again be a necessary condition.  Decent men should all rise to defend the country.  Today, however, the US does not face an existential military threat; so, service in not a necessary qualification for political leadership. 

Pompeo Swearing-In

Here is a link to Pompeo's swearing in as Secretary of State:

https://www.facebook.com/NBC4Columbus/videos/10155318139252751/

A Card from the Bushes

The funeral for Barbara Bush reminded me of my one personal experience with the politeness and decency of the George H.W. Bushes.  I was deputy director of the State Department office dealing with "green" environmental issues -- animals, plants, and health -- while George H.W. Bush was President.  Somehow, I got word that President Bush wanted to encourage tree planting; one of Bush's personal secretaries in the White House asked me to take care of it. 

The difference between dealing with Bush's personal staff and the National Security Council was like night and day.  In my previous job working on missile proliferation, I had frequently dealt with the NSC, and I always had trouble with them.  They would never take my calls, would never keep me informed about where decisions stood, etc.  President Bush's personal secretary could not have been nicer. 

At their request, I drafted a cable to all the embassies in the world, asking them to do a public tree planting with an official of the host government, at the request of President Bush.  As usual, some embassies ignored it, but some took it to heart and the ambassador planted a tree with a high official of the host government, the foreign minister or the president.  President Bush was apparently pleased with the result, and I ended up getting a White House Christmas card, probably the lowest, most impersonal type, but still the only one I ever got. 

It was my personal experience with the decency and kindness of the Bush family.  I wish them the best.  I was particularly impressed with Barbara Bush's funeral service because of its upbeat tone, and lack of feeling sorry for themselves.  It was an example of the old British "stiff upper lip" that saw them through the Blitz and World War II.  The American news media today love weepy, sorrowful victims feeling sorry for themselves and sobbing on TV.  Cowardness sells ads, and then the anchors call it heroism, because they have no idea what true heroism is.  The Bushes know. Barbara taught them.  

Foreign Affairs on the Death of Democracy

The new issue of Foreign Affairs magazine asks, "Is democracy dying?"  Editor Gideon Rose's introduction says,"As a Latin American friend put it ruefully, 'We’ve seen this movie before, just never in English.'”  What Rose fails to note is that English is less and less the language of political discourse in the United States, as Spanish displaces English throughout the country.  America is becoming a Latin American country (where authoritarian government is more common), rather than a Western European country founded by British colonists who rebelled against the authoritarianism of the British king. 

Analyzing whether the US is becoming more authoritarian is a legitimate topic, but it is clearly aimed at being critical of President Trump.  I haven't read all the articles, but I guess it is going to have a strong anti-Trump bias, perhaps deserved, perhaps not.  One of Trump's main issues has been immigration, but surprisingly much of the Mexican immigration is due to Republican President Reagan.  However, much of the recent immigration has been due to Democratic appeals to Latinos, such as DACA, more lenient enforcement of immigrtation laws, etc.

The bipartisan Latinization of the United States didn't really begin until the middle of the 20th century.  The most important impetus was Ronald Reagan's grant of amnesty to illegal aliens in 1986 to deal with a vastly increased immigration flow that had begun about 20 years earlier.  This law triggered a subsequent more massive influx of aliens hoping to benefit from the next amnesty. 

The following graph from the Migration Policy Institute show the dramatic increase in Mexican immigrants following Reagan's 1986 amnesty. 

According to that group:

In 2016, Mexicans accounted for approximately 26 percent of immigrants in the United States, making them by far the largest foreign-born group in the country….  The predominance of Latin American and Asian immigration in the late 20th and early 21st centuries starkly contrasts with the trend in the mid-1900s, when immigrants were largely European. In the 1960s no single country accounted for more than 15 percent of the total immigrant population. 

It's not clear how these statistics differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants.  There are a number of legal Mexican immigrants, and the number of illegals is difficult to measure because most of them are in hiding of some kind.  So, estimates of illegals are untrustworthy, but from looking through some internet data, it looks to me like there are more or less equal numbers of legal and illegal Mexican immigrants. 

I believe that the Foreign Affairs thesis about the death of democracy is largely the product of massive immigration that the changed the cultural climate of the United States.  This is no longer a Western or Northern European nation with a tradition of democratic institutions.  It has developed a culture that favors a caurdillo over a popularly elected president responsible to Congress and the people. 

From <https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states#Numbers>
From <https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states#Numbers>
From <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-04-16/democracy-dying

Samual Huntington on Multiculturalism in America

The following is from Samuel Huntington's 1993 essay in Foreign Affairs in reply to criticism of his 1991 essay.  

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/global-commons/1993-12-01/if-not-civilizations-what-samuel-huntington-responds-his-critics

AMERICA UNDONE?
One function of a paradigm is to highlight what is important (e.g., the potential for escalation in clashes between groups from different civilizations); another is to place familiar phenomena in a new perspective. In this respect, the civilizational paradigm may have implications for the United States. Countries like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia that bestride civilizational fault lines tend to come apart. The unity of the United States has historically rested on the twin bedrocks of European culture and political democracy. These have been essentials of America to which generations of immigrants have assimilated. The essence of the American creed has been equal rights for the individual, and historically immigrant and outcast groups have invoked and thereby reinvigorated the principles of the creed in their struggles for equal treatment in American society. The most notable and successful effort was the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the 1950s and 1960s. Subsequently, however, the demand shifted from equal rights for individuals to special rights (affirmative action and similar measures) for blacks and other groups. Such claims run directly counter to the underlying principles that have been the basis of American political unity; they reject the idea of a "color-blind" society of equal individuals and instead promote a "color-conscious" society with government-sanctioned privileges for some groups. In a parallel movement, intellectuals and politicians began to push the ideology of "multiculturalism," and to insist on the rewriting of American political, social, and literary history from the viewpoint of non-European groups. At the extreme, this movement tends to elevate obscure leaders of minority groups to a level of importance equal to that of the Founding Fathers. Both the demands for special group rights and for multiculturalism encourage a clash of civilizations within the United States and encourage what Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., terms "the disuniting of America."
The United States is becoming increasingly diverse ethnically and racially. The Census Bureau estimates that by 2050 the American population will be 23 percent Hispanic, 16 percent black and 10 percent Asian-American. In the past the United States has successfully absorbed millions of immigrants from scores of countries because they adapted to the prevailing European culture and enthusiastically embraced the American Creed of liberty, equality, individualism, democracy. Will this pattern continue to prevail as 50 percent of the population becomes Hispanic or nonwhite? Will the new immigrants be assimilated into the hitherto dominant European culture of the United States? If they are not, if the United States becomes truly multicultural and pervaded with an internal clash of civilizations, will it survive as a liberal democracy? The political identity of the United States is rooted in the principles articulated in its founding documents. Will the de-Westernization of the United States, if it occurs, also mean its de-Americanization? If it does and Americans cease to adhere to their liberal democratic and European-rooted political ideology, the United States as we have known it will cease to exist and will follow the other ideologically defined superpower onto the ash heap of history.

What follows next is from a Brookings Institution study:

The U.S. will become “minority white” in 2045, Census projects

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/

New census population projections confirm the importance of racial minorities as the primary demographic engine of the nation’s future growth, countering an aging, slow-growing and soon to be declining white population. The new statistics project that the nation will become “minority white” in 2045. During that year, whites will comprise 49.9 percent of the population in contrast to 24.6 percent for Hispanics, 13.1 percent for blacks, 7.8 percent for Asians, and 3.8 percent for multiracial populations.... 

Among the minority populations, the greatest growth is projected for multiracial populations, Asians and Hispanics with 2018–2060 growth rates of 175, 93, and 85 percent, respectively. The projected growth rate for blacks is 34 percent.* The demographic source of growth varies across groups. For example, immigration contributes to one-third of Hispanic growth over this time span, with the rest attributable to natural increase (the excess of births over deaths). Among Asians, immigration contributes to three quarters of the projected growth.

Tillerson’s Firing

I think Tillerson is a good man, but I am not sorry to see him leave as Secretary of State.  He was better than Trump on foreign policy issues. He wanted to keep the Iran agreement; he wanted to negotiate with North Korea before Trump did; he was more concerned about climate change than Trump, even with his Exxon Mobil background; he was inclined to be tougher on Russian than Trump; he had a better feel for Middle East politics than Trump.  In general he favored a more traditional, conventional foreign policy than Trump.
On the other hand, administratively he almost wrecked the State Department.  He gutted the ranks of the Foreign Service. Partly Foreign Service officers left because they disagreed with Trump’s foreign policy, even as moderated by Tillerson; partly they left because of the mess he created trying to reform the State Department.  The Foreign Service is already one of the smallest organizations in the US Government. It may need reform, but Tillerson was on the way to destroying it with a meat cleaver. Maybe he had some bad experiences with American embassies when he was working for Exxon Mobil.  
The Foreign Service is probably a pretty liberal organization, but that’s not surprising since many of the officers are there, rather than in some high-paying private sector job, because they want to bring about world peace, just like most Miss America contestants.  Most, however, are willing to fight back rather than let a hostile country take advantage of us. They are willing to endure hardships and danger in poor or unstable countries around the world. They deserve better threatment than Tillerson gave them. 
With Tillerson’s leaving, therre has been some talk that some of the senior officers may come back.  It’s possible, but I think may of them objected to Trump’s foreign policy as much as they did to Tillerson’s admiistrative reforms.  Plus, they will have moved on with their lives. I doubt that many will come back, especially since it looks like Pompeo’s foreign policy philosophy is closer to Trump’s than Tillerson’s was.  
Pompeo’s military experience may make him more sympathetic to the Foreign Service.  Secretary Colin Powell was very helpful and supportive of the Foreign Service, given his experience as a general.  I hope that is the case, that he emulates Powell’s attitudes toward these State Department officers.

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker is the Jewish author of the week.  Jewish commentators often hype books by Jewish authors.  I guess it's not unethical, but it gets a little tiresome.  The latest is StevenPinker and his book, Enlightenment Now.  The two Jewish commentators recommending it are David Brooks, in his NYT column "The Virtue of Radical Honesty,"

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/opinion/steven-pinker-radical-honesty.html

and Paul Solomon, in his PBS segment "Making Sense." 

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/if-youre-worried-about-the-world-heres-reason-to-be-hopeful-and-keep-worrying

Solomon says this book is a favorite of Bill Gates, who is not Jewish.  It postulates that we are living in the best times in the history of the world.  People are wealthier and healthier than at any time in the past.  There are no huge wars going on, although there are some small ones.  Democracy has been spreading, although that is slowing down now. 

Neither commentary on the book reports whether we are happier now, because we are richer; Pinker wrote his book to counter the general pessimism because people are so unhappy now.  Does he posit that society is better simply because people live longer.  However, Brooks points out that

Pinker doesn’t spend much time on the decline of social trust, the breakdown of family life, the polarization of national life, the spread of tribal mentalities, the rise of narcissism, the decline of social capital, the rising alienation from institutions or the decline of citizenship and neighborliness. It’s simply impossible to tell any good-news story when looking at the data from these moral, social and emotional spheres.
From <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/opinion/steven-pinker-radical-honesty.html>

At least Brooks criticizes his Jewish fellow, although he closes by saying he likes Pinker because they took a DNA test that showed they were third cousins. 

What Do Democrats Fear from Russia?

On Februray 15, the New York Times wrote an editorial called, "Mr. Trump is Blind to Russia's Threat." 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/opinion/trump-officials-warning-russia.html

I thought that here I would find what the Democrats fear from Russia.  What is Russia's threat.  I was not frightened by the editorial.  It seems the  main threat is Russian meddling in our elections, although it also mentions aggression against Ukraine, weapons deals, and human rights abuses.  This is a far cry from the threat by Khrushchev that "We will bury you," and installing missiles in Cuba. It said the senior intelligence officials who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee said they had not been asked "to take measures to combat Russian interference and protect democratic processes."  There is no allegation that the Russians have physically manipulated the voting process by hacking voting machines, but rather that the Russians have used campaign dirty tricks to support some candidates (Trump and Sanders) over Hillary.  Lee Atwater would be proud the Russians learned from his playbook. 

The implication is that the NYT believes that democracy in America is extremely fragile, although so far I have not heard any responsible source, including the NYT, say that Russia was responsible for Mr. Trump's election.  Rather it looks like it's just sour grapes from  the NYT and other Democrats.  The NYT thinks it is the most important paper in the world, with the smartest reporters and editors.  It was fully supportive of Hillary Clinton, writing many articles and editorials daily during the campaign supporing her and telling the American populace to vote for her.  And America ignored them.  So now they blame a handful of Russian nerds sitting in a dark room in St. Petersburg for her loss.  They claim these few nerds were more powerful than the vaunted New York Times, not to mention the Washington Post, the major networks, and most other media outlets (except Fox). 

Mr. Mueller has indicted thirteen Russians for election meddling.  The NYT probably has that many reporters covering Congress, much less the White House, or campaign stops around the country.  Are thirteen Russian hackers really that much more powerful than the New York Times?  If so, then the Russians are supermen, and the NYT editorial should have said that we should fear the Russians because they are supermen, not because they have some good hackers. 

Huntington and the Russians

I have been mystified by why the NYT and Washington Post hate Russia so much and are engaging in yellow journalism fomenting war with Russia.  I thought it was because of the Jewish connection.  So many of their journalists and editors are Jewish, and Jews have a long (1,000 years) history of subjugation by Russian Slavs, so that hatred of Russians is embedded in Jewish DNA.  Israel is in many ways a country populated by Russians.  Most American Jews are Ashkenazi Jews from Central Europe (often dominated by Russia) or from Russia itself. 

An old article that I am reading, maybe for the first time, raises the possibility that there are changes in Russia which may call for a reorientation in US policy toward Moscow.  Samuel Huntington says in "Clash of Civilizations":

"If, as the Russians stop behaving like Marxists, they reject liberal democracy and begin behaving like Russians but not like Westerners, the relations between Russia and the West could again become distant and conflictual."

 Clash of Civilizations (Page 25).

Arguably this is happening.  Putin may not be becoming another Stalin, but another Tsar.  Under the Tsars, Russia considered itself a European country, but with a strong Asiatic component, given its Asian and Middle Eastern components on the fringes of the Russian territory.  Moscow and St. Petersburg remained European, and if anything, Putin has increased the importance of St. Petersburg, Russia's European capital under the Tsars. 

I think Putin was inclined to make Russian a Western, European country, but the West pushed him away.  Russia's former empire in Central Europe, the Warsaw Pact, completely abandoned it after the fall of the Berlin wall.  NATO pushed farther and father east, until it came to Ukraine, whose capital, Kiev, was the original capital of Russia. 

While the West saw Russia's refusal to let Ukraine go and join the rest of the old Warsaw Pact as part of Europe, it might have been that Putin did not want to give up his last connection to the West and make Russia a solely Asiatic power.  Putin could have seen the refusal of the US and Europe to allow Ukraine to stay in the Russian orbit as saying, "Russia, we hate you and want nothing to do with you."  If so, Putin may have taken offense at this putdown.  The result may be the increasing tension between Russia and the West.  This would have little to do with Jewish control of American media and politics. 

Lest we forget, Russia under the tsars defeated Napoleon in 1812, beginning his removal as emperor of France.  In World War II, Stalin defeated Hitler, beginning his defeat.  Russia has played key roles in European history. 

I guess the question for me is, did Jews in the West significantly influence the decision to move against Russia by moving NATO to its front door and excluding it from various European activities, G-7 versus G-8 meetings, for example.  Russia was included in the G-8, but since the invasion of Crimea, it has been excluded and now the meetings just consist of the G-7 (no Russia).  Jews have been prominent in the foreign policy bureaucracy of both Democratic and Republican administrations.  

What Russia Did on Social Media Was Not Illegal

What the Russians did on social media during the 2016 election was not illegal.  It may have been mean-spirited or morally dishonest, but it did not violate the law.  It's not illegal to create bots on social media, and it's not illegal to spread fake news, unless it violates an old, somewhat irrelevant law, such as libel.  See

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html

This article reports on the creation of millions of Twitter bots, many based on real people, which are sold to minor celebrities and others to increase the number of their Twitter followers.  The article implies in passing that fake users may also be a problem for Facebook, but it only reports on Twitter.  Facebook has somewhat more stringent controls on who can open a Facebook account, while Twitter has almost no controls.  It does, however, claim that it does not want fraudulent users and removes them when they are called to its attention. 

The Twitter bots in the article are mostly used for advertising, but some are political; usually there are bots that espouse both sides of controversial issues, some leftist bots, some conservative bots.  However, the article does not claim that this activity violates any laws, although it may violate Twitter policies. 

If it's not illegal for a company in Miami to do this, it doesn't seem like it is illegal for a business (or government) in Moscow to do so.  Fake news is a problem, but so far not illegal.  The bigger problem is that Americans are so gullible that they fall for it.  I don't see how the government is going to limit fake news without getting into censorship.  Alreeady I think some of the procedures instituted by Twitter and Facebook border on censorship, although as private entities they do not have same high bar that the government does. 

Another consideration is that through the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe the US has directed news at the old Soviet Union, and now at Russia for many years. Although it was not fake, it was intended to bring down the Soviet Union, and it did.  I would guess, although I do not know of an example, that the CIA has planted fake news over the years. 

In a brief web search, I found this article about the CIA deceiving not only the Soviet Union, but the American people as well. 

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v09/v09p305_Marchetti.html

What's going on now with fake news is bad, but it's not new. 

Debt Service and Mick Mulveney

People are talking about the huge deficit Trump's new budget will create and what that will do to the overall deficit.  The stock market tanked recently when there were fears that inflation was returning and the Fed would raise interest rates higher and more quickly.  So far, nobody is talking about what happens when these two things come together.  A huge public debt and high interest rates mean that paying interest on the debt will take up a bigger and bigger piece of the federal budget, leaving less money for everything from the military to medicare.  It's a problem that only gets worse.  Higher debt means investors from pension funds to the Chinese government will be less willing to buy US bonds, and that will mean the government will have to pay higher interest to get people to buy them. 

Mick Mulveney, Trump's Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is the man who is supposed to keep the budget under control. I worry that he will follow in the footsteps of his predecessor in the Reagan administration, David Stockman.  Stockman and his Republican colleagues encouraged Reagan to cut taxes deeply.  Their idea was that once taxes were cut, there would be no money to fund the liberal programs, like Medicare and food stamps, that they disliked.  However, Stockman misjudged Reagan.  When push came to shove, Reagan was unwilling to cut these programs that helped poor and ordinary people. Reagan was too soft-hearted for Stockman.  As a result, Reagan cut taxes, but not spending, leading to huge deficits and the federal debt that we face today. 

It now looks like, not only Trump, but the entire Republican party (except for Rand Paul) has followed in Reagan's footsteps and ceased to worry about unfunded government spending and the deficits and increased debit that it brings.  Stockman has gone on to make millions in New York, but so has Donald Trump.  Nobody knows what the mplications are of this debt load, because there has never been anything like it before.  What it brings for smaller nations who have less control over financial markets is usually austerity and recession to pay for the years of carefree spending.  We'll see if the US profligacy will end any better will end any better than it has for other nations. 

One example that worries me, given the important role of Jews in the US government and the financial sector, is Germany between the world wars.  Germany found itself in terrible financial straits after World War I.  It could not pay the huge debts it had incurred to finance the war.  It printed money and inflation became rampant.  At that time Jews became very prominent in German business and financial affairs.  One study reports that

In the early 20th century, a dense corporate network was created among large German corporations, with about 16 percent of the members of this corporate network of Jewish background. At the centre of the network (big linkers) about 25 percent were Jewish. The percentage of Jews in the general population was less than one percent in 1914.

https://www.uni-trier.de/fileadmin/fb4/prof/SOZ/APO/Windolf/ZUGJewishElite.pdf

This outsized influence of Jewish businessmen and bankers enabled Hitler to blame the Jews for many of the hardships the average German population was experiencing in the 1930s.  It influenced many average Germans to accept his increasing persecution of Jews.  Let us hope that America does not end up like Germany, with Jews presiding over a failing country that cannot pay its debts.  Chuck Schumer, Steve Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, Michael Bloomberg, Lloyd Blankfein, Larry Fink, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg and company would do well to help America get its financial house in order, 

Opposition to DACA

I am against special treatment for DACA "Dreamers."

My first job in the Foreign Service was as a vice-consul issuing visas at the American Consulate General in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in the 1970s.  Every time I refused a visa to a Brazilian applicant because I thought he might try to work illegally in the US, I felt badly because I knew if he lived in Mexico, he could just walk across the border into the US.  That was not an option for Brazilians, especially poor ones for whom travel was expensive. 

For immigrant visas, two of the most important requirements were that the visa applicant have a labor certification that he or she would not take a job in America that would displace an American worker, and that he or she had sufficient financial resources so that they would not become a public charge and receive welfare benefits.  Mexicans illegally entering the US did not have to meet either of these tests.  On the one hand, DACA advocates argue that illegals only take jobs that Americans will not do; on the other hand, PBS and other pro-DACA news media show many DACA candidates who are studying to be doctors, lawyers, or computer scientists, or who have started successful businesses.  Which is it?  It's some of both, but interestingly, many of the low wage Mexican workers probably displace African-Americans.  Democrats don't worry about African-Americans, because they are guaranteed to vote Democratic.  To assuage black concerns about losing jobs to Mexicans, Democrats will give them lots of welfare. 

The Democrats are pushing for DACA because they expect Mexicans will vote Democratic and they want as many of them in the US as possible to build up the Democratic base, even if it takes a few years to get them the vote. 

The American immigration system has been broken for at least 50 years.  It is sort of the reverse image of our drug laws.  We have relatively few immigrants in prison, even for serious crimes, while we have many drug users in jail for minor crimes.  Both represent failed policies and poor law enforcement. 

We should be somewhat concerned about hardships imposed on Dreamers; we don't have to put all of them on buses back to Mexico tomorrow.   But we should enforce applicable laws in a humane fashion.  While they are here, I don't think we should give them lots of money, whether for subsistence, health care, or other necessities.  If they can't support themselves, send them back to Mexico sooner rather than later, and let the Mexican government support them.  They should also show some interest in becoming Americans, whether as citizens or permanent residents, not just in working or going to school here because they just happen to be here.  The whole point of DACA is that these kids did not want to come to America; they were dragged here. 

People say that children should not be punished for the crimes of their parents, but if the parents rob a bank, the children should not be allowed to keep the money their parents stole.  Allowing Dreamers to stay in the US is a benefit for which they should be prepared to work and sacrifice.  If they don't want to, send them back to Mexico. 

I was concerned during the government shutdown that the Democratic Party was putting the interests of Mexicans (Dreamers) ahead of the interests of American citizens, such as military veterans.  The VA hospital in Denver is an illustration of government's perverse priorities.  Millions, maybe billions, have been paid to contractors and other political donors to construct an empty building that is an insult to veterans.  While veterans die, Democrats cry tears for Dreamers and shovel money out the door to help them.  I understand that Mexicans are the future of the Democratic Party and that they must buy their votes now to strengthen the party in future years, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of Americans. 

I do not care much about building a wall.  The wall is symbolic.  If we build it, it is concrete proof that we are serious about enforcing immigration laws.  If we don't build it, it means we will carry on with business as usual, ignoring many laws already on the books.  

Michael Wolff Is Austin Powers

Think you've seen Michael Wolff before?  Is it Austin Powers, international man of mystery, or just Mini-Me grown up? 

Brooks on Democracy

Brooks on Democracy David Brooks has a good column in the NYT on the virtues of democracy, “The Glory of Democracy,” but one questions he fails to deal with is who should participate in it. When the US was created, the founding fathers limited the vote to older, white, male citizens who owned property. If we still had these restrictions, the US government would look very different from how it does today. The founding fathers did not even trust this limited electorate, but instituted indirect elections for the most important offices, such as the electoral college for the Presidential election. They thought rough hewn voters would electe better educated, wiser men to make the final choice, hopefully adhering more closely to the ideals Mann and Brooks espouse.

 Mann and Brooks say that in an ideal world voters would “seek justice, freedom and truth.” I haven’t heard anybody campaign on those issues lately. Mann says democracy should encourage everybody to make the best of their capacities, to seek beauty and truth. Today we see mainly people whom Mann would call the enemies of democracy, seeking money, status, and a free lunch from the government.

 Brooks aims his criticism at the Trump Republicans as the crass money grubbers, but Trump is President because so many Americans saw the Democrats squandering the national inheritance of property and decency built up over hundreds of years through trial, error and hardship. Democrats espoused lofty goals, but sold them out for personal power and cronyism.