Tag: news

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE

Technology is a key to social need which has not been well served in the past or present and could become worse without pragmatic accommodation.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Daughters of the Baboo Grove (From Chian to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins)

Author: Barbara Demick

Narrated By: Joy Osmanski

Barbara Demick (Author, American journalist, former Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.)

This is a brief and fascinating historical glimpse of a government policy gone awry. Like America’s mistaken policies on immigration, Barbara Demick’s story of China’s one-child policy traces the effects of government overreach. Demick tells the story of a rural Chinese family who births twin sisters during the time of China’s unjust enforcement of their one-child policy. One sister is abducted by Chinese government officials, and is adopted by a family in Texas. The ethics of an inhumane Chinese government policy and the perfidy of free enterprise are exposed in Demick’s true story of two children’s lives.

The territorial size of China in respect to continental America.

China’s one-child policy leads to a Chinese criminal enterprise to capitalize on kidnapping and selling children born to families that could not afford the fines for having more children than the law allows. Undoubtedly, most children born were cherished by their parents, but the hardship of life and human greed leads to unconscionable human trafficking. Kidnapping became a part of a legal and criminal enterprise in China. Government policy allowed bureaucrats and scofflaws to confiscate children from their parents and effectively deliver or sell children to orphanages or people wanting to adopt a child. Demick recounts stories of grieving parents and grandparents that cannot get their children back once they have been taken.

Child trafficking, broken families, loss of personal identity, human shame, and the immoral implication of other countries interest in adopting children are unintended consequences of a poorly thought out and implemented government policy.

Demick becomes interested in this story because of a message she receives from a stepbrother of an adopted Chinese sister that has a twin that lives in China. Because of Demick’s long experience in visiting and reporting on China, she had a network of people she could call. Using adoption records, Demick is able to find the Texas stepsister who had been kidnapped when she was 22 months old. She was trafficked to an orphanage in the Hunan Province of China. Years later, through messaging apps, the twins communicated with each other and shared their photographs. They eventually meet in China in 2019.

One is hesitant to argue a government policy is a unique act of China when every government makes policy decisions that have unintended consequences.

America’s policy decisions on immigration are a present-day fiasco that is as wrong as the one-child policy in China’s history. The one-child policy is eventually rejected by the Chinese’ government but Demick’s book shows how bad government policy has consequences that live on even when they are changed by future governments. America’s policy on immigration will be eventually reversed but its damage will live on.

Getting back to the story, Demick is instrumental in having the mother of Esther (aka E) and the twins meet in China.

One is hesitant to argue a government policy is a unique act of China when every government makes policy decisions that have unintended consequences. The twins are initially reticent but warm to each other in a way that bridges the cultural and language divide between the sisters. The two mothers see their respective roles in their daughter’s lives. E and her identical twin, Shuangjie, are reserved when they meet because of the cultural distance that was created by E’s adoption.

E. appears more confident than Shuangjie who is more reserved and less assured.

However, Demick suggests they seem to mirror each other in subsequent meetings. One feels a mix of emotions listening to this audiobook version of “Daughter’s of the Bamboo Grove”. They have grown up in different environments but seem to have been raised in similar economic circumstances, though the two economies are vastly different in income per household, the two appear to be raised in similar economic classes.

Every person who reads/listens to “Daughter’s of the Bamboo Grove” can view the story from different perspectives.

There is the perspective of identical twins raised in different families, cultures, and histories. How are identical twins different when they are raised by different parents and in different cultures? Another perspective is that Xi and Trump have had dramatic effects on the societies their policies have created. The Twin’s meeting in 2019 is one year after my wife and I had visited China. Xi had become President after his predecessor began opening China’s economic opportunities. Two incidents on the trip when Xi had become President come to mind. The first is the feeling one has of being monitored everywhere and the internet restrictions when used to ask questions. The second was an incident in a crowded Chinese market when I was approached by a beefy citizen who raised his arms and seemed to be angrily talking to me in Chinese which I sadly did not understand. The distinct impression is that I was not welcome. This was a singular incident that did not repeat in our 21-day tour, but it seemed like an expression of hostility toward America.

This listener/reader thinks of the unintended consequences of Trump’s treatment of alleged illegal immigrants.

Trump’s immigration policy is similar to China’s earlier mistake with the one-child policy. America’s, China’s, and Japan’s economies are highly dependent on youth which is diminished in two fundamental ways. One is by public policy that restricts birth, and the other is immigration. Freedom of choice is a foundational belief in democracy while considered a threat in autocracy. In America today, it seems there is little difference between America, Japan, or China in regard to government policy that threatens the future. All have an aging population that can only be aided by younger generations. Even though manufacturing may become less labor intensive, public need in the service industry will grow. Technology is a key to social need which has not been well served in the past or present and could become worse without pragmatic accommodation.

GENERIC DRUGS

Katherine Eban believes generic drugs are important for global health because of affordability and accessibility. One wonders if anyone who reads or listens to “Bottle of Lies” will take generic drugs if they can afford the original FDA approved product.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Bottle of Lies (The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom)

Author: Katherine Eban

Narrated By: Katherine Eban

Katherine Eban (Author, American Rhodes scholar with a MPhil from University of Oxford.)

“Bottle of Lies” is a history of duplicity and dishonesty in the generic drug industry. It is a damning dissection of the lure of money at the expense of human life. On the one hand, affordability, healthcare savings, global health, and the value of regulation are made clear in “Bottle of Lies”. On the other, Katherine Eban shows how the lure of capitalism and greed creates an incentive to evade regulation and kill innocent people seeking drug treatment for their illnesses.

Katherine Eban reveals the history of an India drug company named Ranbaxy that was founded by two brothers, Ranbir Singh and Gurbax Singh.

In 1937, these two entrepreneurs recognized the economic opportunity of creating a drug manufacturing operation with lower labor costs in India to capture the market in drugs nearing their patent expiration dates. They were focused more on organizational cost cutting and the money that could be made than the efficacy of the drugs they could produce. The company was sold in 1952 to their cousin Bhai Mohan Singh. This cousin transformed Ranbaxy to a pharmaceutical giant, but his experience was in construction and finance, not pharmaceuticals. However, his son Parvinder Singh joined the company in 1967 and was a graduate from Washington State University and the University of Michigan with a master’s degree and PhD in pharmacy.

Parvinder Singh (1944-1999, became the leader of Ranbaxy in 1967.)

Eban argues Parvinder Singh looked at his father’s business as a scientist with a pharmaceutical understanding and a desire to produce lower cost drugs for the world for more than a source of wealth. Parvinder appeared to value quality, transparency, drug efficacy, and long-term credibility for Ranbaxy. Parvinder recruited talent who believed in lowering costs and maintaining the efficacy of drugs the company manufactured. However, Parvinder dies in 1999 and the executives who took over the company focused on maximizing profit rather than the efficacy of the drugs being produced. Parvinder’s leadership is succeeded by Brian Tempest who expands the company by navigating the regulatory restrictions on generic drug manufacture. Tempest tries to balance profitability with global health efficacy of generic drugs. Parvinder’s son, Malvinder Singh eventually becomes the CEO of the company. He returned control to the Singh family. The corporate culture changed to what its original founders created, i.e., a drug producer driven by profit. Malvinder was not a scientist.

Malvinder Singh (Born in 1973, Grandson of Bhai Mohan Singh and son of Dr. Parvinder Singh.)

Under Malvinder, Eban shows the company turns from science to economic strategy to increase revenues of Ranbaxy. Internal checks on the efficacy and testing of their drugs is eroded. Criticism from regulators and whistleblowers are either ignored or sidelined by company management. Peter Baker Tucker’s role in exposing Ranbaxy is detailed in Eban’s history. With the help of Dinesh Thakur, an employee of Ranbaxy, Tucker bravely exposed the company’s fraud. (Thakur received $48 million compensation as a whistleblower award.) Tucker is an FDA investigator who reviewed Ranbaxy’s internal documents that revealed their fabricated data about their drug manufacturing process.

Peter Baker Tucker (aka Peter Baker, former FDA investigator.)

Ranbaxy is sold to a Japanese company called Daiichi Sankyo in 2008. Eban explains that Malvinder concealed critical information about FDA investigations and data fraud in the company’s sale. Malvinder and his brother, Shivinder Singh, are arrested in 2019 and remain in custody in 2021, facing multiple fraud accusations.

Sun Pharma acquires the remnants of the Ranbaxy-Sankyo’ sale.

Though Eban does not focus on what happens after the sale to the Japanese company, it is sold at a loss to Sun Pharmaceutical Industries and Singh family’s ownership is sued by Sankyo for hiding regulatory issues of the company. Daiichi received a $500 million settlement but effectively lost money on their investment. Eban, in “Bottle of Lies” offers a nuanced indictment of generic drug manufacturer and sale.

Eban believes generic drugs are important for global health because of affordability and accessibility.

Quality and drug efficacy must be insured through international regulation. Eban endorses unannounced inspections, routine testing of the drugs, and strict legal enforcement against poor manufacturing systems. Without transparency and oversight of all drug manufacturing, human lives are put at risk.

This is quite an expose, but it ends with criticism of inspections of China’s drug manufacturing capabilities.

The inspections of foreign companies that manufacture generic drugs, like those she refers to in her book, are conducted by similar inspectors who do not know the culture or language of the countries in which generic drugs are being produced. The FDA was paying their inspector in India $40,000 per year at the time of Ranbaxy’s investigation. It is by instinct, not interrogation, that malfeasance is detected. Too much is missed when one cannot talk to and clearly understand employees of manufacturing companies.

It seems America has two choices: one is to increase the salaries of FDA inspectors and require that they know the language of the countries in which they are working and two, set up a system of random reverse engineering of generic drugs allowed in the United States. This not to suggest all other FDA regulations would not be enforced when a generic drug is proposed but that site reviews would be more professionally conducted. One wonders if anyone who reads or listens to “Bottle of Lies” will take generic drugs if they can afford the original FDA approved product.

CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY

America’s current government may not be the criminal enterprise of Drew Hayes’ “Forging Hephaestus”, but it reflects on the worst characteristics of capitalist democracies.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Forging Hephaestus: Villains’ Code Series, Book 1 

Author: Drew Hayes

Narrated By: Amy Landon

Drew Hayes (Author, humorist writer who earned a BA in English from Texas Tech University.)

“Forging Hephaestus” is the beginning of a series of books that this critic is unlikely to complete. The first book, “Forging Hephaestus” sets the table for some interesting points about systems of power, identity, and morality that reminds one of government control and influence. However, Hayes is creating a secret guild of criminals’ intent on ruling the world of crime.

Drew’s story begins with the creation of a young woman that embodies the force of fire.

She is like the mythological god of fire though not appearing as someone who is male or has, as the Greek myth goes, any physical imperfection. One presumes the author is challenging the patriarchal truth of history that shows power, aggression, and ambition are not only masculine. Additionally, the choice of Hephestus as a woman makes one think about a person who exemplifies both creation and destruction, i.e., the birth and death of humanity.

If one thinks of Hayes’ story as a cynical allegory of government, rather than a criminal enterprise, it becomes more interesting to this reviewer.

What Drew describes as a Villains’ Guild is like a government elected by people who believe they are voting for someone who represents their interests. In reality, voters are voting for self-interested people who may or may not govern in voter’s best interest. At best, governments try to serve the public but are not gods of infallible understanding that can legislate what is always in the best interest of its citizens. Generally, governments control through compliance, not morality. Order is prized over justice and equity. That desire for order changes elected officials’ loyalty to those who are elected as much as to people who voted for them.

The guild that Hayes creates audits and enforces their criminal objectives with state surveillance and internal security.

State surveillance and internal security are the same tools used by government which are even more effective today than in the past because of technology. (A past trip to China after Xi had taken power shows how internet searches are restricted when one is in a Bejing’ hotel.) The paradox of surveillance and internal security is that no one is truly free whether they are a part of those who govern or are the governed. Human nature exploits the weak, the ethnic, and ill-informed. Government representatives are no more virtuous or venal than the citizens who elected them. That is why citizens become skeptical about the legitimacy of their government’s concern about common good.

Trump’s world view.

Listening/reading “Forging Hephaestus” is an apocryphal story to some who feel President Trump is the quintessential example of one who is more interested in himself and his family’s wealth than the people who voted for him. America’s current government may not be the criminal enterprise of Drew Hayes’ “Forging Hephaestus”, but it reflects on the worst characteristics of capitalist democracies.

EQUALITY

Discrimination is certainly based on the color of one’s skin but also on gender, ethnicity, and income inequality. Those nations that embrace equality of opportunity for all will be the leaders of the future in the age of technology

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Caste (The Origins of Our Discontent)

Author: Isabel Wilkerson

Narrated By:  Robin Miles

Isabel Wilkerson (Author, American journalist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1994 while serving as the Chicago Bureau Chief for the NYTimes.)

Isabel Wilkerson has written a provocative book about what she characterizes as a rigid social hierarchy in America that undermines the ideals of democracy. Wilkerson weaves her personal life and the history of black experience with the sociological failings in America’s treatment of race. She notes the past and present truth of white America’s unequal treatment of its citizens based on race. However, her characterization of America’s discrimination as a caste system and its comparison to India’s and Nazi Germany’s governments is hyperbolic. Nevertheless, it creates a sense of urgency for those who believe in the ideal of human equality. It is difficult, if not impossible, to compare other nation’s inequality with America’s effort and present-day failure to fulfill the ideals of democracy.

The timeliness of Wilkerson’s book seems appropriate in relation to the backward steps being taken by Donald Trump.

Some Americans feel threatened by demographic change that will make white citizens less than 50% of America’s population by 2045. In theory, no one should care if all people are treated equally. What history shows is that the ideals of equality have never been achieved in America or in any other country with a dominant race and/or ethnicity.

Trump’s effort to return America to its past is interpreted by some as a return to industrial production.

America’s return to industrialization is a false flag that will not make America Great. Reindustrialization and keeping America white is a fool’s errand based on demography and the age of technology. Trump’s desire for power, adulation, and loyalty have little to do with prejudice but everything to do with appealing to the worst fears of middle-class America. Trump is willing to use whatever dog whistle is required to satisfy his desire for power and prestige. He understands the fears of the middle class and where American power lays. Power and money are the driving forces of capitalism. Middle class American’s buying power has stagnated or fallen since the 1970s despite the increasing wealth of the top 10% of American citizens. The middle class of America is something Trump appealed to in his re-election for a second term because of their disproportionate loss of income and the rising wealth of America’s business leaders. The irony is that Trump is one of the beneficiaries of that income gap between the very rich and the working-class.

Income growth in America.

Income disparity trend in the U.S. through 2015.

Wilkerson is right in the sense that America’s real objective should be to ensure equality of all. She is arguing we should have a greater sense of urgency in achieving equality. Equal treatment for all is a formula that can maintain America’s position as an economic, military, and political hegemon. American industrial hegemony is yesterday’s goal. Technological advancement is today’s goal. To achieve today’s goals, equal treatment of all becomes essential in technology because intelligence, innovation, and persistence does not lie in any one race, sex, or creed.

America is class conscious but not in the same way as either India’s or Nazi Germany’s histories.

Wilkerson notes a caste system can be built around ethnicity, religion, language, or gender but race discrimination is what she has personally experienced and underlays much of her comparisons of American history with India and Nazi Germany. Equality of opportunity is key to continued growth of human beings and national economies in the age of technology. In the short term, one may see an autocratic country like China become an economic and military hegemon, but maintenance of that success is dependent on equality of opportunity for all, not just those in power.

One can sympathize with the author’s view of discrimination but her comparison of America to India and Nazi Germany misses too much of what unequal treatment in America is based upon.

Discrimination is certainly based on the color of one’s skin but also on gender, ethnicity, and income inequality. Those nations that embrace equality of opportunity for all will be the leaders of the future in the age of technology.

SUPREME COURT

To Leah Litman, Trump’s election seems a setback but not a reversal of the ideal of balancing equal rights with private interests. As Alexander Pope wrote in his poem, in the 18th century “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Lawless (How the Supreme Court Runs Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes)

Author: Leah Litman

Narrated By:  Leah Litman

Leah Litman (Author, BA in Chemistry & Chemical Biology, constitutional law scholar with Doctorate from University of Michigan Law School.)

One doubts Leah Litman would suggest there are no biological differences between men and women considering her education as a science major and legal scholar. As a science major, she knows there are chromosomal, hormonal, physical, and reproductive system differences between the sexes. However, Litman is spot on in arguing women do not have equal rights with men just as all races and ethnicities do not in the ideals of American Democracy. Litman argues that legally, equality is not being enforced in America today and is being diminished by today’s Supreme Court of the United States.

American Supreme Court

Litman persuasively argues today’s Supreme Court has eroded women’s rights by supporting legal theories that are ideologically promoted by political conservatives but not by precedents set by an earlier Supreme Court. Today’s majority at the Supreme Court has succumbed to the influence of conservative theories about the sexes rather than precedents set by an earlier Supreme Court.

It is not that the sexes are not different but that they deserve equal treatment under the law.

The point made by Litman is that the Supreme Court has found that in “all forms of discrimination”, equality of opportunity is mandated by the 14th amendment which provides equal protection under the law to all citizens with assurance that no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process. Further, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment, education, and public accommodation. Previously settled law by the Supreme Court is being ignored in reversing Roe v. Wade, criminalizing same sex intimacy and marriage, and denying equal rights to the LGBTQ community.

What Litman is pointing to is the politicalization of the Supreme Court.

One might argue the Court has always been a political body. America’s history of discrimination has been reinforced and attacked in different eras of the Court. As the Turkish saying, “A fish rots from the head down”, today’s Justices of the Supreme Court are reversing precedents set in former rulings. America elects a President every four years. Even though Supreme Court justices are appointed for a lifetime, they decide to retire at some point in their careers and are replaced by recommendations of a current President with acceptance or rejection by Congress. If a conservative is in the office of the Presidency, then the recommendation will be based on candidates who reinforce a President’s political leaning. The same, of course, is true for a more liberal President.

Litman infers a politicalization of the Supreme Court lies at the feet of those who choose to vote, promote, and support candidates of their choice.

America is at a conservative revisionist point in the history of the Court with Donald Trump’s election. America has only itself to blame or praise for that revisionism. The obvious leaning of Litman is liberal in that she strongly believes in equal rights for all Americans. Her plea is for Americans to wake up to the importance of voting, promoting, and supporting candidates for public office.

American Democracy remains the best form of government despite wavering on balancing equal rights and private interests.

A perfect society will balance equal rights with private interests. America is not there, but it has a greater possibility of getting there than any other form of governance. To Leah Litman, Trump’s election seems a setback but not a reversal of the ideal of balancing equal rights with private interests. As Alexander Pope wrote in his poem, in the 18th century “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”.

COST/BENFIT

“Apple in China” is a message to the entire world about the risks of technological relocation solely based on reducing costs of labor in a politically and culturally divided world. This is a book every employer should listen to or read.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Apple in China (The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company)

Author: Patrick McGees

Narrated By:  Fred Sanders

Patrick McGee (Author, technology/business journalist, San Francisco Correspondent for “Financial Times”.)

Patrick McGee has written an important book about world trade. He reveals a shocking story about Apple and the risk of basing a corporation’s economic future on a singular aspect of its success, i.e. cost of manufacturing. This is a story of two companies and the world’s labor market. Foxconn and Apple look to China, Taiwan, South Korea, Ireland, and Asian countries that vie for the role of the cheapest and best labor markets in the world. Foxconn’s and much of Apple’s search and success as a tech company is based on finding the cheapest labor in the world for the manufacture of product. However, McGee explains how that view makes Apple and other international corporations vulnerable to the politics of nation-states that have a mix of economic and political agendas. McGee explains how politics can be a greater cost than benefit to a business enterprise because of nation-state’ politics.

The power of political leadership in business enterprise is on display in America today with Donald Trump and his doomed effort to return America to a 20th century manufacturing behemoth.

McGee’s story is about the impact of China’s government on Apple and Foxconn led by Tim Cook and Terry Gou. Tim Cook is the wunderkind hired by Steve Jobs before his death, and Terry Gou is the Taiwanese billionaire who founded Foxconn which is now headed by Young Liu who was educated in Taiwan and the United States.

Tim Cook (CEO of Apple Inc.)

McGee explains why and how Tim Cook became the CEO of Apple. Jobs who was known as a poor manager of people, needed a manager who emulated Jobs’ drive but understood how to manager an organization to become bigger while remaining profitable. Cook is characterized as someone who has a near photographic memory. His analysis of reports from subordinates could be used to advance company goals or change a subordinate’s understanding of anything they propose that is not practicable or goal focused. What McGee argues is that Tim Cook’s focus on the cost of manufacturing became an Achilles heel when he hires Foxconn to organize Apple’s iPhone manufacturing to be done mostly in one country, China.

To accomplish iPhone manufacture in China, Cook had to transfer thousands of American engineers to train laborers in the assembly of Apple products.

Cook needed a go-between which became Foxconn, a Taiwanese company that is the largest electronics labor contractor in the world. Foxconn is also China’s largest private-sector employer with over 800k employees. Foxconn employees assemble iPhones, semiconductors, and electronics for some of the largest American technology companies in the world, e.g. Apple, Microsoft, and Dell. Foxconn’s relationship with China is further complicated by the international relationship between Taiwan and China. Foxconn has built a lucrative business in the tech industry because of its labor intensity and the desire of tech companies to minimize overhead to improve their profits.

World trade has made Foxconn the leading international labor subcontractor in the world. They employ an estimated 800,000 employees in China alone.

The desire to bring Taiwan under the control of communist China is a background conflict between Xi and Terry Gou. It may be unlikely that Gou would ever be elected President of Taiwan, but his candidacy is a cloud of suspicion to knowledgeable Chinese, Taiwanese, and American leaders. McGee notes Foxconn’s tax audits and land-use investigations by Chinese authorities that some believe are politically motivated. Foxconn has been criticized for poor working conditions because of incidents of worker protests, suicides, and labor strikes. China’s posture on those working conditions is ambiguous and most American businesses are ignorant or uncaring. A China crackdown on labor conditions would have wide effects on the global tech industry.

For Apple to lower costs of iPhone assembly, Foxconn contracted China’s people at low wages, to support what would be unfair labor practices in America, to assemble iPhones.

This benefited Apple in the first years of their association with Foxconn in China. However, later in the transition President Xi spread false reports of poor and unfair warranty practices being offered Chinese consumers of Apple products. Contrary to Xi’s claims, McGee explains that Apple warranties were the same in China as they were throughout the world.

McGee infers politics were behind Xi’s false claims about iPhone warranties.

China’s economy benefited from Apple’s move for cheaper manufacturing costs. China gained an immense technology boost from the retraining of Chinese citizens by Apple’s experienced engineers. With iPhone manufacturing in China, Apple’s revenues rose from $24 billion in 2007 to $201 billion in 2022. Apple invested an estimated $275 billion in China’s economy over 5 years. However, with Xi’s lies and vilification of Apple’s warranty, Chinese smartphone giants like Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo increased sales. One presumes, Tesla followed a similar cost and benefit reward with its labor and technology transfer to China’s electric vehicle manufacturers.

McGee notes the bad publicity for Apple in the Chinese market threatens Apple’s future in three ways.

One, its loss of sales in China, two, a significant change in low-cost manufacturing advantages with rising Chinese labor cost, and three, Apple’ technology transfer to Chinese companies. Add to those lost advantages is Apple’s relocation costs to another country for iPhone manufacture.

GENERAL GEORGE C. MARSHALL (1880-1959)

An interesting comparison McGee makes between Apple’s $275 billion investment in China for iPhone assembly is that it is more than double the amount used in the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after WWII.

McGee notes Apple has a supply chain vulnerability from the Chinese government’s relationship with key suppliers of iPhone components wherever they are assembled. “Apple in China” is a message to the entire world about the risks of technological relocation solely based on reducing costs of labor in a politically and culturally divided world. This is a book every employer should listen to or read.

SNARES

Being bad is a human characteristic, i.e., the desire for money, power, prestige, and sex are elemental parts of the human condition. They are the “Snares” of human life.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Snares (A Novel)

By: Rav Grewal-Kök

Narrated By:  Neil Shah

Rav Grewal-Kök (Author, “The Snares” is his first novel. Rav Grewal-Kök has written for The Atlantic, New England Review and won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.)

“The Snares” is about a well-educated lawyer who feels like an American outsider struggling to become a success. His mother and father are Punjabi. He seems burdened by being a person of a different race and ethnicity in white America. That feeling is reinforced by the circumstances of his life. He is married to a woman who comes from a wealthy white American family. He is a lawyer at forty years of age that is offered a job by the CIA. His hope is that working for the CIA will be a career making move that will make him a success in his own eyes and in the opinion of his in-laws. The irony of Grewal-Kök’s story is that the CIA is not an avenue for success but a road to perdition. The author paints a picture of the CIA and FBI that makes a mockery of American ideals.

What Grewal-Kök shows is that American government employees are just like the general population.

All the prejudices and dishonesty of America (or any country) are as present in governments as in any organization of human beings. The difference is that government has wider societal influence than a singular business, or eleemosynary organization. Government is filled with all the social goodness and prejudice of the society in which it is designed to serve.

“The Snares” the author is writing about are the best and worst of what the American CIA represent. The author’s main character, Neel Chima, is interviewed for a job with the CIA. Chima is hired by the CIA during the George W. Bush administration. George W., considered a Republican conservative, is the first President to authorize drone strikes for targeted killing. President Bush approved the killing of 6 Yemeni’ men in Yemen for their attack on the USS Cole. What is often forgotten is that Barack Obama, a Democratic liberal, authorized between 400 and 600 drone strikes that killed an estimated 3,797 people, of which 300 to 400 were civilians.

Obama’s drone strikes were in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

One takes for granted that every drone strike is based on a careful examination of the human targets that are chosen. What Grewal-Kök implies is the CIA is something more than an intelligence service charged with collecting, analyzing and acting on foreign threats to America. As CIA operatives, these very human and well-educated government employees are pursuing a good life by stopping considered threats to America. Neel Chima is hired because the CIA officer in charge believes he can be an asset in the pursuit of foreign intelligence because of his ambition and life as a Punjabi American. However, Chima’s career ends in a state of turmoil, in part because of his own human vices but largely because of inept management by unscrupulous supervisors.

The snares that Grewal-Kök is referring to are “bad people” who are in powerful government positions. These bad government actors use their position to subvert newbies to their organization for actions that are contrary to ideals of the government agency for which they work. This is particularly dangerous in organizations like the CIA and FBI that are designed to interpret behaviors of potential criminals, i.e. not criminals in the act of crime but those who may or may not commit a crime.

J. Edgar Hoover led the FBI from 1924 to 1972.

The FBI arrested Americans suspected of being radicals during the Red Scare without due process. President Trump is doing the same thing with the arbitrary exportation of immigrants today. The FBI targeted Martin Luther King Jr. and tried to discredit him by closely surveilling, recording, and interpreting his activity. Hoover arguably collected secret files on politicians and famous Americans to aid his power and influence in government more than to reduce public corruption. The author infers the same is true in the CIA.

Grewal-Kök’s primary focus is on the CIA but the “Snares” of which he writes are the same that troubled the FBI. The CIA is creating files on other countries’ citizens with recommendations on actions to kill real and perceived enemies of America. Both conservative and liberal Presidents of the United States have used the CIA to kill foreign nationals. In 2o05 Abu Hamza Rabia was killed by a drone strike under George W. Bush’s administration. In 2006, the assassination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was done in an airstrike under Bush. In 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. born cleric and Al-Qaeda figure was killed in Yemen by a drone strike under Obama’s administration. In the same year, Osama bin Laden is assassinated in a U.S. Navy Seal’ raid ordered by Obama. In 2020, Qasem Soleimani, a major general in Iran’s Islamic Guard was killed in a drone strike at the orders of the Trump administration. In 2022, a CIA drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan killed Ayman al-Zawahiri under President Biden.

WHAT IS THE TRUTH?

Even if all of these sanctioned murders by American Presidents have been justified, the story of “Snares” makes real–the potential for a bad or ambitious CIA agent to lie or inadvertently misconstrue the truth. Grewal-Kök explains how all human beings are subject to the “Snares” of life.

The character of Neel Chima is an everyman in America. His fall from grace is partly self-inflicted but accelerated by bad actors in the CIA. Being bad is a human characteristic, i.e., the desire for money, power, prestige, and sex are elemental parts of the human condition. They are the “Snares” of human life.

ARROGANCE

A President who only sees government as a cost and the wealthy as the nation’s only benefactors, compounds America’s inability to solve the problems of poverty with eviction being a preeminent symptom.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Evicted (Poverty and Profit in the American City)

By: Matthew Desmond

Narrated By:  Dion Graham

Matthew Desmond (Author, sociologist and a Pulitzer Prize winner, Professor of Sociology at Princeton.)

Matthew Desmond has written about American poverty in “Evicted”. There are two types of poverty. One is a worker who is not making enough money to be anything more than poor. The second kind of poor is grinding poverty where one must choose between having food to eat or a roof over one’s head. One who is poor can live in America, may get an education, find a job, and get along in life. However, those with too little money to eat and have shelter–live lives of desperation. Desmond’s book is about the latter to show how American society is failing desperate citizens. Desmond interviews several poor Americans that offer a clear understanding of the difference between being poor in America and being desperately poor in America.

Some argue America is the land of opportunity and if one cannot grasp opportunity, it is because they create their own problems.

“Land of opportunity” believers argue there are jobs in America and those who choose to beg for food rather than work deserve their fate. The truth is that many jobs in America do not pay enough for those who have jobs to pay rent and feed their families. Housing is expensive and affordable housing is not being produced in large enough quantities to reduce the costs of housing. Affordable housing is hard to build because many homeowners resist having it built in their neighborhoods. When land is found, it is often too expensive for the builder to make a profit with low rents. The cost of construction is often higher than it needs to be because of high land prices, building code requirements, or rezoning needed to allow multifamily housing.

Education in America is not meeting the needs of its citizens.

School availability is not well enough managed to ensure education for all who live in America. Sex education and contraception are being discouraged in school, which is a foolish, self-destructive societal mistake. Healthcare is too expensive for many Americans with low incomes which compounds the health problems of the poor who cannot afford either medical service or treatment. Grinding poverty causes some to seek relief through drugs which increases medical problems and further aggravates inequality being fed by an illicit industry that is growing in America. Drug abuse kills Americans in many ways; not the least of which is addiction and poverty.

The history of American income inequality is burdened by forms of racism and sexual discrimination that do not treat people equally.

Jobs are changing with automation and outsourcing of goods produced by an international economy. American government has failed to create policies that help those who need more help. As one of the wealthiest nations in the world, America has been incapable of solving the spread of poverty among its citizens.

In reading/listening to Desmond’s research, it seems like there is an American conspiracy making one of the wealthiest countries in the world incapable of solving the housing, education, and employment problems of its citizens.

A President who only sees government as a cost and the wealthy as the nation’s only benefactors, compounds America’s inability to solve the problems of poverty with eviction being a preeminent symptom.

PROJECT 2025

Only the Constitution of the United States stands between Trump’s authoritarianism and what has made America one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Project (How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America)

By: David A. Graham

Narrated By: Ari Fliakos

David A. Graham (Author, journalist, staff writer at The Atlantic.)

Graham has taken the time to dissect the policies proposed by the Heritage Foundation’s support and creation of Project 2025. Project 2025 is a political treatise that seems to outline many of the policies and objectives of the Trump administration.

As Graham notes, even though Trump is unlikely to have read Project 2025, its content seems to outline much of what Trump has done or is trying to do in his Presidency.

A priority in Project 2025 is downsizing the federal government. Interestingly, government employee firings began as soon as Trump entered the oval office. With Trump’s appointment of Elon Musk as the leader of DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) over 200,000 federal workers have been discharged. An estimated 10,000 employees were discharged from the Department of Health and Human Services. If all of these firings were to be permanent, an estimated $1.17 billion to $1.26 billion would be saved per year. With 2 million federal employees, less than 1 percent of the payroll cost of government has been SAVED.

Three things come to mind with the 1 percent cost reduction in government employee payroll.

One, is the effect of a job lost to a family who depends on gainful employment. Two, what public services are lost as a result of 2oo,000 fired government employees. And finally, what value is there to the public in reducing government payroll cost by less than 1 percent?

Of course, some will say that misses the point of the symbolic value of reducing the cost of government.

After all, America is founded on capitalism not socialist welfare. Yes and no. Yes, we are capitalists. No, we benefit from government employees who are gainfully employed because they buy things with the money they make while providing service to the public. Is the risk of unemployment in America worth the cost of some human inefficiency?

Project 2025 recommends tax system overhaul with the implementation of a flat income tax.

Trump has reduced jobs in the Department of the IRS. One should remind oneself that the present tax system takes the same maximum amount of money per year out of a family’s income for social security whether they make a million dollars per year or minimum wage. The social security tax rate is 6.2% of up to $176,100 of income per year. After one who is making more than $176,100, no further social security tax is taken. Americans pay that 6.2% whether they make minimum wage or millions of dollars per year. There is something wrong with that picture. Tax reform is needed in America, but the tax reform Trump is interested in is for rich capitalists, not minimum wage earners.

Trump wants to abolish the IRS and finance the government with tariffs and a sales tax.

He wants to have a national sales tax of 23% or roughly 30 cents per dollar spent. That tax will be a burden to the poor but nothing to the rich. Trump perceives an equal benefit to minimum wage workers because they would not have to pay taxes on tips, overtime, and social security. Is that tax benefit equal to corporate tax reductions of 21% to 20% and a reduced rate of 15% for U.S. manufacturers. More jobs may or may not be created, but who gains the most benefit?

Trump infers corporation owners and managers would not put tax savings in their pockets but would create more jobs.

Two entitlement programs Trump believes will be unnecessary as a result of his tax changes are Medicare and Medicaid. Trump supporters believe economic growth will offset the negative impact that his tax reform plan will have on the poor. Does that make it unnecessary to have Medicare or Medicaid for the poor?

Trump is making a mockery of the Constitution by indiscriminately arresting and deporting anyone who cannot prove their status as a legal resident of America.

Project 2025 insists on immigration enforcement with improved border security and tighter immigration policies. Trump endorses that plan, but it is a job for Congress, not an autocratic President. He is willing to pay immigrants with American tax dollars for them to return to their countries of birth. Whose money is it that Trump is choosing to use?

Trump believes global warming is just a seasonal event in the history of earth.

Project 2025 recommends rolling back environmental regulations and endorsing fossil fuels over renewable energy. Trump endorses that plan by rolling back environmental regulations because he believes global warming is a fiction. Science is a fiction to President Trump.

Project 2025 recommends strengthening the executive branch of government and decreasing the rolls of Congress and the courts.

Project 2025 recommends strengthening the executive branch of government and decreasing the rolls of Congress and the courts that are the basis upon which separation of powers were written into the Constitution. Trump is ignoring fundamental tenants of the Constitution like Due Process of Law in the deportation of immigrants.

Project 2025 recommends criminalizing pornography, removing legal protections for anti-LGBT discrimination, and ending diversity programs that drive for equality of all Americans. Trump is using the office of the Presidency to punish elite colleges that have DEI programs meant to address American social inequality.

Trump believes what he believes and acts on those beliefs. His sexual picadilloes are ok but pornography is not. The author shows Trump has support for his beliefs in Project 2025. His support is equally apparent in the free vote of a majority who voted for him in the last election. Only the Constitution of the United States stands between Trump’s authoritarianism and what has made America one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

HUMAN HOPE

Migration is the movement of people to new areas of the world for work, better living conditions, and safety. In that process the world economy is strengthened. .

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Shortest History of Migration

By: Ian Goldin

Narrated By: Julian Elfer

Ian Andrew Goldin (South African born professor at the University of Oxford, specializes in globalization and development.)

Professor Goldin has written a history of migration that reminds one of the well-known phrases attributed to Socrates: “I know that I know nothing”. Goldin is born in South Africa to a Lithuanian father who fled his home country to escape political and social upheaval in Europe during the early 20th century. In retrospect, that migration saved the future of the Goldin’s from Stalinist suppression after WWII. It is ironic that Ian Goldin is raised in South Africa where white suppression of native South Africans was common. “The Shortest History of Migration” is no apologia, but it is a forthright history of the ubiquity of world migration.

Migration is an essential characteristic of civilization believed to have begun in Africa.

The obvious irony of human origin is the darker skin tone of our first ancestors who had higher levels of skin melanin to protect them from the harsh effects of the sun. Humanity began as a species of a black ancestor, an estimated 6 to 7 million years ago.

Neanderthal precursor of human beings.

Goldin implies humans moved from Africa to explore the world. They may have left to escape the harshness of their existence or because of the nature of species’ curiosity. Their change in environment led to changes in their physiognomy (facial features and expressions) caused by the evolutionary nature of life and the exigencies of environment. The point is that migration has been a part of history since the beginning of life on earth.

What may be forgotten by some is that migration was largely unregulated until WWI according to Goldin.

That seems largely true except the United States passed the Naturalization Act of 1790 that established rules for citizenship and an Immigration Act of 1891 that created the U.S. Bureau of Immigration; both of which implied regulation. Nevertheless, the fundamental point is that migration has been a part of society from the beginning of human life.

WWI generated many new laws and policies about migration.

Wartime measures required passports and border crossing cards to manage migration. National security increased scrutiny of immigrants. Broader societal and political concerns about migration spread across the world. Migration became more complicated.

Goldin argues the benefit of migration is misunderstood and misrepresented by leaders like Donald Trump.

Goldin suggests the economic impact of Trump’s anti-migrant beliefs and policies will undermine both the world and American economies. In 2023, an estimated 18% of the economic output of the American economy came from migration. The two industries most impacted are agriculture and construction but many immigrants work in caregiving and medical professions, all of which will be impacted by labor shortages. Goldin notes that migrants working in other countries send money back to their home countries that amount to more revenue than is provided by tourism and foreign aid. Many, if not most, economists would argue migration is a cornerstone of economic growth and stability. Trump’s false statements about migrant criminality are overblown and unsupported by economic statistics that show migrants contributed an estimated $25.7 billion in 2022 to the Social Security system in taxes that benefit aged American citizens (like myself).

Trump policies will not return American to the manufacturing prosperity of the twentieth century but to a possible depression like that of the 1930s or, at the very least, a recession like that of 2007-2009.

Migration is the movement of people to new areas of the world for work, better living conditions, and safety. In that process the world economy is strengthened.