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India has reduced imports of oil from Iran from 12% in 2011 to about 9% by the end of April, 2012. A senior state department official from the U.S., Carlos Pascual, will be in India in mid May 2012 to assess the energy situation and see what specific energy facilities in India need to do. Some of the refineries in India are designed to handle only the kind of heavy oil Iran supplies. For the U.S. the issue is keeping up the pressure on Iran during the talks in Istanbul, Turkey, on Iran's nuclear program. For India it has the vital trade and economic relationship with the U.S. balanced against cultural ties to the region and the need for oil supplies.

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This may be the most important work of the DJT administration by 2027 into 2028 elections.  WSJ calls it the soda wars, when it is the slow destruction of America. As JFK and RFK well knew when they made fitness a goal for America in 1960- health is not built on sodas. Today with such high obesity, sodas and its likes, it is about the slow destruction of America.  MALA make America Live Again starts here. “When a taxpayer is putting money into SNAP, are they OK with us using their tax dollars to feed really bad food and sugary drinks to children, who perhaps need something more nutritious?” Right now it is the biggest item for schools in most states for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan. Passed by Congress in 1964 the original bill for SNAP excluded sodas and luxury drinks, but had Sodas added back in by the Senate. By lobbyists even in 1964? SNAP schools program falls under the Agriculture Department. Democrats as well as Republicans appointed Agriculture Secretaries and not one took the action to get sodas excluded, to let states request sodas be excluded and approve it, not the Democrat a Carter, a Clinton, or an Obama, or a Republican a Reagan, a Bush, or a Trump (first term) took the necessary action. In 2025 Brooke Rollins is Agriculture Department Secretary. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee has seen the damage sodas can cause in her family. Rollins on her first day in office has finally acted- after 61 years when the original intentions of the SNAP bill's creators were confounded in the Senate.  On her first full day in office, urging them to propose pilot programs testing changes to food aid. Rollins sent governors a letter to ask for the removal of sodas from schools food aid program.   ...

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Malaysia filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. unit and a former partner in relation to the 1MDB financial scandal. Goldman arranged a $6.5 billion in bonds for 1MDB in 2012 and 2013 of which $2.7 billing was allegedly stolen, according to this report in the Wall Street Journal. The bank was able to make $600 million in profits. Malaysia's Attorney General stated that "Malaysia considers the allegations in the charges against the accused to be grave violations of our securities laws, and to reflect their severity, prosecutors will seek criminal fines against the accused well in excess of the $2.7 billion misappropriated from the bonds proceeds and $600 million in fees received by Goldman Sachs, and custodial sentences, the maximum term of imprisonment being 10 years." The 1MDB scandal was a major issue in recent Malaysian elections resulting in a return to government of Mahathir Mohammed in an attempt to restore integrity and transparency to the country's finances and spending. The Wall Street Journal has covered 1MDB as it did other issues relating to the 2008 financial crisis to ensure Asia's developing countries have good governance and financial integrity. 1MDB, Malaysia's development fund is now the centre of investigations by the U.S. Justice Department, Malaysia, Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg.   ...

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The BBC looks at the conflicting agendas when it comes to China of Rubio at State and Tulsi Gabbard at Intelligence. Lighthizer is the positive in correcting the trade imbalance with China because he served as US Trade Representative in the first DJT term and has experience going back to negotiating with Japan under Reagan as Deputy Trade Representative.  Controversial are the appointment of a Fox news person Hegeth as Defense Secretary, as he has no experience running an agency, and this one employs 3 million people. Gaetz as Attorney General is being questioned by many Republicans, and in the Senate by Cornyn (R). On spending the Office of Government Efficiency is not a department and Vivek Ramaswamy age 39 years lacks experience in administration, cost cutting. Elon Musk has cut costs at Tesla and Twitter but has no experience handling budgets of agencies. Trump has promised more spending. The cost cuts would be the opposite of what he promised if it cuts essential programs not for efficiency but for viewpoint.   ...

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Sitharaman told parliament the situation created by 2013 had the effect of national security being compromised, Environment as a Ministry becoming a bottleneck, and the leadership failing the country. In the military there was a critical shortage of ammunition and equipment. She cites the Defense Minister at the time having the attitude that independent India has had a policy for many years not to develop the border areas, as an undeveloped border was better than a developed border. She also says Ministry stated that 92% of the Defense Budget was used up and major acquisitions have to wait for the military. Following this Sitharaman cited the scandals of that period and leakages of funds that weakend the country and failed its people. She compared defense capital expenditures today of 6.22 lakh crores in 2024 thre times the number in 2013 of 2.53 crores. HAL now makes Tejas jets and helicopters in Made in India production. At the Environment Ministry the delays that were 86 days reached a high of 316 days by 2013 for approval of development projects, with 355 projects pending, the nation brought to a standstill with the effects of the coal supplies to thermal power plants being wholly inadequate and Coal India in poor shape. The root of this was said Sitharaman- what everyone in Indian business knew, the term "genteel facts," as the cost of business going up. She cites the changes since then of aiming for Balance and Development- Transparency, Online Green Clearance, Standardized Environment Impact Studies, A new Department of Climate change, International Solar Alliance 2015, Mission Life 2022, Green Hydrogen, Namami Gange, Rooftop Solar. India set ambitious goals at the last Climate change Conference.    ...

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This election is seen as a turning point for Britain. The Liberal-Conservative coalition has come up with a radical plan to cut spending and decentralize services in the areas of education, policing and health care. The plan is to cut the deficit quickly from 11% of GDP in 2009-10, to 2.1% in 2014-15. By comparison the outgoing Labor government's plan was to balance the budget by 2016-17. And the fiscal impact of Labor's budgets would have been 4% by 2014-15, compared to the Cameron government's looking at 6.3%, with larger and accelerated cuts in spending. It is something of a gamble by the Tory-Liberal government. If the severity of the cuts in spending stifle growth, then Plan B will be needed. The size of the cuts are not seen as feasible. With growing interest payments with the large borrowing by the government, and no real cuts in healthcare spending, departments delivering public services in Britain face cuts of 25% by 2014-15. With defense and schools limited to cuts of 10%- other departments would face cuts of 33%. According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies one way to reduce the severity of these cuts in department budgets, would be to find additional savings in the welfare budget. In June, Mr Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced 11 billion pounds in savings in this area (with half coming from using a different measure for inflation in calculating benefits). Additional savings of 14 billion pounds in welfare budgets, can reduce the size of the cuts needed in departmental budgets to 20%. One example cited is means-testing payments that go to the affluent as well as to poor people, such as child benefits, and cutting winter-fuel payments. Tories and Liberals agree on the need to decentralize government and services in the areas of schools, policing and the NHS. In schooling the idea is to give more choices to parents and children. Current schools can apply for academy status and new "free schools" will be run be non-profits, charities, churches, and parents. These schools will have freedom to set pay, select curriculum, and still receive state funding. In policing, the idea is to have directly elected police and crime commissioners for every constabulary in England and Wales. The elected commissioners would appoint constables and determine budgets and priorities. For the National Health Service the move is to give groups of general practitioners a significant role in the delivery of health care. ...

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The U.S. Labor Department reports that 4.4 million unemployed workers in the U.S. were out of work for more than one year. For the U.S. this is 30% of all unemployed. In some of the largest states about one in three unemployed workers have been out of work for more than one year. For New Jersey which has a 9.4% unemployment rate compared to 9.6% nationally, 37.1% were out of work for more than one year. Older Americans, the highly educated workers, are more likely to have longer stretches of unemployment. This is the situation in New Jersey and Florida where there is a larger population of older workers.

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IBM in addition to rapidly upscaling its operations in India, adding 10,000 employees in 2007 alone for a total of 53,000 in India. This compares with 25,000 for all its Indian competitors combined. With its Pune facility attracting employees from its rivals. With $2 billion invested in R&D centers and 3000 engineers engaged in R&D. IBM in addition to this has gone after the Indian market getting about 10% of the domestic market with names like Bharti Airtel, DLF a real estate developer, Canara Bank, the Indian tax department, and so on. And it has done this when companies like Infosys have overlooked the Indian market.

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In this WSJ report a top American Defense Department official before resigning says- "I have no problem with feeding China or trading with China. I have a problem with arming China." Advanced or sensitive manufacturing technology is still being approved for export to China says this report in WSJ, even as the US perceives this to be a national security threat. Experts say the Commerce Department report approval process needs overhaul and the US needs close coordination with the European Union on this process. Of the total US $124 billion in exports to China in 2020 only half of one percent needed a license Commerce Department data reviewed by WSJ shows. Of that small fraction of one half percent Commerce Department approved 2562  applications or 94%. This even includes array of semiconductors, aerospace components, artificial intelligence technologies that could be added to China's military. This means that even towards the end of the Trump administration with its talk about national security threats, through the four years 2016-2020, nothing much happened in this important field.  The difficulty that the Trump administration faced and America faces is putting company and business interests first or American security interests and retaining competitive technological advantage interests first. American administrations and business have consistently failed to follow what plain ordinary Americans understand by America first. Even when it is clearly evident that America is handing over sensitive advanced technologies with very little in return, and creating out of nowhere competition that poses serious risks for the national interest, business and administrations operate indifferent to the national interest. Even right into the period when this is making the world a riskier and more dangerous place.   This is the state of affairs today, and the situation is not about Congressmen visiting Taiwan or ships going through the seas in that region, or international law. All that is American policy  and is well known and well understood. What is missing is the right action and the right determination behind other action that is sending a different message at the same time -that the US is oblivious to its own interests. That administrations, even those such as the recent Republican one under Mr. Trump, see a higher priority in following American business wherever it goes in pursuit of individual company interests alone, even if it does not accord with the national interest. Lobbying groups distort what policy should be in the public interest and in the interest of both countries, leading to a breakdown in the whole process itself whenever governments surrender their role of protecting the public interest.  Outshoring manufacturing was bad economically at the level of communities across the US, leading to divisions that weakened the country in the last decade, it was also bad for the economy of the country with loss of the best manufacturing jobs, beyond what economists in their ignorance of the big picture sought to show was the consumer- often the same person who lost a job or stopped seeking work- paying less. It was bad also for China as it created the hyper growth that rapidly contaminated land, air and water and created an inherently unstable relationship in trade with destruction of jobs at a pace that America had not faced with Japan and with which it could not cope. Could a pace that worked for both nations have worked? At the root is the notion that business knows best even if it is in plain sight to every plain American that the country's most advanced technologies are being shipped out. Governments do not fulfill their responsibilities and fail when they fail to tell business what rules are in the public interest, as it was never in the first role of business to protect the public interest. That the European Union has simply followed the US in this has created a problem for both the US and the European Union of deviating from what plain Americans or Europeans see as abundantly clear.  Even in plain dollars and cents business and economists fail to grasp the true cost for the whole country or whole people compared to the benefit for an individual or an individual company. The cost of wars even small wars can be be trillions of dollars which are borne by the whole country or people, and most of it by the middle and less economically well off classes in a country. Creating a belligerent competitor in world affairs and the risk of conflict and war is to lose trillions of dollars when the benefit to an individual, groups, or individual companies is no more but a tiny fraction of that trillion dollar cost, not including what all the plain people pay in human lives. It is not that anyone benefits as the people in the belligerent competitor country follow the same pattern of loss that would happen in the US. One should ask is it not a loss for China also? The example of Imperialist Japan is not so far off in time for Americans or Asians including the Chinese and Japanese people who suffered so greatly to forget. Business remains oblivious to the public interest not just for America but for the world, individual companies do not see it as their role beyond that of pursuing individual company interest. Is it not then for the government to set the rules. Is it alright for government to not fulfill its responsibilities? Even when this pushes the world faster to into conflicts as technologies take the place of exercise of wisdom in conflict, and even when there are unmet challenges such as climate change that affect the whole planet.  ...

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Speaker Mike Johnson says democracy is "messy," as Rep. Greene of Georgia calls for a resolution for him to step down for violating a rule that no legislation would be brought up that lacks majority support. Only 101 Republican members of the House supported it less than half. How then would the funding of the federal government its departments of defense, homeland security, education, health, operate as the deadline for funding it is tonight? This is left unsaid. One can see the Senate and House live on C-SPAN television at this very moment. It appears that the older senior members of the Republican party have not done a good job of talking to their younger less experienced colleagues and building agreement, that the mediocrity of leadership in both parties for the past three decades, even four, is the cause. Unstable politics in the Republican party as it is split with older senior members on  one side and younger many first time elected organized by the Freedom Caucus group on the other.  Many are from the Southern states and some from rustbelt midwest showing the deep divides that still shape the US. Democrat Steny Hoyer the House Minority leader who has worked in Congress for over 40 years called it on the House floor, and he said its a harsh word delaying and "dissemble." Democrats call for compromise to govern, the compromise was finally reached today March 22 to pass the $1.2 trillion spending bill with something for each side or somethings that both sides wanted, funding at border and child care. ...

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The balloons detected over US airspace at 40,000 feet that stirred up tension are now seen as intended for surveillance over Guam and Hawaii and blown off course by winds into Alaska and then Montana. This report in the NYT says US State department officials told Chinese diplomats on Feb. 1 about the balloon - 24 hours later China's Foreign ministry officials told US diplomats at the US embassy privately that the balloon a harmless civilian machine had gone off course. On Friday Feb. 3 China issued a public statement expressing regret. What happened after wards showed a series of poor decisions by Chinese officials and the balloon's civilian run balloon company under contract with the PLA says the NYT.  At that point the balloon's operators tried to accelerate it out of American airspace before it was shot down over South Carolina. On Saturday NYT says China told the US this acceleration was intended to get it out of American airspace.This story may not be widely read or covered so that most of the people in the US may already believe that China had intentionally flown surveillance equipment over Montana and the continental US. The US flies hundreds of reconnaissance flights near the coast of China says one defense expert.  This NYT correction of the original story on the spy balloons did not get any front page coverage in the WSJ, BBC, The Guardian, DW.com, FR24, and the NYT story itself got only 5 comments, showing how important it is for governments and information communicators to get each story right. A similar situation of a lack of communication with poor decisions may have delayed a unified response to the covid pandemic in its earliest stages. It shows how gaps in perception and information can gradually affect a relationship which the US had once nurtured into a critical part of its supply chain manufacturing following wartime cooperation against the Japanese invasion, the civil war in China, and later the Korean,  Vietnam Wars during the Cold War.    ...

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An important investigation by the Wall Street Journal looks at the 60 day sprint to find the origins of the Covid virus that killed about 6 million people worldwide, with excess deaths three times that. Did labs in the US and in China and scientists experiments cause this or did it happen naturally in the wilderness or in wild animal markets in China. Were other points of view excluded, asks the WSJ by NIC in it's 90 day sprint meeting with president Biden on August 24, 2021. WSJ Investigation says the FBI WMD scientist Banaan and scientists at the Defense Intelligence Council Hardham, Cutlip and Chretien were kept away from the president at a crucial final meeting of National Intelligence Council with Biden on the 90 day sprint to discover where this virus came from. Comparable is the  25 million people who died in the Black Death plague in Europe in 1348- Europe's population did not return to its pre-1348 level till the 16th century, says Britannica.  A scientist working at the FBI offices in Virginia Banaan was brought to main FBI offices for WMD to look into the origins of the virus in Feb. 2020. He and the FBI expected to be called in to see president Biden at a special meeting with Avril Haines, James Murphy of NIC. The FBI and Defense Intelligence Council scientists were not called in to see the president. Scientists on the DIC Council section on the Virus were not given a chance to share views or join the meeting by the Director DIC Scott Berrier who had his own theory on the virus, says WSJ. These scientists had done genomics research that showed a spike protein part of the virus that enable it to enter human cells was constructed in a lab, says WSJ. The WSJ investigation says the investigation sought by president Biden in a 90 day sprint was done with the National Intelligence Agency officials under Avril Haines, a State department official who joined the agency after the 90 day sprint, and James Murphy of the NIC who headed it's WMD section. WSJ report says the heads of Defense Intelligence Agency and NIC believed in what is called the zoonotics theory that the virus was of natural origins and simply transferred from animals to humans. A Lancet article in Feb 2020 by a group of scientists including Daczak of EcoHealth Alliance that supported coronavirus research at Wuhan had supported this theory in the interest of global cooperation to fight the virus but called any alternative explanations conspiracy theory, says WSJ, politicising something that should never be politicized.     ...

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China's new national energy law in a draft stage. The government will retain control over pricing and to adjust prices in its national distribution network of oil and gas pipelines and the power grids. It will set up an Energy department under the State Council, China's cabinet, to to bring all energy sectors administration and policy into one place. It will handle China's strategic reserves of oil, natural gas and uranium, and decide on timing for their release.

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Expectations of lower inflation in the U.S. for 2012. The Commerce Department showed inflation slowing with consumer prices up 2.5% over the prior year in November, down from 2.7% in October and 2.9% in September. The Labor Department's consumer price index went up by 0.8% annual rate in the last 3 months. Increase in labor costs are also mild. Hourly wages of private sector U.S. workers were up 1.8% in November 2011 over the prior year. Commodity demand in emerging markets is slowing with lower growth, which reduces pressure on commodity prices. The consumer price index is expected to rise by 1.2% in 2012, according to J.P. Morgan economists. The Federal Reserve in its recent statement after a Dec. 13 meeting stated it expects inflation at below 2%.

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WSJ reports that Tech companies spent heavily in 2022 to block legislation in the US. Congress. This means the US Justice Department had to step in with the Executive Branch determined to dismantle the edifice of anti competitive behavior that Google, Apple and other companies have built. States are also stepping in with the US Justice Department. Attorney General Merrick Garland seeks nothing less than to breakup Google as is clear from his statement on January 25 announcing the US Justice Department lawsuit. 

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Fiat plans to pay Chrysler $1.27 billon to increase its stake to 46%. This will happen after Chrysler refinances $7.1 billion in U.S. and Canadian debt to pay off government loans. A debt offering is expected in coming weeks. Fiat's Sergio Marchionne sees this as critical to the next step forward for Chrysler- the speedy approval of $3.5 billion or more in low interest loans from the U.S. Department of Energy for projects that increase fuel efficiency. Marchionne would like to leverage as much as he can from DOE as they will be essential to Chrysler's investments in improving the fuel efficiency of its vehicle lineup. Chrysler paid $1.2 billion in interest on its debt in 2010. Much or all of the $1.27 billion from Fiat will be used by Chrysler to reduce government debt. Chrysler will not use any unused funds from the government. Chrysler is also planning to add a revolving line of credit for $2 billion. By the end of 2011 Fiat will add another 5% stake to bring its stake up to 51%, and make it the majority owner. Fiat and Chrysler are operating as an integrated company. Marchionne says it makes little sense to have separate legal entities for Chrysler and Fiat, as the two companies are already developing, building and selling vehicles as one company. The Chrysler financials will be consolidated with Fiat's....

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A open conversation with the NYT's Baker, Schmidt and Haberman by president Trump in mid July 2017. This conversation of the president with the NYT is remarkable for its frankness about people close to the president during the election campaign, particularly Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Sessions was the only leading Senator in Congress who supported Mr. Trump from the beginning. Southern states came out heavily for Mr. Trump as part of the traditional Republican base. Trump says of Sessions that had he known Sessions was going to recuse himself from the Russia investigation he would not have appointed Sessions as the new Attorney General. About Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein Trump says he should never have appointed Mueller as Special Counsel. The president also says Mueller should stay only with information related to Russia and not stray from that to delve into Trump's finances. During the election efforts were made to get Mr. Trump to disclose more about his finances as a real estate businessman- most of these efforts failed and not much is known about president Trump's finances. The president says he never said he would order the Justice Department to fire Mr. Mueller, yet he left open this possiblility, according to the NYT, as the president feels it has affected the first 6 months of the Trump presidency. This interview with president Trump was published on July 20, 2017, the day after an editorial in the WSJ by the Editorial Board of the Journal on July 19, 2017, calling for transparency from president Trump on the Russia investigation. This was an exceptional and powerful editorial by its editorial board telling president Trump that he must tell everything he knows now or face the risk of losing public confidence, and risk his presidency. It said that president Trump was wrong to think that his larger than life personality and social media role could insulate him from the effects of this lack of transparency. ...

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A WSJ study showing the plans offered under the new U.S. Health Care Law in the state of Oregon. For young people ages 18-34 earning about $17,000 and uninsured the law offers a bargain with insurance premiums monthly at about $52 and deductibles as low as $100, because of higher subsidies. The situation changes at incomes of $29,000 when the deductibles are about $6300 and the premiums per month at about $147 a month, because subsidies are much smaller, or deductibles dropping to $2500 at $172 in monthly premium. The federal subsidies disappear for single people under age 30 earning much more than $26,000 because of the way the law places them to specific plans on each state's exchange. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there are 11.6 million people in the U.S. ages 18-34 who are uninsured. The federal government has to get as many of these people to get insurance so that the cost of medical care for the elderly can be supported.

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Tech is not going to fix this, say software experts from tech companies. Google and Apple's efforts in coming up with an app have fizzled out, says this report in thee WSJ. Has the U.S. lost precious time in waiting for an app by tech companies to be developed, instead of doing what India and Britain have done. India introduced its own app Aarogya Setu app from the Indian government. Britain had the National Health Service develop its app. India acted quickly. Is an app needed or essential? Germany decided that contact tracing based on Asian country experience was mainly about human contact tracers with skills to make the phone calls. All they needed was a centralized database on a computer and a phone. Germany set up teams at offices in each district in Germany and quickly plodded ahead even if all the offices were not fully staffed. In fact a third of the offices needed more people and resources. Yet the speed of action is something like 80 to 90% of the contact tracing effort when the team has the skill set to call. This is because clusters of infections do not wait - they spread. There is simply no time to waste. The German effort has produced the best results so far of any country of this size- Germany has 85 million people. The reproduction ratio is at 1.13 and Germany remains vigilant. It is the first country to reopen in Europe, and is methodically doing the right actions, much that the world can and should learn from. Contact tracing teams worked round the clock in the early days, they are still hard at work today, using their human skills to talk to people and find out who they were in contact with, calling the contacts in turn, at each step working to isolate where needed with followup calls from the state health departments. ...

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Robert Gates, U.S. Defense Secretary from 2006-11, says the West should provide a strong response to Russian president Putin's actions in Ukraine. He says settling old scores is not the way to peace in Asia or Europe. He describes Mr Putin's resentment of how Russia has been treated since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the desire to prevent the EU and NATO from coming too close to its borders, and especially Ukraine which is linked he says to the beginnings of the Russian Empire centuries ago. This could only lead to worsening tensions. Actions include bolstering defenses in Europe and reducing economic vulnerabilities of the Baltic states, restoring the defense budget to the levels of the 2014 budget proposed by the Obama administration in 2013, cutting overhead at the Defense department to add Navy ships, and urging the EU to grant associate status to Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine.

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Robert Gordon of Northwestern University shows the optimistic and pessimistic factors in the economy in terms of their contribution to GDP. He says botht he optimists and pessimists ae correct, with the question being the relative strength of the factors. He says the recovery will not be a V shaped recovery , and it will only be half as strong as the recovery of 1983-84, in the range of 3% to 4%, the annualized growth rate between 1982 4th quarter and 1984 4th quarter was 6.4%. Annualized growth according to the Commerce Department was 3.2% in 1st quarter 2010, following 5.6% growth annualized in 4th quarter 2009 In this picture international trade and exports have not played as strong apart as imports continued to rise. Overall personal consumption expenditures held up pretty well and showed +2.55, inventory change +1.57 as companies began to replace IT and other equipment, producers durable equipment and software, federal government +0.11. On the pessimist side residential structures were -0.29, nonresidential structures -0.44, net exports -0.61 showing that exports are not playing the part needed for the economy to recover, and state and local governments are -0.48. The progressively deteriorating situation expected as state and local governments cut back will weigh as aserious negative in this respect says Gordon. And this just as the inventory chnge numbers wind down to a smaller number. The total has to add upto the +3.24% growth for 1st quarter 2010 on an annualized basis as shown in the Bureau of Economic Analysis numbers. ...

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President Obama launches his election campaign in Columbus, Ohio, at the campus of Ohio State University. The campaign is overshadowed by information coming in from the Labor Department about high unemployment.

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In a 5 to 4 court runling the U.S. Supreme Court gives president Trump the authorization to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for building a border wall with Mexico. This was a campaign promise and energized his election campaign after years of failure to reach agreement between Democrats and Republicans on how to tackle the migration issue. In the court's decision it overturned an appellate court decision.  The Supreme Court stated in its order that the groups challenging the administration did not appear to have the legal right to do so. This indicates that the Court's conservative majority is likely to support the Trump administration in the end.  The surge in migration from Central American countries such as Guatemala through Mexico has revived the issue of migration. President Trump also secured an agreement with Guatemala to cut down on the migration.  President Trump has cited the need to control flow of illegal drugs across U.S. southern border in addition to the migrants from Mexico and Central America. In bringing the case to the Supreme Court the solicitor general, Noel Francisco wrote that the Plaintiff (Sierra Club) "interests in hiking, bird watching and fishing in designated drug smuggling corridors do not outweigh the harm to the public from halting the government's efforts to construct barriers to stanch the flow of illegal narcotics across the southern border."  The dispute between the Trump administration and the Democrats controlled House of Representatives led to court decisions stopping the use of government funds to build the wall. This led to the declaration of a national emergency along the Mexican border by president Trump on Feb. 15, 2019, after a government shutdown during an impasse with Congress on this issue.  Now the Supreme Court has given president Trump access to Defense Department funds to proceed with the wall and meet a campaign promise.   ...

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Administrative costs are one of the key reasons tution costs have increased to excessive proportions in the U.S., putting a heavy burden on the middle class, reducing social mobility that is an important aspect of postwar progress in Europe and the U.S. by putting college out of reach for millions of young people. This also creates a heavy debt burden for young people- U.S. student loan debt passed $1 trillion in 2012- who are less likely to buy a first home because of years needed to repay student loans. The market pressures to control costs do not exist in the same way as industries such as automobiles, because of the demand for college education in a modern globalized economy. Douglas Belkin and Scott Thurm have provided an indepth look at the University of Minnesota to show the spending surge and internal tendencies for faculty and bureaucracy to increase spending on hiring, building expansion to compete with other schools, and salaries to support their own within the college and university system, with a passive student community, and passive parent community, and lack of other outside pressures. Tution and fees for state residents doubled in the last decade at the University of Minnesota to $13,524. The figures tell the story- total debt with borrowing for building construction at U.S. 4 year public colleges tripled to $88 billion between 2002 and 2011, according to the Department of Education. Debt servicing costs doubled at the University of Minnesota to $106 million in that period. Minnesota's government provided $570 million for university operations in 2011, same as 2003-2004 school year even with inflation and 10% higher student enrollment. Yet analysis by the Department of Education and the Wall Street Journal shows in that period the spending increased disproportionately compared to inflation, student enrollment and teaching activity, with little restraint. WSJ analysis showed the University of Minnesota system added 1000 administrators between 2001-2011, with administration hires increasing 37%, double the increase in the students and double that of teachers. During that period the number of employees to manage people, programs and regulations went up 50% faster than the number of instructors, according to the Department of Education. Bureau of Labor Statistics cites this as the reason tution costs went up faster than health care costs. The 19,000 employee payroll at the University of Minnesota means one employee for three and half students. The new university president in 2011, Eric Kaler, interviewed by WSJ's Belkin and Thurm, says no one knew what it cost to run the school when he started....