Donald Trump obsessed with power but he will fail because his failed leadership is unable to inspire loyalty

Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe: 

Trump’s obsession with winning is a losing strategy. 

Raw power can only get a strongman leader so far. 

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it❗

Thank you for your service❗ 😞😰💘💙

By Stacie Nicole Smith, the managing director of the Consensus Building Institute and the director of the Workable Peace Project, a high school curriculum designed to teach conflict resolution.

For years, I watched ninth-graders learn a lesson that continues to elude some of the most powerful people in the world.

These students participate in a classroom role-play exercise based on one of history’s most famous diplomatic exchanges: the Melian Dialogue, recorded by Thucydides in his account of the Peloponnesian War. 

In 416 BC, Athenian envoys arrived at the small island of Melos with an ultimatum: submit or be destroyed. 

When the Melians protested, the Athenians cut them off. “The strong do what they can,” they said, “and the weak suffer what they must.”

The outcome: Athens “won” that conflict. Melos refused to submit and was conquered, its men killed, its women and children enslaved. In the very short term, it was a victory for Athens. 

Today, the logic of “the strong do what they can” seems to define how the world works. Great powers are ignoring the norms that once restrained them: Russia invaded Ukraine, and the United States arrested Venezuela’s leader and bombed Iran. The current administration’s approach to US foreign policy embodies the Athenian ethos, from a zero-sum approach to trade relationships to a willingness to take the country to war. 

In Canada, like the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently lamented at the World Economic Forum’s summit in Davos, “It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”

Those who admire the Athenians’ vision of strength seem to miss the fact that Thucydides didn’t record that exchange to celebrate it. It’s a prelude to catastrophe. Because, within a few years, Athens’s enemies united against it. The empire Athens built by force dissolved precisely because it had been built by force. 

Loyalty from its conquered coalition proved only as durable as the armed force holding it together. I mediated environmental disputes, organizational conflicts, and complex multiparty negotiations, and I have seen how decisions dictated by the powerful are much less stable than agreements designed to meet the interests of all parties.

Students I observed almost always figured this out. In the role-play, some were Athenians, some , and they were prompted to think beyond what they “can” or “must” do. 

Instead, they had to consider what would meet their core needs, uphold their values, and endure the test of time. Students routinely found compromises Athens never even considered — like reduced payment by the Melians* or autonomy over some matters of governance. Those arrangements would have given Athens much of what it needed while giving Melos more reason to accept its rule. This is what mediation experts call the “mutual gains” approach to conflict resolution.

In other words, the students I work with learned the limits of coercion. By rejecting the moral case out of hand, Athens made its contempt for justice explicit and thereby handed every wavering city-state a common cause. Overtly illegitimate behavior reduces the cost of opposing the aggressor, makes coalition-building against it easier, and converts previously neutral parties into motivated adversaries. 

Legitimacy is not a constraint on power — it is a form of power. In their focus on demonstrating strength, the Athenians ignored the strategic importance of building legitimacy.

Mediators know that win-lose deals are almost always worse deals, especially in the long run. The pattern is consistent: One party’s interests are ignored and it is forced to comply with the aggressor’s demands, resentment accumulates, and the forced “agreement” holds only as long as the aggressor can maintain the pressure.

The mediators I work with share the conviction that achieving win-win deals on the world stage is possible. 

People practicing the dynamics of coercion and negotiation firsthand can learn to avoid the pitfalls of the raw, and usually short-lived, exercise of power.

The lesson from Thucydides, then, extends far beyond violent conflict. The ninth-graders in my classroom figured this out in an afternoon. The question is whether today’s strongmen will figure it out before the costs become irreversible.

*Melians were the inhabitants of the Aegean island of Melos, famously involved in a 416 BC, incident during the Peloponnesian War. They maintained neutral, friendly ties with Sparta but were forced into a confrontation by Athens, which demanded their submission. Following their refusal to surrender, Athens conquered Melos, executing all men and enslaving women and children

Donald Trump and maga Republicans wrecking America's reputation in Europe anti-American sentiment rising

I just got back from Europe. Anti-American sentiment is on the rise
Opinion essay echo published in the Los Angeles Times by Robin Abcarian.

It was midday just before Easter in Paris. 

My niece and I walked past the city’s famous opera house, where tourists were relaxing on the wide steps. French soldiers armed with assault rifles strolled around, a comforting sight given the warnings about Iran-backed sleeper cells and potential retaliatory attacks. 

A busker with a guitar and a microphone entertained the crowd with a Coldplay cover.

Between songs, he asked, “Anyone here speak English?” Unbelievably, not a single hand went up.

The busker shrugged, turned both thumbs down in the universal gesture of disapproval, and said, “America, eh?” I felt him.

A couple of days after I got home, I saw a social media post that reminded me of that moment. “Honestly,” wrote @_thatambitiousgirl, “I don’t know how anyone could even feel comfortable traveling as an American outside of the U.S. right now.”

Anti-American sentiment is on the rise, and it sucks being from a country whose presidents do things like threaten to end a “whole civilization,” invade Middle Eastern countries based on lies about weapons of mass destruction, or insert themselves into pointless conflicts in faraway lands. 

In college, I had friends who sewed Canadian flags onto their backpacks because they didn’t want to be associated with America’s misadventures in Southeast Asia.

Polls show that half of Europeans view Donald Trump, who has threatened to withdraw from NATO, as an enemy rather than an ally. He has managed the neat trick of telling our allies they are useless while castigating them for not rushing to help with his poorly planned and illegal war on Iran. “This is not our war,” the German defense minister said pointedly last month. “We have not started it.”


Quite simply, with the assent of the Republican Party, Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the world order as we’ve known it in our lifetimes, while also managing to make life harder for Americans at home.

“We’re worse off in every way, and officially a global pariah,” said the New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie on Facebook this week. “Awesome. Love that.”

Anyway, I was glad to see that someone I know, the novelist Erin Zhurkin, responded thoughtfully to @_that ambitiousgirl’s Instagram post.

Donald Trump is a Republican wrecking ball

Been an American abroad for 20 years now,” wrote Zhurkin, whose Russian-born American husband is an executive with Renault. “Six countries so far. People are in general curious and grateful that I can see my country from all sides….I try to represent the heart of the US, which I believe is about being open to all people and finding commonalities rather than differences.”

This, truly, is the heart of the matter.

 In the fall of 1967, my family moved from Northridge to France, where my father had a year-long Fulbright teaching scholarship at the University of Pau. Before we got on the airplane, my mother sat the four of her rambunctious kids down.

“It’s very important that you not be ‘Ugly Americans,’ ” she told us. We were too young to have read the classic 1958 novel she was referring to, but we understood that we were to be curious and respectful and maybe not yell, as we unfortunately did, “Yuck, this is NOT a hot dog,” during our first meal in Paris.

One winter evening in Pau, my parents took us to an anti-war demonstration, as they had done many times in Los Angeles. The locals we marched with were chanting something we couldn’t quite make out. It sounded to our American ears like “Yohn-kee go ohm.” We figured it out pretty quickly, and frankly, it was unsettling.

Zhurkin had a similar experience in Moscow, in the early 1990s, at a kiosk near Red Square. “An older Russian lady looked at me, and in a thick Russian accent said, ‘Yankee, go home,’ ” Zhurkin told me by phone from Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she and her family had moved in September from Seoul. “It opened up this whole feeling inside of me that there is something about my country that may not be as wonderful as it seems. It was a huge, perspective-breaking moment for me.”

Years later, Zhurkin was living in Paris. Trump had just been elected to his first term.

“I could not get into a taxi without someone asking me why I would let this happen, as if it was all me,” Zhurkin said. “They’d say, ‘I can’t believe you Americans are so stupide.’ I was like, ‘Look, I didn’t vote for him.’” Still, she said, “I feel like I am apologizing all the time.”

By the time President Joe Biden was elected in 2020, Zhurkin said, her family had moved to Ireland, where the vibe was much more “Thank God you guys got your act together.”

Maybe in the not-too-distant future, we will again. And then we can start to put this long national hideous nightmare behind us.

Bluesky: @rabcarian
Threads: @rabcarian

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must prevent any money allocated for purchase or invasion of Greenland

Editorial published in The New York Times: 

The World Will Remember Trump’s Greenland Outburst💢

The free world exhaled on Wednesday when Donald Trump retreated from his administration’s threat to invade Greenland. 

But, that relief, however, masks the damage that Donald Trump has done to America this week. Donald Trump’s apologists once dismissed his bullying of Greenland as an attempt at humor. Instead, it has been something far darker. His immoral threats against a loyal NATO ally have escalated a crisis in U.S.-European relations, weakened one of history’s most successful alliances and hurt American interests in tangible ways.

NATO is an important force for global stability and for the democratic values that our nation champions. It has made the world safer, more prosperous and better able to work together for a common purpose. The alliance amplifies American military might, deterring Russia and adversaries around the world through the original promise that an attack on one member is an attack on all. NATO also serves nonmilitary purposes, helping present a unified front that limits the rising technological and economic influence of China and its autocratic allies.

Mr. Trump is undermining these interests with his push to take control of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, despite vociferous resistance from Denmark and Greenlanders themselves. He is attacking the shared values to which democracies have aspired for decades: the rule of law, recognition of national sovereignty and respect for self-determination. 

Donald Trump is causing what Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada this week called “a rupture, not a transition” in the world order.

In normal times, the president deserves great deference in the exercise of foreign affairs, but that deference is never absolute, especially not when the president has shown himself unbound by legal and ethical constraints. When the president endangers the country or breaks its laws, other branches of government have a responsibility to intervene. Donald Trump’s repeated moves to undercut our most valuable alliance require other Americans to reaffirm our commitment to our international partners. The Republicans who control Congress cannot sit on their hands as they have done so many times in the past year. Many of them know the value of NATO. Congress should pass a bill that bars spending on any military action against Greenland or Western Europe. It should also hold up all of Mr. Trump’s nominees to national security positions until he commits to halting his attacks on the alliance.




The Supreme Court has a role to play as well. Mr. Trump’s attempt to use tariffs to coerce allies, including in the fight over Greenland, is unconstitutional. He has justified using them by declaring a national emergency on false pretenses. We are encouraged that most justices expressed skepticism of his use of tariffs during oral arguments in November. We are disappointed that the justices are about to embark on a midwinter break that will last until late February, apparently without acting on the case. They should issue an expedited ruling, given the policy’s illegality and the damage it is causing.

Donald Trump has always been an undisciplined and unprincipled politician, but the shambolic and sometimes illegal nature of his foreign policy moves of the past few weeks has been unusually harmful.

After months of blowing up boats in the Caribbean, without giving the victims any chance to defend themselves, he ordered a military operation to capture Venezuela’s dictator — and has since allowed the dictator’s corrupt deputies to continue ruling the country. Mr. Trump encouraged Iranians to rise up against their brutal government, saying “help is on the way,” and abandoned the protesters to a crackdown that reportedly killed thousands of them and imprisoned thousands more. 

And his confrontation with NATO crossed a new line: threatening the territory of a longtime ally. The notion that the United States might invade Greenland would sound like satire under any other modern-day president.

Yet, it fits with Donald Trump’s escalating and caustic attacks against NATO. During the 2016, presidential campaign, he called the alliance obsolete. In his first term, he reportedly considered withdrawing from it. During the 2024, campaign, he said he would encourage Russian leaders to “do whatever the hell they want” with NATO allies if the allies did not increase their military spending. The threat was chilling to Russia’s Baltic neighbors, like Latvia and Estonia, given Vladimir Putin’s slaughter of civilians in Ukraine.

As is often the case, Donald Trump has blended a reasonable policy critique with blatant falsehoods and extreme behavior. In this instance, the reasonable critique is that most European countries have long spent too little on their defense, relying on the United States to protect them. President Barack Obama understandably complained in 2016 that they were behaving as “free riders.” Donald Trump deserves some credit for pressuring Europe to increase military spending, in both his first and second terms.  Nevertheless, that success does not give him credibility or any valid reason to threaten invasion or annexation to promote American interests.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans causing Americans stress creating a culture of carnage- Impeach Trump Again!

 Letter to the editor of TribLive: Trump's carnage

Just where is America headed❓

Impeach Trump AGAIN!

DOGE hollows out government, Medicaid. Aid for food and medicine is slashed and FEMA’s (emergency management) future effectiveness is questioned.

Masked ICE agents arrest migrants, targeting Latinos, who are denied due process while others are raided and shackled.

The National Guard patrols in Washington D.C., with Donald Trump planning the same (illegal terror❗💥) for other cities.

Trump’s tariff war has created friction and raised prices on imported goods, making everything less affordable while the rich get huge tax cuts.

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) chaos sows confusion over covid-19, immunizations and Tylenol, as pseudoscience takes over.

Ukraine, hammered by Russia, sees Trump being played by Vladimir Putin, while Trump’s promised end is nowhere in sight.

Starvation haunts Gaza; we see emaciated children while we continue supplying Israel with weapons — making us also culpable.

The Epstein saga continues while Trump seems to be attempting to distract us from who really visited Jeffery Epstein’s brothels.

While Trump enriches himself in office (aka "delusional"), he fantasizes over Greenland, Canada and making Gaza a seaside resort, initiates vindictive political retribution by directing government to target his enemies, orders election meddling through state gerrymandering, uses hateful speech to demonize his opposition, and assaults our rights of free speech and press.

This is Trump’s “American Carnage”, where disorder, confusion and disarray abound.

From Ron Slabe in Oakmont, a borough in Pennsylvania

Donald Trump list of failed accomplishments in just 100 days has dismantled democracy as we know it

Echo opinion letter published in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, a Montana newspaper:

OK, 100 days into the horror of the Trumpzi administration so, let’s take a look at some numbers for Trump’s “accomplishments,” shall we?
• 39% approval rating – lowest of any new president ... ever.$6,400 expected increase in new car prices (tariffs).
• 60% rise in egg prices.
• $5.9B expected losses (annually!) in soybean farmers’ sales (tariffs)❗

• $81.65 billion in first-term farm bailouts. This will be worse!
• 200 “trade deals” he claims he has made- without any proof.
• Zero trade deals actually confirmed by any evidence.
• Zero plans to actually lower grocery prices.
• 121,000 fired dedicated federal workers – including 70,000 VA employees.
• $500B of lost tax revenue due to fired IRS workers, especially those who were working on the richest tax cheats (imagine that, huh!).

• $500 million funneled into Trump’s pockets from crypto schemes (Forbes). 24 days spent golfing (25% of his first 100 days!) costing the taxpayers $26 million.

• $6 billion cut from NIH medical research grants for cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc.

• $12 billion cut from state health services.
• $90 billion loss in tourism this year (Goldman Sachs estimate). Montana expected to be the No. 1 biggest loser.
• At least 288 people trafficked to El Salvador without due process, in defiance of court orders (and the Constitution!).
• 1,600 pardons for violent January 6th criminals, plus convicted fraudsters (hey, birds of a feather, right?).
• 21 Faux News personalities and six billionaires in his administration.
• 293 times Trump has with cruelty complained about Joe Biden (more than times a day!).
• Four threatened annexations of other countries: Greenland, Gaza, Panama, and ... Canada?!
• One commercial for Tesla on the White House lawn.

Well done, Trump MAGA cult Republican voters! 

Are you “tired of winning” yet❓ 

Enjoy your increased prices on pretty much everything, income losses, and maybe even your farms and tourism businesses.

Unfortunately, the rest of us will also suffer for your voting folly.

From Kevin Crawford in Bozeman, Montana

Physician Assisted Suicide is a horrible end of life policy to end the lives of mentally ill people

Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) or Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) is morally and ethically wrong. Full Stop. The ambiguity around this method of mis-treating end of life care by normalizing suicide is personally disgusting to me. In fact, suicide is among the most prevalent causes of death in the U.S. With tens of thousands of people perishing from suicide each year, it is the 10th leading cause of death overall.

Suicide prevention ribbon

Suicide is already a tragic act by people who are victims of substance use disorders or because of untreated depression.  Creating the policy to normalize suicide is just morally inconsistent with improving the human condition.   

Echo report published in MedScape Nurses:

One of the most controversial issues today is whether a physician should be permitted, or even obligated, to assist patients with a terminal or incurable illness to end their life — a process known as medical assistance in dying (MAID) or physician-assisted suicide (PAS.)

Until recently, this contentious issue applied only to patients with physical illnesses who want to end their suffering and who seek out a physician willing to assist with that objective. 

In the United States and other countries, this is the patient population who may be able to avail themselves of this option.

However, newly proposed legislation in Canada — which has the largest number of physician-assisted deaths worldwide — would expand the indication for MAID to include serious mental illness. Originally set to be passed in March 2023, the law has been deferred for final decision until March 2024. (This policy issue in Canada is a mystery to me because Canada already has a population deficit problem but killing their own is now accepted? Makes no sense.)

A recent Medscape commentary by psychiatrist Dinah Miller, MD, explored the ethics of this proposed legislation for mental health professionals. "To offer the option of death facilitated by the very person who is trying to get [patients with serious mental illness] better seems so counter to everything I have learned and contradicts our role as psychiatrists who work so hard to prevent suicide," Miller writes. "As psychiatrists, do we offer hope to our most vulnerable patients, or do we offer death? Do we rail against suicide, or do we facilitate it?"

Miller's piece garnered a huge amount of reader response that included many, laudatory comments: a "nuanced and open-ended inquiry here," "timely and honest," and "beautifully written." 

One reader thanked the author for "this thoughtful, questioning, and open reflection on what it means to be a psychiatrist facing a thorny and deeply personal practice and philosophical question."

Cognitive Distortion or Objective Reality?

Vincent van Gogh had a history of mental illness. He painted Starry Night in 1889 during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

Many readers were opposed to any type of physician involvement in hastening a patient's death, regardless of whether the condition is medical or psychiatric. "Let others who wish to die make their own arrangement without the aid of the medical profession," one reader writes.

But others felt that for those with terminal physical illnesses or intractable pain, it is justified for medical professionals to either facilitate death or, at the very least, withhold life-prolonging treatments.

A critical care physician described responding to families' accusations that withdrawal of life-sustaining measures means "playing God." On the contrary, the physician writes, "there is a limit to our abilities; and withdrawing those life-prolonging interventions allows nature or God or whatever to play a role and take its course."

Another US reader pointed out that "multiple polls in this country have shown that the majority of the general public, physicians in general and psychiatrists in particular, support the option of MAID for the terminally ill. They do not find it at variance with their calling as physicians." (So, what is the purpose of the physicians' Hippocratic oath to "first do no harm")

"I and many of my elderly friends don't fear death but fear prolonged dementia with its dependency and lack of quality of life," one reader writes. "We would be much more at peace if we could put in our advanced directive that we request MAID once some point of dependency has been reached."

(P.S. Maine Writer- a person experiencing dementia is not competent to make any decisions. Selecting suicide to end their lives is morally, ethically and legally wrong.)

Food insecurity reports the growing number of working people who need access to food

I work in a British Columbia, Canada, food bank. We’re serving triple the number of people we used to.

Thank you to David Long for writing this article!

Echo article reported by David Long, in MACLeans Magazine- the Magazine of Canada.

For the first time, many of our clients are people with jobs who can’t keep up with the cost of living. How did we get here?

About six months ago, a young single father came to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. He was working full time, but his rent had gone up 20 per cent and he just couldn’t make ends meet. Unable to adequately feed his children, and with no other choice, he came to us. He was distraught. Like many people, he felt the stinging stigma of accepting charity, of asking for something as basic as food.

This is not an isolated or extreme case. It’s entirely typical, in fact, of the 17,000 people we currently serve each month at the GVFB. Last year, we gave out eight million pounds of food. And we’re not the only organization with such staggering numbers. We’re seeing similar situations at food banks all across Canada, as well as in New York, in Houston, in Mexico, in the U.K. In March of last year, there were nearly 1.5 million visits to food banks across Canada, the highest March usage on record. It was 15 per cent higher than the previous year, when we were in the teeth of the pandemic. Our colleagues at the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto say demand for their services is absolutely frightening—more than 270,000 visits in March, compared to 65,000 per month before the pandemic. According to a recent report from Food Banks Canada, food bank usage is up 35 per cent from 2019, and one in seven clients is employed. Our base of lower-income donors has eroded, and some of them have even become food bank users.

Greater Vancouver Food Bank

We’ve had to grow into a massive operation to accommodate all this demand. We have a paid staff of 65 people and rely on a legion of volunteers—last year they put in 65,000 hours. Our operating budget has grown past $30 million, and almost all of our funding comes from donations. Since the pandemic, we have received some federal grants, but they cover a small percentage of our overall budget. 

In fact, next year I will spend $8.5 million buying food for our clients. We distribute food in two different ways: directly to our clients at our distribution hubs (this accounts for 60 per cent of our outbound food this year) and indirectly through community agency partners like women’s shelters, after-school programs and soup kitchens on the Downtown East Side. We supply them with food once a week to carry out the meal programs they run. Since I started, we’ve gone from 74 agency partners to 139.

Our clients have changed as well. Food banks have traditionally fed the working poor, people on social assistance, people with disabilities—the most impoverished and vulnerable members of our society. But in the last few years, we’ve seen many people who are working full time and still can’t make ends meet. People who are earning $40,000 or $50,000 per year and, after they pay their bills, there’s just nothing left. We register new client families where the parents have been skipping meals so their children can eat.

We see retired teachers and nurses—people you think would have great pensions that they can live off for the rest of their lives. 

We supply a food bank at the University of British Columbia, which provides food for 450 people a week. It’s horrifying. International students are among the most frequent users of food banks across the country, and they pay much higher tuition fees than domestic students. In an economy like this, their funds erode faster than anticipated. And so we have these students who haven’t eaten in days, sitting in class trying to study. It’s just wrong. They’re tired of the situation they find themselves in, fed up with living in chronic poverty.

Where does this go, and when does it stop? 

When I became CEO of the organization in 2019, we were supporting 6,500 clients per month. That number has nearly tripled in just five years. What’s going to happen in another five years’ time? That’s what keeps me up at night. People often say that food banks are just a Band-Aid solution. My colleague Alex Boyd of the Greener Village food bank in Fredericton put it much better: we’re not a Band-Aid, we’re a tourniquet.

Immigrants built America! More legal immigration will build a better America

Editorial Board of The Washington Post echo opinion: The percentage of U.S residents born overseas today is the highest in more than a century, and the number of immigrants in this country has more than quadrupled since 1960.

"Canada does not struggle to police one of the world’s longest borders separating a mostly rich country from a mostly poor one, as the United States does along its southwestern frontier"

Those facts and a surge of unauthorized border crossings, which exceeded 2 million in the fiscal year that ended in September, a record, have contributed to unease and antagonism in some communities, Republican attacks on the Biden administration and, among Democrats, jitters about the political fallout.
Meanwhile, in Canada, the share of foreign-born residents — approaching one-quarter of the population — is markedly more than in the United States, and also at a more than 150-year high; few Western countries have a higher proportion of immigrants. Despite that, Canadian officials recently announced a substantial increase in immigration over the coming three years. In 2025, the goal is to admit 500,000 newcomers, a 23 percent increase from last year’s record total. The news prompted no widespread outcry.

The many differences between the two countries discourage facile comparisons. But one critical contrast is worth noting: Canada has a relatively functional immigration system that responds rationally to its economic needs. The United States does not.

Granted, Canada does not struggle to police one of the world’s longest borders separating a mostly rich country from a mostly poor one, as the United States does along its southwestern frontier. That affords Ottawa the luxury of simpler enforcement — that is, being able for the most part to select which migrants will be admitted and which refused. It is also the case that while there is broad consensus on immigration levels in Canada — well over half of Canadians favor welcoming more immigrants to boost population and help fill nearly 1 million job openings — there are danger signs. Specifically, nearly half of Canadians say too many newcomers fail to adopt “Canadian values.”

Still, Americans should consider taking some lessons from Canada, especially in an era of massive U.S. labor shortages, which have contributed to spiking inflation. Critically, the Canadian system gives preference to well educated, highly skilled and entrepreneurial migrants with strong earnings prospects. By contrast, the U.S. legal immigration system heavily favors family ties, meaning the relatives of current residents. Its H1-B program for skilled workers, including those with advanced degrees, has been capped for years at 85,000 visas annually; that is grossly inadequate.

Canada’s policy is no outlier; several of the world’s other wealthiest countries, particularly in Europe, are pursuing similarly sensible initiatives. They include France, where President Emmanuel Macron survived a stiff electoral challenge this spring from a far-right anti-immigration candidate, Marine Le Pen. His government, like Canada’s, is pursuing reforms that respond to economic reality, not xenophobic populism. This month, Mr. Macron’s administration proposed legislation to establish resident permits that would grant legal status to undocumented migrants already in France who could fill jobs in sectors desperate for workers, including agriculture, hospitality and construction. The legislation is expected to come before France’s parliament early next year.

French nativists howled but the country’s largest employers organization applauded the measure, which is designed to support the nation’s economy as it battles inflationary head winds. Officials took a measured tone, pledging to tighten enforcement by pursuing migrants who remain in the country after receiving deportation orders while at the same time pushing for the new residence permits.

In Germany, too, employers starved for workers have generally welcomed Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s promise, upon taking office last year, that “it’s high time we made life easier for immigrants to become German citizens.” In fact, the Scholz government has set a goal of attracting 400,000 qualified workers annually for the country, which has Europe’s biggest economy, and easing access to language and other courses to help assimilate migrants. A recent survey found the German economy is grappling with a record shortage in skilled workers, affecting nearly half of the country’s companies. That has forced many to slash production, costing the German economy as much as $85 billion on an annualized basis.

Elsewhere in Europe, the picture is mixed. In Italy, the far-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni took power this fall on an anti-immigration platform. Yet it is anyone’s guess who will fill low-skill jobs, including caregivers for the elderly, if migrants are barred or forced out of the country. Italians, whose birthrate has long been among the lowest among the world’s wealthy countries, are often in short supply for such positions.

Denmark is pursuing what might be one of the most self-defeating immigration policies among wealthy countries. Earlier this month, Danish voters handed a narrow victory to the center-left Social Democrats, who have embraced a “zero refugee” policy and proposed relocating asylum seekers to Rwanda, against their will, as their applications are processed. At the same time, Danish firms are facing a severe labor shortage, which many have called their biggest challenge.

Ironically, it was Donald Trump, the most nativist of recent American presidents, who proposed a reform based partly on the Canadian model, as well as similar point-based systems in Australia and New Zealand, that would tilt the balance of U.S. legal immigration toward skilled workers, while still retaining about one third of slots for relatives of current residents.

Mr. Trump’s blueprint was mainly an act of political positioning; once introduced, in 2019, it was rarely mentioned again. Nor did it take into account the reality of 10 or 11 million undocumented migrants, most of them long-standing members of U.S. communities, including nearly 2 million young “dreamers” raised and educated in this country.

Still, by acknowledging Canada’s example, the Trump proposal was a useful starting point. There are now 10.7 million jobs available in the United States, nearly 2 for every unemployed worker, and an ever-increasing share of the openings are for skilled employees. As a proportion of population, more jobs are vacant in the United States than Canada. Canada is wisely opening the door wider to the legal immigrants that its economy needs, while Congress, politically paralyzed, has proved itself unable to fix the United States’ broken
system.

The Post’s View | About the Editorial Board- Editorials represent the views of The Washington Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the Editorial Board, based in the Opinions section and separate from the newsroom.

Calling Senator Ted Cruz is a waste of time

Letter: Calling Ted Cruz: "Now, if I were a gun lobbyist giving Ted over $400,000 in contributions, Ted would be more receptive...."

Opinion letter echo published in the Longview News-Journal, a newspaper published in Longview, Texas.

Rafael Edward Cruz was born on December 22, 1970, at Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to Eleanor Elizabeth (née Darragh) Wilson and Rafael Cruz. Rafael Bienvenido Cruz y Díaz (born March 22, 1939) is a Cuban-American Protestant preacher and the father of Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. Donald Trump referred to Cruz as a “Canadian anchor baby”, at a town hall rally in New Hampshire.

When I have called Ted Cruz’s D.C. office to leave a comment, this is what I experienced over several months.

The Ted Cruz Goldman Sachs Loan, Explained

First you hear Senator Cruz in his most smarmiest voice saying what an honor and privilege it was to serve the great state of Texas, and he looked forward to hearing thoughts and concerns about issues.

Then press 1 to leave a comment. After listening to Ted again, the message goes to a box that can’t accept any more messages. If it happened once, I would chalk it up to a temporary anomaly, but it occurred over several months. So it occurred to me that maybe Sen. Cruz is not interested so much in my thoughts and concerns.

Now, of course, if I were a gun lobbyist, giving Ted over $400,000 in contributions, Ted would be more receptive, I assume. (National Rifle Association- NRA, and gun rights groups. are best friends with Ted Cruz!)

Actually, Sen. Cruz received that much, which was the largest amount for any Congress person from the gun lobby. 

Sadly, the Cruz fake solution to the school shooting in Uvalde Texas was to hire more police.

It seems 19 officers weren’t enough. 

And Sen. Cruz seems equally receptive to the military industrial complex lobby, with support for a continuous increase in Pentagon spending. 

But about my concerns, Cruz is obviously not so much interested. 

Will Rogers: “Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with nowadays.” DT #1538, June 28, 1931.

—From Jerry King, in Longview, Texas 

Putin's World War Three is genocide

Echo opinion published in the National Post, a Canadian newspaper:

Is It Time to Call Putin’s War in Ukraine Genocide?

The world has never before been confronted by a genocidal war waged by a man brandishing nuclear weapons.

Russia's brutal and unprovoked attack on the Ukraine is the greatest crisis since the Second World War, and the world must meet it with skill and a commitment to resist the threat- because the all of Europe's security is at risk of being assaulted..

Now that Russia has launched its genocidal attack, the world needs to do three things. First, we must recognize publicly and internationally that every Ukrainian killed, whether fighting to defend Ukraine or a passive citizen, is a victim of murder. Russia must be identified as a terrorist state supporting mass murder.

As I am a Canadian prosecutor, I can confirm that the provisions of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, which Canada enacted in 2000, apply to the actions of the Russian president and to the Russian and Belarusian states and armies. Calling it a “war” suggests a kind of equivalency between two parties. It is not a war. It is a state-sponsored attack intended as a genocide and must be identified as such. It is a crime against humanity. Canada must publicly and repeatedly state its intention to launch proceedings here and before the World Court to identify Russia and all its state actors (including military personnel as well as Belarus) as international criminals. This will allow the seizure of substantial Russian assets in the West to pay reparations to Ukraine if and when Ukraine is ever in a position to rejoin the international community as a free state.

Secondly, the law of “conspiracy” and “parties” applies to the Russian embassy staff, who ruthlessly assisted Russia by disseminating false information. 

Russians who have collaborated with the Kremlin must be expelled from Canada. To allow Russian staff to remain in Canada after they have been complicit in crimes against humanity would be unconscionable. 

Moreover, I also hope and expect that the Canadian broadcaster, the CBC, is aware that giving voice to any statements from Russian agents in Canada is, in effect, to assist a criminal organization. We do not need to hear the CBC repeating more lies from Russian embassies.

Thirdly, we need to prepare to receive refugees from this Russian attack. People are fleeing and there is a very real likelihood they will never be free to return to Ukraine. Putin, like Stalin, has a kill list, which will only grow exponentially.

Canada needs to create a streamlined pipeline to bring the Ukrainian refugees to Canada. One thing is to begin to identify people and resources in Canada, that are prepared to host refugees and assist them in integrating. 💙💛

From Vernon Frolick,in  Calgary, Canada

P.S. The New Yorker: “We have to call this what it is,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said, a few days after Russia's Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion and conquest of Ukraine. “Russia’s criminal actions against Ukraine show signs of genocide.” 

President Zelensky, who lost family members during the Holocaust, and who also happens to have a law degree, sounded suitably cautious about invoking genocide, and he called for the International Criminal Court in The Hague to send war-crimes investigators as a first step.

Health Care is a right in Canada and Great Britain - coverage must be expanded in the USA

Health care is a right!

• Canada has universal coverage:  Medicare is  the name of Canada's universal, publicly funded health-care system—known as Medicare—is a source of national pride, and a model of universal health coverage. It provides relatively equitable access to physician and hospital services through 13 provincial and territorial tax-funded public insurance plans.
• Great Britain: a state-funded system called the National Health Service, or NHS, which guarantees care for all. That means everything from ambulance rides and emergency room visits to long hospital stays, complex surgery, radiation and chemotherapy — are all free. They're paid for with payroll taxes.

Echo opinion letter published in the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago newspaper:

Regardless of whether health insurance coverage as a mandate is constitutional, it is important to understand the underlying rationale behind it in order to realize the consequences, both explicit and implicit, of the absence of health care benefits. 

Fundamentally, by requiring almost everyone, including healthy individuals, to pay for and have health insurance through the enforcement of this tax penalty, the mandate seeks to protect the right to health care for those of us who get sick -- our families, friends, neighbors, co-workers and, most importantly, American community, notwithstanding whether we know them personally or not.

At a time where we are working tirelessly to expand access to health care, striking down the mandated coverage requirement and potentially the whole law without a proposed replacement, is expected to increase the number of people without adequate access even more. Most importantly, this resolution threatens the future of the people's fundamental right to health care -- the right ensuring that we will be taken care of when we get sick.

We now need to evoke government officials, whom we inherently elected to protect our rights, to find a serious solution that is sensitive to all Americans. During this important time, with the presidential election being just around the corner and Americans being more divided than ever, it is urgent to spread this message in order to fight for and protect our rights and democracy together.

From Anis Barmada,  Mount Prospect

Maine Writer- America has the resources to match the programs provided to the citizens of Canada and Great Britain!

Insulin should be free! Going to Canada to purchased insulin

"...for some patients, it is increasingly difficult to survive as a diabetic in America," Glenn Howatt, published in the Star Tribune, a Minnesota newspaper.  

Insulin outlaws: High cost of medication drives Minnesotans across the border to Canada

(MaineWriter-In my opinion, Insulin for diabetics should be free.)

Diabetes activists cross the border to snare affordable medicine and supplies.

Fort Frances, Ontario – Six Minnesota diabetes activists, who have dubbed themselves the “Caravan to Canada,” approached the U.S. border crossing last Sunday with a mixture of apprehension and defiance.

Their three vehicles were carrying insulin, carefully packed in coolers, that they had bought the day before at a Canadian pharmacy just three blocks away.

Together, they had spent $1,265 for insulin supplies that in the United States would cost an estimated $12,400 — a savings of $11,000.

But as they crossed the Rainy River into International Falls and made their way to the small border outpost wedged among industrial buildings, they wondered if they would be searched — or even if the insulin would be seized.

“I was nervous when all of a sudden we approached the border,” said Lija Greenseid, the trip’s organizer and mother of a teenage daughter with Type 1 diabetes.

Importing prescription drugs into the United States is illegal, and government health officials have warned consumers that drugs bought outside of American’s regulatory umbrella could be counterfeit and unsafe.

But as they crossed the Rainy River into International Falls and made their way to the small border outpost wedged among industrial buildings, they wondered if they would be searched — or even if the insulin would be seized.

“I was nervous when all of a sudden we approached the border,” said Lija Greenseid, the trip’s organizer and mother of a teenage daughter with Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetes.

Importing prescription drugs into the United States is illegal, and government health officials have warned consumers that drugs bought outside of American’s regulatory umbrella could be counterfeit and unsafe.

But they made the trip because, for some patients, it is increasingly difficult to survive as a diabetic in America. 

High costs are draining their savings; insulin prices doubled between 2012 and 2016.

Insurance restrictions are making it harder for them to get the insulin that works best for them, as well as the supplies they need to test their blood and inject the medication.

“We talk about freedom here all the time, but the medical system here causes people to be shackled,” said Greenseid.

“I always thought it was just me that had these issues,” said Vicky Luedtke, a Type 1 diabetic who has never been involved with activism before. “I met these amazing people and I saw it is more than just me. It is a huge epidemic.”

Traveling with the group was Nicole Smith-Holt, whose son Alec Smith died about two years ago. He was rationing insulin because he couldn’t afford what he needed.

She made a symbolic purchase of a single vial of insulin — one vial would have extended her son’s life.

“There are so many what-ifs,” she said. “I would have crawled here if I had known that I could come to Canada.”

The public outcry over high insulin prices has sparked some movement. Congress has held hearings, one insurer has capped insulin co-pays and one drug maker will offer a generic insulin at half price. But even at that discount it will still cost five times as much as insulin sold in Canada.

In Minnesota, both the House and Senate have passed bills that would give people access to insulin during an emergency, although the differences between the bills need to be worked out in a conference committee.

Insulin’s high cost in the United States reflects many factors, including patent protections that keep competitors out of the market. The pharmacy trade group PhRMA contends that net prices have dropped but that consumers often don’t see that because they don’t receive the rebates that the industry pays to health insurers and their pharmacy benefit managers.

But unlike most other industrialized countries, drugmakers can set their own prices in the United States. The Canadian government, for example, negotiates with the three big insulin makers that dominate the market worldwide, which results in insulin prices that can be one-tenth of those in the United States. Insulin also can be purchased in Canada without a prescription.

The public outcry over high insulin prices has sparked some movement. Congress has held hearings, one insurer has capped insulin co-pays and one drugmaker will offer a generic insulin at half price. But even at that discount it will still cost five times as much as insulin sold in Canada.

In Minnesota, both the House and Senate have passed bills that would give people access to insulin during an emergency, although the differences between the bills need to be worked out in a conference committee.

Insulin’s high cost in the United States reflects many factors, including patent protections that keep competitors out of the market. The pharmacy trade group PhRMA contends that net prices have dropped but that consumers often don’t see that because they don’t receive the rebates that the industry pays to health insurers and their pharmacy benefit managers.

But unlike most other industrialized countries, drug makers can set their own prices in the United States. The Canadian government, for example, negotiates with the three big insulin makers that dominate the market worldwide, which results in insulin prices that can be one-tenth of those in the United States. Insulin also can be purchased in Canada without a prescription.

$410 v. $5,250

Travis Paulson, another member of last weekend’s caravan, can remember when insulin cost $8 a vial.

“It just kept climbing,” he said.

The medication is now so expensive that he doesn’t use health insurance to buy it. Instead, he gets it mostly from Canada — driving there from his Eveleth home when the weather is good or using a mail-order pharmacy in Vancouver. He hasn’t bought insulin in the United States for many years.

“It is just craziness to what the prices have gotten to in America,” he said.

Paulson paid about $410 in Canada for 15 vials of insulin that would have cost $5,250 in the States. 

The supply should last him three to four months.

On his insulin trips to Canada, Paulson often stays overnight. “They can get suspicious if you come and leave on the same day,” he said. “I don’t want my car to be torn up and searched.”

But he has never had a problem getting it across the border.
Although it is illegal, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website says “it typically does not object” to imports if they are for personal use and the supply is for less than three months.

Drug importation from Canada is not new for Minnesotans. Beginning in 1995, the Minnesota Senior Federation organized bus trips to buy drugs north of the border. They gained more popularity after Mark Dayton, then a U.S. senator, pledged his government salary to pay for the trips.

The state of Minnesota also got involved. In 2004, then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty set up the nation’s first state-sponsored program to help residents buy drugs from Canada. The FDA opposed the program but never acted to shut it down.

After Medicare introduced drug coverage in 2006, demand for both services dwindled. The bus trips stopped in 2007 and the state shut down its program in 2010 after facilitating 25,000 prescriptions at a savings of $1.7 million.

Dropped her insurance

Twenty years ago, the demand for Canadian drugs was not as high among Americans under age 65. Back then, most people with private insurance faced a small copay. But since then, health insurers have adopted deductibles as a way to control costs and shift more expense to the consumer. Many people now pay sums like $7,500 before their insurance kicks in.

That means diabetics often spend the first few months of each year paying the full cost of insulin. 

Additionally, insurers have limited the number of insulin formulations and supplies to one or two brands, another move to cut spending.

As a result, some people, like Luedtke, are going without insurance. “When I had insurance, I couldn’t get my medications,” she said. “I would rather take all my money and invest it in myself.”

Luedtke, who runs a fitness studio, works with doctors and other providers who specialize in cash-paying customers. Without having to employ office staff for insurance company paperwork, these providers can offer lower prices.

Still, she is concerned what would happen should she develop a major illness.

“I do worry about that a lot, especially with diabetes,” she said. But, she added, “I worry more about not having insulin than health insurance.”

Altogether, it took about 15 minutes for five people in the caravan to buy the insulin at a small Fort Frances pharmacy called Shoppers Drug Mart.

Customs turned out to be even faster the next day. As they had decided the previous night, they told the border officer that they were bringing insulin back in.

The disclosure drew no interest or questions from the agent. Instead, he asked about alcohol, tobacco and firearms.

After the caravan made its way through, they stopped to talk.

“That was a nonevent, huh?” said Greenseid.

“Let’s do it again,” said Luedtke. “None of us are asking for something free. We just want to be able to take care of ourselves.”