MGH: The WSJ has clarified the situation in the Panama Canal. You see red when you enter and when you exit. It’s a symbolic chokehold. Makes you blush and rage too.
Why Trump Sees a Chinese Threat at the Panama Canal, and Locals Don’t
President Trump’s reasons for wanting control of the Panama Canal can be found at either end of the interoceanic waterway.
Every day, dozens of cargo ships pass by blue cranes at a port near the Pacific Ocean entrance, the towering skyline of Panama City visible across the horizon. About eight hours later, they drift past another terminal stacked with containers as they exit into the Atlantic.
These facilities are run by a giant Hong Kong port operator, Hutchison Whampoa. And that is the crux of the problem for the Trump administration, which sees the Chinese infrastructure that has been built up around the canal in the past three decades as a national-security threat.
“China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China,” Trump said in his inaugural address, referring to the 1977 treaty that handed control of it to Panama. “We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”
There are other China-backed projects in Panama that include a canal bridge, a new subway line, a cruise-ship terminal, a convention center and a wind-energy farm. Trump said it all amounts to a violation of the purpose and spirit of U.S.-Panama treaties that required the canal to remain neutral when Washington turned over the American-built canal to Panama in 1999. …
… More than 70% of the traffic is bound for or coming from the U.S. American oil and gas tankers shuttle fuel to the Pacific, while vessels loaded with Peruvian asparagus, Chilean wine and Ecuadorean bananas cut through en route to the U.S. East Coast.
… “The symbolic effect of seeing the Chinese flag at the mouth of the canal would have been poorly received by the U.S., Panama’s traditional friend,” Feeley said. “They canned that.”
[END]
MGH: That’s apropos of a previous SSF report on the Monroe Doctrine, with red map.
MGH: Meanwhile James Freeman on the latest deep state dodge to dodge the DOGE.
Swamp Creatures Scurry: Unelected policymakers realize they shouldn’t have been making policy.
It’s impossible to know whether an older and wiser Donald Trump will be able to tame the Washington bureaucracy in his second time around as president. But it’s nice to see bureaucrats acting like they’re afraid he just might.
It’s not just about the money—although today brings yet another official warning about federal debt. It’s also the principle of the thing. Under the U.S. Constitution, people who were never elected do not get to dictate federal policy. Over the course of the last year, whoever runs the Biden administration has been seeking to “Trump-proof” Washington, in part by trying to make federal bureaucrats even harder to dislodge from positions of great undeserved influence. Whoever has been in charge at the White House obviously wasn’t wildly optimistic about the chances of defeating Mr. Trump at the ballot box. Today brings new hope that the mystery chief executive also failed in the antidemocratic effort to insulate bureaucrats from voter accountability.
Hadas Gold and Rene Marsh report for CNN:
As President-elect Donald Trump’s administration prepares to take over Washington, some federal employees are quietly changing the language of job descriptions and performance reviews in an effort to protect roles and critical government functions in the face of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump tapped to lead the outside initiative, have said they plan to recommend slashing the federal workforce, cutting the government’s annual budget by at least $1 trillion, and curbing regulations.
Ahead of the initiative’s deployment, five sources familiar with the effort, including senior staffers from multiple agencies, told CNN that some workers are removing mentions of “policy” decision-making and terms related to diversity programs from written job descriptions, duties, and performance reviews to protect the roles from possible cuts.
“People are definitely reimagining how to communicate what they’ve done and do to try and escape scrutiny,” one federal employee told CNN.
“Reimagining how to communicate what they’ve done” seems to be a lovely euphemism for pulling one more over on the voters for whom they are supposed to be working and over whom they should never have had any governing authority. The CNN reporters have more:
President-elect Donald Trump, who has derided civil servants as agents of the “deep state,” promised on the campaign trail to reinstate a 2020 executive order known as Schedule F which created a new job category for federal employees in policy-related positions. The order removed much of the federal protections for civil servants, making it easier to fire workers. President Joe Biden has later cancelled the order shortly after taking office.
Ahead of the order’s possible reinstatement, one senior staffer said they were advised by their agency’s “front office” to edit “any job description that mentioned policy.”
“Managers could elect to just quietly tweak a career officials’ job description so that the functionality of the job stayed the same but would say ‘provide guidance’ instead of ‘provide policy guidance’,” the staffer told CNN. “It makes their role seem less policy and political orientated.”
“Deep state” is too kind a description for people actively seeking to obscure the nature of their work specifically to thwart our duly elected president.
At noon on Monday such providers of guidance should be encouraged to find another employer.
[END]
MGH: Over the sea in Blighty self-service personalised state welfare is automised as the welfare bill continues to overwhelm public finances, displacing defence.
‘It’s a mess’: ADHD ‘sickfluencers’ drive up £69k-a-year benefits claims, rise of social media advice comes as cost of disability welfare scheme spirals to £258m
Thousands of people with self-diagnosed mental health conditions are using a £69,000-a-year disability benefits scheme following a rise in advice from ADHD “sickfluencers” on social media.
Spending on the Access to Work scheme – which can hand claimants nearly £70,000 a year for equipment and support, including work coaches, noise-cancelling headphones and Apple smartwatches – surged to £258m in the last financial year, up 40pc from 2022-23.
The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) is increasingly alarmed at the spiralling cost of the scheme, with around a third of all demand now driven by people claiming financial support for mental health conditions, up from just 5pc a decade ago.
A search on social media reveals dozens of users highlighting the benefits of Access to Work, which was initially launched to help deaf and blind people.
One user, Madeleine Alexander-Grout, claims to have received tens of thousands of pounds from the scheme in the last two years to help run her businesses, which provide financial advice and coaching to people with ADHD. …
… She has since promoted walk-through guides on social media to help others claim benefits, has offered coaching services and is releasing a book about money and ADHD.
In one post, she said: “In my first year, I got £13,000 but I realised I needed more support workers because I have got two businesses. Both of them are really busy and there is stuff I just can’t manage to do.
“And before you all kick off and say ‘you don’t look disabled’, I have multiple hidden disabilities and neurodivergent conditions.” …
… Grants were initially used to help deaf and blind people start work by providing special equipment, as well as practical support including sign language interpreters.
However, analysis of DWP figures shows that “mental health condition” is now the most cited primary reason for a claim, overtaking people granted support because they are deaf or hard of hearing in 2018.
Mental health was cited as the primary reason behind 22,000 of the 67,000 payment approvals in the last financial year, with learning difficulties now the second most common condition. A decade ago, just 1,000 out of 24,000 claims were associated with people claiming for mental health. …
… The rise in claims associated with mental health has also pushed up the cost of support, which has doubled in real terms in just seven years.
This included £21m for “special aids and equipment”, including smartwatches, fidget toys, noise-cancelling headphones and wobble boards – almost double the previous year. Spending on support workers jumped 40pc to £178m.
Whitehall sources said the rise in spending on support workers, including interpreters and specialist coaches to help people with ADHD, was of particular concern.
“It’s a mess,” said one source. “And it means the scheme will cost much more than was allocated at the last spending review – probably double.”
Fears are mounting as the scheme gains prominence on social media and online, as disabled and chronically ill users encourage people to apply. …
[END]
MGH: And, lest we forget …
Inside the ‘priority’ NHS services for migrants: Asylum seekers receiving ‘preferential medical treatment’ despite increasing wait times for Britons
It’s Thursday evening, just before 10pm, and the A&E at University College Hospital in central London is heaving. … Yet here at UCLH, there is one way you can get seen earlier. Indeed, for certain members of society, you can get assessed in just 15 minutes.
That privilege goes to undocumented migrants, as well as the homeless and drug addicts, according to its website. Under a scheme called 987 Inclusion Health, patients within those categories needing an “urgent” assessment can ask for an appointment at A&E and be bumped up the queue on arrival. …
… The initiative is aimed at patients who “struggle to attend A&E due to the long delays waiting to be seen”. And it is just one of several schemes set up across the UK focusing specifically on helping migrants arriving here to get better access to healthcare. Yet, at a time when the NHS is on its knees, dealing with underfunding and chronic staff shortages, critics have questioned whether it is fair that those without a right to live here have what appears to be a “priority” service in healthcare.
“This sums up broken Britain,” one said. Another accused the NHS of prioritising diversity over healthcare.
In south London, for example, special “walk-in services” at community day centres are on offer for refused asylum seekers and undocumented migrants. Here, they can receive a full health assessment, treatment of minor illnesses, and referrals to specialist services. In contrast, 15 per cent of locals had to wait at least a week before seeing a doctor in November.
In Stoke-on-Trent, an NHS team is on hand to “help failed asylum seekers, many of whom are homeless and destitute with no recourse to public funds”, access a GP and dentist. A survey in 2022 found 73 per cent of people in the city struggled to see an NHS dentist.
“It is outrageous that those here illegally are prioritised over British taxpayers, and it reinforces, once again, the concern that the NHS has become an international service, not a national health service,” says Steve Barclay, the former health secretary. “There should not be preferential treatment for those here illegally at our expense, and I think the public will be outraged to discover that’s the case. NHS England should give clear answers as to why.”
It comes as immigration numbers are soaring, with last year seeing the second-highest number of small boat arrivals on record. …
… Yet the point for critics is not that sick people are given healthcare, but that asylum seekers appear to be receiving preferential treatment over those with a right to live in the UK.
Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital, in south-east London, offers a dedicated “refugees and asylum seekers service” in Lambeth and Southwark. According to the trust’s website, those who can benefit from the service include undocumented migrants and asylum seekers who have been refused the right to live here. Many of the services listed resemble those that ordinary Britons routinely wait days or even weeks to see their GP about …
[END]
MGH: There is now an ever starker contrast between Broken Britain and the American firing-up of small state deregulatory capitalistic impulses on Jan 20, 2025.
Walter Russell Mead reports:
American Exceptionalism Is Back: Trump has assembled a potentially powerful coalition of tech moguls and populists.
… While the tech industry’s staunch defense of the H-1B visa program enrages some populists, the tech industry is far less dependent on low-wage immigrant labor than many other economic sectors. Overall, a compromise in which Mr. Trump’s tech allies support caps on unskilled immigration and tight border controls while keeping the door open for migrants with the skills tech needs seems within reach.
The combination of reshoring production and restricting the growth of the labor force may be a net positive for tech. Faced with paying U.S. wages to production employees, manufacturers will invest much greater resources in technology that allows them to keep their head counts low. That is good for the national economy and productivity overall. It is even better for the tech sector.
Meanwhile, protectionism, immigration and deregulation will support blue-collar labor demand even as the technology revolution disrupts one industry after another. That looks important. Robo-taxis are already beginning to roll across the streets of American cities. How long will the members of the Teamsters Union be needed to drive trucks?
This is how American exceptionalism works. While much of the West remains gridlocked among antigrowth greens, sullen socialists clinging to unsustainable welfare states and technophobic regulators more interested in blocking potentially dangerous technologies than in developing world-beating companies, American populists have aligned with tech moguls around a program of deregulation that will accelerate the transformation of the American economy.
The pro-enterprise streak in American populism runs deep. The colonists who revolted against Britain wanted, among other things, the freedom to conduct their business without the restrictions that British policy sought to impose. Andrew Jackson’s populists weren’t capitalism-hating socialists who wanted to introduce central planning or stifle the animal spirits of American entrepreneurs. They hated the Eastern coastal elite and its domination of finance, but they wanted to decentralize and democratize capitalist opportunity, not crush it. …
[END]
History in action.. the process of procreative creative destruction resumes?
President Trump declared that going forward it will “be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”
Trump will sign executive orders on Monday ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government and instituting a policy recognizing individuals’ biological sex rather than their expressed gender identity.
My thanks to the Wall Street Journal, the Telegraph, and conservative Condorito
Dr Michael G. Heller
