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Do not judge US UK relationship only by trade of $148 billion yearly. US companies invested $1 trillion in the UK in 2023, and UK companies invested $630 billion in the US. Both countries share a common economic, law and constitutional framework, and British settlers opened up a vast continent in North America by settling along the Atlantic coast from Maine to the Carolinas. It is this system that was adopted in India, Canada, Australia and other parts of English speaking countries of the world.

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China chooses periodic blockades or air-sea coordinated exercizes around Taiwan's 12 mile waters as a strategy to respond to US Indo-Pacific strategy of keeping lanes of sea traffic and navigation on oceans open to all nations. This is seen as less risky than an outright invasion. Military exercises in August 2022 are seen as preparing for such a strategy.  The US is the destination for $541 billion and Europe $521 billion in products Made in China in 2021, which make China the manufacturing powerhouse in the world. Without the export of $1 trillion in Chinese products thousands of factories and millions of Chinese workers would remain idle. It is unbelievable that China is risking so much with its Taiwan policy with no idea of what the consequences would be years from now. It took China three decades after the gradual opening by 1990 and a willingness on the part of American and European governments and business to give up much of their own manufacturing leading to loss of jobs in communities across both America and Europe and much pain from this loss, for China to get to $1 trillion in exports. This situation may never come back as the supply chains shift and jobs return home and to countries that are becoming competitive in infrastructure and capabilities in Asia. Such competition between nations is not unknown as it was with Imperial Japan in the Pacific just 100 years back. The US maintains its position as keeping navigation on the oceans of the world open and rule of law, and it is on these foundations that China was able to get the strong manufacturing and exporting position it has now that no nation has enjoyed in history to this extent. Only the British come close in the nineteenth century. So much of China's progress in the twentieth century was a result of cooperation and support from America, from the first university Tsinghua in Beiijing, to the war against imperialist forces of Japan, to the rebuilding of China's manufacturing and technological competitiveness with American business cooperation. ...

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The German government's committee on the future of transport has proposals that call for fuel price hikes and electric vehicle quotas as Germany faces heavy European fines for not reducing transport emissions since 1990. This means the stretches of unlimited speed on the Autobahn roadways in Germany may now have speed limits. The proposals include limits of 80 mph on roadways and fuel tax rises from 2023, abolition of tax breaks for diesel cars, quotas for electric and hybrid cars that could get half of the emission cuts needed.

A series of diesel emissions cheating scandals have damaged confidence in diesel, and the lack of progress in climate change through less coal use has damaged confidence in Germany's climate change efforts. A new climate change law is planned.

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It is only 10 days from the Thursday July 4 election night and Keir Starmer went to work immediately Here is what he said today: "My new cabinet hit the ground running. We’ve lifted the ban on onshore wind. We’ve created a national wealth fund to invest in and grow our economy. We’ve met NHS bosses to get the 40,000 extra NHS appointments we need each week and 700,000 urgent dental appointments up and running as quickly as possible. The Department for Education is resuming and expanding its recruitment campaign to kickstart our promise to hire 6,500 new teachers. We’re taking emergency measures to pull the justice system back from the brink of collapse. And, on day one, we scrapped the Rwanda gimmick and began setting up a new Border Security Command to smash the people-smuggling gangs for good. Now is the time for politics as public service. A government committed not to its self-preservation but to uniting the country in the shared mission of national renewal. The start of the road back to restoring people’s hope and faith that politics can be a force for good. No more gimmicks, lies and self-serving self-obsession – this government knows we have a duty to the people we are elected to serve." ...

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Vance says he is skeptical and inherently mistrustful about the constructive influence of Silicon Valley on America, on the broader economy in all parts of America, and on education expanding opportunity for all. Vance says of his stint in Silicon Valley starting in 2013 when he moved to the Bay Area after graduating in law from Yale to 2022 when he ran for the US Senate from Ohio, that it taught him something about the influence of venture capital on America. He is skeptical about its constructive influence when seen from the American heartland, from the Kansas prairies of Eisenhower to his own rust belt state of Ohio and the hinterland of Appalachia across the eastern US from New York through Tennessee to Mississippi. Vance says: "I've certainly personally been very close to the technology sector. Because of that experience, I inherently mistrust it or worry about its influence in the broader economy." WSJ's Angel Au Yeung calls it short lived but it stretched for 10 years and Vance returned to Ohio for Narya Ventures, worked with AOL founder Steve Chase on Revolution to look at what could be done in places such as Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the south and midwest with these venture concepts. This is enough experience just to understand its effects on all parts of America. Realizing in the end that it failed to support education or expanding opportunity for all. Even Apple's much touted iPad succeeds as a potentially useful tech device but fails when one sees what little interest or effort Apple put into developing its educational potential to expand opportunity for all. The reasons are that that was never the intended goal to subordinate public interest to profit, when education is inherently public interest. And because tech tools alone cannot do the work of educating minds. Only human beings and knowledge, ideas in books can do this, as they have done in all of America's and Europe's past. ...

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The NYT, Wash Post, WSJ, and television shows such as CBS, fail to clearly give a summary of Harris and Trump policies, showing  dangers or opportunities. Key issues are Immigration and here Kamala Harris simply will sign into law in the first months of her presidency the Republican Lankford McConnell legislation that president Biden has negotiated and agreed to for closing the Border with Mexico and fixing asylum policy.  

Social Security Medicare- The Trump plan for ending tax on Social Security in effect defunds Social Security and Medicare. For what purpose? Ending the tax only gets people earning less than $60,000  90 dollars. That's correct $90, according to Tax Policy center. And on average $550. It will bring up the insolvency of Medicare up by 6 years to 2031, and lead to cut in Social Security Benefits of 25% in 2032, according to Center for a Responsible Budget.

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 Nikki Haley was born in Bamberg, South Carolina in 1972, her father became US citizen 1978, her mother 2003, according to her autobiography. She was governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017 and served as the US ambassador at the United Nations under president Trump. Article 2 of the US Constitution sets out that only natural born citizens can be president of the US. Commentators have opined that the natural born citizen requirement was put in to mean that the citizen was not naturalized at some later date. During the 1730's under British Common Law and under the Naturalization Act of 1790 of the First US Congress children of Ameircan citizens born overseas were considered to be American citizens. This was true of Barry Goldwater born in Arizona before it became a US state, and Romney born in Mexico, Senator McCain born in the Panama Canal Zone. This is why when one parent is an American citizen as for Obama and Cruz this law prevails. When a child is born in the US he is considered to be a citizen at birth under the laws of the US and natural born under Article 2 of the US Constitution. Supporting US literacy about civics  knowledge for children is the best way to get the best outcomes for the civic life of the United States as promoted by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor through iCivics site, and by Lyrarc under the Movement for Global Literacy. ...

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Indian Navy has expanded to 140 warships and technology modernization with domestically produced ships. About another half of that 140 will be added and produced inside India in the next few years. This effort to build the Indian Navy comes with the need to ensure freedom of the seas for open navigation. Much of the world's trade happens for raw materials and manufactured goods through the shipping lanes including the seas in the Indian Ocean and adjoining region. Indian Navy is showing the results of this effort as it protects the oceans in its region in 2024 in the interest of all nations. The US is supporting India's effort with flow of new technologies. The French are also supporting India's efforts and president Macron is in India this week. He will attend the Republic Day celebration as a special guest in New Delhi on Jan 26, after an unprecedented road show in an open SUV in Jaipur today with prime minister Modi.

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On major issues- her pledge to sign into law the Lankford Biden bipartisan Immigration and Border Bill after Trump blocked it in Congress for electoral advantage,  Cost of Living going up under Trump with his tariff plan, on abortion restrictions, the BBC says what Harris says is True.  Lyrarc has done its own fact check with effort for broad understanding of how her vision differs from Trump's- "As a prosecutor, when I had a case, I charged it not in the name of the victim. But in the name of. “The People.” For a simple reason. In our system of justice, a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us." Every day in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge and said five words: “Kamala Harris, for the People.” And to be clear: My entire career, I have only had one client. The People This is True. It is also most revealing about this candidate regardless of sex, creed, color or race. It tells so much about this person and the influence that Gandhi and the struggles of India for independence have influenced her views on life through the influence of her mother and her grandfather who had great influence on her life and work- mother Shyamala Gopalan and P.V. Gopalan Shyamala's father a senior Indian Civil Service head for India's Department of Labor 1954 who lived and worked with the ideas an ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. On Immigration she makes a pledge to sign the Lankford Biden immigration law the first in four decades that closes the Border with Mexico and fixes asylum policy. "But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign. So he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal. Well, I refuse to play politics with our security. Here is my pledge to you: As President, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed. And I will sign it into law." Trump blocked it for personal advantage at the elections to use this as an issue which has blocked a permanent solution. Confirming this is a month old interview in NYT by Republican Senator Lankford saying the legislation he drafted would have passed Congress in December 2023 and signed into law by Biden. It came up in Congress in February by this time Trump was made nominee of the party and he blocked it so that he could use the issue in an election. This says a lot about character and more than mere fact checks shifts focus on the characters of the two people running. Steve Kerr coach of the men's basketball Olympic team says decency humility, values and character, a clear authenticity are essential in a leader. People ask yourselves what you would have done in this situation, and what would Kamala have done, would she have blocked a bill that would permanently fix the Border and change US asylum policy?  Biden went on to do this by executive action bringing migrant flow numbers down to where they were under Trump and Obama, and more than that put together a bipartisan bill with Republican Senator Lankford that Kamala can now sign into law.    ...

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Kamala Harris says she will tackle immigration head-on at the Arizona rally August 10, 2024. She said she would Pass the Lankford- Biden Immigration Bill and sign it into law. It is the bill that passed the Senate and was given no chance in the House because of it being opposed by Trump for use as an election issue.

Harris said-

“I was attorney general of a border state. I went after the transnational gangs, the drug cartels and the human traffickers. I prosecuted them in case after case and I won, so I know what I’m talking about.”

“He talks a big game about border security but he does not walk the walk."

“We know our immigration system is broken and we know what it takes to fix it: comprehensive reform. That includes strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship,” 

 

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Tsutsui Yoshinobu, head of Keidanren, Japan's business federation, says China limiting exports of vital raw materials is "an obvious act of economic coercion." For the first time in 2025 Keidanren cancelled its annual dialogue meeting with China's representatives.  This was a followup to comments by Japanese PM Sanae that it would consider an attack on Taiwan as a danger to Japan's security. Sanae now enjoys 62% popularity rating. After 2 years of the LDp government with aminority in parliament she has announced a snap election to gain an abasolute majority in parliament. In the last elections small nationalist parties gained a large share of votes. Changes are happening in Japanese politics as a younger generation becomes more nationalistic. Sanae was made PM only recently at the end of 2025 after the PM in the LDP party faced criticism and resigned. Before he resigned he quickly signed a trade agreement with the US DJT administration to maintain Japanese exports to US at a 15% tariff. ...

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Biden's hard work and going into details and seeing that projects are delivered on time and in quality for the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law will make him an enduring president in the 21st century. Tyler Pager gives this report on the Biden style of making decisions and of getting things done on time that are making a big difference for the ease of living for all Americans.  Of Biden using his 36 years of negotiating in the Senate more than any Congressman including LBJ who only had 12 years, and the hard work from someone who commuted by Amtrak for all those years and attended to every detail. For the president who started out as county councilman in Delaware details matter, he looks into the details of rebuilding infrastructure by delivering projects on time and on scale. In late 2022 Tyler says Biden checked into the details of delays and wanted specifics which projects were not delivered on time for the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law passed a year earlier. Seeing this only one leader comes to mind prime minister Modi of India who is faced with a huge task of infrastructure projects and investments that are intended to make India the third largest economy in the world. Modi like Biden uses his experience of getting into details and checking that work is delivered on time, putting in the hard work in earnest, from Modi's work with state projects in Gujarat when he led the state for 15 years as chief minister. ...

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This report on Danish wind energy company Orsted, looks at the journey of the largest developer of wind energy in the world from a company sending natural gas from North Sea to Europe to a joint developer with Denmark's Vestas of offshore wind farms. Last year Orsted, pronounced Ehrr-sted in Danish for the O and named after a Danish scientist, decided to invest $57 billion in offshore wind farms by 2027. It was not easy and the path required a bold vision and bold action to invest in wind energy for the long term even as debt piled up from losses in natural gas competing with coal, climate change committments were not yet strong, subsidies were required to make wind energy competitive, and debt was piling up. It would take a decade of hard work and technological innovation to produce wind energy that could outcompete coal and natural gas on cost without subsidies. The year is 2009 with the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The predecessor company to Orsted was losing money in natural gas with lower cost coal energy generation in Europe at the time. Yet the mood was changing governments were willing to invest in renewables. In 2012 a new CEO Paulsen did a review of 12 businesses of this Danish energy company and decided wind energy was the only one with long term prospects. The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference created new awareness for the need to come up with a long term solution for energy that has no negative health effects and is renewable. That Conference set a goal of 20% for renewable energy by 2020 in the total mix for Europe up from 14%. Paulsen saw an opportunity in the crisis at the company then called Danish Oil and Natural Gas. The new company was called Orsted and the old divisions in fossil energy were sold to invest in wind farms offshore. The way Paulsen saw the situation was that the company had to take radical action whether it wanted to do so or not. By 2012 Danish pension funds were investing in large offshore wind farms of Orsted, taking a stake of as much as 50% in the Nysted wind farm. The Danish government which owned 80% of Orsted thought its projects were risky. Hard work with Vestas which builds the turbines in Denmark paid off in developing a huge new turbine that would bring costs down 65% comparing 2020 with 2012.  In 2018 the European Union was spending about 92 billion euros or $112 billion on energy subsidies including to wind farms. Britain also heavily subsidized offshore wind farms such as Hornsea 1 at about $198 a megawatt hour for 15 years double the electricity price in recent years. Windy conditions and shallow waters in the North Sea were favorable. Technology was being developed with Vestas which would reduce the cost each year. By 2016 Orsted was listed in Copenhagen. The remaining oil and gas business was then sold for $1 billion. The returns are less in wind than coal and natural gas- about 7-8% a year but the big thing is that there is certainty in this compared to coal and natural gas which are volatile and uncertain. The lesson companies are learning in renewables is that with solar and wind technology can. bring down costs, a lot of hard work and creative work lies ahead, that crisis can be turned into opportunity for companies that can be focussed enough to produce results. ...

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Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves dropped to $2.9 billion in February 2023, says this report in the WSJ, enough to cover 2 weeks of imports and a fraction of debt servicing requirements. Under an IMF agreement that is being negotiated $1.1 billion will be given by the IMF, which would lead to further lending by other countries and banks based on IMF oversight. This includes putting $630 million in  additional taxes and increasing the price of electricity. Successive governments have decided to avoid the IMF conditions of increasing taxes and price of electricity. Donor countries such as Saudis and Qatar, UAE, would step in once IMF oversight is in place and invest in airports, power plants, oil and gas companies, and make loans to Pakistan once the IMF oversight is in place, says WSJ.   Sri Lanka faced a similar situation after it delayed an IMF program and loan, leading to financial crisis. The situation is now stabilized with the IMF on the verge of making a $2.9 billion loan and other banks making loans on the basis of IMF oversight. In Sri Lanka's case India is a serious donor, investor and supporter of Sri Lankan recovery. ...

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The entire area from the east coast of Africa to the west coast of the US in Pacific is now being covered as the Indo-Pacific region with the US, India, Australia and other nations committed to keeping the international rule of law and freedom of navigation.German Air Force takes part in a joint military exercize of 17 countries for Indo-Pacific in Darwin, Australia. The focus was on rapid deployment. The German Bundeswehr transfer of fighter jets and supply planes in mid-August Rapid Pacific 2022 was done within 24 hours for 6 Eurojets fighter jets, four transport aircraft, and 3 air to air fueling tankers, with 100 tons of material. The exercize from Aug 19 to September 8 was for 2500 personnel and 100 aircraft from all over the world called Pitch Black in Australia's Northern Territory. Next year Gemany plans to have its army participate in Australian exercize. An entire fleet unit is being set for German navy to return to the Pacific waters.  ...

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Can Christian evangelical therapists exercise free speech rights to counsel religious teens dealing with their sexual orientation and identity true to the Biblical teachings. The US Supreme Court Justices support Christian therapists in this situation.  The issue of prayer in America's schools which was a tradition that lasted for the first 300 years of the settlement of the Nation since 1600, only to gradually disappear after 1962-1963 when Justices of the US Supreme Court simply took upon themselves the power to alter the fundamental character of the Nation with 2 decisions. This has not yet come before the Court to restore the basic driving energy for over three centuries of settlement of this continent of North America. Already the Court has found it is against the law to prevent athletic coaches from praying on a school field. It found in 2024 that Washington State infringed on freedom of expression when it allowed a coach to be disciplined for making such a prayer. There is a sense in America that prayer is part of the fundamental fabric of the Nation. In the deepest hour of crisis in the 20th century Chuchill and FDR met on a battleship near Newfoundland, August 10, 1941, when a prayer service was conducted to restore freedom and democracy to the world at war, it sustained America and Britain and Europe through these years, why should it not be in everyday life today is a question the Supreme Court has to ask itself when confronted with the new challenges of the 21st Century. As Justice Potter Stewart says to use metaphors such as "the wall of separation" that is nowhere in our Constitution, and to reject prayer in schools is to reject the deeply entrenched and widely cherished spiritual traditions of our Nation." Traditions that have come down from the time of George Washington whose miraculous survival that winter of 1754 through the hand of a Divine Providence ensured the survival of the Nation. ...

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Janet Protasiewicz, a Democrat, wins 55% to 45% for Republican Daniel Kelly in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. This gives Democrats a one vote majority in the Supreme Court. It will mean a challenge of a 1849 abortion law and the redrawing of the electoral maps that gives Republicans  a majority in the state assembly. The governor is Democrat Tony Evers and the legislature in Wisconsin has a Republican majority.  States in the midwest such as Michigan and Wisconsin played a part in Mr. Trump's gain of the presidency. Since then Ohio has moved into the Republican side, and the close contests are in places like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Colorado moved to the Democratic side. Just 40,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin separated Biden from Trump in the election of 2020 even though Biden had 7 million more votes than Biden because of the Electoral College system which goes by state's won. In 2016 Trump and Biden were separated by just 80,000 votes.   ...

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One of the leaders who has emerged with solid skills and with patience, firm resolve is Olaf Scolz, former mayor of Hamburg, finance minister and deputy chancellor. He is leader of the SPD and has a shot at chancellor in coming years. His hard work has led to increasing popularity during the pandemic and he is in charge of disbursing the euro recovery funds for recovery of Germany and the rest of Europe.  Being labor minister under chancellor Schroeder in 2003 did not help as he tried to sell Schroeder's labor reforms with harsh cuts for welfare recipients and he ended up looking like a bureaucrat and someone doing somebody else's work.  But hard work persistence in doing the work that mattered has helped him regain respect in Germany. Leading the youth wing of the SPD, then in 1998 joining the Bundestag, running a business law practice in Hamburg, on to the mayor's office, now Scolz is a transformed figure as he appears more emotional, more accessible, friendlier. ...

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When even the NYT, or the host of CBS television Face the Nation does it poorly, how are independent voters, and voters leaning Democrat or Republican, or leaning not vote, to have a clear idea of policies?  This review of Trump statements about Harris statements on red meat, ICE, law enforcement, fails to get down to the policies she has stated at Wake Tech in North Carolina and in other places before this. It also does not address the Trump plan to end tax on Social Security which would lead to about $550 going to seniors but lead to a cut of 25% in Social Security in 2032, defunding Social Security and Medicare. Immigration- the first thing Harris would do as president is to sign the legislation written by Republicans Lankford, McConnell with the backing of the party and agreed to by president Biden that will in effect close the Border with Mexico and fix the asylum policy, not done in three decades. Cost of Living- Harris policy on price gouging is for taking the action that companies follow and play by the rule on pricing, so that they do not take unfair advantage of the public. It is not about passing a law or fixing prices. This has been done in Texas and in Kentucky, other states. Restrict rent to 5% increases and increase the supply of new houses by building 3 million new homes, $100 billion to be allocated for fixing housing supply shortages.   ...

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Tution fees in the UK are 9450 pounds. The cost of housing about 7500 pounds in 2024, up 15% over the last 2 years. In addition to the over charges on student loans for Plan 2 Loans in Britain that take it from 4.3% with a surcharge of 3%, there is the 15% inflation in housing costs in Britain that households and student have to contend with. This situation is true today for Britain, the US and Germany, and other countries in the EU leaving less for food and transportation costs. This is why there is an added level of worry and anxiety for young people in Britain the EU and in the US, and for their parents.

Others one with a business economics degree and a solicitor apprentice in a law firm face the same situation. He works in finance and just sees it as he says a tax on having gone to university.  Similar stories across the US. It doesn't have to be this way for advanced nations education is FIRST PRIORITY.

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Boris Johnson looks back to September of 2020 when he was at the Edward Jenner Institute in Oxford and scientists showed him the first slides of antibodies from the developing Oxford vaccine, and his realization that this was a cause for optimism, for Britain and the world.  Today its manufacture in India, Britain and other parts of the world show the meaning of Global Britain, says Johnson. By engaging with the world, both the world benefits and Britain gains. A larger view is that of protecting the values that originated in Britain and are part of the order in other parts of the world, including the rule of law, representative democracy, habeas corpus, freedom of speech. The new review of Britain in the world today is about how Global Britain engages with the world, with like minded nations, with democracies in Asia and Europe, America, to build a better future for all, and to advance those ideas and beliefs against those who oppose them, says Johnson. ...

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What has happened that makes it so hard for Democrats Biden who stood on a picket line for the UAW autoworkers union, Harris fighting for workers, that they cannot easily convince workers that they are on their side? It is because compared to 1980 not the lowest income groups but the "downwardly mobile" white and other groups without college degrees have taken the brunt of the loss of manufacturing jobs. It is why the "zero-sum" stories of the former president have appeal to some workers who have lost the most from deindustrialization of the US. Even though Biden, and Harris, have fought hard and are putting in place the policies for the fight to reindustrialize America by taking old plants and modernizing them one by one across the country. No one has ever done this before including years in which the former president was in office. In these visual graphs it is easy to see the sharp decline in incomes and status in society of workers without college degrees as the economy changed after 1980 sending steel, auto and other industries to Asia. By 2024 these workers lives had been upended by the loss of these industries and the hope for income and place in society that existed in 1980. Every US president from Reagan through Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump had failed to address this. Biden was the first president to take this up but too much has happened with to reverse this in 4 years, the pandemic, inflation from loss of supply chains to Asia, and wages not keeping up with cost of living.  NYT's Badger, Gebeloff and Bhatia show analysis of the economy, incomes and jobs in 1980 vs the economy, incomes and jobs in 2024 for persons with a college degree and without a college degree.It shows the sharp differences in the eastern Midwestern states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania over 4 decades of job losses, loss of income status and self worth for men without college degrees. With their jobs in manufacturing disappearing also disappearing was the middle class lifestyle- of owning a house, having a cottage or boat in the countryside, and sending kids to college. ...

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"Favorable" District courts are now being used to support illegal migration into the US that was rejected in the 2024 election. A District Court in DC makes a ruling on ending asylum "invasion" of US southern border, by questioning that millions of illegal migrants entering in one year alone is an "invasion." Even though it is publicly known that over 2.4 million people crossed the US southern border in fiscal year 2023. These District Court rulings are being given high priority by the US Supreme Court.  In the most recent ruling from last week the SC stated in a 6-3 decision written by Justice Coney Barrett on birthright citizenship that the law on the lawsuits can apply to the individual case not  be converted into a national injunction.  The situation of asylum seeking deteriorated in three ways, the Mexican government of president Lopez Obrador, Alejandro Mayorkas as Biden's selection for Homeland Security, himself an immigrant from Cuba, and the Biden administration not grasping the true extent of the crisis at the southern border with the unsettled situation in central America and the economic disaster in Venezuela. For the first time in the 400 year history of this hemisphere since the Spanish colonization by 1600 and American independence by 1800 the ideas of the Monroe Doctrine of the US protecting this hemisphere were ignored leading to the disastrous situation at the US borders, leading to fentanyl and illegal migration of such proportions. As a result of the election of 2024 and the public view of illegal migration the DJT administration is taking the approach taken by president Eisenhower in 1952 in Operation Wetback, seeking to return illegal migrants to their home countries.   ...

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The long awaited renewal of America's National parks may finally be arriving with massive funding of the National Park Service by president Trump in 2020. Billions of dollars of undone maintenance from washrooms, to restaurants, to camping facilities for people, and maintenance work in the parks is finally being tackled in 2020. A new law called the Great American Outdoors Act will put $9.5 billion towards this which now has a bill the size of $12 billion for undone maintenance since 1990's.  Everything from water pumps, to camping facilities, remodeled buildings, employee facilities and housing, adding staff, will now be tackled. At the Rose Garden signing Mr. Trump said of teh National Parks what Teddy Roosevelt has always said- "This is truly God's creation. President Theodore Roosevelt was right when he called these exquisite resources." Mr Daines  Senator from Montana who with another Republican Mr. Cory Gardener of Colorado got enough Republicans to support the bill to get it passed 73 to 25 in the Senate. This is a great achievement for the American people particularly at a time like this with the pandemic taking over 150,000 American lives and so many recovering from the coronavirus. There ia new appreciation of the outdoors, of trees, gardens and of parks. The national parks show the beauty of America and every child sees America differently once he has experienced a stay in one of the many parks from Yosemite in California to Acadia National Park in Maine. It is a gift to the generations made possible today by spending money first in America, and regaining the national spirit. ...

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Gretchen Morgenson cites two views on the newly approved Volcker Rule in December 2013. Prof. Richard Sylla of New York University sees the rule as going part way in the direction of the Glass-Steagall Act, which gave the financial markets five or six decades of financial stability. Just the fact that the rule is on the books should give the bank officers pause before engaging in questionable financial activities, is his view. Prof. David Skeel of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, believes only aggressive enforcement can make the law work because of the way it is written. He says regulators have fallen short in enforcement in the past and have not been held accountable. Only by making regulators accountable, including penalties for regulators failing to do their job, would this work says Skeel. By not imposing penalties for regulatory failures in the last crisis there is more likelihood for this sort of behaviour to continue. Instead the same regulators are now given greater powers after an earlier failure. Considering the Skeel view, the importance of the attestation- that is now required from bank senior executives that the Volcker Rule's provisions are being followed- take on an important role in ensuring enforcement. This also coincides with Mr. Volcker's view that the bank officers should have to take on the responsibility for making sure that they are doing it the right way....