CHASING THE MONEY CHANGERS AND MERCHANTS FROM THE TEMPLE

When I was young, I was much intrigued by the parable of Jesus chasing the money changers from the Temple.  The act is mentioned in four different books of the Bible.  I had vision of someone in the sanctuary, breaking down a twenty to some fives and ones to make a small donation.

Imagine my surprise to find out that the money changers were not in the physical Temple (building) but in a courtyard adjacent to the Temple (likely Court of the Gentiles*).  But this was in the King James version of the bible.  Others versions of the bible say "temple courts."**

The whole thing about money changers was that you could only buy the purified animals for sacrifice in local (Jewish) money at the Temple of Jerusalem so Greek and Roman money had to be changed.  Also one could "deposit" some money  with the changers for safe keeping in the Temple vaults for later withdrawal.***

The animals for sacrifice had to be "pure."  The sacrifice was only performed at the Temple courtyard in Jerusalem by a priest.  It bothered me that the sacrifices were a waste of food, but that was not so.  The sacrificed animal was eaten by the priests or the family or both making the sacrifice, depending on the animal sacrificed as a burnt offering and the reason for the sacrifice.****

The animal sacrifice in Judaism is no more.  The discontinuation is not because animal sacrifices are viewed as being barbaric, but because the Temple (a building) in Jerusalem is no more.  It was destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again and not rebuilt.  How do you destroy an open space (courtyard)?  It all seems strange to me.  It seems that some modern Orthodox Jews would resume sacrifices if a Temple were rebuilt.

But why did Jesus chase out the money changers and animal keepers from a courtyard?  It seems the problem was that the money changers charged a  fee for changing the money or storing it.  The poor, for example could only afford a dove for sacrifice.  The sellers of animals (merchants) also collected a fee, and the animals were soiling the ground and creating a strong smell.  The noise made prayer difficult.

I guess where I go wrong was that the sacrifices were done in a courtyard and a Temple means to me a building, an enclosed area with ceiling and walls, but the praying was not done inside the Temple (building) but in an open courtyard.  All the activity in the courtyard made praying to be difficult.  Apparently if the business was done at smaller fees before you entered the courtyard, everything would have been all right?

Upon further investigation (August 09, 2017): Another fifteen steps led up to the famous Gate of Nicanor, to which Mary had brought the child at the time of his presentation; this led through the Court of the Men to that of the priests, which had in its center the altar for the burnt offerings and to the left of it a large basin called the Brazen Sea resting upon twelve bulls cast in bronze.(ht tp://www.bible-history.com/jewishtemple/JEWISH_TEMPLEThe_Altar_of_Sacrifice.htm)

Inside the court of the priests and just after the entrance into the Temple area, stood the great Altar of Burnt Offering, it could be seen from a distance. (underlining added)

The Altar of Burnt Offering was made of unwrought stone, 30 cubits (45 feet) in length and breadth, and 15 cubits (22 feet) high. West of this was the Temple, and between the Holy Place and the altar stood the laver of  cleansing. 
 http://www.biblehistory.com/jewishtemple/JEWISH_TEMPLEThe_Altar_of_Sacrifice.htm

Whereas the above reference indicates that the burnt offerings were not done in the Temple building, they also were not done in the Courtyard Of The Gentiles.  I have talked about the matter to a minister, and he says that the changing of money was actually sort of a ticket of entry to the Courtyard of The Gentiles.  It is still possible that Jesus would have cleansed the area of money changers and merchants no matter where they were; however, I remain confused that the parable mentions  chasing the money changers from the Temple which to my literal mind means from the building as the Courtyard of The Gentiles was even beyond the balustrade beyond which only circumcised (men) may go.

* https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/25776/why-did-jesus-physically-throw-out-the-money-changers-instead-of-winning-the-arg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple
** https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21%3A12-13
http://biblehub.com/luke/19-45.htm
*** http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/money-changers
**** http://www.jewfaq.org/qorbanot.htm

‘‘RUSSIA, IRAN, AND NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS ACT’’

Everyone is scared what the President will do to sanctions on Russia so congress is trying to pass a bill limiting what the President can do on sanctions without congressional approval.  There are also some new sanctions in the bill for Russia.

The Senate passed a sanctions bill 98 to 2.  The House passed a sanction bill 419 to 3.  There are moves to make the Senate version agree with the House.  The bill, hopefully, will be sent to the President this week.  The President has indicated he will sign it.  If he vetoes it, overriding the veto looks to be easy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/house-prepares-to-pass-sanctions-bill--and-set-up-veto-dilemma-for-trump/2017/07/25/ece80164-7138-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.c1a25b7c3ba0

WHAT IF THE SENATE SHOULD PASS A HEALTH CARE BILL?

The House of Representatives narrowly passed a health care bill and sent it to the Senate.  The Senate has been massaging this bill and voted today on a procedural vote to consider a bill.*

Among the variants to be considered by the Senate is:
The chamber could then field some version of the replacement plan that stalled out recently, which may also fail. After that may come a vote for a partial, "skinny" repeal that would eliminate the individual mandate penalty, the employer mandate penalty and the medical device tax, according to NBC.    These mandates and device tax were made in an attempt by Democrats to pay for the ACA.   Republicans hate to pay for health care.  Reagan got a law that Emergency Rooms in hospitals must take all comers, and he left it up to the hospitals to find a way to pay for this.  George W. Bush (Bush-43) got Medicare D passed on prescription drugs, but also didn't pay for it so any deficit went "on the cuff."  It as no surprise that Republicans don't want to pay for the ACA.

 If the Senate passes a health care bill, it will be different from the House bill in important places so it gets sent back to the House to vote on it.  If the House doesn't pass the Senate Bill, the bill will go to a Conference Committee, presumably to resolve differences between the two Houses.

Here the fun can start because anything, absolutely anything, can happen to resolving the disputes, including letting the the bill "die in committee,"**  something not unusual even if the bills passed both houses by large margins.  Usually the Conference Committee "splits the difference" in some way between the two house bills, though I know of one case where the Conference Committee voted to increase the budget of a Bureau above what either the House or Senate bills provided.  At any rate, what comes out of the Conference Committee can be quite different from either the House or Senate bills.

If the Conference Committee comes to a conclusion and forms a revised bill, it then goes back to the houses for a vote where a member of the first house to consider the bill can recommend it go back to Conference Committee.  Also a member of the Senate can move to stricken some item from the Conference Committee bill, but 60 Senators can wave the rule.  In my experience, the House and the Senate usually vote to approve the Conference Committee bill.**

Don't hold your breath waiting for a  health bill.

* http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/25/sen-rand-paul-plans-to-support-republican-obamacare-vote.html
** https://www.thoughtco.com/how-bills-become-laws-3322300
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_conference_committee

JULY CONSUMER CONFIDENCE UP, NOT DOWN

The July Consumer Confidence Index yielded a nice surprise:

Economists polled by Reuters forecast the major indicator of consumer optimism to decline to 116.5 in July. Instead, consumer confidence remains at the highest level since July 2001.
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The Consumer Confidence Index beat expectations last month as well. In July, consumers said jobs were even more "plentiful" than last month's report, up to 34.1 percent from 32 percent, while also saying jobs were not as "hard to get."

(Click on figure to enlarge)

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/25/july-us-consumer-confidence.html

PUTIN'S LAP DOG

President Trump sat beside  Akie Abe, wife of the Shinzo Abe who is the Prime Minister of Japan, at the Couples Only dinner of the G20 Conference.  Japan has the 3rd largest economy in the world.  Incredibly, Trump got up from the table and went around to visit with Vladimir Putin, dictator of Russia.

It was a huge insult to Akie Abe.  One more insult to a woman, and one from a major country.  Trump says she didn't speak English, but he had a Japanese translator with him.  Of course Putin had a Russian translator with him.  As Trump's translator only was good in Japanese, Putin's translator was the only one to take notes or recordings.  So what was the difference?

It is unbelievable that Trump's backers then claimed that Akie Abe snubbed President Trump!  The rudeness of all this is unbelievable.  Talk about the "ugly American."

I don't know how you feel about this, but I''m embarrassed for my country that our President is so obsequious to Putin.   There is word from the Russian Foreign Minister that they may have met several other times at the Congress, e.g. in the bathroom (what we used to call "pissing partners.").

Trump says he was going to talk to his wife who was sitting next to Putin, but talked for about 15 min. with Putin.  Others say the visit was mor like an hour.  Everyone at the dinner noticed it which is why we know about it.

It would be nice if Trump was so smitten with his wife that he couldn't stay put with one of the major dignitaries at the dinner, but Trump managed to survive 3 or 4 months while his wife Malania stayed with their son in New York so he wouldn't have to change schools in the middle of a term.

Well, it looks like congress is overwhelmingly going to pass a sanctions bill on Russia, North Korea and Iran.*  Will Trump veto it?  Will congress override his veto (looks like they could).  Trump says this bill will restrict his powers because he has to go back to congress before he can get rid of any sanctions on Russia.  President Trump, that's exactly what its all about.

* http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/22/congress-reaches-bipartisan-agreement-on-sweeping-russia-sanctions.html

DEMOCRATIC ECONOMIC INITIATIVES AND THE TRUMP BASE

I've tried to think of ways that the Democratic Party might lure back the white male worker.  After considerable thought, I conclude there probably isn't a way.  Just consider our previous President, Barak Obama.  There was the Birther Movement among Republicans that Obama wasn't born in the U,S.  Even when he finally released the "long form" of his birth certificate the doubters said it was a forgery.  There was nothing you could do to get them to admit Obama was born in the U.S. to an American mother.  Even as recently as August of 2016 before the election as many as 72% of Republicans felt that Obama was not legitimate.  This percentage is far more than President Trump's base.

These same people, however, were ready to accept Senator Ted Cruse as legitimate even though he was born in Canada because he had an American mother.  So by analogy even if Obama was born outside America, it was to an American mother so if Cruz is legitimate, Obama should be also, but a double standard is clear.

The problem is that these workers feel the Democratic Party favors women, minorities, and Gays.  So the Democratic Party would have to abandon these groups.  Yet it was probably enough women, minorities, and Gays who crossed over and voted for Trump to put him over the top in crucial states because they felt that the Democratic Party hadn't done enough for them.  Politics is a hard game.

Still, the Republican Party is not a good fit for the disaffected white male workers.  For one thing, the Republican establishment ("elites") feel American workers are overpaid, and I feel the workers are also held in disdain by the establishment.  Even Donald Trump has said on at least two occasions that the American worker is overpaid.  For years, however, the Republican establishment soothed the white American male worker through telling them such things as they are "The Real Americans" and other syrupy terms.

But along came a candidate for President who talked in their terms.  Send illegal Hispanics back to Mexico, build a wall, outlaw Muslim immigration to the U.S., and "keep THEM under control."  The "Them" is, of course, women, minorities, and Gays.  They thought Trump would lead them "out of the wilderness" in a reform of the Republican Party, but they were conned.  I've heard from some of Trump's base say that the wall is the big thing (even over better pay), so it is the emotional things they love.

Below I've noted some of Hillary Clinton's proposals and actions (Quotes from references are given in italics):
Increase The Minimum Wage
    If the minimum wage is increased, everybody above it gets a raise also.
    She supported a $12/hr minimum wage.  She supports prevailing wage laws in states and a $15/hr  minimum wage where economics support it.

• Every student should have the option to graduate from a public college or university in their state without taking on any student debt. By 2021, families with income up to $125,000 will pay no tuition at in-state four-year public colleges and universities. And from the beginning, every student from a family making $85,000 a year or less will be able to go to an in-state four-year public college or university without paying tuition.*
• All community colleges will offer free tuition.*

Work for Women's Equality**
"If fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in."

She began her career at the Children's Defense Fund.  Wrote a book "It Takes A Village To Raise A Child," and fought to pass the Children's Health Insurance Act that has covered an estimated 8 million children.  Perhaps a negative was that she cosponsored the "Dream Act" three times.

And if there was any state the "owed" Hillary Clinton their vote it was Michigan.  She voted to save the automobile industry and Michigan has had the best record of increasing employment of the "rust belt" states.  She also was early involved in the Flint, Michigan, water problem.***

While Clinton may not have put a ton of resources into Wisconsin, her campaign peppered Michigan with visits by her and her surrogates during the final weeks.

Still, in Detroit, she won roughly 50,000 fewer votes than Obama did in 2012.***

She also campaigned in Detroit.****  I have no idea what more she could have done.

I think a problem for the white male worker is that Hillary is a woman.  This also seemed to bother many white educated women, especially in Pennsylvania where she had a major effort.  Incidentally, Pennsylvania is the Rust Belt state that had the greatest wage increases although the employment picture was static.

It seems like there is nothing the Democratic Party can do to win over the Trump base.

What all this means is that Congress is probably going to have to impeach the President (or Department heads rule he is incompetent: 25th amendment) while Republicans voters vastly approve of him (They will say he wasn't given a chance though Trump hung himself.).  This is going to take time.  You can find any number of Republicans outside of Congress, however, that oppose Trump vehemently.

* https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/
**  http://www.refinery29.com/2016/08/118582/hillary-clinton-strong-women-quotes
*** http://www.salon.com/2016/01/21/what_hillary_clinton_needs_to_learn_from_the_flint_water_crisis/
http://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2016/11/09/how-clinton-lost-blue-wall-states-michigan-pennsylvania-wisconsin/93572020/
**** https://www.c-span.org/video/?416681-1/hillary-clinton-campaigns-detroit-michigan
https://www.c-span.org/video/?418008-1/hillary-clinton-campaigns-detroit-michigan

I'VE GOT A NICE BRIDGE TO SELL YOU: KILL OBAMACARE AND ?

and replace it in twio years.

After the collapse Monday night of the latest GOP plan to replace Obamacare, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he aimed to pass a bill to repeal the law and then pass a replacement during a "stable two-year transition period."*

If you believe that the Republicans will really come up with a health care bill during those two years, I got the proverbial bridge to sell you.

* http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/18/the-gops-obamacare-repeal-only-plan-is-already-on-the-verge-on-stalling.html

VAUDEVILLE AIN'T COMING BACK - KENTUCKY

CNBC has an interesting article on coal mining and renewable resources in Kentucky (quotes from the reference are in italics):

When Kiran Bhatraju, a native of Pikeville, Kentucky, and the CEO of renewable-energy company Arcadia Power, heard that a coal company would be converting an old strip mine into a solar farm, he expected huge backlash. But his community's reaction was the opposite.

"The mayor, local politicians and people in coal country are ready and excited about new jobs in the renewables industry," Bhatraju said. "The entire community has been rallying behind the project because it will retrain and put miners back to work."

............................................................................

At one point more than 90 percent of the electric power provided by EKPC was coal-fired. Last year that number was down to about 70 percent, and today the cooperative is in the process of installing a 33,000-panel solar field on its property.[!]

"What we're doing is recognizing customer demand," Comer said. "And not just residential customers but also businesses. When companies are considering areas to locate a plant or facility, they're looking for energy options that are cost-effective and sustainable."

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Berkeley Energy Group, the coal company that Bhatraju referenced, announced their plans to build the state's largest solar farm in April, claiming that it would generate jobs for displaced coal workers. That same month, the Kentucky Coal Museum — a physical, standing tribute to the state's coal heritage — had 80 solar panels installed on its roof as a cost-saving measure. The museum's owner expects to save between $8,000 and $10,000 a year.

(Click on figure to enlarge)

But coal mining may not be dead, just a change from energy production to rare earth elements mining:

Hower and his university colleagues, for example, have partnered with the Department of Energy in the research of "rare earth elements," a group of 17 metals that are vital in the production of smartphones, wind turbines, solar panels and dozens of other modern-day technologies.

REEs, which include metals like scandium, yttrium and neodymium, are said to make up a $7 trillion global market, while supporting $500 billion to $600 billion in other industries. The United States imports 90 percent of its REEs from China, which holds a near monopoly over the market. This is despite the presence of 13 million metric tons of rare earth elements within the continental United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Hower said it's too soon to provide an estimate for REE resource potential in Kentucky, specifically.

"REEs can make Kentucky a player," Hower said. "You're not going to displace the entire range of imports from China, but if you could make a dent in it, that can go a long way."

On the city level, Louisville has joined the coalition of cities that will still follow the Paris accord:
On the city level, Louisville's government is setting sustainability standards for its residents. Following Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the city signed onto "We Are Still In," a coalition of more than 200 cities pledging to uphold the climate accord.
Also see: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2017/07/parallel-government.html

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/18/post-coal-country-kentucky-bets-on-renewable-energy-metals-mining.html

ENGINEERS AND THE ACA

Many decades ago, I majored in engineering.  We had a little one credit course in which, in part, it was said that when a project was discussed, it was all right to propose alterations or even a new plan, but once a decision was made, everyone was to get together and make the plan work, even if you thought it wasn't the best plan or even if you thought it wouldn't work.  So the question is, ACA (Obamacare) became the plan (became law, a decision was made) so what did Republicans do to try and make the plan work?

True, the ACA was passed by one political party although the plan was that of the opposing party; yet none of the opposing party voted for it.  That is a big reason why the Republicans are having such a difficult time with repeal and replace for the ACA.  It was really their plan.

A huge problem in our current politics is that there is never a real decision made.  It sure makes it difficult for people to plan for the future.  You have to plan for every eventuality.

When Republican Bush-43 proposed Medicare D (prescription drugs), Democrats voted for it.  It was his fellow Republicans that gave Bush such a hard time, but it passed.  Now there is no argument over Medicare D.  President Reagan proposed that emergency rooms have to take all applicants, regardless of ability to pay.  Democrats and Republicans both voted for it and there is no argument against it today.  Come on Republicans, it is in your interest to propose some plan that Democrats can vote for or help fix the ACA.

ON PRAYER (Biographical)

My late wife and I had quite opposite views on prayer.  She believed that if millions of people prayed for the same thing it must have an effect.

I, however, granted that praying might do some psychological good for the person saying the prayer and even might mentally benefit two people if the praying is done out loud.

So I guess I would say that it is possible for a prayer said out loud to many people might have some effect on all, many, or several in the group.  If I was affected by a church service, however, it was from the sermon and not the prayers.  But prayer is not going to create miracles.  No amount of praying will regrow a leg, for example.

I add to grace at meals, "And lead us to Middle East Peace."  I've been doing this for more than a decade, but, then, I am only one person.  I thought for awhile that the Arab Spring might eventually take hold.  I thought that making ourselves energy independent would allow us to withdraw militarily from the Middle East.  But in neither case, does there appear to be anything positive happening, though maybe it is early years.

U.S ECONOMY KEEPS ROLLIN' ALONG BUT THERE IS A JOB PARADOX?

The Remarkable Recovery continues another month.  The preliminary jobs reports for June shows an increase 222,000 new jobs, handily beating estimates.*  And wages increased nicely too at an annualized rate of 2.5%.  Even better, the figures for the previous two months were also raised.  The thing is that the report could be even better if we had a better trained work force.**

• By 2020 there will be 1.4 million computer science–related jobs available in the U.S. but only 400,000 graduates with the skills necessary to fill them.

I have long been interested in motivation, based on my personal experience.  If you are strongly motivated, you can make up for low brainpower IQ (Of course there is a limit to what motivation).  In the late 1960s, I participated in a program to motivate 5th graders in a large low-cost housing development in Denver.  Then around 2000, I participated in a reading program for 2nd graders in a school in a low-cost housing neighborhood.

A parents best friend is to be in a neighborhood where children are motivated.  In such a case the likelihood of your children being motivated is greatly enhanced.  In the neighborhood where I grew up, I think my whole gang rose to the level of their abilities.  In some cases it was Ph.D. and in other is might have been a two-year certificate, but everyone took things as far as they could go.

All us oldersters know that if we need to know something about our cell phones or computers, we should seek out a 10 yr old.  Since children are so motivated to learn about tablet computers and such, it would seem easy to get a workforce trained in computer science.  The main problem is in getting such things to them in such a way that the youngsters can interact.  It seems like there are attempts to do this.

But there is also a paradox about the shortage of coders and other computer science specialists as graduates have difficulties in finding jobs:

With coders (A.K.A. computer programmers) in such high demand, you’d think it would be obvious to “start ‘em young” and put high school students on a path to a rewarding career. And yet, according to Computer Science Education Week, computer science classes don’t count toward math or science high school graduation requirements in 22 states, including Colorado, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. It is no wonder that computing occupations are among the highest-paying jobs for new graduates, fewer than 3% of college students graduate with a degree in computer science.***

* http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/07/us-nonfarm-payrolls-june-2017.html
** http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/07/heres-what-the-unemployment-rate-is-not-telling-you-about-job-losses.html
*** http://fortune.com/2016/04/27/tech-skills-gap-stem/

PARABLE OF PRODIGAL SON AND OTHER SON (Biographical)

One of the most famous stories in the Christian Bible is the story of the Prodigal Son (Prodigal means "wasteful extravagance").  Here is my take, but feel free to read more authentic renditions (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son).

A wealthy father has two grown sons.  One says he wants to enjoy his inheritance now and not wait for the father's death.  The father complies.  So that son goes out into the world and fritters away his inheritance on "unworthy" women, drugs, and alcohol and finery, but loses everything when he runs out of money.  So he sees the error of his ways and returns home in contrition.  The father meets him and showers him with things, including a feast of a fatted calf.

But what of the other son who is heart broken.  He had stayed home and looked after his father and the family business, doing well, and obeying his father's commandments.  He never was so much as treated to a spit roasted goat to share with his friends.  I call him the Dutiful Son.  The Dutiful Son is upset and doesn't even attend the Prodigal Son's feast.

My sympathies have always been with the Dutiful Son who well deserved some praise and celebrations from the father, but my mother would have said, "Doing good is its own reward."

Among other things, we are asked to believe that the Prodigal Son was forever cured and had no recidivism, something I very much doubt.

So which was I?  Well, I went into a profession that almost guaranteed I would be far from home, but I did take care of myself and didn't have to return home defeated, so you can't say I was the Prodigal son who lived in wasteful extravagance.  So it doesn't really fit.

My late brother never moved far from home and took care of my mother, even seeing her once a week in the nursing home and looking after her medications (He was a medical doctor), whereas I saw my mother maybe twice a year.

Before my mother went into the nursing home, she would visit me for a week.  I had a love/hate relationship with my mother, but when she was away I could forgive her and she did many wonderful things for me.* But before the week's visit was over, I would have to forgive her all over again because of her "artistic" personality.

Clearly my brother was the Dutiful Son.

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/03/side-boards-poem.html
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-sword-biographical.html
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-career-as-pianist.html

PUGNACIOUS POLITICS

What were your first thoughts about the clip showing Donald Trump wrestling down the man with the CNN face?*  My first thought was that someone had uncovered this clip and showed it to embarrass the president.  My second thought was that it was some of the dirty FAKE NEWS the president rails against.  Imagine my surprise that the clip was in a tweet from our president!  Shocked is a word hardly strong enough.

Well maybe it follows from Trump's election run in which he urged violence against demonstrators.**  So the trend toward violent politics continues (see Decline in American politics)***

So getting physical in politics and encouraging a foreign government to get involved in our politics are added to our decline politically.  It is getting difficult to think of ways our politics can get even worse.  A shooting war?

* http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/02/politics/trump-wrestling-tweet/index.html
** https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004269364/trump-and-violence.html
*** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2017/06/decline-of-american-politics.html

PARALLEL GOVERNMENT

CNBC has a remarkable article by David Roberts apparently based on Michael Bloomberg:*

Even before President Trump announced that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, it was clear that he intended to lead the US on a  fossil fuel bender. He has made it crystal clear that the federal government has no interest in addressing climate change.

But every action has an equal and opposite reaction; his announcement on Paris has sparked an extraordinary amount of counter-organizing. In recoiling from Trump, states, cities, and institutions are entering into closer cooperation. A coalition is forming, a Blue America, and at least on climate change, it is going beyond mere resistance to a more proactive role, negotiating with the international community on its own behalf, like a separate nation.

It is, in foreign policy terms, a remarkable development — and while it seems to offer some near-term hope on climate change, it carries troubling implications for the ongoing stability of the country.

...............................................................................
In the same vein, Ivo Daalder had a fantastic piece in Politico Magazine** on the need for cities to organize themselves and engage in purposeful foreign policy. Urban areas, he notes, have more in common with one another across national boundaries than they do with rural areas in their own countries. They all face traffic, congestion, and pollution. They all depend on a steady influx of outsiders and thrive on innovation and higher education. Not one of them is interested in the Trumpian recipe of xenophobia and fossil fuels.
........................................................................
The commitments of the US subnational climate diaspora [states and cities] are voluntary as well. But by organizing and transparently sharing information about progress (assuming the coalition can pull itself together to do so), it could trigger a dynamic very much like the one Paris seeks to trigger at the international level: Pride and peer pressure, not the threat of legal penalties, will drive ambition.
........................................................................

At least currently, Blue America has more people but less political power. That's partly what the subnational organizing is responding to.

It is often said, metaphorically, that America is becoming two separate countries, with different values and visions, occupying the same territory. But what if that becomes less metaphorical?

What will happen when Red and Blue America starting thinking of themselves as separate countries, and acting that way, consolidating their power and negotiating independently? What happens when they really start fighting?

It's a little dystopian, as it carries the whiff of a second Civil War. But as we've learned about dystopias this past decade, they need not happen all at once, dramatically. They can happen in creeping increments, each of which allows for enough of a pause that it comes to seem normal.

..........................................................................

Still, I can't imagine that having two parallel governments operating in the world's most powerful country is going to stay peaceful and symbolic for long. Red America — especially in its intemperate and vengeful current incarnation — is going to notice that Blue America is being hailed as an international hero for saving the US commitment to Paris. It's going to notice that Canadian officials are spending an awful lot of time with mayors. It's going to notice subnational climate and trade agreements forming under its nose.

Trump is going to notice that even though he won the presidency, the world keeps talking to the governors and mayors who oppose him. I worry it will not end well.

It is interesting that I am not the only one who has noted that such political divisiveness as we see today happened before and resulted in the Civil War.  I'm not sure how such a war would happen today, but somehow it could involve rural areas against metropolitan areas (as noted in the articles cited).  This would be difficult because rural areas supply the food and urban areas supply the goods.

* http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/03/blue-america-reaches-out-to-the-world-ignoring-trump.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climate-paris-idUSKBN18W2DQ
** http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/06/why-cities-need-their-own-foreign-policies-215234

WOMEN ENTREPENEUR HARASSMENT - II

The problem with the sexual harassment of women entrepreneurs is more common than you might think.*  This has caused Reid Hoffman to propose three rules:

To Hoffman, this means three different things for VCs:**

1. VCs should interact with entrepreneurs the same way a manager would with an employee. Sexual relationships and business relationships should not mix.
2. Those who see VCs behaving inappropriately should share that information with colleagues.
3. Limited partners should take a zero-tolerance attitude toward this behavior, and stop investing in VCs who behave badly.

Perhaps there is hope in that one of the harassers has said:

Now, a venture capitalist is at the center of sexism claims. Half a dozen women have accused Justin Caldbeck, formerly at Bain Capital, of making unwanted sexual advances when they went to seek out funding or advice from him, according to a report in The Information. (In a statement Caldbeck said: "It is outrageous and unethical for any person to leverage a position of power in exchange for sexual gain, it is clear to me now that that is exactly what I've done.")**

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2017/07/women-entrepeneur-harrassment.html
** http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/02/three-things-reid-hoffman-thinks-vcs-should-do-to-stop-sexual-harassment.html

WOMEN ENTREPENEUR HARRASSMENT

I find the sexual harassment of women entrepreneurs to be shocking:

One female entrepreneur recounted how she had been propositioned by a Silicon Valley venture capitalist while seeking a job with him, which she did not land after rebuffing him. Another showed the increasingly suggestive messages she had received from a start-up investor. And one chief executive described how she had faced numerous sexist comments from an investor while raising money for her online community website.

What happened afterward was often just as disturbing, the women told The New York Times. Many times, the investors’ firms and colleagues ignored or played down what had happened when the situations were brought to their attention. Saying anything, the women were warned, might lead to ostracism.

The reference even names some names.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/technology/women-entrepreneurs-speak-out-sexual-harassment.html?mi_u=29112017&_r=0