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The Republican party under Mr. Trump is getting money from small donors compared to big donors particularly from tech supporting the Democratic party. This affects how the two parties take stands on issues. The Democratic party has lost some of its working class character because of the donors supporting it. This shift was more prominent under Mr. Obama when tech donors favored him. It also affected the Democratic party and Mr. Obama's stand on issues such as the TPP agreement which Obama supported even though the unions were against it. TPP favored the tech industry and was seen as hurting the auto industry. As a result it created an opening for the Republican party under Mr. Trump who won the election because of a win in midwestern states such as Michigan.

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Former employees of Google and Facebook have joined together to form The Center for Humane Technology. It plans to fight tech addiction in schools. A ad campaign is planned with $7 million from Common Sense, capital it has raised, and $50 million in donated media and airtime by DirecTV and Comcast. The idea is to educate students, teachers and parents about overuse of tech media leading to depression, other dysfunctional health issues. 

In one report even Tim Cook, Apple CEO says he realizes the dangers and is trying to discourage such use by his nephew. Some early investors such as Roger McNamee say they are horrified at what has happened with overuse of social media, especially health effects for a generation of school children and young adults. 

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David Beers, John Chambers and the Committee that made the U.S. credit ratings downgrade. Earlier calls on Iceland, Argentina and Italy by David Beers and his willingness to make a tough call and defend it. The committee is called the sovereign ratings division, with David Beers as head, and John Chambers as his deputy. A report from the IMF gives good marks to S&P on making timely sovereign ratings revisions where approporate and on being ahead of Moody's and Fitch in this regard. S&P spokesperson says that the sovereign ratings group is quite different from the corporate ratings group.

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Karl Robe attributes Obama's vote getting success to intense grassroots efforts to register new voters and strategies to attract votes from Hispanics, Catholics and other segments of the voting public. And he economic downturn helped steer the election to his strengths. His calm and cool manner reassured voters in the economic crisis days of October. Says rove the country voted for change but the precise direction of the change remains unclear, so he thinks the Obama victory was personal rather than philosophical. "He became a large vessel into which people place their hopes and this can lead to disappointment and regret."

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A small tax on the $800 trillion foreign exchange industry of 0.005%- with the tax on currencies where the leaders of these countries approve like Merkel of Germany and Sarkozy of France- would generate much needed money to help the word's poorest, says Philippe Jouste-Blazy, a former foreign minister of France. For instance he says tuberculosis killed nearly 1.8 million people in 2007, and caused the GNP of some countries to fall as much as 7 %. THis would bring serious gains to economic growth in the poorest countries. Look at the $1 to $5 tax imposed on airline tickets in France and 10 other countries since 2005.It has raised $700 million and financed three quarters of the AIDS treatment now being received by the world's HIV positive children. Unitaid, is an organization Blazy leads. It manages the money from the airline tax, and has negotiated 50 to 60% reductions in the price of pediatric anti-retroviral drugs in low income countries. The reason why the banking community should support this tax. One it is tiny, 0.005% on a foreign exchange transaction, and should not affect the flow of transactions. It is done automatically by computer systems. The currency trading system right now is untaxed. More importantly the bankers says Blazy have been benficiaries of taxpayer money. Isn't it time to give back to those worst affected by the global crisis the bankers helped create? Does'nt it create more credibility for the global financial, monetary and trading systems? He says the tax money could be managed by the Global FUnd to fight AIDs Tuberculosis and Malaria, with upholds programs in 100 countries to high performance standards....

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The influence of the spontaneous and bold George Romney, three term governor of Michigan, and presidential candidate in 1968, on his son Mitt Romney during the final weeks of the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. George Romney as CEO of American Motors was known for going over the fence to talk directly with UAW union workers. A more cautious approach of Mitt was an effort to correct Dad's weakness of talking out loud in a media intensive world where everything gets analyzed instantly. During the final weeks with this cautious approach having its own problems in not giving voters a clear picture of who the candidate is, Mitt Romney found himself again turning to "Dad," for that spontaneous and bold approach to put himself out there for who he is. On the lectern before the start of the first presidential debate Mitt scribbled the word "Dad," a reminder of how he should handle the debate with Obama. Ann Romney shared this with a television reporter in a choking voice.

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Viktor Zubkow becomes new Prime Minister of Russia. He is close to Putin from his St Petersburg days and worked on Putin's staff in those days.

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Ali Gomaa, the grand mufti of Egypt, gives his ideas on Articles 2 of the 1971 Constitution (which established Islam as the religion of the state), and Article 7 of the interim Constitution (which guarantees equal citizenship before the law, regardless of religion). As head of Egypt's agency of Islamic jurisprudence, he gives his assurance to the West and to Egyptians, that the religious establishment of Egypt and he personally, is committed to tolerance and popular sovereignty that respects the rights of all citizens. He points to Egypt's tradition of a moderate and tolerant view of Islam. He says that Egypt threw out the heavy hand of authoritarian rule after many years and is not about to replace this with another type of authoritarian rule based on Islam. Islam's place in Egypt he argues, will be similiar to state churches in Denmark, and England, and similiar to Islam as the national religion in secular states like Tunisia and Jordan. The kind of Islam he sees for Egypt, in his words, is that of freedom and tolerance....

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In a forceful speech at George Washington University, on April 14, 2011, President Obama outlined his proposal for addressing the U.S. budget deficit. His plan includes a mix of tax increases and spending cuts. His plan is for a $4 trillion deficit reduction over 12 years, with $1 trillion coming from revenue increases, $2 trillion from spending cuts, and $1 trillion from savings in interest because the U.S. would borrow less. Obama's plan would end the Bush-era tax cuts for people earning more than $250,000 a year and eliminate a number of tax breaks. Spending cuts would include cuts in Medicare costs, discretionary spending, and defense. Obama's plan would commit to automatic, across the board spending cuts and tax increases if an initial target is not reached by 2014. Obama said the Republican plan proposed by Paul Ryan presented " a vision that was less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America....The's nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don't have any clout on Capitol Hill."...

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Walter Isaacson's "The Innovators," covers the beginnings of the silicon chip with William Shockley in the fifties and the first transistor. Pat Haggerty at Texas Instruments has the marketing ability to get people interested in transistors for radios, just as Steve Jobs did for iPods, iPads and iPhones, products they did not know they wanted until they tried them. Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, Gates of Microsoft, Jobs at Apple, Brin and Page at Google, and the internet developent, is covered as more recent material. No one person does it as each is standing on the shoulders of people before them. Social media does not get much attention. The messy work of venture capital and the errors and missteps of Apple and Microsoft are given less attention in Isaacson's exuberance and enthusiasm for the inventors. Patents play a part as the inventor Atanasoff did little to patent his creation of the first computer in the 1940's ,and instead was forgotten, as John Mauchly who based his invention on some of the same ideas took his place....

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Experts say Kuroda of the Bank of Japan still has some Finance Ministry DNA, as he is from Japan's Finance Ministry which has pushed for the consumption tax to be increased to 10% in 2015. Even though Kuroda favors aggressive monetary stimulus compared to others in the Finance Ministry, he shares the views of Ministry colleagues on the tax changes. LDP leaders in the Abe cabinet and Abe see the recession with 2 consecutive quarters of declining GDP for the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2014, as good reason for delaying the next tax increase from the 8% already implemented in 2014 to 10% in 2015. Under Abe's revised plan the tax increase would be postponed till 2017. Abe referred to the different views on the tax increase in his announcement for a snap election in Dec. 2014 for a new mandate to pursue his Abenomics economic policies of Three Arrows. Kuroda for his part downplayed their differences saying fiscal policy was the mandate of the elected government.

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An interview with the President in which he says "the only real regulatory approach I've been interested in is in raising fuel efficiency standards so we can wean ourselves off dependency on foreign oil." Mr. Obama is saying that his real desire is to be doing less, when is has had to do more. The key words he comes back to are rules of the road, transparency and openness. The government's role in his view is to set clear rules of the road, but not to so few rules that you have the kind of situation that ocurred to setup this bubble and the financial collapse. In his view the right rules won't stifle finnacial marketplace innovations, but allow a recovery that does not have any of the bad characteristics of the financial bubble. He wants to see a sustainable model of economic growth that is not dependento on a supply of foreign dollars, or high levels of debt, and looks to the dynamism of the free market for growth.

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Walter Berns, a Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University, describes the difficult situation Lincoln faced, and the different factions from Abolitionists who lost interest in the Union, to Southern slave holding states, and compromise promoting factions, which he had to navigate around to achieve his ultimate purpose. A purpose based on what the Bible and every human sense of right and wrong would say. After the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court stated that slavery was affirmed in the constitution, and there were efforts in the Senate in 1861 to continue with another compromise that allowed slavery to continue and expand in the south, and after secession of some states under his predecessor, Lincoln had to keep saying no to a compromise or any rejection of the union. Even after huge losses, and battle weariness of northern and southern states, Lincoln had to have that deep inner faith, a faith in Almighty God and his purpose for the Union, to reject peace negotiations with the southern states that conceded anything on slavery. ...

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Dugan and Spector of the WSJ take readers through efforts to push self driving technology to its limits at electric car maker Tesla. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is pushing the technology and plans to get a self driving car go from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017. Problems faced by Tesla include a car crash involving a driver who took his hands off the wheel of a Tesla automobile, leading to a crash with an eighteen wheeler truck. This led to an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Board and a decision by Tesla to make driver's hands on the steering wheel required for autopilot to operate. Earlier in 2015 Tesla engineers confirmed that the Tesla cars were not ready for autonomous driving because of near crashes when the reliance was placed entirely on the technology. Ten engineers and two managers resigned from Tesla according to this report by WSJ, with problems relating to deadlines and marketing decisions. Sterling Anderson, the head of the Autopilot program at Tesla resigned to start his own company with the head of the autonomous driving unit at Google, saying he was going to do it the right way, citing concerns that Musk was going ahead with the technology without making it failure proof. The tricky thing about auto pilot driving is the behavioural factors involved, where drivers may take their hands off the steering wheel and not be prepared to act as a backup should the technology fail or something go wrong. Another aspect of this is the tendency of drivers not to pay attention to the road and rely completely on the auto pilot to do everything, more than its capabilities today. Toyota and other auto companies are including some elements of collision free driving, and reliable aspects of the new technology into cars. For Tesla the driverless technology is part of its marketing appeal, and CEO Musk has moved faster in this respect than his own engineering team, according to this WSJ report. ...

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Jaiswal who made 209 in the Second Cricket Test hits a fast century in the Third Test against England to put India in a strong position on Feb 17, 2024. Jaiswal hit 3 sixes and 2 fours in 8 balls at one time in the 150 run partnership with Shubman Gill.

 

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Floods in the Valenica region are described to be "like a tsunami" and  so sudden that flood warnings came too late. This is typical of the climate change related floods in Germany, North Africa, Mexico, and other countries where the floods have hit all of a sudden, bringing torrents of rain within minutes.

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Michael Atherton calls Jasprit Bumrah "absolutely fantastic" for his bowling in the First Cricket Test vs Australia at Perth 2024. After being bowled out for 150 rus in the first innings India went on to score over 500 runs in the second innings to beat Australia by 295 runs. The turnaround was amazing.

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DJT says about the use of non official app Signal for sensitive information discussions between Hegseth and Vance on a strike against the Houthis in the Persian Gulf- "Waltz has learned his lesson, he is a good man." Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine was accidentally added to the conversation thread, making it public.

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10% estimated increase in US tomato prices- from Mexico imports  hit by tariffs 2025. Tomatoes could be grown in the local regions as an alternative to importing over long distances encouraging the use of local produce for vegetables and fruits. Transport alone could make up for the 10% and for the labor costs.

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President Obama's call for boosting the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 in his 2013 State of the Union address designed to lift millions out of poverty.

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Barrack Obama made a memorable speech on March 18, 2008 in Philadelphia, on the whole race question and his relationship with Reverend Wright and the Trinity Church.

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About 1.17 million jobs were lost in 2008 according to the Labor Department, with half of these job losses in the last 3 months, as unemployment reached 6.5%. Bu the the labor underutilization rate is the one to watch, the measure of total unemployment including parttime workers who seek full time employment but can't get it. This hit 11.8% in October up from 11% a year earlier. This is what happened in Japan where companies began using parttime workers to reduce costs and not to have to pay benefits, a trend that has already started in the US. See link to trend. Over a long period like 5-10 years this can lead to depressed consumer spending as workers see an uncertain future, as ocurred and is still the case in Japan. Also note that the unemployment rate reached 10.8% in the 1981-82 recession and this is shaping up to be something bigger, and half of the 1.2 million job losses ocurring in the last 3 months so this is accelerating. The economy is expected to shrink at an annual rate of 4% in the 4th quarter, and could see these kinds of declines or worse in 2009 and beyond....

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Les Moonves, head of Viacom's CBS television network, was an actor in a television show from the seventies called "The Six Million Dollar Man." He moved later to Warner Brothers and headed the studio which developed hits such as "ER" and "Friends" during his period at the studio. Moonves retains the instincts from this earlier period as he helped develop programming that pushed CBS into first place among television networks, beating Disney's ABC, Comcast Corp.'s NBC, and News Corp.'s Fox. He joined CBS in 1995, when CBS was in last place of the three U.S. television networks. At CBS he pushed for developing shows at the network studio level. In 2000 he came up with "Survivor"- the first reality programming, and the police investigatory show "CSI." CBS was hit hard during 2007-2009 as the ad market fell sharply and net income fell 82%, the stock losing 82% of its value. Moonves has diversified away from dependence on ads with revenues from syndication sales of televisions shows such as "CSI," and licensing to Netflix of old shows such as "I Love Lucy." Major problems facing CBS and the other television networks is the decline in the number of people watching television, with competition from streaming online video, digital recorders, and on-demand viewing. Even though CBS has the most viewers in prime time in the U.S., 11.5 million viewers, this is seeing sharp declines. In the 2012 fall seaon there was a 10% decline in viewers compared to the prior year, and a 20% decline in viewers 18-49 years old. ...

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Fed chairman Jerome Powell gets Biden's support for another term as chairman of America's central bank. Powell is utterly different from previous Fed governors under previous administrations because of his concentration and clarity of mind that let him focus on the job of renewing America, after the missteps of previous governors and administrations. The WSJ says he is viewed by president Biden and by markets as a steady hand whose extensive, personal outreach helped restore bipartisan support for the central bank one decade after its reputation was badly hurt by the 2008 financial crisis.  People from both sides of the aisle in Congress and in markets see his personal outreach reflected in his understanding of the country and the needs of its people. Rep Emmanuel Cleaver, Democrat of Missouri says Powell visited  Missouri several years ago and talked to a cross section of rural Missourians and Kansas City residents. And everybody who met Powell thought he was frank, nothing partisan about him, as straight shooter. After what America went through during the financial crisis of 2008 and the utterly aloof and distant central bank governors of the last 3 decades Powell brings a needed quality for all who head America's central bank -a direct on the ground understanding of the needs of the people and the country. Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana says "You kept this thing in the middle of the road. Some days you had to do it with spit and happy thoughts but you kept this thing in the middle of the road." Powell's senior thesis at Princeton University was titled "South Africa- Forces for Change," and the years since then reflect a concern for the people, for families and working class Americans. Supporting Powell is Lael Brainard, Fed governor, who will be vice chairman. Brainard brings experience to tackle the regulation of banks that was missed under previous administrations.   ...

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Kozo Yamamoto joined the Finance Ministry in 1971, and is serving his sixth term as member of Japan's parliament. Since 2011 Yamamoto has convinced Abe, a colleague in parliament, about the need for reflationist policies now called Abenomics. This helped Abe make a comeback win for the prime minister's position for a second time. Yamamoto led the study group that convinced Abe of the need to delay the second increase in the consumption tax to 2017, and a 3 trillion yen stimulus package to encourage household spending, following the economy's fallback into a recession in Nov. 2014. He says it was important to not add to the headwinds the economy is facing. Yamamoto does not fall into the conservative mold of people from the Finance Ministry, as he takes tango lessons, is interested in fine pottery, and in Italian cooking. He has called bureaucrats in the ministry and central bankers "feckless" and "defiant," after years of questioning them in parliament and demanding reflationist policies. With the snap election in December 2014 the Abe led LDP is taking on the conservative Finance Ministry officials, who have insisted on sticking with the old timetable for the tax increase, regardless of the headwinds and slowing exports....