AUDIO:
POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; REGISTER TO VOTE; APPLY FOR MAIL-IN BALLOT; RICO Night in Georgia — Why Trump’s indictment in Georgia could spell ‘big trouble,’ according to a legal expert; Military Providing Disaster Relief Assistance on Maui; Amid the ash of Lahaina, aid and anger are spreading; Harris County’s election chief remains in legal limbo after judge rules that lawmakers can’t dissolve the position; China, Philippines’ dispute over grounded warship heats up; China’s Great Leap Backward: So Much For The Next Dominant Superpower (CONTINUED); More.
Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host, assistant producer and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.
Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) or Thursdays at 6PM on KPFT 90.1 FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Media. You can also hear the show:
- Live online at KPFT.org (from anywhere in the world!)
- Podcast on your phone’s Podcast App
- Visiting Archive.KPFT.ORG
- An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
- You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.
- VOTING IN THE NOVEMBER 7TH GENERAL ELECTION:
- Make sure to register to vote, or update your address by the October 10thdeadline. Click here for more information on voter registration.
- Deadline to apply for a mail ballot is Friday, October 27. Click here for the application.Fill it out, print it, and then mail it to our office before the deadline.
- In HARRIS COUNTY, go to COM. For any place in Texas, you can go to VOTETEXAS.GOV
- MIKE: Because of the nature and import of news this week, we’ll be discussing our stories a little differently this time. Geographically, we’ll jump around some to try to touch the stories we feel we need to. Usually, we try not to cover news-cycle-dominant stories unless we have something to contribute. I hope you feel that we do.
- Why Trump’s indictment in Georgia could spell ‘big trouble,’ according to a legal expert; Kate Murphy, Producer | YAHOO.COM | Updated Tue, August 15, 2023 at 2:46 PM CDT·4 min
- MIKE: This story touches on many of the same aspects of these indictments as other coverage. That a Georgia governor has no individual pardon power; That a RICO (Racketeering-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) indictment encompasses an entire conspiracy and it’s conspirators in a wide and deep net going all the way to the top; That in Georgia, there is a 5-year minimum sentence upon conviction (although whether that requires 5 year of confinement is an open question); That State convictions cannot be pardoned by a president; And that a president cannot order the Department of Justice to cease any ongoing trials or investigations at the State level. This story also offers an interview, which I will cite in part:
- … Clark Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University, told Yahoo News, “Trump is in big, big trouble if he’s convicted in Georgia.”
- Cunningham spoke to Yahoo News about how the Georgia indictment stacks up against the other criminal indictments the former president is currently facing. Some responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
- … What happens if Trump gets reelected in 2024 in the middle of the Georgia trial?: If the Georgia case is still going forward and he becomes president, I think we would have a constitutional crisis, because I think he would do whatever he could to use the power of the presidency to prevent the trial from happening.
- If the trial did go forward and he was convicted, it’s hard to imagine that a sitting president would be arrested by the Atlanta police and put in the Fulton County Jail.
- But the way the system ought to work is, if he’s convicted in Georgia, the House of Representatives would put forth articles of impeachment based on that conviction. The Senate would approve those articles of impeachment, and Trump would be removed from office through the constitutional process of impeachment. But, of course, what the Republican Party would do is certainly a question in that regard. Recent history suggests that House and Senate Republicans would block a process like that.
- MIKE: On Monday night, Rachel Maddow interviewed Hillary Clinton. That Monday was “RICO Night in Georgia” was a coincidence of scheduling, but made for interesting viewing. One of the points made by Hillary is that the Georgia indictments are an interesting example of how the messiness of American federalism is among its most resilient strengths. Unlike most countries, the central government has relatively little control over what happens in individual States, and vice versa. This is often a double-edged sword, depending on whose metaphorical ox is being gored. But it’s also what makes accountability possible for the otherwise unaccountable.
- MIKE: There were two topics that the interview stayed away from. One was Hillary’s 1998 reference to the phrase “vast rightwing conspiracy” in relation to the Right’s attacks on her husband, Bill Clinton. The media made a lot of fun of Hillary at the time; conspiracy theories are always fodder for mainstream satire, but in hindsight, was Hillary entirely wrong?
- MIKE: The interview also never touched on Hillary’s use of the term “basket of deplorables” during her 2016 presidential campaign. Most mainstream media followed Republicans in treating the comment as a political ploy rather than a serious argument. A certain amount of fun was made of the remark and made of Hillary for saying it, but in hindsight, was she wrong? In addition to typical party loyalists who will vote for practically any candidate on their preferred party line, Trump was and is supported by the likes of White supremacists, White nationalists, and by Neo-Nazis and proponents of fascism.
- MIKE: Trump has always been a shady character, but what do the Georgia RICO indictments show if not the amount of aiding, abetting, and enabling necessary for committing of what have commonly come to be called “Republican Dirty Tricks”, and how much further are Republican elected office holders and party apparatchiks willing to go in pursuit if power?
- MIKE: It’s unlikely that the Trump RICO indictments will go much further up a ladder, but is it fair to at least speculate to what extent “Republican Dirty Trick” conspiracies have become part of the party’s DNA? The Republican Party line is still remarkably anti-law, even after “RICO Night in Georgia”.
- MIKE: I wonder if Republican officials would still defend Trump if he shot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue?
- ANDREW: Of course they would. The Republicans are not concerned with honesty, integrity, or propriety. They haven’t been since Nixon, if not farther back. They are solely interested in seizing and maintaining power, and when the processes of power in US law stopped being useful in achieving that goal, Republicans stopped caring about them. Now, in fairness, I think the only difference for the Democrats is that they still find those processes useful for things like keeping third parties from having a fair shot. Otherwise, neither major party would care about the law.
- ANDREW: There are exceptions, of course, because there always are. There is still a vocal anti-Trump contingent in the Republican Party. But the polls aren’t looking good for them–one poll has 69% of Republicans viewing Trump favorably, and 30% unfavorably. Really, I think the only hope any of Trump’s challengers have of getting the nomination for President is if Trump is suddenly disqualified. But as the 1920 Socialist Party candidacy of Eugene V. Debs shows, one can very much run for President from prison. Conviction in Georgia is not going to stop Trump from getting nominated–to my mind, the only sure-fire way to stop him winning the Republican nomination for President is to find him guilty of insurrection under the Fourteenth Amendment, which no case against him is currently trying to do.
- ANDREW: Even if Trump is disqualified from the Presidency, we won’t be out of the woods. The next frontrunner for the Republican nomination is currently Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. I’m just going to let his Wikipedia page argue why we wouldn’t be any better off with him in the White House. The only hope I could see is if Trump wins the nomination, then gets convicted of insurrection, then the Republicans decide they have no choice but to nominate someone else, and that process delays the next nominee enough so that they can’t get their feet under them to campaign, and they don’t have a chance against any other party’s candidate. But I’m not holding my breath.
- MIKE: The scariest thing about DeSantis in the White House is that he would be a far more effective fascist and seditionist than Trump was.
- REFERENCE: Vast right-wing conspiracy (term) — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- REFERENCE: Basket of deplorables — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- REFERENCE: The Secret Papers of Lee Atwater, Who Invented the Scurrilous Tactics That Trump Normalized — NEWYORKER.COM | By Jane Mayer, May 6, 2021
- REFERENCE: The Watergate Hearings: 45 Years Later — ROLLCALL
- “Prior to testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, Donald Segretti, the California lawyer allegedly hired by Nixon aides to sabotage Democratic presidential candidates in 1972, pleads guilty to three misdemeanor charges for his actions in the 1972 Florida Democratic primary and is given limited immunity from prosecution for testimony before the Watergate federal grand jury and the Senate committee.
- “He tells the committee about “dirty tricks” he performed during the primaries in an attempt to confuse Democratic presidential candidates. Segretti says that he had reported regularly throughout the campaign to Nixon’s former appointments secretary, Dwight L. Chapin. …”
- REFERENCE: DNC v. RNC Consent Decree — BRENNANCENTER.ORG (“In 1982, after caging in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods, the Republican National Committee and New Jersey Republican State Committee entered into a consent decree with their Democratic party counterparts.”) Published November 5, 2016
- REFERENCE: Judge ends consent decree limiting RNC ‘ballot security’ activities — POLITICO.COM, 2018/01/09
- Military Providing Disaster Relief Assistance on Maui; By David Vergun , DOD News | DEFENSE.GOV | Aug. 15, 2023
- The Defense Department is continuing to support disaster relief efforts related to the devastating wildfire on Maui, Hawaii, said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh today.
- Missions Under the Federal Emergency Management Agency:
- Providing inter-island air and sea transportation for the movement of cargo, personnel, supplies and equipment.
- Setting up a DOD-coordinated element office that includes liaison officers.
- Using Schofield Barracks in Oahu to support facilities for billeting, life support and hygiene facilities for federal emergency responders.
- Standing by for aerial fire suppression.
- Providing transportation of personnel and cargo.
- Setting up additional staging areas on Maui and Oahu.
- … The Hawaii National Guard has activated about 258 soldiers and airmen for duty that includes liaison support to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, command and control elements, and local law enforcement, Singh said. …
- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been assigned to remove debris and temporarily restore power, she said.
- Singh said the Coast Guard has been working to minimize maritime environmental impacts, while remaining ready to respond to any new reports of individuals in the water. …
- And in a story I can empathize with: Amid the ash of Lahaina, aid and anger are spreading; By Bill Weir, CNN Chief Climate Correspondent |COM | Updated 11:09 PM EDT, Tue August 15, 2023
- A week after blowtorch winds brought the most horrific disaster in modern Hawaiian history, members of Maui’s working class have become do-it-yourself first responders and cul-de-sac commanders.
- With everything from U-Haul trucks to borrowed boats to dugout canoes, hundreds of lifeguards, carpenters and bartenders have set up and stocked nearly a dozen pop-up relief centers around the scorched earth of Lahaina, mostly without the help of anyone in uniform. The outpouring has been so great that what started as a plea for fuel, ice and diapers has turned into a request for shipping containers to store it all.
- But between the disappointing official response, tourists who went snorkeling during the search for bodies and stories of real estate speculators hounding families in grief, Hawaii’s famous “aloha spirit” is being strained.
- “Look around,” Keoki Naihe said on Sunday as he nodded at the impromptu encampment feeding a small crowd with organized efficiency at Pohaku Beach Park, questioning why there were no officials lending their support.
- “They don’t give a sh*t about us,” Alika Peneku chimed in. The home of the self-employed contractor and mechanic was spared from the flames, but after giving it up to a displaced family with an infant, he’s been sleeping on a cot next to neighbors and strangers in one of the groups the community calls “pods.”
- “Tourists have slept here,” he said. “We had three families sleep here the first night and we fed them just as if they were local. Why wouldn’t we? But nobody came to help us.”
- He nodded at Charlie and Brittany Fleck, a Maui couple who spent the week crowdfunding on Facebook and passing cash out to survivors. CNN was there as they sweet-talked a caravan of relief supplies through red tape and checkpoints. …
- As the Flecks delivered cash to grateful families, Grace Hurt was running an improvised boat lift to supply pods like Peneku’s.
- “Everyone who is a native Hawaiian and everyone who has built their homes here, we respect you,” she said, describing the tons of supplies her friends had delivered to cut-off communities. “We’re here for you. We are partnering with you. We will bring you back.”
- But as she spoke, a tourist charter docked alongside and unloaded snorkelers from an excursion near Lahaina. “That is not pono,” she said, using the Hawaiian expression for righteous harmony, shaking her head in disgust.
- While the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau took to social media to “strongly discourage” visitors from vacationing on the western side of Maui. Peneku was more blunt.
- “Leave,” he said. “Give us the chance to heal. If any one of those tourists’ homes burned down, they wouldn’t want anybody outside their home doing fun excursions. They would want time to mourn. They would want time to rebuild.” …
- [Archie Kalepa] biggest long-term worry is that Maui will be rebuilt without his ohana, or extended family, as they are priced out of their native paradise.
- “One of the struggles we will see in this community, is the big land buyers are going to buy us out. And you know what happens if that happens? We’re gone. The people who lived here a very, very long time are going to get offers to leave. We need to find solutions to guarantee that they don’t have to come back to ground zero and pay for building their homes from the bottom up.”
- FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told CNN after a weekend tour of Lahaina’s ruins that the agency has “a limited amount of funding that can help support some repairs to homes but as we see here, there is no repairing some of these homes.”
- “So if they don’t have enough insurance, they have a little bit of funding from FEMA,” Criswell said. “We can also work with our partners like the Small Business Administration, who can do small home loans for up to $500,000.”
- But in a playground of billionaires and skyrocketing home prices, there’s concern that won’t be enough for some families to rebuild and stay. …
- “We’ve already been priced out of a lot of these homes and had three to four families working multiple jobs just to stay,” Peneku said, shaking his head. “So now I can see how the pressure is probably at the breaking point but – do not sell your property,” he implored his working-class neighbors. “Do not run away. Please. Just hang on as long as you can,” he said with a sigh and shrugged.
- “It’s hard to be a Hawaiian in Hawaii.”
- MIKE: I once did a couple of shows on housing affordability in Hawaii after visiting Kauai. It was the first time I’d heard the term “houseless” as opposed to “homeless” when talking to a resident Hawaiian.
- MIKE: In Hawaii, people holding full-time jobs can often be found living in nighttime encampments on beaches, living in tents, cars and vans. Small homes can go for millions. At the time, “Gentleman farmers” with a few fruit trees got preferential real estate tax treatment as agricultural properties, though there were efforts to change the tax laws. (See the show link included in the show post.)
- MIKE: When Alika Peneku says that native Hawaiians have been priced out of their homes, she’s not kidding even a little bit. When I visited Kauai in 2013, there was a smallish beachfront property of about an acre with a 600 or 700 square foot shack — yes, a shack — listed for several million dollars. (I think I mention it specifically in the show.)
- MIKE: People who buy a modest 3-bedroom home often rent out a bedroom or two to help pay the mortgage. (It beats living in a van on the beach.)
- MIKE: My house burned down during Hurricane Ike in September 2008. If the fire department hadn’t disobeyed orders to take shelter, my house might have been the “Mrs. O’Leary’s cow” of the Houston Heights and burned down a fair portion of the neighborhood.
- MIKE: If not for the generosity of my neighbors and the fact that I was well-insured, I could be one of these homeless Hawaiians. I know that help never comes fast enough and it’s never enough when it comes. I learned you can even be grateful for someone’s used underwear.
- MIKE: I have had my cat, Audrey Hepburn, for over 12 years. I’m grateful we had no pets at the time of the fire, because someone probably would have died trying to find her and get her out.
- MIKE: And with all the advantages I had, it took 15 months for material recovery and years before our traumas became tolerable. It never goes away. And there were plenty of people in the greater Houston area that suffered like I did, and hadn’t recovered even years later; you could still see the blue tarps covering roofs.
- MIKE: The causes of these fires will be investigated and there will be lawsuits that never really make anyone whole. Laws may be passed that will make future fires less likely or more survivable, as has happened in California, but it’s never enough. There’s always the next fire or hurricane or flash floods.
- MIKE: Barack Obama’s website, OBAMA(DOT)ORG, has links to suggested sites where contributions can be made to aid the people and even their pets.
- ANDREW: To take a brief aside, O’Leary wasn’t actually responsible for the Great Chicago Fire. A reporter named Michael Ahern admitted in 1893 that he made the story up, but it was picked up and circulated due to anti-Irish sentiment. She was despised for the rest of her life, despite not having done anything wrong. The Chicago City Council officially exonerated her in 1997, over 100 years after she died. Thought it was worth mentioning.
- MIKE: I knew that, but it’s still a useful cultural reference.
- ANDREW: As for the story, I think this is another real-life example of communities doing for themselves what capitalist governments won’t. I found another story interviewing people from Lahaina and the surrounding area who are organizing mutual aid there, and Maui County official Keani Rawlins-Fernandez has said that the nearest federal aid is ten miles away from where the fires were, when most people in Lahaina have lost their vehicles or aren’t able to get gas to travel there. I don’t know why federal aid chose to set up there, but the consequences are that that aid is not doing much good for the people that were hardest hit.
- ANDREW: On top of this, FEMA requires applications for financial assistance be filed online, when half the island is without power and internet. I know Hanlon’s razor says “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”, but I’m sure it’s hard for anyone in Maui who’s just lost their home to think the lackluster government response is anything other than yet another insult to the Hawaiian people.
- ANDREW: I strongly recommend donating to the local aid funds like Maui Mutual Aid and Maui Humane Society instead of organizations like the Red Cross to ensure that as much of your donation as possible stays in Maui and is used to help Hawaiians, Native Hawaiians especially. I have a link on my personal blog to four organizations recommended by indigenous people in Hawai’i that I ask our listeners to consider donating to as well.
- REFERENCE: OBAMA(DOT)ORG – Take action to help those affected by fires in Hawaiʻi; Ways to support Maui and Lāhainā residents affected by wildfires.
- REFERENCE: Some are blaming powerlines for igniting the Maui fires in Hawaii. Here’s what we know; By Basel Hindeleh with wires | ABC.NET.AU | Posted Aug 16, 2023, 3 hours ago
- REFERENCE: “Homeless In Hawaii” a 2-part show, will air Weds. and Thurs. [VIDEO & AUDIO] — THINKWING RADIO, April 10, 2013
- Coming back to local news: Harris County’s election chief remains in legal limbo after judge rules that lawmakers can’t dissolve the position; Republican lawmakers targeted the Harris County elections department during this year’s regular session after numerous issues arose out of the 2022 election. By Natalia Contreras | VOTEBEAT and THE TEXAS TRIBUNE | Aug. 15, 2023 / 5 hours ago
- The Texas Attorney General’s Office on Tuesday appealed the decision of a judge to temporarily block a new law passed by Republicans to abolish Harris County’s elections chief position. The decision earlier Tuesday by a Travis County district judge found that the law is unconstitutional and would disrupt this fall’s elections.
- The Texas Attorney General’s Office filed its appeal in the Texas Supreme Court, keeping Travis County District Judge Karin Crump’s order from taking effect.
- The law, which would have forced the county to eliminate the county’s elections administrator and transfer all election duties to the county clerk and the tax assessor-collector, is set to take effect Sept. 1, weeks before early voting begins for the county’s November municipal elections.
- Nonetheless, Harris County officials said the earlier injunction was a “win” for the county and “local officials across the state.”
- Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee filed the lawsuit in Travis County District Court last month and argued the law, Senate Bill 1750, violates the Texas Constitution because it was used by the Legislature to single out one county. Menefee asked Crump to prevent the law from taking effect.
- Crump agreed and in her ruling added, “Not only will this transfer lead to inefficiencies, disorganization, confusion, office instability, and increased costs to Harris County, but it will also disrupt an election that the Harris County EA [Elections Administrator] has been planning for months. The Harris County Clerk and the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector have had no role in preparing for the November Election.”
- Those were the same concerns Menefee detailed in his initial filing to seek an injunction.
- “Without court intervention, the public’s selection of their elected representatives — the core process on which our democracy rests — will be risked in Harris County,” the filing says.
- At a Tuesday news conference celebrating the decision, Menefee called the law an “existential” threat to county sovereignty.
- “The Texas Constitution says what it says,” he said. “This filing is much bigger than this particular law.”
- Menefee said Harris County’s lawsuit is “reining in misguided legislators” whom he said “aren’t playing in good faith anymore.”
- Texas Republicans, who dominate the state Legislature, spent this year’s legislative session pushing for unprecedented state authority over elections in Harris, the state’s most populous county and a Democratic stronghold. The result was a new law introduced by Houston-based state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican — one that election experts told Votebeat is likely to cause disruptions and problems for voters in the county’s elections this fall and in 2024. The new law would force a rushed department transition and impose responsibility for dozens of state-mandated election-related deadlines on new officials in the middle of the crucial process, observers said.
- Bettencourt was unavailable Tuesday for comment on the court’s decision.
- In a news release, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said the office maintains that “the legislature had a reasonable basis for the law: Harris County is the most populous county in Texas, and, as such, has an outsized statewide impact on elections, a consideration enhanced by the county’s past significant difficulty with election administration.”
- On Tuesday, the Harris County Republican Party filed an intervention to support the implementation of the law. The filing claims Harris County’s current and former elections administrators have “totally botched” past elections there and therefore the new law to return duties to elected officials should be upheld. …
- MIKE: The story goes on to outline Republican claims of how Harris County elections were “totally botched”, and their litigation complaining that 21 Republicans lost elections as a result.
- MIKE: The changes to Harris County election management was only one aspect of a law passed by the last legislature that stripped local powers from many cities and counties, continuing an ongoing effort to centralize as much power as possible in State government in Austin.
- ANDREW: In fairness, elections in Harris County haven’t been smooth sailing in recent years, though “totally botched” is a pretty big stretch. There were plenty of mistakes in Harris County elections before the Elections Administrator office came into being in 2020, as well. I don’t believe that any state legislators or officials really think that the Elections Administrator office is the root cause of any of the problems that Harris County elections have encountered since 2020. I think targeting this office is simply an attempt to limit the impact of Harris County voters on state politics by disrupting the County’s elections and making it harder for people to vote. It wouldn’t be out of character for Republicans.
- And in Asia: China, Philippines’ dispute over grounded warship heats up; By Ella Cao, Liz Lee and Karen Lema | REUTERS.COM | August 8, 2023, 1:43 PM CDT/Updated 4 hours ago
- China again asked the Philippines to tow away a grounded warship – a World War Two-era vessel now used as a military outpost – from a disputed shoal on Tuesday, after Manila rejected Beijing’s earlier demand.
- Tensions have soared between the two neighbours over the South China Sea under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, with Manila pivoting back to the United States, which supports the Southeast Asian nation in its maritime disputes with China.
- China’s embassy in Manila criticised Washington for “gathering” its allies to continue “hyping up” the South China Sea issue and the boat incident.
- “South China Sea is not a ‘safari park’ for countries outside the region to make mischief and sow discord,” the embassy said in a statement on Tuesday.
- The Second Thomas Shoal, which lies within the Philippines exclusive economic zone, is home to a handful of troops living aboard the former warship Sierra Madre. Manila deliberately grounded the vessel in 1999 to reinforce its sovereignty claims.
- Manila has repeatedly accused the Chinese coastguard of blocking resupply missions to its troops there, as it did on Aug. 5 when it sprayed a Philippine vessel with a water cannon.
- China maintains the Philippines’ occupation of the shoal is illegal. …
- Security experts say China’s actions around the atoll point to one thing – Beijing wants to take control of Second Thomas Shoal, also known in China as Renai Reef, and Ayungin in Manila. …
- China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, which overlaps with the exclusive economic zones of Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan and the Philippines. …
- … Collin Koh, a security fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, believe[s] China would think twice about using outright force to occupy the shoal lest it triggers a 1951 U.S.-Philippines mutual defence treaty.
- “There’s probably no question about whether China has the means to up the ante here, but more about its willingness over those political risks,” said Koh. …
- Japan and France, through their embassies in Manila, have expressed concern over China’s recent actions and repeated their support for a 2016 [Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague] arbitral ruling that invalidated Beijing’s expansive South China Sea claims.
- S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Philippines Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro on Tuesday to discuss the alliance between the two countries, the Pentagon said.
- MIKE: China has been pushing these claims to some degree or another since at least the early 20th They have been considered by the world at large to have limited historical validity and were over-reaching. If anything, that’s become truer as countries in the region regained their independence after WW2.
- Mike: When the Philippines brought its case to the Hague, China didn’t defend itself because it isn’t a member. It therefore saw the court as having no jurisdiction in the dispute. The Philippines nonetheless had to plead its case and could not win simply by default.
- MIKE: The US has taken the Philippines’ side on this ruling, but the irony is that the US also is not a member of the World Court and does not officially recognize its jurisdiction in cases involving the US.
- MIKE: In any case, I’ve been public in my views on 21st century China being an aggressive neo-mercantilist, neo-colonial power. I’ve also commented that China sees a window of opportunity in its power and influence now that might not be the case in 15-25 years. We’ll touch on that in the next story.
- ANDREW: I’ve talked before on the show how the situation in the South China Sea has created some strange bedfellows (see Mike’s reference link to the May 10th show on the blog). Vietnam and the Philippines have both objected to China’s claims over some of the islands in the area, for example, while Taiwan generally agrees with China’s claims so it can claim those waters as well.
- ANDREW: In this specific case, the Philippines (along with Vietnam) have been building new islands in the area for a long time, and China responded by building its own new islands at a much quicker pace, surpassing any other island-building efforts. That response has legitimized island-building as a strategy, and I don’t see the Philippines having grounded this ship being very different from that. If China wants the Philippines to drag their ship back, maybe China should demolish one of their islands. Just a thought.
- REFERENCE: Philippines v. China — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- REFERENCE: Everything you need to know about the South China Sea conflict – in under five minutes — REUTERS.COM, May 11, 2016
- REFERENCE: Second Thomas Shoal – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- REFERENCE: We discussed China’s Nine-Dashed Line Weds, MAY 10+11, 2023 with some historical references.
- REFERENCE: We also discussed China’s Nine-Dashed Line April 12, 2021
- REFERENCE: China blasts US for forcing it to accept South China Sea ruling — Reuters, July 12, 2023 (China accused the United States of “ganging up” and forcing it to accept a 2016 arbitration ruling over claims in the South China Sea, as Washington urged Beijing to halt what it called its routine harassment of vessels of other countries in the region. …)
- China’s economy is showing signs of serious trouble — and the problems are still mounting; By Phil Rosen | BUSINESSINSIDER.COM | Aug 12, 2023, 7:30 AM CDT
- The world’s second-largest economy isn’t growing, producing, or trading as much as it usually does.
- The pandemic rebound that China and the rest of the world were anticipating has yet to materialize, and official data suggests there’s a long road ahead before the economy is back on its feet.
- China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced Wednesday that consumer prices dropped annually in July for the first time in two years, dipping 0.3%, just slightly better than median estimates for a 0.4% decrease.
- The People’s Bank of China is now facing the opposite problem of the Federal Reserve, which has tightened policy for 18 months in a bid to tame soaring prices. Deflation — the trend of prices falling throughout the economy — presents a particularly dangerous trajectory for China, which carries a massive amount of debt.
- “Deflation means the real value of debt goes up,” David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute’s China center, told Insider. “High inflation we know is bad, but it does help manage debt burdens over time. Deflation does the opposite.” …
- Increasingly, China’s US-led Western trade partners have turned elsewhere. Global demand for Chinese goods has cooled, even as Russia ramps up trade with Asia amid its war in Ukraine.
- The US Census Bureau reported Chinese exports to the US dropped 23.7% in June, hitting a six-month low of $42.7 billion. That reflects both the Biden Administration’s “de-risking efforts,” as well as a general pullback in spending as central banks around the world raise interest rates.
- Near-shoring trends have also picked up since the pandemic. Mexico, for example, has emerged as America’s new biggest trade partner, blowing past China with US bilateral trade totaling $263 billion through the first four months of the year. …
- Most of China’s economic troubles tie directly into its property market.
- China was able to skirt deflation in 2009 and 2012 on the heels of the global financial crisis, but today’s housing market complicates policymakers’ current battle.
- Notwithstanding recent price declines, property values have appreciated dramatically since 2009, and fiscal stimulus measures may not have the same impact as before. China’s allowed developers to over-build, and now the inventory glut has crippled major developers.
- Last week, Country Garden Holdings — once China’s largest developer by sales — failed to make millions of dollars’ worth of coupon payments on its bonds, and it anticipates reporting enormous first-half losses.
- Similarly in July, Chinese developer Evergrande, which made headlines in 2021 with a massive debt default, recorded a two-year $81 billion loss.
- Real estate accounts for about one-fifth of the country’s economy, and the sector’s headwinds include hefty debt and weak demand from homebuyers. …
- Even if Beijing could somehow remedy its other issues, years of a one-child policy may have long ago crippled its economy for decades.
- In 2022, the population shrank for the first time since 1961, and the consulting firm Terry Group said the country is on pace to lose nearly half its population by 2100.
- But it’s not just population decline that weakens China. It’s the climbing proportion of elderly people.
- In 1990, 5% of Chinese people were 65 or older. That’s at 14% today, and could surge to 30% by 2050, per Terry Group. By their estimate, China could lose an average of 7 million working-age adults each year by the next decade.
- Already, working-age couples have to support aging parents, education costs for children are climbing, and confidence in the economy is low.
- For China to have a shot at improving demographic conditions, experts say Beijing will have to unwind its long-standing household registration system. The policy, which dates back to the 1950s, makes rural-to-urban migration unfavorable and difficult, as it ties social welfare benefits to where people are born.
- Roughly a quarter of China’s population works in agriculture — well above the 3% mark in the US — and that presents its own productivity limitations. …
- There’s also a story I read here two weeks ago that I promised we’d follow up on: China’s Great Leap Backward: So much for the next dominant superpower; The Chinese century is over. Facing upside-down demographic and economic trends, China is heading off the cliff. By Joe Tauke |COM | Published July 30, 2023 @ 12:00PM (EDT)
- The “Chinese century” is over.
- After all the prognostications, projections and proclamations of the past 20 years asserting that China would soon overtake the U.S. as the world’s dominant superpower, the People’s Republic is now facing twin perpetual headwinds, and has no realistic options for countering either of them.
- The first could accurately be described as the strongest long-term force driving the fates of all great powers: demographics. What was, for many previous decades, China’s ultimate advantage — its never-ending supply of working-age laborers — peaked at almost exactly one billion people in 2010, according to the Chinese census. The next census, in 2020, revealed that for the first time since China’s economic liberalization in the 1970s, the working-age cohort had shrunk, decreasing by more than 30 million. The U.N. estimates that this group will continue to contract, dropping to 773 million by 2050. (In other words, between now and then China is likely to lose a number of workers larger than the entire population of Brazil.) The under-14 population will also fall in that same period, from just over 250 million in 2020 to a median projection of 150 million in 2050. Not only will the workers be disappearing, but nobody is expected to replace them.
- Every age-related trend in China is going in the wrong direction. The nation’s median age, once well below the Western world’s, is now older than America’s and headed further north with every passing year. Deaths outnumbered births last year for the first time since 1961. The fertility rate, which normally must be at 2.1 children per adult woman just to maintain a steady population, has slipped to below 1.1 — a figure made worse by the fact that, unlike in virtually every other country on the planet, China doesn’t have a relatively even gender split in its adult population, the long-term result of male favoritism combined with the central government’s infamous one-child policy. Basic math dictates that tens of millions of these “extra” men will never start families of their own. To compound the problem even further, women in China have indicated lower interest in having children than ever before; more than two-thirds have expressed “low birth desire.” According to Prof. James Liang of Peking University, fertility rates in Beijing and Shanghai have fallen to an astonishing 0.7, “the lowest in the world.” …
- Much has been made of the difficulties China will face in attempting to manage a rapidly-shrinking workforce against a rapidly-growing retirement age population, which is projected to double by 2050. But that issue may actually be preferable to what is likely to happen afterward, or perhaps sooner if some of China’s older population doesn’t wind up living as long as expected. …
- [T]he lower-end expectations at the end of the century: 600 million, 500 million, perhaps as low as 450 Even the median projection puts the number at around 750 million. This is not just a rogue estimate by a single U.N. agency — the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences has issued an extremely specific prediction of 587 million. If you think China has ghost cities now, imagine that vast nation with barely one-third of the population it has today. What will happen to property values in a country where between 50 and 70 percent of its people have disappeared? What will happen to tourism? To retail? So many articles have been written about what happens when a modern society grows “too old,” as has happened in Japan and Germany, among others. But how many have been written about what happens when the majority of a modern society vanishes altogether?
- To make matters worse, if that seems possible, all these numbers rely on official Chinese statistics, and the government has likely been overstating them. According to an extensive examination of different sets of books by University of Wisconsin Prof. Yi Fuxian, it’s possible to find the “fudging” effects by comparing local and provincial data to that published at the national level. …
- To be fair, most major nations in the West also face declining birth rates and aging citizens. The enormous difference in projected demographics, at least in many of those cases, comes down to immigration. Even with a current fertility rate of only 1.6, the U.S. population projects to reach roughly 400 million by the end of the century, according to the U.N.’s median estimate. East Asian countries tend to have much more restrictive immigration policies, but nowhere is this as true as in the People’s Republic. Since 1950, which is as far back as the data goes, China has never experienced a single year of net positive migration. Ever. …
- [The Chinese economy]is going to become a big, big problem. Much of this problem will, of course, be caused by the enormity of the demographic crunch. But there are specific details that will amplify the impact of that crunch. A whopping 70 percent of Chinese household wealth is held in real estate. Seventy. Percent. (The comparable number in the U.S. is less than half that.) The demand for investment properties has been so high that China’s construction eruption simply cannot be reasonably compared to those that have occurred in any other major economy, even ones that have experienced giant housing bubbles of their own. …
- [T]he Reserve Bank of Australia shows, “residential gross fixed capital” as a proportion of GDP is close to 20% in China — the comparable proportions in Australia, Japan, South Korea and the U.S. are all around 5% or less. …
- It is likely impossible to overemphasize the potential economic damage that will likely ensue when previous decades of population growth, urbanization and the frenzied real estate investment that has accompanied them run into the brick wall of new decades with consistently fewer buyers — and that doesn’t mean “fewer buyers” in the normal sense of a bubble popping, but the literal absence of hundreds of millions of buyers over time. What will happen as those aforementioned ghost cities begin to multiply? And perhaps the more important question: How can China possibly make its all-important transition to a consumer-based economy when consumers as a whole have shoved so much of their wealth into properties that will often end up being worthless? How in the world is this supposed to work? How could it work? …
- … Carnegie’s China scholar Michael Pettis explained earlier this year, “China has the highest investment share of GDP in the world. It also has among the fastest growing debt burdens in history. …
- Pettis is not strictly talking about central government debt here, but rather total debt within the economy. …
- … The total amount of such debt in the U.S. increased over those 15 years [by 120%], or slightly more than double the amount that existed in 2007. … [T]he Chinese measurement reached nearly … 50 times what it was in 2007. …
- The ironic lack of social safety nets in an ostensibly Communist country, combined with a seemingly unstoppable regime of compulsive over-investment, has for many years resulted in the exact opposite of what China needs — consumers have felt and still feel it necessary to have some of the highest savings rates in the world, which means they aren’t becoming a larger part of the economy but rather a smaller part of it. …
- The structural forces that have allowed it to grow at breakneck speed for half a century are now the same forces preventing it from continuing to do so. Chinese labor costs today are significantly higher than costs for the same amount of labor in both its Asian neighbors and Latin America, including Mexico, where manufacturing for the American market is much more convenient despite the overhanging power of the cartels. In fact, Mexico became the largest overall U.S. trading partner in the first quarter of this year, after surpassing China to become the biggest trade partner specifically for manufactured goods last year.
- China’s “factory of the world” status is slowly evaporating because cheaper workers can now be found elsewhere, which often come without problems like blatant IP theft across countless industries or figuring out whether any given supply chain involves Uyghur forced labor camps. The Chinese population is shrinking, meaning that domestic labor costs will continue to surge upward even as overall GDP growth falls. … China is no longer a place where capitalist dreams go to succeed, and indeed the fact that it ever was reflects one of the biggest mistakes the Western world has made since the fall of the Iron Curtain. …
- MIKE: I read the lengthy excerpt of this article 2 weeks ago and the link is here. The excerpt is also scripted here, so you can refer to it if you wish. The article is long, and I’ve digested it down as best I could. I recommend reading it. Based on the number of related stories I’ve seen over the past couple of weeks, I think the topic is, and will remain, relevant, but this article is still one of the best.
- MIKE: I’ve discussed China’s “demographic timebomb” a number of times on this show, and while this article goes into a lot of detail and projections about China’s demographic and economic present and future, it doesn’t spend one word on the implications for global peace.
- MIKE: From my readings, this whole story discusses a big reason why the years 2025 to maybe 2030, or 2035, represent the window of greatest danger for an attempted Chinese military solution to the Taiwan question.
- MIKE: Economic power is the ultimate source of military power. Population is the source of military manpower and production. China is nearing its historic zenith of both.
- MIKE: Meanwhile, the US, as the dominant Indo-Pacific power, will be declining to its military low point due to aging equipment that’s scheduled for decommissioning and retirement. And when I talk about “equipment”, I mean very expensive things with long lead times like ships, aircraft, and now even missiles and artillery.
- MIKE: The great danger here is this period may be China’s best window of opportunity for perhaps the next 50-100 years to take Taiwan by force, if it ever intends to do so. Let’s hope that the temptation doesn’t become too much to bear.
- ANDREW: War is historically a popular policy in times of economic crisis. I too hope that China doesn’t fall back on the easy out. I thought last week’s article was a very fair-minded analysis of China’s potential issues right up until the last few paragraphs where the author just had to throw in some jabs. But what else can you expect from a mainstream US publication talking about a geopolitical rival. I take exception with two points in particular.
- ANDREW: First, the article mentions “Uyghur forced labor camps”. As I’ve said before on the show, until a government or international entity investigates the situation with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and comes to a conclusion that contradicts the investigator’s own biases, I don’t believe there’s enough reliable evidence to conclude whether China is using forced labor or committing genocide. Second, the article claims that China has a “lack of social safety nets”. I did some research to test this claim, and based on my amateur currency conversion calculations, I believe that China has budgeted the equivalent of about $545 billion USD for social security and employment in 2023. By comparison, India, a country with about the same population, budgeted what I’ve calculated to be the equivalent of over $865 billion USD. I haven’t taken costs of living into account, or what specific programs are funded by each government, but I am disappointed to see that China is spending almost half of what India is on social welfare. One estimate says that across federal, state and local governments, the US is even spending $74 billion more than China is, and I think we all know how underfunded social services are in the US. So sure, China’s social safety net probably isn’t where it needs to be, but it’s not earth-shatteringly worse than the US’s either, and I feel like the article doesn’t accurately represent that.
- ANDREW: To give the article its credit, though, this is a very well-evidenced and sobering look at China’s demographic and economic prospects for the future. I think one of the best solutions for China is going to be loosening their immigration laws, with a specific focus on working-aged people. If they had already had fairly lax immigration laws, and still got into this position, then I think there would be a lot of cause for concern. But I think that quite a lot of economies that have grown to take major positions on the world stage have ended up needing immigration to keep ticking over, and it may just be that time for China. True, they may not end up dominating global trade like maybe they want. But sitting comfortably among the top economies of the world isn’t too bad of a consolation prize.
- REFERENCE: The Plague Is More Likely Now Thanks to Climate Change — THINKWING RADIO -Weds, Nov. 24, 2021 (Item 8)
- REFERENCE: Goldman Sachs says India will overtake the U.S. to become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075; Lee Ying Shan@LeeYingshan | CNBC.COM | Published Mon, Jul 10 2023,1:17 AM EDT. Updated Tue, Jul 11 2023, 8:27 AM EDT
=======================================================
- Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter Information
- It’s time to snail-mail (no emails or faxes) in your application for mail-ballots, IF you qualify TEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
- Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
- Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2022
- Austin County Elections
- Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
- Chambers County (TX) Elections
- Colorado County (TX) Elections
- Fort Bend County takes you to the proper link
- GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
- Harris County ((HarrisVotes.com)
- LibertyElections (Liberty County, TX)
- Montgomery County (TX) Elections
- Walker County Elections
- Waller County (TX) Elections
- Wharton County Elections
- For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG. Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
- If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
- HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, HARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
- Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
- A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
- Current utility bill
- Bank statement
- Government check
- Paycheck
- A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
- You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
- Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
- Sick or disabled;
- 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
- Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
- Make sure you are registered:
- Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
- CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
- CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
- Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
- BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and if eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL NEW MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2023.
- Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
- Just be registered and apply for your mail-in ballot if you may qualify.
- You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
_______________________________________________________________________
Remember! When you donate to KPFT, your dollars pay for:
- Transmitter and equipment costs
- Programs like Thinkwing Radio, Politics Done Right, and other locally-generated political talk shows
- KPFT’s online streaming
- Maintaining a wide variety of music programs
Each time you turn on the radio, you can hear your dollars at work!
Make your contribution to this station right now. Just call 713 526 5738. That’s 713-526-5738. Or give online at KPFT.org!