Americans — especially but not exclusively Trump voters — believe crazy, wrong things

By Catherine Rampell

Washington Post, December 28 2016

Many Americans believe a lot of dumb, crazy, destructive, provably wrong stuff. Lately this is especially (though not exclusively) true of Donald Trump voters, according to a new survey.

The survey, from the Economist/YouGov, was conducted in mid-December, and it finds that willingness to believe a given conspiracy theory is (surprise!) strongly related to whether that conspiracy theory supports one’s political preferences.

Remember Pizzagate? That’s the bizarre theory that Hillary Clinton was helping run a child sex slave ring out of a D.C. pizza joint, as allegedly proven by code words in hacked Democratic emails.

Retrenched workers getting zero or smaller payouts last year ticks up

DECEMBER 29, 2016

SINGAPORE — The soft economic conditions last year took its toll, with fewer employers paying retrenchment benefits to workers they laid off, with the size of the payouts also shrinking, a periodic survey by the Ministry of Manpower showed.

Over nine in 10 companies (90.6 per cent) gave payouts, down from 94.3 per cent during the last survey in 2012, but similar to the proportion in 2008. The drop was caused by non-unionised companies, with 89.3 per cent paying retrenchment benefits, versus 100 per cent of unionised companies.

Large businesses, defined as those with at least 200 employees, were more likely to compensate laid off workers (97.5 per cent) than smaller firms (87.0 per cent).

About the Clinton emails - Comey, the FBI, the Justice Dept, and the AG

[The backstory on how the FBI inadvertently contributed (maybe) to making Trump the President.

The ostensible villain is James Comey, FBI Director, who two weeks before the elections, announced publicly that the FBI was re-opening investigations into Clinton's private email server issue. (Quick recap: Clinton, when she was Sec of State used a private email server for convenience. However, this was against protocol, especially for confidential and secret emails. However, while what she did was against standard practice, no criminal intent or act was discovered, or at least none legally actionable or prosecutable.) He did this to be transparent and also in the vacuum of authority created by the Justice Dept's AG, Loretta Lynch who as a political appointee, appointed by Bill Clinton, felt that it would look bad if she stopped Comey from making that announcement. Complicated story. ]

As Fed raises rates, China faces a paradox

Christopher Balding

DEC 22, 2016

Last week, when the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates, it was a sign for many investors that things were getting back to normal. For China, facing large-scale capital outflows and a declining currency, it was a sign of a serious problem.

For the past decade, China has maintained a "soft peg" of the yuan, allowing it to rise and fall within a narrow band against the US dollar. This has worked, for the most part, because the two countries have had relatively synchronous business cycles and broadly similar monetary policies. But now their economies are diverging in important ways.

The Fed has been openly worrying about rising prices, as the US economy grows steadily and its labour market tightens. That's why it is boosting rates. But in China, state news outlets now regularly talk about the "new normal" of slower growth. Private investment has grown by only 2.5 per cent this year through September. Near-zero consumer inflation has risen lately only due to speculation.

Worse, many years of excessively loose monetary policy have produced wildly inflated asset prices. Real estate in some Chinese cities ranks among the world's most expensive. Virtually every commodity, from coal to garlic, has experienced a boom and bust this year, sometimes more than once. With few investment opportunities in a sluggish economy and bubble-level asset prices, investors are moving money overseas at an accelerating rate. Economists at Goldman Sachs Group estimate that US$69.2 billion (S$100 billion) exited China last month. Other estimates suggest a total outflow of nearly US$1 trillion this year.

Are China’s schools failing?

ADAM MINTER

DECEMBER 21, 2016

It had become something of a ritual. Every three years, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development would release the results of its Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) exams, which are given to hundreds of thousands of students in dozens of countries. And every three years, an American freak-out would ensue, as Chinese students seemed to be outperforming their United States counterparts by a wide margin.

In 2009, Shanghai students did so well — beating the world in math, science and reading — that President Barack Obama declared it a “Sputnik moment” requiring immediate action. A similar panic broke out in 2012. But this year proved to be a surprise. The results from last year’s tests, released this month, showed Chinese students ranked sixth in math, 10th in science and 27th in reading. What happened?

On one hand, the answer is simple. Instead of merely testing Shanghai’s elite, last year’s exams included a broader selection of students across China, which dragged down scores. But the results also highlighted an important problem: China’s much-lauded education system remains riven by inequality, with far-reaching consequences for schools, students and, ultimately, the economy.

‘Real America’ is its own bubble

Richard Cohen
Opinion writer 
December 12

This column is for Bernard Gibson, a good man from the state of Indiana. Late last month, NPR went out to Vigo County there to explain why it flipped from voting for Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016. Gibson was one of those interviewed, and here is what he said: “These are real people here. These are not New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles. You know, these are real people that live every day from hand to hand, just have to work to make a living and everything else.”

Oh.

There are some things you ought to know, Mr. Gibson. I served in the Army. I worked at blue-collar jobs. I washed dishes and bused tables. I went to college at night and worked during the day for an insurance company (as the legendary “Cohen of Claims”). My father was raised in an orphanage, and my mother was an immigrant from Poland whose first childhood memory was of hunger. Somehow, despite all of that, I am called a member of the “elite.” If so, I damned well earned it.

Will Trump get trumped?

Elizabeth Drew

Dec 15 2016

WASHINGTON • This is not a city overflowing with the holiday spirit. As the United States Congress heads home for the holidays, there is a sense that something ominous lies over the horizon. People might try to avoid discussing the pending inauguration, on Jan 20, of President-elect Donald Trump, but the topic rarely stays out of conversations for long.

At last week's White House Christmas party for the press, reporters speculated about whether this might be the last such party for years to come. It is difficult to imagine that Mr Trump, no fan of the press, would host such an event, much less stand stoically with his wife Melania, greeting each individual guest, as Mr Barack Obama and his wife Michelle did for eight years. One reporter joked that the next press Christmas party would be held at the recently opened Trump International Hotel down the street from the White House, and there would be a cash bar.

Taiwan is a country with history and people. It’s not just a diplomatic nuisance.

Trump's controversial phone call is a chance for us to talk about Taiwan for Taiwan's sake.

By Shawna Yang Ryan
December 9

Shawna Yang Ryan, a former Fulbright scholar, is the author of “Water Ghosts” and “Green Island” and teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.


In third grade, I received a school assignment to interview a family member. I chose my mother, who had immigrated to the United States after marrying my white American father. We began with a simple question.

“Where were you born?”

“Taiwan,” my mother answered.

No, I argued. I had seen it with my own eyes: “Republic of China” in sharp black ink on the letters and packages my grandmother sent. I insisted that she was from China. She tried to explain the difference between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China, but I could not comprehend how a place could be called China but not be China. The interview ended there, at the first question, with my mother frustrated and me in tears.

Meet the Ma family: How millennials are changing the way China thinks about money

DECEMBER 12, 2016

SHANGHAI - Ma Yiqing, 24, is typical of China's younger generation - he uses his credit card frequently and borrows from online platforms to fund his shopping habits. In a pinch, he is happy to fall back on a lender closer to home - his mum and dad.

Interviews with Ma, a single-child, his mother and grandmother, show how rapidly attitudes toward credit are changing as the millennials generation - roughly those aged between 18 and 35 - embraces debt like never before.

The frugal attitude of previous generations produced the bedrock of China's credit worthiness - household savings equal to some 50 percent of GDP, one of the highest levels globally.

Ma and his cohorts are changing that equation. Their willingness to borrow has driven up household lending – the fastest growing area of China's debt. They are among the most indebted of their peers in Asia, taking on debt 18.5 times their income, significantly higher than their parents’ generation, a report from insurer Manulife shows.

While their spending and borrowing is an opportunity for lenders, brands and economic growth, it is also a risk as they add to China's fast-growing debt.

Central player in ensuring amicable split from Malaysia

K. Shanmugam

9 Dec 2016

This is an excerpt of a speech by Law Minister K. Shanmugam on Wednesday, at the launch of a new book on Mr E. W. Barker, Singapore's first law minister, who drafted the legal documents that led to Singapore's separation from Malaysia and its independence

Eddie Barker was a pivotal figure in our history. To begin with, he was our longest-serving law minister. Twenty-five years to be exact. Nobody in our history has helmed any ministry - apart from Mr Lee Kuan Yew and the premiership - as long as Mr Barker has helmed Law. He also helmed other ministries, like National Development at a crucial time in our history, where he made an especial mark.

Despite his various portfolios, all of which he handled successfully, it is his stint in Law that I think Mr Barker is remembered most for. Even among the generation of huge historical figures, Eddie Barker defined the Law Ministry more than most other ministers defined their ministries in their generation. He is the template of what a law minister should be; the ideal as a model.

In addition to his tremendous contributions to politics and government, Eddie Barker will personally be remembered as a great sportsman, a bon vivant. Indeed, simply, a very nice man. I think Mrs Lee Kuan Yew recalled somewhere that Eddie Barker and Mr (S.) Rajaratnam were the two most popular ministers in her husband's Cabinet, someone whom all civil servants liked serving under.

Emotional testimony from the trial of Dylann Roof:

From the trial of Dylann Roof:

[Testimony of Felicia Sanders]

“Next thing I know, bullets started flying everywhere.”

She said she was lying under the table, holding her 11-year-old granddaughter, who was saying, “Granny, I’m so scared.”

“I said, just be quiet, just play dead. I squeezed her face to my body so tight that I thought I suffocated her,” she said, tears streaming down her face.

As she lay there, her son, Tywanza, was on one side of her and Jackson, her aunt, was on the other, both of them shot. “I could feel the warm blood flowing on either side of me.”

The right has its own version of political correctness. It’s just as stifling.

Conservatives use “patriotic correctness” to regulate speech, behavior and acceptable opinions.

By Alex Nowrasteh
December 7 at 4:43 PM

Alex Nowrasteh is an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

President-elect Donald Trump has not been shy about the “big problem in this country”: political correctness. Trump has blamed PC for the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando (“They have put political correctness above common sense, above your safety and above all else,” he tweeted) and the rise of the militant group Islamic State. His voters agreed (indeed, it might even have been the reason for his victory).

It’s not just him. Political correctness has become a major bugaboo of the right in the past decade, a rallying cry against all that has gone wrong with liberalism and America. Conservative writers fill volumes complaining how political correctness stifles free expression and promotes bunk social theories about “power structures” based on patriarchy, race and mass victimhood. Forbes charged that it “stifles freedom of speech.” The Daily Caller has gone so far as to claim that political correctness “kills Americans.”

But conservatives have their own, nationalist version of PC, their own set of rules regulating speech, behavior and acceptable opinions. I call it “patriotic correctness.” It’s a full-throated, un-nuanced, uncompromising defense of American nationalism, history and cherry-picked ideals. Central to its thesis is the belief that nothing in America can’t be fixed by more patriotism enforced by public shaming, boycotts and policies to cut out foreign and non-American influences.

Insufficient displays of patriotism among the patriotically correct can result in exclusion from public life and ruined careers. It also restricts honest criticism of failed public policies, diverting blame for things like the war in Iraq to those Americans who didn’t support the war effort enough.

Why conservatives might be more likely to fall for fake news

By Christopher Ingraham
December 7 2016

This week, a North Carolina man took an AR-15 rifle into DC's Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant to "self-investigate" a fake internet conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and a child sex ring.

It's the latest example of the impact that "fake news" -- untrue or wildly misleading stories masquerading as fact, usually to appeal to a particular worldview -- is having on the real world.

Numerous reports have highlighted how fake news creators began targeting conservative readers after finding them receptive to stories that reinforced their existing worldview. As one fake news creator told NPR, "We've tried to do [fake news with] liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out."

A Buzzfeed analysis found that three main conservative Facebook pages were roughly twice as likely as three leading liberal Facebook pages to publish fake or misleading information.

China should heed the lessons of Pearl Harbour

KUNI MIYAKE

DECEMBER 8, 2016

The anniversary of Pearl Harbour is commemorated on Dec 8 in Japan — the time locally when, thousands of miles away, its ships and warplanes sank much of the United States Pacific Fleet and launched war against America.

For 75 years now, many Japanese have reflected on that moment with great remorse, appalled by the hubris and miscalculation that led to the attack. Later this month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will travel to Pearl Harbour to commemorate the tragedy. Sadly, though, the leaders and citizens of another Asian power appear to have forgotten those lessons.

For all the differences between Imperial Japan in the 1930s and Communist China today, I cannot help but see parallels between the two. Like Japan then, China is a rising Asian nation whose thinking is informed by patriotism, suspicion of outsiders and the remnants of an inferiority complex toward the West. Its military seems not entirely constrained by civilian control. And just as Japan did in the 1930s, China is defying international opinion and challenging the maritime status quo in the western Pacific, where the US defends vital sea lines of communication for all nations.

Pizzagate: From rumor, to hashtag, to gunfire in D.C.

By Marc Fisher, John Woodrow Cox and Peter Hermann

December 6 2016

What was finally real was Edgar Welch, driving from North Carolina to Washington to rescue sexually abused children he believed were hidden in mysterious tunnels beneath a neighborhood pizza joint.

What was real was Welch — a father, former firefighter and sometime movie actor who was drawn to dark mysteries he found on the Internet — terrifying customers and workers with his ­assault-style rifle as he searched Comet Ping Pong, police said. He found no hidden children, no secret chambers, no evidence of a child sex ring run by the failed Democratic candidate for president of the United States, or by her campaign chief, or by the owner of the pizza place.

What was false were the rumors he had read, stories that crisscrossed the globe about a charming little pizza place that features ping-pong tables in its back room.

The story of Pizzagate is about what is fake and what is real. It’s a tale of a scandal that never was, and of a fear that has spread through channels that did not even exist until recently.

Pizzagate — the belief that code words and satanic symbols point to a sordid underground along an ordinary retail strip in the nation’s capital — is possible only because science has produced the most powerful tools ever invented to find and disseminate information.

Donald Trump’s Peace Through Strength Vision for the Asia-Pacific

[Was the faux pas of speaking directly to Taiwan's President intentional and strategic? Note: this is partial to Trump.]

How the Republican nominee will rewrite America’s relationship with Asia.

ALEXANDER GRAY, PETER NAVARRO
NOVEMBER 7, 2016f

In 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced with great fanfare in Foreign Policy that the United States would begin a military “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific. This beating of the American chest was done against the backdrop of China’s increasing assertiveness in the region and the sense among many longtime American allies that the United States had lost sight of Asia’s strategic importance during 10 years of Middle Eastern wars.

President Barack Obama’s administration was right to signal reassurance to our Asian allies and partners. However, this pivot (and later “rebalance”) failed to capture the reality that the United States, particularly in the military sphere, had remained deeply committed to the region. This pivot has also turned out to be an imprudent case of talking loudly but carrying a small stick, one that has led to more, not less, aggression and instability in the region.

Initially, Clinton’s pivot and the Obama administration’s stated interest in countering China’s rising clout were met with general bipartisan agreement in Congress. Inside the Beltway, the analyst community also appeared to share a similar consensus that the global financial crisis had emboldened China. As one of Washington’s leading experts on Chinese foreign and security policy, Bonnie Glaser, told one of the authors in an on-camera interview: “The Chinese saw the United States as weakened by the financial crisis; and it created opportunities for China to test the United States and to try and promote its interests in its periphery in the hopes that the United States would not respond forcefully.”

China’s leaders emerge from the fog of pollution denial

JAMIL ANDERLINI

DECEMBER 1, 2016

In mid-2012, Mr Donald Trump fired off this tweet: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US (United States) manufacturing non-competitive.”

Apart from its sheer absurdity, one of the most striking things about Mr Trump’s assertion is how similar it sounds to the paranoid ravings of Chinese nationalists, who blame almost everything on the CIA and evil, imperialist America.

With admirable patience, Chinese officials have pointed out in recent weeks that global discussions on climate change were started by the Reagan administration in the 1980s — at a time when China did not even acknowledge the existence of pollution within its borders.

Thanks to the election of Mr Trump, who remains unconvinced by the overwhelming scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change, China is now poised to become the world’s leader in tackling global warming and the environment. Nobody is as surprised by this new responsibility as China itself.

Less than a decade ago, the Chinese government still refused to admit that the acrid clouds of choking smog hanging over most of the country had anything to do with industrial development.

Fed on a diet of government denials and propaganda, ordinary citizens in Beijing would insist the sulphurous haze enveloping the capital was in fact harmless “fog”, despite the fact the city is built on a desert.

The big shift in China’s policy and public perceptions was prompted, ironically, by the actions of the US government.

The election really was rigged

Dana Milbank 
Opinion writer
November 29

A voting scandal of epic proportion tilted this election. The scam involved millions of people.

No, I’m not talking about the recount the Clinton campaign joined in Wisconsin and may seek in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Hillary Clinton and her aides were correct before, when they said voting fraud is rare. The recounts won’t change the election’s outcome. And after rightly criticizing Donald Trump for saying he might not honor the election results, Clinton and her aides, who admit they have no evidence of skullduggery, risk looking hypocritical.

Neither am I talking about Trump’s outlandish and baseless claim that millions of non-citizens and dead people voted illegally. That’s as absurd as his preelection claims that the voting system was “rigged.”

Both distract from the real scandal, which is happening in plain sight. Millions of would-be voters didn’t participate because of obstacles designed to discourage them. The hurdles were, thanks to a 2013 Supreme Court ruling invalidating key parts of the Voting Rights Act, largely legal. And they arguably suppressed enough minority voters to cost Clinton the election.

Fourteen states had new voting restrictions in place for the first time in a presidential election, and 20 have had such restrictions put in place since 2010, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a group that opposes such laws. These include strict photo-ID requirements, cutbacks in early voting and new restrictions on registration. Other states are resisting efforts that would make voting easier with same-day, online and motor-voter registration.