Trump’s Emerging Tax Plan: Bad for Ireland – The early predictions for the Trump administration tax package is that it will shake up the world of direct foreign investment and severely impact Ireland’s economy. The Irish Times used the term “potentially toxic” regarding the Trump plan’s negative effect on Ireland and its economy going forward.

A version of the plan, now in its formative stages, calls for a cut from 35 percent to 15 percent in the corporate tax rate that US companies currently pay on profits. That would result in an enormous decline in America’s overall tax revenue unless other sources of revenue are found to make up the loss. One idea being floated by Republicans in Congress is a “border adjustment tax.” This revenue reordering would make up for the reduced tax income by increasing taxes on those companies that sell into the United States while cutting tax bills for companies exporting from the US.

There are those who say that the border tax could raise a significant amount of money, with one estimate hitting $1 trillion ($1,000 billion) over the next decade, a sum used to pay for tax cuts elsewhere in the budget.

The window of opportunity for this radical tax shift is relatively short – until the autumn – which means that campaigning members of Congress would be looking to the 2018 mid-term elections when they would be selling the plan to a volatile, untested electorate.
As now envisioned, the restructuring on import/export taxes will have a decided impact on Ireland and other overseas companies, and bring new threats of retaliation from global markets. The word about the plan being used among companies doing business internationally is “danger.”

This year and into 2018 could mean vast changes for American companies and serious concern for an Ireland that has done well, even prospered, with its current low corporate tax policy and strong links to corporate America.

Troubled Deutsche Bank Has Long, Close Links to Trump – The Guardian newspaper has conducted an internal examination of the hundreds of million of dollars the bank has loaned to Donald Trump, a probe aimed at learning if there are any suspicious financial connections between the new President and Russia. The internal Deutsche review “found no evidence of any Russian link,” but the bank is under increased pressure to appoint an independent external auditor to review the institution’s misconduct

in other, non-Trump matters. Deutsche Bank is also “undergoing scrutiny” by the US Department of Justice for alleged misconduct and possible Russian money-laundering.

A member of the US House Ways and Means Committee, Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat, is urging Deutsche to “shine a bright light” on its lending to the president while adding that Congress should also be allowed to “review Trump’s tax returns in closed session.” Amen to that, and the sooner the better.

Return of “Beauty Queen” Triggers Warm Memories – An over-booked flight home to Boston with an unexpected extra day to revel in our holidays back in the early ‘70s was the first time I saw Anna Manahan on stage in what was to be a
lengthy and enriching special friendship. We had met briefly through a mutual friend a year earlier, and my wife Jean was with me on this trip to Ireland. We both were enthralled as Anna and Art Carney performed wondrously in Brian Friel’s “Lovers,” which was on tour in Limerick.

Even if I wanted to, I can’t escape the memory of Anna this month of March in 2017. It has been eight years since she died after a long and lustrous career as the Grand Dame of the Irish theatre. Her brave heart allowed her nearly 60 years in front of audiences, and eight decades as Ireland’s most endearing personality. She appeared on stage from the Royal Court in London to Broadway in New York. She had a unique rapport with theater audiences with the way she made the stage a home and the audience her guests. The critics were unanimous: She came alive, electric when she was on stage.

Waterford was Anna’s touchstone. Her hometown gifted her with the Freedom of Waterford City, named a sprightly housing estate after her, and smiled with pleasure as she lived her life between “work” (her name for on-stage moments from Panto in Dublin to Broadway’s Beauty Queen, the television shows and the one-woman performances) on Williams Street with her brothers Val and Joe.
A frequent visitor to Boston, a city she loved, Anna was the 1984 recipient of the Eire Society of Boston Gold Medal for lifetime achievement in the arts.

But there was a second act for Anna and it opened in 1998 in New York where she stunned critics and her fellow actors with the power and perception of her role as Mag in “Beauty Queen of Leenane,” the Martin McDonagh play that opened first off Broadway in an Atlantic Theater Company production, and after rave reviews, moved to the Walter Kerr Theater on Broadway
where it won six Tony nominations and four Tony Awards. “Beauty Queen” is now on tour and it just completed a run at Boston’s Paramount Theater with Marie Mullen as Mag.

With six nightly performances and two matinees, if memory serves, Anna was at center stage eight times a week for most of the play’s performance. It was an endurance trial every night, but as tired and sick as she was those 19 years ago, she wouldn’t consider an understudy or some time off. Anna Manahan was a team player and “Beauty Queen” was her team, and she did it night after night until she eventually gave in and sought relief.

Anna had long thought via a long-ago diagnosis that she had a lingering allergy or something similar. Finally, after much urging by the cast in New York, she relented and saw a doctor. It turned out that she was suffering from a heart virus that she had fought to overcome but could never find relief for as she toured from Australia to Boston to Belfast and points in-between to keep her theatrical commitments.

Anna listened with amazement as she learned from the celebrated cardiologist sitting across from her that she had a serious problem and would be dead in a year or less if she didn’t immediately begin using life-saving medicine that would end her years of mysterious suffering and constant unexplained fatigue. She lived for eight more years, until March 8, 2009, traveling yearly to the United States to see her doctor, now an old friend, and take back to Waterford a large supply of the life-prolonging medicine.

That should be the end of her brilliant life story, but it wasn’t. That happened when she won the Tony for “Queen” as Best Featured Actress and went on stage in 1998 before millions on TV to accept the award. She thanked her friends and fellow cast members, but saved her best for her doctor, the medicine man who found time in a specialist’s hectic life of healing to treat her. She always referred to him as “the doctor who saved my life.”

A personal note: Back in spring 1998 Jean and I visited and stayed with Anna on a series of visits to New York to see her perform in “Beauty Queen.” And we later attended her “wrap party” to mark the final performance of “Beauty Queen” before she flew home to Waterford.

Wheels Coming Off This “Finely Tuned Machine” – Sadly, the finely tuned machine, as our president called his administration in his first weeks in the White House is in reality a deeply flawed operation, especially at Rex Tillerson’s State
Department. Media reports (that dishonest press!) note senior staff positions left vacant, his deputy sent back to the parade grounds, and US foreign policy being made by the ideological clique that surrounds Trump. While Tillerson was showing the flag at the G20 conference in Bonn, back home, a major department that he had left unattended, one that is organically weak and confused, was left outside the loop on key policy decisions, many of which were coming directly from the White House.

If this administration were a Fortune 500 company, the executive board of directors might be scanning the business pages with thoughts of a fresh face as CEO. But the Trump situation is far different; it’s in peril amidst calls for the reigning majority party, the GOP, to go into alarm mode and bring things under control. But I wouldn’t hold my breath until that egg shell is broken. In the interim we have an elected president who wants to talk about old elections, voter fraud that never happened, and media that have seen enough in Trump’s first days to raise the alarm.

Yet there are small mercies we may be thankful for. Among those are (to date) no sign of the “BS Three” – Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, and Chris Christie. They have not been selected by the president to join the White House team, so all is not quite as dark and gloomy in a deeply divided America as it could be.

Ugly Business Out of the North – The Northern Ireland province has enough problems they would dearly like to improve on, but they could do no less than run down the brutal, violent messages that arrive on politician’s desks. The latest obscenity is a bullet –conventional shorthand for a death threat in the North – in a post to a SDLP Assembly candidate in North Belfast, Nichola Mallon.
Mallon, the target of loyalist paramilitaries, is pregnant and due to give birth to her second child in May. Alliance leader Naomi Long, who has also received loyalist death threats, voiced her “absolute sympathy and support for Mrs. Mallon.”

Who are these “tough guys” who love to intimidate women? The people of Ireland have had enough of that strong-arm politicking; it has no place in Irish society. What great sin or political evil has Mrs. Mallon done to merit such an outrageous mail delivery, you
ask? Well, she has spoken out as an elected official against paramilitaries who profit at the public’s expense, describing the threat as “an affront to democracy” from paramilitaries and thugs reacting to her “legitimate questions” about how public money is being spent. And she has been an unrelenting critic of Stormont’s Social Investment Fund, which recently received nearly
$2 million dollars in public money.

Too Early For Snap Judgments – I had intended to cover a compilation of reports from a variety of sources regarding the stability and clarity of accusations made by the president. These evaluations included some material from Al Franken, a US senator from Minnesota who says that some of his fellow senators think Trump is “not right mentally.” Along with that, the Guardian (UK), and questioners from BBC News have been putting probing questions to mental health professionals. I decided to let that discussion ripen somewhat before sharing it. Although I confess I am not sanguine about all this, given Trump’s 77-minute anti-press diatribe on Feb. 17, an unanchored rant with no clear purpose.

The March Almanac of Life, Death and Travail – March 1, 1965: The body of Sir Roger Casement, who had been hanged in 1916, was re-interred in Glasnevin Cemetery; Republicans in Long Kesh begin phased hunger strikes in support of better conditions; March 2, 1984: The death of Belfast-born Rinty Monaghan, world flyweight boxing champion; March 6, 1831: US Gen. Philip Sheridan was born in Killinkere, Co. Cavan; 1988: The shootings of three unarmed Provo IRA in Gibraltar; March 8, 1966: The Dublin landmark Nelson’s Pillar was demolished by Republicans; March 10, 1888: Barry Fitzgerald, a renowned character actor as an adult, was born in Dublin; 1966: The short story writer Frank O’Connor dies; March 12: The educator George Berkeley is born in Thomastown,, Co. Kilkenny; March 17, 1762: First St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York; 1858: The Fenians, an Irish Republican Brotherhood, are launched in Dublin by James Stephens; March 20, 1964: The death at age 41 of Brendan Behan; March 24, 1909: The death of John M. Synge at 38; March 25, 1920: The arrival in Ireland of the notorious Black & Tans; March 29, 1873, Peg Sayers, storyteller and autobiographer, was born in Dunquin, Co. Kerry; March 30, 1979: Airey Neave, a member of the British Parliament, was assassinated by an Irish National Liberation Army car bomb in the House of Commons car park.

RANDOM CLIPPINGS
The numbers for the next election in the Republic of Ireland have begun to tighten up and Fianna Fail, long considered struggling for a resurgence of public support, has jumped into an early lead. Latest polling (Feb. 18) shows Fianna Fail overtaking Fine Gael. In recent surveys the Soldiers of Destiny jumped six points to 33 percent, while Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s party is at 25 after a 4- point drop. … The Brexit border skirmishes have developed a hard edge as roads near Dundalk in Co. Louth are filling with protesters in opposition to a hard border between Ireland and the UK, which is a major concern. … GAA finances are reflecting an increase in revenue for 2016, but warn of lower attendance. … Building firms in Ireland are pleading for expats to return home to be a part of the anticipated construction boom over the next five years. … New York Congressman Peter King was saying he helped design the Trump immigration ban, but now, amid growing criticism, he is now edging away from the issue, perhaps because he has had no job offer from Mr. T. … The writer and widely respected cultural public figure Anthony Cronin has died at age 88.

There are changes coming in EU phone bills; the end of mobile roaming charges is in sight. … Amidst a dispute between the Pope Francis and the Knights of Malta, the Vatican has taken over and accepted the resignation of the Knights’ grand master. … In late January, Trump talked of a probe of supposed voter fraud, but little is heard lately from the Tower Man. … Four bills have been proposed for the 2017-2018 session of the Mass. House that would require drug makers to disclose the cost for research, marketing and manufacturing (applause here). … Sinn Fein’s new leader has moved to rescind the NI invitation to the US president, apparently after getting a look at Trump in action. … I sense that Bay State Attorney General Maura Healey would love to go one-on-one with the GOP fantasy brigade over the phantom buses to New Hampshire polling places.

The European Central Bank is warning Washington that deregulating US banks “could sow the seeds of the next financial crisis.” … Alasdair McDonnell, the SDLP member of the British Parliament for south Belfast, is cautioning against hard borders in the Brexit aftermath. … The ads are out pushing the commemorative “Donald coins,” but like the original they have no price tag and their value is a mystery. … Thousands are backing the House of Commons speaker who has banned Trump from addressing the Commons during his upcoming state visit. … The beat goes on for Irish passports, especially from Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK. Recent applications from the UK were up a stunning 74 percent. … The UK-based Aldi supermarket chain is busy opening stores in New England, with one near the Mass-RI line.

Wishing one and all the peace and patience of Saint Patrick as we grapple with today’s burdens.