The first few weeks of the new administration in the US has seen a lot of uproar in the media. The key media personnel and the citizens are reacting like some of these were unexpected. Given there is a Republican senate, representatives and white house. Here are a few examples of note.

• Obama Care – Trump Care
• 3 million illegal voters
• De-regularising wall street
• Revoking EPA
• More regularisation for progressive ideas
• Reduce spending on government departments
• Wiretapping claims of Obama – Microwaves turning to cameras

These moves are nothing more than classic republican, libertarian or political conservative moves. This speech has varied at all in spite of having nil evidence of it working for the common people. Let’s just dig deep into this.

Regulate the poor and free the rich

The conservatives always talk about having small, non-interfering government. What exactly they mean here is, they want the government to not interfere in the business of the rich but instead regulate the poor. There is a reason why the taxation policies are heavily biased towards people who do not early daily or monthly wages. No conservative government removes regulations to liberate labour force. They will regulate more to protect the rich. I will write separately about the naturalisation of this movement, but for now, let me just summarise this order. The conservatives tap on to the selfish nature of people by extending microeconomic principles to the macroeconomic arena. Here are few examples.

1. Trickle down economics – People are poor because they are lazy. If you extend support to the rich, they will instigate growth. Feels logical for most. doesn’t it?
2. Sell hope where everyone can become rich like an extension of liberty. In reality, richness only exists when you have a segment of the society as poor.

Rich have to get richer

It is extremely despicable when we watch Paul Ryan talks about the need to provide more to the top 1% of the economy at the expense of the bottom 80%. However, Paul Ryan is not that different. If you think about the policies of the conservative governments globally, you will see the following pattern.

1. Deregulate them to ensure they get richer at the expense of the society. Just look at regulations which republicans want to repeal
   1. EPA – Laws which protect the environment. You have to look at the world through the eyes of a stockbroker to not bother about the environment.
   2. Dodd  Frank – Regulation which ensures (at least partially) that we will not have another financial crisis. This will ensure that Wall Street can go back to its merry bad ways again.
   3. Offshore drilling ban in the Arctic – Regulation which will ensure we don’t endanger the A species and trigger an avalanche. Also, this will have a massive impact on the climate.
2. Cut spending on key portfolios where private industries will be able to make more money. The portfolios which get funded are ones where government money cannot be syphoned out to private sectors e.g. Education, IRS, Space research. The ones which get funded are Military, infrastructure where huge contracts can be given to big corporations.
3. Confuse the citizens between debt issue and revenue issue. A person who earns a monthly salary of $6000 pays more in tax than a person who makes the $60,000 amount in profit.  The government then talks about having a debt issue. Government debt is not bad, it is a hope that economy will grow. Most governments have an income problem where the rich don’t pay their fair share. Like Political Scientist Mark Blyth says, democracy is like asset insurance. Rich can’t default on their premium payments.
4. Tax breaks for the rich – The biggest reason to repeal Obama care is not because it didn’t work for the poor, it is because it made the rich pay a bit more. There is never a thought of reducing taxes for the working population. No one has done that so far. Does anyone wonder why?

Voter base has to get smaller

As a society gets bigger and more informed, the chances of them falling for the bad story above gets lesser and lesser. Further, considering the policies are divisive, if you conduct an unbiased election, then the chances of victory for republicans also reduces. That is why historically all republican members speak about voter fraud and more scrutiny. The more the voter percentage the lesser the chance they will win. The story of 3 million illegal voters is not new, it is age-old technique to make it difficult for miniorities, poor to register to vote. It is not like Republicans want small state. They want to replace democracy with either Aristocracy or Technocracy.

Quash diversity as it creates opinions

The conservative base has always been anti-minority, anti-immigration, anti-LGBT, anti-woman and anti-change. The reason is inclusivity will bring in diversity and diversity will bring in alternate opinions and alternate opinions will bring challenges. Any such challenge will threat the world order I have created where the rich reign supreme. This is a way to recreate the feudal system.

Faith is awesome

There is a reason why conservatives love faith. Faith gives everything that any dictator ever wanted.

1. A world order which cannot be questioned
2. Enough reasons to enslave and discriminate minorities
3. Prevent people from using their critical faculties

In conclusion, the conservatives parties don’t have a great hidden policy which will change. Their policies have always been pro-rich. The rest of the policies are means to make the rich richer.

One of my friends recently asked me a question. What is the difference between democracy and other forms? Why do you need an election? What is the choice I am making as a citizen? I promised to unpack the first question for him through this blog. It is my attempt at unpacking this and I am extremely sure I have made some blunders. So, I am happy for people to correct me.

Firstly, I want to avoid the confusion between forms of government and the names. If you look at the names of countries like the People’s republic of China, Republic of China, Republic of India, Republic of Korea, Commonwealth of Australia, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, United States of America, it doesn’t essentially tell us anything on the nature of the government.

Secondly, I also want readers to not confuse forms of government with party names. For example, the Democratic Party, Republican Party, People’s democratic party, National Democratic Alliance etc do not represent forms of government. I will write a separate blog on the philosophies of these parties.

Thirdly, the form of any government is never singular. It is a collection of different ideologies and types. We will now start to dissect it to make sense. I have classified government under different paradigms.

1. Head of the State

Head of the state is someone who takes part in diplomatic relations and is officially the head of the executive. The head of the state in most instances serves as the protector of the constitution and the commander in chief. In most countries, especially republics and constitutional monarchies, they turn out to be mere figure heads. Head of the state should not be confused with the head of the government.

Monarch

This is the oldest political institution. The head of the state is the king or the queen of the dynasty rule. e.g. Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Australia, Norway, Canada

Direct Representative

This kind of institution is where the head of the state is directly elected by the people. In most instances, these people are also the head of the government. e.g.The  United States of America.

Indirect Representative

In this format, the head of the state is chosen by the representatives of the government. e.g. India, China, Singapore, North Korea

Commonwealth

This is a fairly unique situation where countries agree to have a common head of state, invariably belonging to one of the member nation. e.g. Australia, Canada etc

2. Source of Power

There will be an entity which wields power in any society. Another way to look at governments is the source of those power

Autocracy – Rule of one

An Autocracy is a form of government, where power is with just one person. It is quite a utopian state as even the most autocratic of governments have people sharing the power. The forms of Autocratic governments are

1. Dictatorial – North Korea
2. Absolute Monarchy – Saudi Arabia

Democracy – Rule of all

Democracy as the very name suggests means that the power belongs to the entire population. This doesn’t mean that the entire population essentially rules. It is invariably the opinion of the majority. According to Democracy, no individual has more power than the other. This should not be confused with the execution of the powers. For example, countries like the US, Australia, Canada, UK, India are all democratic as far as the source of the power is concerned.

Oligarchy – Rule of few

Oligarchy is a government where the power is retained by the few people. A few forms of government

1. Bureaucracy – Power is with administrators and other officials
2. Theocracy – Power is with heads of religion
3. Technocracy – Power is with experts
4. Aristocracy – Power is with a small bunch of privileged

3. Economics

The economic ideologies are arguably the most discussed and least understood side of any government.

Capitalism

This ideology is based on private ownership and maximising individual wealth and profit. The core of capitalism is an unregulated market for good and services, which will enable the best make maximum profit. It gets  further classified into

1. Free Market Capitalism or Laissez-faire
2. State Capitalism eg. China
3. Welfare Capitalism – eg.Singapore

Communism

Communism is derived mainly from the ideologies of Karl Marx, where there is no individual ownership. All good and services are produced for the collective development and get shared as the state deems appropriate.

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system where individuals in a society live for the benefit of each other. There is still an element of private ownership and individual wealth, however, the core is not to maximise profit for the individuals. Unlike many, I don’t look at Socialism as a happy side of both Capitalism and Communism, but an independent economic system derived from principles of collective good.

4. Executive Power

The executive power defines who has the control over the government. This is required to make legal and policy decisions in a state. As with most of the other classifications, a state can fall into multiple category

Republic

A Republic form of government is one where the state is considered to be a public property run by a set of elected officials. The officials can either be elected by people as in the USA, Australia or India or by a single party like North Korea or China.

Monarchy

Most monarchs in the world don’t have executive power like the United Kingdom, Spain, Netherlands. There are very few absolute monarchs who hold executive power. They include Saudi Arabia and Brunei. Swaziland is a unique country whereby it has diarchy. As the name suggests, there are two heads of the state with absolute power.

Constitutional

These are states where the constitution holds precedence over anything else. The constitution also provides guidelines on the power distribution, civil rights, duties and also details how to make amendments to the constitution.

Anarchy

Anarchy is a form of government where there is practically no order. This is a very unstable state. It generally happens as a result of a regime change.

Direct Democracy

This kind of government is one where the executive power lies with the entire population. Every decision made is collective. Apart from few examples like plebiscites or referendums, there is no evidence of this form in the modern world.

5. Distribution of power

The last classification is on how power is distributed across the state.

Central

This form of government is one where there is one central body and the power is fully at that central body. In countries like China, Singapore the power is fairly centralised.

Federal

In this form of government, the powers are shared between the central body and states. Countries like the USA, Australia, India have a federal structure.

Commonwealth

As the name suggests, this is a system where a group of territories operate on common interest and welfare of the people. Countries like Australia call themselves commonwealth, though the word has lost its original meaning these days.

Feudal

Feudal system existed during the medieval period. In this form, there were a lot of representatives (lords, knights, nobles) running parts of a larger empire. These representatives held administrative control over their territory but were answerable to the monarchy.

Example countries

Here is my classification for some of the countries.

My references

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forms_of_government

and loads of others

It is a growing trend and quite a dangerous one, to pay on people’s emotions to justify and cover up deep flaws.Trump in his speech to the Congress, did exactly that. The mainstream media were obsessed with him being presidential but totally missed his rather outrageous sinister attempts. I have given below the links to videos where people actually did talk about this.

Here are the people he exploited in his speech.

1. Megan Crowley and her father John for FDA deregulation
2. Denisha Merriweather for private schools
3. Jamiel Shaw, Susan Oliver, Jenna Oliver, and Jessica Davis for illegal immigration
4. Carryn Owens for military spending
5. Antonin Scalia for justifying  Neil Gorsuch

Let me start by congratulating Trump on this idea. It works and I have seen it succeed a lot in India. People vote for candidates who make them cry a lot. People also forget their misery and the parties responsible, when they see bigger catastrophes in other people’s lives. It works like a charm. It is also a strategy which cannot be contested. Hillary Clinton did that successfully at DNC by using the father of dead US soldier, Khizr Khan. In both the instances though people who used the example were also responsible for the death. Trump ordered the mission in Yemen which was responsible for the death of Ryan Owens. Hillary Clinton voted for the war which resulted in the death of Humayun Khan along with countless others.

The press and wall street have reacted to the President Donald Trump’s address like the kids who were told to eat a bag of candies instead of attending the class. The wall street, the pinnacle of rogue stupidity and callousness reacted quite positively. They think it augurs well for their next quarter. Exactly what did Trump say? I just want to break it down for the purpose of people who haven’t heard it. I have followed Trump’s speech as is and you can look at the transcript if you want to map it back to his words.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/01/full-transcript-president-donald-trumps-first-speech-congress/

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/transcript-donald-trump-congress-speech-full-170301060306943.html

Summary

As it is a fairly long post, I want to start with a summary. I agree with Trump on withdrawal of TPP, need to look at American jobs, need to invest in infrastructure, and need to provide support to veterans. However, this entire speech was littered with flaws. Firstly the numbers don’t add up. Trump has decided to cut taxes for the rich. Then, he wants to spend more on infrastructure and military. Where does the money come from? He is going to touch your social welfare. Secondly, he hasn’t mentioned a word on climate change. Thirdly, he has contradicted himself a lot, especially on the environment front. Overall, it has nothing worthy of greatness. I don’t want to compare it to Trump’s other speeches and say that this one is relatively better. There is a certain basic standard I expect and this one falls short by miles.  The stock market has reacted positively purely on the basis of tax cuts for the rich and deregulation. It is a system that hasn’t learnt any lesson from the Global Financial Crisis.

Let us get to the details now.

1.0 Introduction

In a typical Trump fashion, he started the speech talking about violence in America. For a person who criticised Obama and the democrats for refusing to call Islamic terrorism as it should, he didn’t mention about what was the motivation behind the vandalism of Jewish cemeteries or the shooting in Kansas city. Both were indeed crimes done by Christians, who in some way believed the victims were responsible for their plight. That said, I am ready to give Trump the benefit of doubt on this.

2.0 Identification of the problems

He then went on to speak about the problems facing the United States of America. He got most of the problems spot on. The dwindling middle class, the crumbling infrastructure and the impact on wars are the major areas of concern. To Trump’s credit, he has been getting that story right and it has contributed immensely to his election success. However, there were two points of contention here. The first one is wealth to foreign countries. It is factually incorrect. The wealth actually is with the US companies. It is with the top 1% of the world and most of them lodged in tax heavens. The second one is having wide open borders. Again it is an alternate fact which was purely inserted to build a wall or insult the Mexicans.

3.0 Vision

Trump followed it up with a rhetoric on how he will make America great again. There are two parts to admire, two to fear and one to be really sceptical.  Let me start with the good parts first. The military needs support, especially its veterans. The crumbling infrastructure should be replaced and hopefully by employing people in the US. The parts to be worried about are his attack on drug and inner cities. No country has worked out this drug war strategy well. They have taken medicinal and recreational use out of the equation. Further, this has been used for decades to target innocents. The epidemic is not drug flow but it is drug war. The neglected inner cities comment is an excuse for stop and frisk. It is a direct excuse to mishandle the youth from minority communities. The safety is a direct reflection of poor gun control and the lack of opportunity is a reflection of the dwindling social support. What feels like an inspiring paragraph, is actually a plot to crush the society further. The last bit is the roaring back to life, for the dying industries. The industries that Mr.Trump is talking about here are, fossil fuel, mining and heavy engineering. The loss of jobs for people in these industries is much more nuanced than outsourcing to other countries. Further, these are directly responsible for the environmental hazards which Trump doesn’t believe happens.

4.0 Achievements

Trump then moves on to talk at length about his achievements. This section was filled with threats, rhetoric, good points and loads of alternate facts. I will break this down into individual parts to make assimilation easier. This is an important section as it is easy to either ignore good points or miss the deeper meaning of the problem.

Making Companies investing the US

Trump started by stating a fact on companies which have decided to invest in the United States and stock market gaining momentum. There are two points to note in this. Firstly, he doesn’t say he is responsible for both these items. That also absolves him of any future issues with both these which is bound to happen. All these companies have decided to invest in the United States, but it will not create American jobs as much. The reasons are

1. There are existing vacancies in the technology sector and specific skills in demand, which the US is unable to fill. This is because of the erosion in public education which has happened over generations.
2. The unskilled jobs will pay minimum wage to people is not going to help. Most of them are already paid minimum wages and can’t sustain a family with that.
3. Companies like Intel, Softbank, Lockheed and Walmart will invest heavily in automation, which will result in lesser jobs and not more.
4. Lockheed already holds a lot of federal contracts for missiles and jet fighters. I am sceptical about this.

This is another age-old technique which comes from trickle down economics. It just doesn’t work.

Cheaper F-35 Fighter Jets

Draining the Swamp

Deregulation

North Dakota Access Pipeline

TPP

Security and protecting citizens

Immigration

ISIS

Isreal and Iran

Supreme Court Judges

Policy Plans

Infrastructure Spending

Health Care

Trump’s plan on health care almost accounts for everything but just doesn’t add up. It had words that most people wanted to hear without actually conveying anything. The core of the plan is, “I hate Obama Care and I am going to repeal it.”. I firmly believe Obama care can be improved and the only way to improve it is by making the rich pay appropriately. Let’s first start by listing down his features of the new plan.

1. Not mandated
2. Cheaper premium
3. More options
4. Protect all Americans
5. Everyone including people with pre-existing conditions will have access to health coverage
6. Purchase your own coverage
7. Give state Governers the power to decide on Medicaid
8. Bring down drug prices immediately
9. Power to buy across state

Social Welfare

FDA – Deregulation

Education

Social Safety

Increased spending in Military

The End.

When Donald Trump talks about media being biased and bad, it is hard for me to disagree with him. The trouble is he is considering media biased only when they oppose him. He is using that as a justification to sideline them, take away their freedom and spread his alternate facts. Here are my view points on this topic.

Focus on the incorrect problems

The country is facing problems which affect the people. Go to the people and figure out what matters to them and report that. The clothes which Ivanka wears or Trump’s tweet on that is not of any significance to the people. Trump being presidential is not the biggest problem facing the country where millions are in poverty. Media has to bring the right problems and the corruption affecting those to light. It is hard to do that when they themselves are corrupt.

Lack of insights

All the reports are extremely superficial. There are hardly any insights. “Trump says there will be a record high reduction in taxes. The global markets react positively to it.” These are factual statements. There are no insights that people can gain from that. Dig deeper, understand the meaning, dissect the statements and the motivations, to come up with the insights of any value.

Reporting on their philosophical allegiances instead of facts

Media hardly gives credit where it is due. When Trump cancelled TPP, says he will force pharmaceutical companies to fall in line, says he will invest in American jobs, questions if America has been good in the past, he is actually right. Given him credit for that. That will show that you are reporting on truth and not your stupid allegiances. It is important to criticise Obama, Hillary and Trump where due. Fox has to support republicans and CNN has to support democrats irrespective of the facts. This is not journalism. It is you putting loyatly to your empoyer and faith before justice to your profession.

Dumb enough to fall for red herrings

When Trump says shit like ‘Removing Ivanka fashion line from store is wrong’, please do not fall for it. These are red herrings which you focus on, as his team of deplorables led by Steve Bannon is coming up with horrendous policies. Your message is diluted when you concentrate on everything. He distracted the press by attacking them on one side. On the other side, he created a safe passage to come up with more executive orders favouring his billionaire looter friends.

If the mainstream media continues to focus on the wrong elements, they are only going to give more power to idiots.  They are losing the plot by not playing the role of effective defender of liberty in democracy.

Growing up in India in the 80s and 90s of the previous century, the kids are always taught to hate Pakistan. There are stories in the print and news media about how bad our neighbour behaves. As with everything else, I had decided early on that I will not believe what my government wants me to believe. In a few years, I moved to the UK for studies. There I met some of the best people from Pakistan I had met till that date, one of which was an aunty in Reading to treated me like her own son. I also met some people who have been indoctrinated the other way in Pakistan. 80 years after achieving self-governance rights from the British, the two countries are at loggerheads desperately trying to overthrow each other in the world stage.

Yesterday, I watched the below documentary. I have watched some outrageous ones in the past but nothing has wrecked my sleep as this. So, I do advise people to go through the description before watching the full video. It can be disturbing. Even accounting for exaggeration and bias, the reality is quite haunting. It got me to write this blog about the tussle as I see it.

India sees Pakistan as a country filled with supporters of Hafeez Saeed, Rehman Malik and Taliban. Pakistan sees India as a country filled with RSS and the perpetrators responsible for the distressed Kashmir. The reality is both countries are filled with people desperately trying to make the ends meet and have military who wants to put this fight to an end. I find this tussle rather unwanted and stupid.

Both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, there is no way one is going to gain supremacy over the other. The line of control between the two countries cannot be renegotiated through battlefield victories. Both countries are spending immensely on maintaining security from the other, ignoring the plight of their civilians. Both countries will struggle if they have an unstable neighbour. Further, the Muslims of India are Indians and the Hindus and Sikhs of Pakistan are Pakistanis. There is not need for either country to perform a moral drive on the rights of minorities with their neighbour. The last of all, one needs to fast forward 500 years and see what they want in history. Fostering good partnership not only makes economic sense, it makes social and ecological sense.

India needs a stable neighbour in Pakistan. By supporting Pakistan in its growth, India will have a new trading partner. It also works to India’s advantage in its bid to get into becoming a permanent member of the security council. It drastically reduced the military budget, which can be focused on development. It will help the intelligence and security agencies look the India more holistically than what it is able to do now.

Pakistan needs India’s support to prevent itself from being distanced any further internationally. The biggest supporter of Pakistan now is China, which has its fair share of human rights violations. Pakistan has to focus heavily on rebuilding its infrastructure, solve the internal extremist movements and become a thriving democracy. It has a massive income and wealth inequality problem. It needs to relook into the education sector and get more kids educated for a better future. This is not going to happen with Chinese investments as the latter is more interested in investment and return from that. What Pakistan needs it to channel funds it is currently spending on military back to its economic development.

The thorn in the flesh of both countries is Kashmir. Both countries look at it as their right. While Pakistan feels it has a moral obligation to the Kashmiris, India believes Kashmir is its sovereign right. As with most other situations, the reality is buried deep and in a different dimension. There are many renowned political experts, who have dug deep into the problem and solution (it is for another blog). Kashmir is a tussle amongst disenfranchised people who want control over their land. Unfortunately, it has become extremely communal. There are three main groups, the Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists of Jammu and Kashmir. The solution has to work for all of them, without any feeling left out or a minority.

The hidden component in the fight is India’s support to the Baluchs. I am in favour of federated governments, where the rights of none get ignored. India can never openly support or arm the Baluch movement. It will never come to the forefront of any negotiation, but I am sure there will be a demand for India to stop its support.

Even considering these two issues, there is actually no strong reason for both countries to collaborate for the greater good of their citizens. The unfortunate part is that the tussle has become a show of strength for the political parties and a red herring for the government to distract everyone from the core issues facing their republics.