Tea Leaves and Europe

U.S. economic growth – heavily concentrated among the wealthiest segments of society – is pretty solid. While the jobs people have might not be stellar or provide earnings comparable to pre-recession times, more people who are active in the American employment marketplace have jobs. But while World Bank estimates have raised U.S. GDP growth numbers from 3% to 3.2%, the prognosis for the rest of the world seems to be going in the other direction, a factor that sooner or later will impact us.

“The 19-nation euro area is projected by the World Bank to grow 1.1 percent in 2015, down from a June estimate of 1.8 percent. China will expand 7.1 percent, down from the 7.2 percent pace the bank projected in October and a 7.5 percent estimate in June. Japan will expand at a 1.2 percent clip, down from the 1.3 percent projected in June, according to the bank.” Bloomberg.com, January 13^th. As oil prices resumed their drop, and U.S. markets reflected a perception of instability, the inherent weakness in Europe was dramatically brought home by a financial move in Switzerland on January 15^th.

Since 2011, in order to keep the Swiss franc from skyrocketing in value, destabilizing the financial markets, and yielding to pressure from local exporters, the Swiss National Bank had locked the ratio of the Swiss franc to the euro at a maximum 1.2. But as the euro seemed to be free fall, this situation was no longer tolerable to the Swiss. So they unilaterally unlocked that ratio, and the financial world went into shudders. The Swiss franc shot up instantly, by as much as 23% (18% vs the dollar), before settling down by four percentage points. Currency trading firms, heavily reliant on the 1.2 ratio, saw their values plunge all over the world.

For example, “Shares of FXCM, an online currency trading service, plunged nearly 90 percent in pre-market trading on [January 16^th] after the company said that it might have breached regulatory capital requirements. The company said on [January 15^th] night that its clients had suffered losses of $225 million in the wake of the shock move by the Swiss. Trading in the shares were halted when the stock market opened… In the wake of the Swiss National Bank’s abrupt reversal, the British firm Alpari UK, a foreign currency broker, said on [Janaury 16^th] that it had entered insolvency as a majority of its clients sustained losses in excess of their account equity.” DealBook.NYTimes.com, January 16^th. Currency traders/brokers all over the world, great and small, took severe hits to their values, albeit most did not suffer the catastrophic losses that slammed FXCM and Alpari.

Not only are the economic fundamentals throughout Europe shaky, from the growing resistance in Greece to austerity measures (see below) to the seeming inability of larger nations like France to meet financial targets, but the Islamist attacks in Paris and the almost-attack in Belgium added to the global consternation reflected by Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Taliban in Pakistan and ISIS in the Levant as well as the conflict in Ukraine further erode confidence in Europe. Despite the precipitous fall in the cost of oil and gas, Europe’s rather complete reliance on fossil fuel imports from volatile regions only amplified the instability.

The impact on the overall Swiss marketplace reflected the surge in the franc in other ways. “Stocks in Switzerland were down more than 4 percent and investors fled to perceived havens like German government debt. Swiss government bonds, also a haven in times of turmoil, rose sharply in price, taking the interest rate of the 10-year bond, which moves in the opposite direction, below zero for the first time. In effect, investors are paying for the privilege of holding Swiss assets.” DealBook. Even at a negative interest rate, where investors effectively are paying to own Swiss francs, there were plenty of takers.

Greece just elected a government that has made it clear that that country cannot meet its EU bailout obligations and will not continue to live under what it believes to be a crushing austerity program imposed by its creditors. “The failure to reach a deal brings both sides closer to the precipice: Greece’s current agreement expires at the end of [February], and putting together a new one will be much more complicated than tweaking the existing one, officials said. However, even without a deal, the horse-trading could theoretically stretch out for weeks or even (if the European Central Bank is willing) until June, when Greece faces the hard deadline of a big debt repayment that it can’t possibly meet without money from somewhere else.

“[The February 16^th EU meeting with Greek representatives] was short by Brussels’ standards and (seemingly) bad-tempered by anyone’s: Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem and European Commissioner Pierre Moscovici were both visibly exasperated in a joint press conference at the lack of progress in finding the elusive ‘common ground’ that would allow a classic, Euro-style compromise.” Fortune.com, February 16^th. Can the EU even survive a Greeck defection from the EU?

These are the tea leaves in a whole pile of macro trends. Generally, Western nations with limited natural resources and heavy commitments to social programs are faring worse than expected, and the “recovery” they need has been most elusive. Switzerland, clinging to its banking secrecy laws and political neutrality, has managed to hedge its bets by moving its rather flexible capital anywhere in the world where there is money to be made… with little consideration for regional or local issues. In effect, Switzerland is a free-floating economic nation that purposely does not align itself with any region or political system, avoiding global conflicts and controversy wherever it can. They listen to speeches from NATO leaders and Russians alike and shiver at what they perceive to be percipient war-mongering.

Not so with the rest of the Western world, with heavy military and security challenges and larger heterogeneous populations to deal with. What seems like a complex and difficult-to-comprehend financial twist – like the revaluation of the Swiss franc noted above – is nothing more than a tea leaf reading of the rise of Asia and the decline of the West. It reflects the pendulum of history, a cycle that has repeated itself for millennia. With one huge caveat, at least when it comes to planet earth: the ability of people to migrate to a “new world” is not available anymore, and even the existing fields have to deal with the expected changes from global climate change. The European Union is stuck in its own mud.

I’m Peter Dekom, and understanding mega-trends does being with amalgamating all the tea leaf readings into comprehensible patterns reflecting expected change.

Dried & Prejudiced

Despite the fact that the famed Oglala Aquifer is virtually bone dry in its southern reaches, cracked and parched farmland in southern Kansas and northern Texas is still selling well in anticipation of the end of the current drought cycle. It’s also known as the High Plains Aquifer, a once massive body of water – the size of one of the Great Lakes – that stretches from the Dakotas to north Texas. Sellers cannot coax crops from this arid earth, and federally subsidized “farm insurance” forces farmers to plant seeds they know will never germinate in the water-starved dirt in order to get big fat checks from the government for crops that will never grow in this increasingly desertified area. Rain is insufficient, streams have run dry, temperatures are rising and the aquifer is tapped out.

I mean, it is cyclical, right? Everything is, I guess, but for those who deny that man caused the bulk of the global warming – I have hammered those statistics so often, they are not worth repeating – there is hope that “normal” weather patterns will repeat themselves. Hey, they exclaim, we even survived the Depression era Dust Bowl and returned to productive farming.

If you remotely believe in analyzing the numbers and trend lines, creating unbelievably complex computer simulations and relying on major universities with the best minds in earth sciences in the world, if you are finally able to look at the hard numbers of what has actually already happened as predicted by these experts rather consistently, buying farmland in south Kansas or north Texas is probably a very bad use of your money. In fact, farming in the entire Midwest grain belt and all of the Southwest for the foreseeable future is downright scary. A bit scary in the immediate future, quite frightening soon thereafter, and by 2050, absolutely terrifying.

“The U.S. is facing the worst drought in 1,000 years, ‘driven primarily’ by man-made climate change… By the end of this century, researchers are predicting years-long dry spells exacerbated by higher temperatures, creating conditions worse than so-called megadroughts that have been linked to the decline of American Indian cultures in the U.S. Southwest, according to an article published [February 12^th] in the journal Science Advances.

“The conclusion is further evidence that human activity is having profound, harmful and long-lasting impacts on the planet, and will continue to threaten the environment even if carbon emissions are significantly curtailed… ‘The bad news is, these past megadroughts -- and we don’t use ‘mega-’ lightly -- when we compare the characteristics of those to the projections from future models, the future’s worse,’ said Jason Smerdon, a climate scientist at Columbia University in New York and one of the authors of the report.’ Bloomberg.com, February 12^th.

“NASA is now predicting [that the] ‘megadrought’ as early as 2050 that might last 30 or more years and transform a broad swath of the United States into an arid Dust Bowl. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase along current trajectories, say NASA researchers, there is a staggering 80 percent likelihood of the Southwest and Central Plains experiencing a decades-long megadrought worse than any that has occurred in the past 1,000 years.” Washington Post, February 19^th.

The earth once maintained massive forests where today deserts are all that is left. All that lovely oil under Middle Eastern desert is the accumulation of ancient carbon-based life, compressed for millennia. The shift in land values in these farming mainstays has clearly begun, and our ability to churn out massive levels of food crops will plummet accordingly, just as demand for food in a Malthusian-demographic explosion places increasing demand on the entire global food chain. It won’t be short drought, I venture to predict with confidence.

Native American populations throughout the Americas have moved, faded in and out, with changes in water patterns, but nothing in recent history can compare to the expected megadrought we seem to have generated for ourselves. “California’s drought is entering its fourth year, with snowpack levels about one-quarter of historical averages. San Francisco went without rain in January for the first time in 165 years. The drought is affecting more than 64 million people in the Southwest and Southern Plains, according to NASA data cited in the study.

“Droughts toward the end of this century are unlikely to force mass migrations, but food shortages and escalating energy prices are legitimate concerns, said Amir AghaKouchak, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of California at Irvine. Rising temperatures already are a significant risk to humans without adding in reduced rainfall, he said.

“‘Even if droughts don’t increase, because of this increase in temperature you have more and more concurrent extremes,’ he said in an interview. ‘If you have two extremes happening at the same time, you’ll have this compound impact. It makes a big, big difference.’” Bloomberg.com.

In a bitter twist of irony, the deeply-religious, Tea Party climate-change deniers have powerful roots in most of the Midwest grain best and much of the Southwest. They simply cannot believe that a Christian God who promised no more global-scale environmental disasters after the Great Flood and instructed man to use earth’s bounty without concern would leave them high and dry.

They have championed taking the reins off of environmental regulations – most of which are woefully inadequate anyway – to foster unregulated growth to solve our economic malaise. They have supported the fracking movement which has pushed the United States back up the petroleum production ladder, and they have clamored for government to cut social support to those in need. And in the end, they will have seriously contributed to the demise of their own livelihoods, for them and the generations to follow, and to becoming those in dire need of those social programs designed to help those in need.

Since we are obviously going to have that drought, what can we actually do to grab and save water? More research and on drought-resistant crops, but that might mean accepting GMO as a way of life. We need to be building a whole lot more coastal desalinization plants, stop the massive leaks of old (pre-1930s) urban pipes, use technology to monitor water at every stage from source to waste and use that data (via the “Internet of things”) to increase efficiencies, perhaps use drones to observe agricultural water use, redesign irrigation systems to put water precisely and only where it is needed, have consumers know exactly what their water usage patterns are and encourage them to implement savings, seed water entrepreneurs to create new solutions and… consider messing further with mother nature by redirecting the weather itself.

“Ever since Beijing used cloud seeding techniques to prevent rainfall over the city during the 2008 Summer Olympics, people have been fascinated by the idea of “weather modification.” China, in fact, was the first nation to create a Weather Modification Bureau.  Currently,24 countries practice some form of weather modification, including the United States, which has looked into ways to minimize the impact of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Based on that initial work, Bill Gates and Richard Branson have championed new geoengineering techniques that go well beyond changes to the local weather and start to impact the earth’s climate. Researchers from Harvard and Stanford have already proposedgeoengineering concepts for the earth’s atmosphere. Some of the ideas for dealing with droughts, admittedly, sound like something out of a science fiction movie – flooding Death Valley with seawater via a canal from the Pacific Ocean or wrapping Greenland with blanketsto capture freshwater ice. Yet, there are some examples, such as China’s massive ‘grand canals,’  that hint at how massive changes to the Earth may be the ultimate Hail Mary pass to bring water to parched regions.” The Post.

So think our Congress is going to admit there is a problem and deal with it? Yeah… and I’m the Easter Bunny. Exactly how bad do things have to get in order to move our elected representatives to deal with this slow but definite death spiral? Does it matter that virtually every prediction on the climate change time-line to date was wrong? That the bad stuff happened much sooner and much faster than predicted?

I’m Peter Dekom, and it does seem as if we are living in a country where the only lessons we ever really understand are those learned the hard way… often the hardest way possible.

Just Fine

To most men, these words are, well, “just fine.” “Good.” “Okay.” Nothing needs to be changed.” To a woman, often, these words are “verbal death” if they are “in response to any inquiry of a male as to any aspect of “looks” or fashion. It’s kind of like answering “not really” to the question of “does this [insert item of apparel] make me look fat?” Humor, perhaps, but society often defines men in terms of their income-generating capacity and women in terms of their looks. Even as so many more women out-earn their male counterparts and too many wealthy men need to look at themselves in the mirror (emotionally as well as physically). Stereotypes that are taken seriously. Ageism. Weightism. Wealthism.

But the biggest social pressures seem to remain on women. We’ve seen recent mini-trends where older women have recently been featured in fashion and cosmetics ads. Writes 74-year-old model, Sandra Howard: “Nowadays, we’re all glad to be grey. Or so we’re told… Apparently it’s never been so fashionable to be wrinkly… Look at the L’Oreal advertisements starring Dame Helen Mirren, 69. Who wouldn’t want to look like her — whatever their age? Or for that matter, like Charlotte Rampling, 68, who smouldered in last year’s campaign for Nars cosmetics? These women are allowed to look beautiful rather than bizarre. And as they know so well, real style is ageless…

“Look at the novelist Joan Didion in the new ultra-cool photo shoot for high-end French fashion brand Celine, wearing a tight black pullover, giant sunglasses and what looks like a brass cowbell around her neck. She’s 80… Or the latest campaign from Dolce & Gabbana. No skinny scantily-clad 20-somethings here, but instead three old women in widow’s black — very chic, naturally — clasping D&G’s latest must-have handbags. I’m guessing they’re all well past their 70th birthday.” Dailymail.co.uk, February 16^th.

Even heavier models are making their way into the hot advertising world. Size 16, bikini-clad Ashley Graham, 26, snagged a place in this year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, for example. The notion of what is “beautiful” seems to be expanding for our Western sensibilities… or so it seems. But there are just too many women whose self-esteem is still pegged to young and skinny. I remember hugging Audrey Hepburn, then 66, shortly before she passed away. There was nothing about that woman that wasn’t super-perfect. She blew away woman less than half her age. Helen Mirren still turns heads and probably always will.

But there is a huge industry that thrives on women (and many men) with harsh self-body images. They don’t want people to feel comfortable unless they are perfect. From cosmetic surgeons, skin-care rejuvenators and diet programs: “The mainstream media often sets the standard for what's seen as beautiful and valuable. (This also includes a $60 billion-a-year diet industry that thrives on making folks feel bad about their bodies.) Sexism also plays a role in making women feel insecure, [one dieter] notes: ‘Women are socialized to constantly monitor their own bodies and to make sure that they don't take up too much space.’ Let's not forget about influences from our social circle. Love them or not, they're part of the problem too because, in [one dieter’s] words, ‘our friends and our parents diet, and body image issues seep into our brain.’” UpWorthy.com, February 16^th. Not that most of these diets create longer-sustainability anyway… when they work at all.

The problem, however, is that too many people – men and women – simply write off those who are heavier or older from the realm of “wow-attractive.” Are the above mini-trends making much of a difference, or are people still clinging to the traditional young and skinny definition of beauty, epithets that apply to the millions of most models in fashion photos and ads?

“In fact, 1 in 3 female students who were polled in a big 'ole survey in the U.K. admitted to being OK with cutting months or years off of their lives to have ‘the perfect body.’… [T]hey were willing to DIE.” UpWorthy.com. Let’s face it, U.S. attitudes pretty much mirror those statistics. Sadly, this trend even reaches pre-teen girls: “In a survey of girls 9 and 10 years old, 40% have tried to lose weight, according to an ongoing study funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.” Depts.Washington.edu (Teen Health and the Media).

Responding to demands of organizations dealing with eating disorders, Israel has even passed a law that bans overly-skinny models. The statute “requires models to produce a medical report no older than three months at every shoot for the Israeli market, stating that they are not malnourished by World Health Organization standards… The U.N. agency relies on the body mass index, calculated by factors of weight and height. WHO says a body mass index below 18.5 indicates malnutrition. According to that standard, a woman 1.72 meters tall (5-feet-8) should weigh no less than 119 pounds (54 kilograms).

“Also, any advertisement published for the Israeli market must have a clearly written notice disclosing if its models were made to look thinner by digital manipulation. The law does not apply to foreign publications sold in Israel.” Huffington Post, March 20, 2012. Should our Congress follow suit?

Photoshopping takes this trend one giant step further, making thinner-and-more-flawless-than-reality the standard that too many women and girls (and their male counterparts) believe is their target look. And then there was the recent viral image of Cindy Crawford, featuring an otherwise tight belly showing pretty normal signs of childbirth. “An unretouched photo of Cindy Crawford in lingerie is going viral. But it’s not for the reasons you might expect. What’s causing the stir isn’t the 48-year old supermodel’s sexy pose, but the surprise of seeing what an un-Photoshopped body looks like (albeit a pretty amazing one). The photo, leaked on Twitter from a 2013 Marie Claire Mexico and Latin America cover story, shows the mother-of-two looking gorgeous, but not flawless. And unfortunately, for many people that’s a shock.” YahooBeauty.com, February 16^th.  Marie Claire almost didn’t publish that picture.

It’s sad, really, that so many fantastic people cannot live in their own skin… or that they are judged, often promoted and compensated, based on body weight, age and general looks. It’s time for us all to take a good long look at our own attitudes and how they shape our perceptions and behavior towards others. Are we guilty of judging that human book by its cover?

I’m Peter Dekom, and by looking at our own biases, perhaps we can make the world a friendlier place for the huge diversity of human existence.

Clean Coal is Dirtier than Ever

The ugly Beijing haze that stings the nose and lungs and waters the eyes has elements from many standing or mobile polluters, but the biggest source of those health-killing irritants comes from the massive numbers of coal plants generating power for China’s insatiable energy needs. Coal is still abundant, cheap and capable of powering electrical power needs for a very, very long time. It’s a big deal here in the United States, as coal miners in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio will tell you. Take coal out of the American energy sector, and our economy just grinds to a halt. Across the globe, about a quarter of all electrical power generation comes from coal.

Where these modern technologies have been employed, we have managed to reduce many of the emissions from coal-burning power generating plants. Electrostatic precipitators, chemical washing, recirculating some of the effluent emissions, pre- and post-combustion capture, and better burning techniques, etc. have all worked to make significant reductions in noxious emissions. But coal still remains among the worst sources of greenhouse gasses on the planet. New plants, expensive to build, can reduce emissions by 90%, but even with retrofitting, older plants have only seen a 40% reduction. While that sounds good, remember that China is adding a new coal-fired power plant every week or two (80% of their electricity comes from coal vs. about 40% for the U.S.), and India plants on accelerating its construction of such plants.

Back during the George W. Bush administration, a Department of Energy program called FutureGen 2.0 was created to build the ultimate “clean coal” power plant in Illinois. The theory was to use modern technology to reduce emissions and, for those emissions that could not be eliminated, to pump these remaining effluents into underground storage where they would create no greenhouse gasses (literally kicking the can down the road for future generations to deal with!). The technique is called carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and it was touted as the salvation of coal as the power source of the future.

If the method sounds a bit lame, perhaps it is because rather than solving an issue, this technology simply creates an expensive delay in dealing with the core problem. And financing such dumb program was problematical. “Funding, however, was a different matter. President Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus law provided initial funding for the Illinois-based project, though it was to be financed via a public-private partnership and a September 2015 deadline to spend the federal portion was fast approaching.

 “The private sector, meanwhile, has shown little interest in expensive CCS technologies, making it a hard sell for government projects… ‘The biggest problem CCS faces right now is that there are no markets for the projects,’ said Howard Herzog, a research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology…‘These demonstrations are created by government incentives and government programs to get the first of the kind going.’

“Herzog said there would be no market for coal plants with expensive carbon-capture systems until federal limits on power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions require them. 
… ‘Longer term, you need markets, and the markets are only created via climate policy,’ he said. ‘And the climate policy is just too weak right now to create the markets.’” TheHill.com, February 8^th. Simply put, the environmental regulations that would motivate power companies to employ the system have been opposed by the GOP-led House (and now the entire Congress), that actually would like to see emission requirements reduced or eliminated (a strong sentiment among Tea Party “man-induced climate change” deniers).

So it was pretty stupid for the feds to fund a coal-plant-system that is so expensive that no one in the coal-power industry would even consider using it, especially when environmental controls are pretty lax. So the program was just scrapped. “The Energy Department’s decision [in early February] to pull the plug on a major ‘clean coal’ demonstration project stands as the latest setback for a technology that only recently held promise as a key piece of the United States’ fight against climate change… Meanwhile, industry groups are seizing on the decision to scrap the years-old initiative as more evidence of the Obama administrations ‘war on coal.’” TheHill.com. Me? I prefer waging a “war on stuff that’s really bad for you”! Is alternative energy ever going to be the “go-to” solution?!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I guess those dedicated environmentalists out there really can’t take a choke, and the Congress really doesn’t care!

The Greenhouse Gas Around Pope Francis

Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu, a Republican favorite, he is not. Pope Francis represents a faith that claims an American flock of almost 70 million registered followers (about half the Protestant segment in the US), which covers about 22% of all Americans, heavily weighted by a Latino demographic. In fact the United States has the fourth largest Catholic population of any nation on earth. While estimates vary, a consensus tells us that there are just under 7 million Jewish folks in the United States, placing them somewhere around 2% of the total.

What do Bibi and the Pope have in common? They have both been invited to address a joint session of Congress, Bibi in March and the Pope in an upcoming visit to the United States in September. They both represent clear religious blocs and both are equally passionate about their faith. But Bibi is a creature of politics, and while the Pope reigns over the Vatican, his role is primarily as a most senior cleric over one of the largest religious groups on earth.

But as much as the Evangelical stalwarts, that Tea Party amalgamation of social conservatives, cry out for Christian values to decide the American political direction, the words from the Pope himself seem to fly in the face of so many of their seemingly immutable issues. Catholics are, after all, Christians, and there are a whole lot more of them than there are Evangelicals. Even the Pope has more tolerance for gays than the Tea Party, but where the schism really hits home, it has to be on whether or not global warming, which now everyone seems to accept as “not a hoax,” is man-made or not. If it were man-made, you see, then having environmental regulations would make rather obvious sense, but if as the Evangelical deniers maintain, global warming is just a normal climate cycle, the government’s limiting emissions (which the Tea Party maintains is an economy-killer) would be a futile and unnecessary regulations meddling in the free market.

This social conservative view of climate change represents a very, very small segment of global opinion in the developed world, even here in the U.S. We already know “that 97 percent of scientists believe climate change is caused by humans… The latest surveys show that 89 percent of Democrats, 79 percent of independents and 70 percent of Republicans already believe global warming is happening and is at least partly caused by human actions.” ScientificAmerican.com, June 24, 2014. A little over half of Americans see a clearer and more direct connection between man’s actions and global climate change.

The rest of the educated world is more certain. “At 93 percent, China is the number one country that agrees that humanity's activity is the cause of climate change. Other countries that agree that climate change is humanity's fault include France at 80 percent; Brazil at 79 percent; and Germany at 72 percent, CBS News reported.” LatinPost.com, July 27, 2014. And so it goes.

But a recent Pew survey tells us that this theory is fairly uniformly rejected among the Evangelical movement which is the force that guides Tea Party philosophy and, as a result of the GOP tripping all over itself to appease this Base, the Republican Party itself. A according to that Pew study (backed up with subsequent substantiating polls conducted by Gallup and LifeWay noted below), “Evangelical Protestants were not only the least likely to attribute global warming to human actions (34 percent), but also the largest group to flatly say there is no scientific proof to validate the theory.

“A 2011 survey of 1,000 randomly selected pastors from the Christian research organization LifeWay concluded that few Protestant church leaders believe global warming is real and that humans are responsible for the phenomenon. According to the data, evangelical pastors were the most skeptical, with 68 percent of respondents disagreeing with the statement that global warming is real and manmade, compared with 45 percent of mainline pastors.” International Business Times, February 14, 2102.

But Evangelicals, where climate change deniers are most heavily concentrated, aren’t exactly the spokes-faith for all of Christianity. “There are an estimated 285,480,000 Evangelicals, corresponding to 13.1% of the Christian population and 4.1% of the total world population… The United States has the largest concentration of Evangelicals.” Wikipedia.

Yet this narrow, unscientific denial of man’s involvement in climate change hardly represents even the view of a majority of Christians. Enter the Pope with his latest admonitions, which simply have to infuriate the Republican Base, just as the GOP desperately tries to figure out how to lure Hispanic Americans into their conservative fold. The Tea Party seems to prefer sticking to its guns on this issue, even if it hurts recruiting new members into the GOP, seemingly necessary if that party is to survive the massive demographic shifts going on in the United States. The Pope is an unwelcomed troublemaker to them, but his views on global warming seem to reflect those of his constituency.

The strong Latino presence in the Catholic faith, particularly here in the United States, already seems to believe in man-induced global warming, taking the resultant threats rather personally. The February 9^th New York Times found the statement of one Carrizo, Texas insurance lawyer, Alfredo Padilla, to be a good summary of that sentiment, a feeling that is also supported in relevant polls: “‘It’s obviously happening, the flooding, the record droughts,’ said Mr. Padilla, who agrees with the science that human activities are the leading cause of climate change. ‘And all this affects poor people harder. The jobs are more based on weather. And when there are hurricanes, when there is flooding, who gets hit the worst? The people on the poor side of town.’

“Mr. Padilla’s concern is echoed by other Hispanics across the country, according to a poll conducted [in January] by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future. The survey, in which Mr. Padilla was a respondent, found that Hispanics are more likely than non-Hispanic whites to view global warming as a problem that affects them personally. It also found that they are more likely to support policies, such as taxes and regulations on greenhouse gas pollution, aimed at curbing it.”

Not only is Pope Francis speaking his mind on global climate change, he’s making waves on other sticky GOP issues like immigration. The Pope has proven that he cares not if his message is warmly received by his hosts. He is trying to change the world.

“The good news for Congress is that Pope Francis has accepted an invitation to visit. The bad news is that elected officials might not like what he has to say…On issues like poverty, immigration, abortion and climate change, the pope is likely to raise concerns that challenge his hosts. And the pontiff has already made clear that he is willing to be direct with political leaders. As he told the European Parliamentin November, ‘Europe seems to give the impression of being somewhat elderly and haggard.’

“‘If they’re expecting a talk only on how wonderful America is, they will be surprised,’ said the Rev. James Martin, an editor at large at the Jesuit magazine America. ‘I think he will be an equal opportunity disturber.’... The pope has expressed repeated concern about the treatment of immigrants around the world – a divisive issue for the Republican Party. In a letter the pope wrote in December, but became public [at the beginning of February], he decried ‘people who only see in immigration a source of illegality, social conflict and violence.’

“The pope has also made clear that he believes humans contribute significantly to climate change, telling reporters last month, ‘It is man who gives a slap to nature continually.’ That, too, is contested among Republicans.” New York Times, February 6^th.

As the majority of our Congress men and women belong to a party that still denies man’s impact on climate change, thinks we need to tighten up our border where the brown-skinned cross (nothing on the other white border), cut support programs for the poor while reducing taxes and regulations for the rich (which they call “job creation”), it seems increasingly that the GOP is pushing itself into an untenable corner of white old men with old-school rural values governing a racially and ethnically diverse and primarily urban population swept up in accelerating modernity.

Watching how they behave when they have a majority, rather dramatically out of step with the rest of the world, augurs badly for their longer-term hold on the American body politic. Can they do it with the help of bumbling Democrats, and their proclivity for exclusionary gerrymandering and voter ID law to keep their opposition silent? Or is that tide beginning to form the tsunami that they do not believe is coming?

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is amazing how few governments remain in power when they try to stop change and cling to a past that has long since been over.

Strange Hotel

What do you do when you are a xenophobic culture with a complex and often indecipherable language based primarily on hard-to-learn pictograms with a severely contracting and graying population? English please? A country that does not want immigration at all, mistrusts foreigners and makes becoming a citizen almost impossible, an economic powerhouse in fading times with a population that is project to fall by as much as 30% by 2050? We call it Japan.

What’s worse, it’s becoming a nation of too few workers supporting too many retirees. “The aging of Japan is thought to outweigh all other nations, as the country is purported to have the highest proportion of elderly citizens; 33.0% are above age 60, 25.9% are aged 65 or above, 12.5% aged 75 or above, as of September 2014.” Wikipedia. Asian labor shortages at the bottom of the labor scale, from construction workers to housekeeper, are covered almost everywhere else in Asia with Filipinos, residents of South Asia, etc. Not so Japan.

Even for foreign students educated at Japanese universities, the post-graduate welcome mat is virtually nonexistent. Fewer than 10% of such graduates find work in Japan, and the path to citizenship is usually impossible even when decades are spent in the country. Despite statements to the contrary and despite “facing an imminent labor shortage as its population ages, Japan has done little to open itself up to immigration. In fact, [as many temporary foreign workers] have discovered, the government is doing the opposite, actively encouraging both foreign workers and foreign graduates of its universities and professional schools to return home while protecting tiny interest groups.” New York Times, January 2, 2011.

So what to do about it all? From the assembly lines in the few remaining manufacturing industries left in Japan to elderly care, Japan is accelerating its research and development in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. If Bill Gates and Elon Musk dread a robotic,Terminator-like takeover, Japan has to be the epicenter of that robo-fear!

Exactly how extreme is this quest for robotic alternatives to allowing immigration to fill the ranks of needed workers? Try the Henn-na (“Strange”) Hotel in the Dutch-oriented Huis Ten Bosch (“House in the Forest”) theme park located in Nagasaki, Japan. Scheduled to open this July, this modestly price hotel boasts… er… no human staff. Instead, just about every service is provided by friendly (we hope!) robots. A bit too lifelike (see above picture), if you ask me.

“The robot experience starts when you first step foot into the hotel. Robots will help you with your bags, as well as manage the front desk and other hotel services — even clean your room for you… Besides just having a fully robotic staff, the hotel has some other high-tech touches. For instance, facial-recognition technology will replace room keys, so you'll be able to unlock your door with your face.

 “The park says that the robots will reduce costs associated with running the hotel, and ensure comfort for guests. They should also help you save some money on tips [but Japanese don’t tip anyway]… The first building in the hotel will open with 72 rooms, followed by another 72-room building next year. A single room will be priced at 7,000 yen a night, or around $59. A twin room will set you back 9,000 yen, or $76… If the hotel reaches maximum capacity during peak season they'll bid off rooms, though the upper limit will be 14,000 yen (around $119) for a single room.

“‘We will make the most efficient hotel in the world,’ company President Hideo Sawada said during a news conference, according to Japan Times. ‘In the future, we'd like to have more than 90 percent of hotel services operated by robots.’” PCMag.com, February 5^th.Wonder if robotic call girls will roam the lobby. Such a warm and fuzzy thought, and for those who argue that we here in the U.S. need a solid border barrier with Mexico to preserve American jobs, I wonder what the barrier device will be against robots? Maybe if they are imbued with white plastic skin, no one will care. But how long before this technology developed in Japan will become the norm here in the U.S.?

My friend and business consultant Dennis Duitch has this little reminder about work life here in the United States in the near future: “‘HALF OF CURRENT JOBS WILL EVENTUALLY BE AUTOMATED OUT OF EXISTENCE… as the technology revolution is widening inequality byincreasing demand for the best brains while reducing demand for everyone else – raising the specter of mass unemployment as intelligent machines do for middle-class employment what their dumb brothers have already done for working-class jobs… Main Street companies in general are trying to do more with less rather than employing new people, replacing fixed costs with variable ones, and putting long-term plans on hold… As nimbleness is replacing clout as the most prized quality, business models can no longer rely on ‘sustainable competitive advantage.’ (Almost half the Fortune 500 list companies in 1999 have fallen off it since)… Living in a world of secular stagnation, jobless growth, zero-sum competition and stability-threatening inequality,’ it’s getting tougher to remain optimistic.  [THE ECONOMIST - Jan 31, 15]” Ouch!

I’m Peter Dekom, and “strange” will someday become “normal,” so I truly wonder what the future “strange” will be after that?!

Hating Our Children Is Politically Correct

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Second Amendment to the Constitution

What do you love more, your gun(s) (if you have one) or your kids (same note)? Or, on a more abstract basis, guns or kids? In the developed world, with one glaring exception, it is obviously the children, with guns so far back in the litany of priorities that they don’t even figure in. Through decades of ignoring the “well-regulated militia” provision of the Second Amendment, Americans, however, have often built ironclad “rights” to bear arms that allows mass people-killing assault rifles and oversize magazines capable of many, many rounds before reloading, perfect for someone with mass-killing in mind, with limited, where they exist at all, background checks. Open carry laws, rights to bear arms in public in all sorts of inappropriate places exploded as recent laws in too many states.

It’s easier to get a gun, it seems, than to score a kilo of heroin. And it’s mostly legal. 40% of gun sales, effected between private parties and often at gun shows, don’t involve in background checks at all. Mexico is screaming at us, since tons of “legally acquired” guns from the United States are smuggled across the border to enforce the murder-machines called drug cartels down there, where such weapons are clearly illegal. We’re worried about undocumented aliens crossing north; they’re begging us to stop the gun trade south.

Two and a half years after orange-haired James Holmes opened fire in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater showing The Dark Knight Riseskilling 12 and injuring 70, a self-righteous GOP-controlled Colorado State Senate (they have a one-vote majority after the last election) has reopened hearings to repeal the more stringent gun-control measures that resulted from that murderous assault (not to mention the 2012 Connecticut Sandy Hook slaughter of 20 children and 6 adults). For those who care, you might want to refer to my November 9^thblog, Americans Love Guns So Much More than Their Children, which lists virtually all of the school-related gun incidents in recent years up to that date. It is a terrifying and unforgivable list, and it includes Sandy Hook victim, 6-year-old Olivia Rose Engel pictured above. But it doesn’t seem to matter to the Republican legislators in Colorado, who clearly favor guns over their children’s lives.

“[The] newly empowered Republicans [in Denver] at the State Capitol are trying to repeal those measures, reviving an emotional debate over gun violence… Once again, the legislature has become a stage for protests and wrenching testimony from families of people cut down by bullets. Lawmakers are sparring over Second Amendment freedoms and public safety, and arguing about the effectiveness of new measures that expanded background checks and reduced the size of ammunition magazines… [M]easures to undo the new background checks and allow legal gun owners to carry concealed handguns without a permit advanced this week after a committee vote split along party lines.” New York Times, February 6^th. 

The National Rifle Association, a powerful gun-manufacturing lobbying machine, keeps its pedal to the metal efforts at repealing just about any piece of gun-restriction legislation – and are still grinning from their long-standing wild success at forbidding any state or federal governmental agency (even the Centers for Disease Control) from maintaining any statistics on gun homicides. They obviously know what those numbers would reveal. And while the Colorado legislation has no chance of surviving passage through the Democratic Assembly, it doesn’t stop morally irresponsible officials from reopening bloodied wounds and rubbing salt in them.

That NRA mantra of “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” not only has been rejected in most of the civilized world, but cannot be supported when someone who is murdered is always killed by a “bad guy,” when that “bad guy” was a “good guy” until he or she pulled the murderous trigger. There isn’t a piece of logic on this planet that can support the notion that more guns in society create fewer homicides. The immorality of extreme gun advocates, starting with the NRA, is staggering.

I’m Peter Dekom, and a plain reading of the Second Amendment cannot remotely be construed to create that morally vapid belief that the Constitution supports the level of gun ownership espoused by the NRA… or the Colorado State Senate.