Democrats & Trump May Have DACA Agreement – The Democratic leadership in Congress, Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have apparently come to an agreement with President Donald Trump to look to legislation to protect some 800,000 undocumented young immigrants who came to the US as infants and toddlers in exchange for stiffening US border protections. The plan did not specifically include any Trump promises on building a border wall.
There are many reasons to compromise on the DACA immigrants, although the president will pay a heavy price for not pushing the wall, a core issue of his. The twin goals sought by Trump when he announced his original plan on the DACA immigrants included solidifying his political base, the hard-core supporters, while one-upping Barack Obama.
Those benefits will have to wait now as a fire storm of Republican criticism confronts Trump back-pedaling on a key GOP issue like immigration. Conservative allies of the president, roughly 30-35 percent of the voting public, are outraged, sending an avalanche of shock and anger and feelings of betrayal to the White House. “A blaring political fire alarm” was the charge among the core faithful. GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa, an immigration hardliner, issued a dramatic warning to the president, “The Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible.”
One of the right wing’s most ardent supporters, Ann Coulter, who wrote a book titled “In Trump We Trust,” said, “At this point who doesn’t want Trump impeached?” And Breibart News, the ultra-conservative website now edited by former White House strategist Stephen Bannon, ran an article with a crimson-red headline: “Amnesty Don.”
However, a word of caution for the rest of us who have seen Trump’s mind-changing and shifts of policy direction, lies, etc.: The president may have further news, real or fake, on the DACA issue. As always, we await the latest news alert from the Fox News broadcast signal at Trump Tower.
Airbnb is Popular NI Lodging Spot – News out of the North and the smiling faces of those there who offer Airbnb couldn’t be better. Reports from government agencies that track housing usage show a red hot success story in the statistics from Northern Ireland. Figures show there have been 132,000 guest arrivals booked through Airbnb since July, 2016, and 53 million British pounds spent by them. Across the UK, there has been guest growth of 81 percent in the past year, providing 3.5 billion British pounds for local residents. Throughout the past year, the North has seen the fastest growth in the UK, up about 144 percent in increased revenue.
John McClure, general manager for northern Europe said recently, “The UK continues to break records on Airbnb, both as a world-leading destination, and for the benefits that hosting generates for local families and their communities. From Exeter to Edinburgh, millennial to seniors, apartments to tree houses, there’s something for everyone while helping global visitors feel at home here.
A Tribute to a Woman Who Knew What Peace Was -– The late secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam, had more friends and supporters, many contend, than most of her colleagues in the Unionist hierarchy and in the Belfast row houses. She was frequently cited as Britain’s most popular politician. And she won that reputation by talking straight, and dealing in hard truths, unlike some of her seatmates in Parliament.
I had the opportunity to watch her in action on several occasions and she had her facts right and her morality and fairness on target. She knew that Sinn Fein was the key to making peace happen and for that she earned Unionist brickbats. But that never slowed her down.
Mo Mowlam was the first women to hold the high-profile Northern Ireland post, yet she never hesitated to take the political risk or something new or unprecedented as when she made a solo visit to loyalist prisoners in the Maze Prison.
During her last months as secretary of state, she was often deathly sick with a brain tumor, but she had a lion’s heart and a job to do. Her efforts helped to restore an IRA cease-fire and to include Sinn Fein in multi-party talks about the North’s future. Her former constituents and her successor are working to get a monument up, a permanent tribute in the north of Ireland on her anniversary.
Mo Mowlam was only 55 when she died, and God knows we need more like her. She was the goods.
What’s The Story on the Bishop & Hospital Pensions? –Blackstone Valley in Rhode Island and, in particular, the former St. Joseph’s Hospital and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, were placed in receivership in early August and the pension fund for nurses faced insolvency. Three years ago the hospitals were sold to a California-based for-profit company. As of June 2016, the pension fund had assets valued at $95.5 million and liabilities put at $126 million.
In a closer look in the weekly Valley Breeze newspaper on Sept. 7, columnist Arlene Violet, a former nun and a former attorney general of Rhode Island, dissected the serious problems that had beset the hospital pension fund and faults Thomas Tobin, the bishop of Rhode Island’s Providence diocese, for not paying into the fund, thus allowing it to post a shortfall of at least $160 million.
One of the complaints that Violet has with Tobin is that the diocesan website highlights the financial difficulties of the priests, without properly noting or supporting the female staff at the hospital. In her column, she wrote: “Shortly after he became the bishop, Thomas Tobin made contributions to the pension fund that fell far short of the actuarial advice he was provided, and then the bishop stopped making payments altogether. The highest amount was a paltry $425 per month or lower; it went out from the pension fund for nurses without any money going in.”
The Valley Breeze and columnist Violet contend that Tobin “did not let the retirement fund participants know that he had ceased making payments or had underpaid the suggested $3 million plus that the actuary was suggesting. The board overseeing the fund apparently acquiesced to the bishop’s arrangements. The contributions which were made and then stopped by the bishop were part of a negotiated contract with the workers at the hospital. The bishop chose to treat [the contract] as a paper tiger.”
Violet, who is familiar with the hospital work force, says, “They worked overtime without pay because, well, that’s what you do when people are sick. Now there are about one thousand of them in their ’70s to ’90s, [and] the church failure to honor its word on the pensions will probably cut in half the paltry sum they receive.” She added, “The bishop delivers homilies on justice but neglects his obligations to retirees and those eligible for the pension.”
The column concludes by noting that Tobin “hasn’t spoken a peep about the malfeasance. He is hiding behind the exemption in federal law for church-related pensions which escape federal scrutiny. My retiree clients and others who have been conned are now forced to sue the diocese.”
As of mid-August, not a word has been heard from Bishop Tobin, who essentially administered the hospital pension fund for the nurses. Since the receivership petition was filed, not one of the current or former managers of St. Joseph has acknowledged any responsibility for the plight facing the pensioners.
Trump’s Weird Advisers Have Tales to Tell – Don’t look now, but aside from the members of the Cabinet who make up the White House management team, there are two radio/TV personalities the media identify as close “confidants” and “advisers.” to the president. They swap ideas and conspiracies, some say, and are gung ho Trump fans. These two media veterans, Alex Jones and Roger Stone, both lucid and confirmed fantasy-believers, have in recent days been sharing some alleged inside details about Trump, saying he has been slurring his speech (the president does not drink alcohol), mostly in the evenings. Neither Jones nor Stone admits to having seen the slurring but say they have been told about it or have “high-level sources” that disclose Trump’s behavior to them.
The Jones scenario goes like this: His sources are saying that “they” (?) are putting a slow sedative in Trump’s Diet Coke and in his iced tea, so that about six or seven at night he is drugged and slurring his words. One name that keeps popping up in conspiracy reports as a player in the drugging operation is that of new White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly, a favorite villain of the far right as he attempts to rein Trump in and bring some order to the dysfunctional and unproductive West Wing.
I leave this all with you folks out there. I think it’s destructive bilge and these two wing-nuts deserve each other. Still, both enjoy large audiences and are notorious conspiracy buffs who keep an eye on their radio and TV ratings. Wait for the book or the indictments, I guess.
Jeff Sessions and His Trouble With Truth – After a reported severe tongue-lashing from the president about his problems over the James Comey controversy, it’s clear that Jeff Sessions is doing his best to show Trump that he can take orders and follow the party line. Sessions has been traveling the country making false claims about funding for the sanctuary cities and its supposed impact on crime in places like Miami-Dade and Chicago. Sessions continues to try to link Chicago’s increase in violent crimes to immigration issues when there are no facts to support such a scenario. In Florida, Sessions credited a reduction in crime in Miami-Dade county to its policy reversal on sanctuary cities. This claim is also unsupported.
Studies show that immigrant-friendly strategies help reduce crime, not increase it. However, the Sessions train continues moving along, spreading his false claims across the country.
Part Two of the AG’s war with the truth came up when he, using questionable arguments, engineered the reversal by the Justice Department of Obama-era restrictions against civil asset forfeiture, a practice that allows police to confiscate property from individuals who have not been convicted of a crime. Early last month, a bipartisan group of Congressmen filed legislation to bar the Justice Department from moving forward on enforcing forfeiture and it is moving through Congress. The question that should be asked is when will the attorney general stop trying to show his loyalty to Trump by showcasing bad facts and bad law and begin to respect our civil liberties?
Of Leadership – Well back in the day – 1969, to be precise– Dr. Hugh L’Etang wrote a ground-breaking book called “The Pathology of Leadership,” and he would later add to this work in several other scholarly tomes that explored how leaders coped with, and displayed, their leadership skills through good times and bad.
The first book discussed the health of leaders like Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, eleven out of thirteen other British Prime Ministers and six of ten American presidents. Later books (“Fit to Lead?) would take a deeper look at the mental side of health in Western leaders as well as their physical conditions.
Now, given the election of Donald Trump, L’Etang’s writings may be gravely and persistently relevant.
There are ample examples in the literature of how leaders suffered physical and mental issues and how they dealt with them, and about the processing of health issues with regard to the leaders’ relationships with the media and the citizenry. Yes, there are ethical restraints on how deep and morally right it is to assess from afar a person’s health, physically and mentally. The medical profession generally agrees that any assessment of a person’s condition should rarely be made public and that an assessment on a person’s well being should only be made by a physician who has personally examined the individual.
With that in mind, it still can be helpful to look at some 20th century leaders and their health issues, particularly the mental challenges that they faced:
Margaret Thatcher: She was 62 when she won the general election in 1987, and her third term was not a success. The “Iron Lady” showed increasing rigidity in her thinking; she was contemptuous and rude to her ministers; she would brook no dissent; and she was apparently unaware of the great public dissatisfaction with the poll tax. Her daughter would later confirm her mother’s dementia, which was severe. How many of her actions were impacted by that dementia?
Ronald Reagan: A very popular governor of California and two-term president, Reagan suffered, we would learn much later, from dementia in the closing months of his second term when the Iran-Contra arms deal became public. There has been speculation about beneficial actions by a loving staff that minimized public knowledge of his dementia until after his death.
French President Georges Pompidou: A very sick man, he was unable to remember the six-digit PIN code for the nuclear option, so it was marked on a tag that he wore round his neck.
Franklin Roosevelt: At the start of his fourth term he was mortally ill from severe hypertension and heart and kidney failure. It is accepted that the wartime president was very ill at Yalta where he was outmaneuvered by Joseph Stalin. Roosevelt died two months later. The morbid details of his poor health had been kept hidden from the American public, particularly during the presidential campaign of 1944. How his health affected the outcomes of the Yalta talks and the country’s future remains a question for the ages.
Woodrow Wilson: An inflexible man, he suffered a severe stroke in 1919 and a number of follow-up episodes. For the remainder of his second term, Wilson’s presidential duties were conducted by the First Lady, his doctor, and his secretary working together.
There are many other such examples in contemporary times and in history. Common features include sociopathic, or even psychopathic, tendencies; severe mood swings; dementia; and age-related illness. The author of “The Pathology of Leadership” wrote that ill-health and the incapacity of Presidents and Prime Ministers was “horrifying.”
It is a given today that a gradual decline in mental abilities accompanies aging. This can include increasing rigidity of attitude, a reduced ability to comprehend new information, and to process it and some memory loss. What we do not know at this moment in time is how narcissism, megalomania, sociopathy, or related mental illness have impacted, or will have an ongoing effect, on someone like Donald Trump. What most Americans believe they know is that he has exhibited a range of behavior in his public actions and words that veers dramatically from the norm.
This unknown will likely remain unknown with regard to how a President Trump will deal with highly dangerously challenges such as the North Korean situation, and long-term, day in and day out, the threat of a nuclear attack by North Korean leaders.
These are extremely consequential matters and very possibly there is scant wriggle room for a president who should know that he has the fate of the world at his fingertips