Extra brief briefs

• National Emergency: He lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but this weekend he's golfing at Mar a Lago again.
• The Green New Deal: Market forces will not address climate change, so radical action is required.  More to come.
• Blackface: If you can't recall any stupid, insensitive things you did when you still were in your twenties, you're still in your twenties. Northam should not resign.
• Amazon: The company plans to add 5000 jobs at its New York headquarters – most likely more – with no bribery required.  Other cities and states should take note.
• Brexit:  The question nobody seems to be asking is cui bono – which powerful individuals and corporations in the UK will profit from a "hard" Brexit?
• Ilhan Omar: Antisemitism?  What she forgot to mention was that AIPAC doesn't represent Jews, or even Israel; it represents Likud.
• Howard Schultz:  Just what we need! Another messianic billionaire!

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

Preoccupied with the chaos of our own national politics, it's easy enough to ignore the political chaos going on elsewhere.  Despite the best efforts of Our President, America certainly can't claim a monopoly on dysfunction; so let's take a moment to check in on a couple of our friends overseas.

If the test of a true compromise is that neither side is happy with it, Theresa May's Brexit deal passes with flying colors, unable to gain majority support even within her own Conservative party.  It is scarcely less contentious among Labour and Liberal MPs; only UKIP remains committed, and that minority party of xenophobes and neo-imperialists appears to be in rapid decline.  In the meanwhile, it looks like the UK is headed for a hard Brexit – with no negotiated exit plan – at the end of March.

Most economists agree that a hard Brexit will damage the British economy, but most Britons, like most Americans, pay scant attention to economists: typically, economic arguments just aren't visceral enough to sway the average voter.  Brexit is an ideological controversy that somehow managed to detach itself from party politics; and since the political parties are divided, no coherent approach to addressing it has emerged.  While a second Brexit referendum seems like the only logical approach to resolution, it probably would further divide the British public.

Nevertheless, the British deserve a new referendum, given that the first one was largely based on lies.  This time, the choice is more clear: between a hard Brexit with none of the advantages of EU membership, and remaining within the bloc, accepting the restraints membership entails.

Meanwhile, in France, Emmanuel Macron has been gobsmacked by the yellow vest movement, a genuinely populist, virtually leaderless series of protests by working class citizens — despite the best efforts of Jeanne-Marie LePen on the right and Jean-Luc Mélanchon on the left to jump out in front and lead the parade.  Even though the protests are dying down, the sentiments underlying them remain strong.

Macron was supposed to be France's savior — the new leader of a new party that would sweep away the old dysfunction.  When he turned out to be yet another entitled rich boy with strong corporatist tendencies, the French were sorely disappointed.  Unlike our own entitled rich boy, though, Macron has been smart enough to make some concessions.  Will they be enough to salvage his political career?  Probably not.  His tax cuts for the ultra-rich seem firmly entrenched.

*     *     *

Chaos notwithstanding, the multi-party democracies of Western Europe at least hold out the possibility of compromise and change.  In the US, though, it seems that our entrenched two-party system only can generate more division and more chaos.  The next two years of divided government are bound to be what the apocryphal Chinese curse calls "interesting times."

A few more briefs...

Brexit
It's going badly for Theresa May.  Apparently, EU leaders are not about to let the UK "have its cake and eat it," so the prospect of a hard Brexit looms ever more likely.  The idea of giving the British public a vote on the terms of an agreement, should there be one, is gaining popularity.  With support from Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbin, British voters might get the choice of remaining in the EU — but Corbins is unsure what political ramifications might ensue for Labour.

Migrant kids
Thousands of young migrants are being transferred from shelters, where they are entitled to schooling and access to legal representation, to tent encampments along the Mexican border, where they receive neither.  The number of minors in detention has climbed rapidly due to Tr*mp administration policies that put potential US sponsors in jeopardy of deportation.  Despite all the other crap in the news, let's not forget the kids.

Oh, yeah, Kavanaugh...
Yes, Kavanaugh's angry testimony in the latest round of hearings was designed to impress the usual "audience of one," and that objective certainly figured into Lindsey Graham's fit of pique as well.  For those wondering why hired gun Rachel Mitchell was pushed aside when it was Kavanaugh's turn, I'd suggest it was so the judge would not have to be seen thundering angrily at a woman.

Next?

Those who think a little disruption can be a good thing — or a lot of it, for that matter — now have an opportunity to test their hypothesis.  The most notable outcome of the Brexit vote so far is the disruption of British politics.  Both the Conservatives and Labour are split, and the British are not especially enthusiastic about either party.

In response, ECB President Mario Draghi is suggesting that the time has come to move away from the austerity policies that have crippled Europe since the financial crisis and emphasize growth.  Draghi knows that what underlies working class discontent across Europe is not immigration.

European workers have suffered with wages that buy less every year, along with the erosion of the social programs that make limited incomes acceptable.  In the UK, unemployment is low, but wages have been stagnant or slipping.  In southern Europe, any work at all is very hard to find.  The problem has been austerity.

It is in the interests of banks, private equity and sovereign wealth funds, and other global capitalists to continue austerity, cutting government services to free up money that will be used to pay back risky loans.  It is in the interests of everybody else to renegotiate that debt and restore public services, shifting wealth from those who have accumulated entirely too much to those they robbed.

That will not be done by the current crop of disruptors — Farange, Johnson, LePen, Orban, Tr*mp, et al. — but sadly will not be done by the ruling Establishment either.  Mario Draghi offers some hope, and with backing from Christine Lagarde, Mark Carney, Janet Yellen, and others whose financial power does not depend on private capital, it is conceivable that something positive yet may be done.

Brexit

Thursday's vote on whether or not the UK stays in the EU has a lot of people nervous, even though the vast majority of Americans couldn't tell you what it is much less what impact it may have.  The British, at least, know what it is.  I'm not about to explain it here.

I do think it's interesting, however, how the two sides in the Brexit debate parallel the sides November's US election.  On one side are establishment neoliberals, continuing to invest irrational faith in the "rational markets" fallacy; embracing globalization with enthusiasm that entirely ignores its negative impact on people who actually have to labor for their living; and paying lip service to the social disruption arising from income inequality while imposing austerity measures to exacerbate it.

On the "other side" are proxies for pretty much the same economic elite, but offering a different approach to keeping working people subjugated.  They are the political leaders who pander to xenophobic and racist nationalism to achieve the power to accumulate excessive wealth.  They understand that people with inadequate education (a large majority) will feel comfortable if they can have scapegoats (the "other") for their powerlessness and financial distress.

Is one side better than the other?  Possibly, but neither is a good choice.  It's "heads they win, tails we lose."  All we can do is forget the lose-lose economics and apply our personal value systems to where they each stand on whatever social issues we count most important.

Sigh.