Sen. Charles (Chuck) Schumer (right) talks with a staff member after the weekly Democratic policy luncheon at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, August 4, 2015. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP)
WASHINGTON — The 115th US Congress, which convened for the first time on Tuesday, is 5.6 percent Jewish, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.
Jews made up 28 legislators in the 114th Congress and have now picked up two more seats. Of the 30 current Jewish lawmakers, 28 are Democrats and two are Republican.
The last election proved to be highly successful for Jewish candidates, as roughly 8% of the freshman class’s non-Christian representatives are Jewish, the largest share of Jews ever entering the halls of Congress since data became available, Pew said.
In 2014, roughly 1% of Washington’s legislative newcomers were Jewish, while in 2012 and 2010, 4% and 2% were members of the tribe, respectively.
As the GOP prepares to control the White House, House and Senate for the first time since 2007, giving them an opportunity to advance an agenda that’s been sidelined during the Obama era, they claim less religious diversity than their Democratic counterparts.
Out of the 293 Republicans who make up the new Congress, only two do not identify as Christians — the two who also happen to be Jewish, New York Rep. Lee Zeldin and Tennessee Rep. David Kustoff.
Illustrative: A joint session of the US Congress, September 9, 2009. (Wikipedia/Lawrence Jackson/whitehouse.gov/public domain)
Democrats, who now hold 242 seats, also claim members who self-identify as Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Unitarian Universalist and unaffiliated.
Of the Democrats’ 28 Jewish members, 20 are serving in the House, and eight in the Senate. Jews thus make up a higher proportion of the upper chamber than the lower, holding 8% of the Senate versus 5% of the House.
Jewish Democrats will also hold leadership positions in the upcoming Congress, as New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, one of the most prominent Jews on the Hill, will serve as the Senate minority leader.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also has a leadership post in the Democratic caucus, as its director of outreach.
One fixture of the new data shows that Jews have a considerably larger representation of Congress than they do the general US population, as the Pew analysis found that while Jews make up nearly 6% of Congress members, they make up 2% of Americans.
Protestants and Catholics also have a greater representation in Congress than the US populace. Unaffiliated Americans, however, are substantially underrepresented, as 23% of the general public identifies in that category but just 0.2% of Congress does.
Arizona Rep. Kyrsten Cinema (D) is the only member who described herself as religiously unaffiliated.
Trump Takes Aim at Currency Warriors Like Israel.The president was talking about Japan and China, but Israel is also an example. Time to rethink policy?
What should bother Bank of Israel Governor Karnit Flug most, a former central bank official urging her to drop the bank’s policy of buying foreign currency to weaken the shekel, or U.S. President Donald Trump signaling what could be the start of a policy to talk down the dollar?
Let’s start with Trump. On Tuesday, in remarks about the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, the president had something to say about other countries’ currency policies.
“Other countries take advantage of us with their money and their money supply and devaluation. Our country has been run so badly, we know nothing about devaluation. Every other country lives on devaluation.”
Trump was talking about the phenomenon known as the currency wars. That’s when a country tries to weaken its own currency against those of other countries or trade blocs in order to make its exports more competitive.
President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with House and Senate legislators in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017.Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP
Since the speaker was Trump — whose tweets might or might not mean the start of a new policy — the world’s currency traders couldn’t remain indifferent. The internet lit up with speculation, with headlines like “Trump administration talks USD down, focus now on Fed” and “Trump just signaled the death of Clinton-era strong dollar policy.”
It’s not only currency traders wondering about what it all means. Foreign policy makers felt they also had to respond. For example, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Trump’s criticism “completely misses the mark.” He added that the Bank of Japan’s pursuit of monetary easing was intended to boost inflation, not weaken the yen against the dollar.
The Bank of Israel can’t be looking at Trump’s remarks with any less equanimity. Even if it officially denies it, like many other central banks, the Bank of Israel has a policy of weakening its currency against the dollar, the euro and all other major world currencies, in order to help exporters and manufacturers.
To do this, the central bank has keep its base lending rate at nearly zero for a long time, even though it means that it lowered mortgage costs and plays a big role in surging home prices that have put home ownership beyond the reach of many young Israelis.
Barry Topf, the former director of market operations at the Bank of IsraelOfer Vaknin
In addition, the Bank of Israel buys dollars on the open market on a regular basis. This practice has boosted the country’s foreign currency reserves past the $100 million mark — a greenback mountain that has grown threefold since the policy was initiated, nearly a decade ago.
From Trump’s perspective, Israel is among the countries that is waging a currency war against an innocent United States by reducing the value of the shekel, even though the only countries he named were Japan and China.
From the Bank of Israel’s perspective, Trump’s remarks are a good reason to double down: If the president orders his officials to join the currency wars and weaken the dollar, the shekel will ipso facto strengthen — undermining all of Flug’s work to preserve Israel’s export competitiveness. It will also strike a blow against companies manufacturing for the domestic market, which will suddenly find themselves competing with cheaper imports.
Trump launched one attack against Flug’s policy this week. A second one came from closer to home — Barry Topf, who was the Bank of Israel official in charge of currency trading until he retired in 2013. Topf told Bloomberg News that the currency buying was hurting the economy and distorting prices.
Topf may no longer be at the bank, but he speaks with authority as the man who designed the foreign currency purchasing program with then-BoI Governor Stanley Fisher in 2008. His remarks could encourage other officials to speak out publicly.
No one disputes the price that the public pays for the policy of the central bank, which the bank itself acknowledges. A weak shekel increases the cost of imports as well as goods that are manufactured locally using imported inputs.
The moment the Bank of Israel stops the purchases, the shekel will strengthen and the prices of cars, gasoline, electronics, foreign travel and French cheese, among other things, will decline.
Topf chose to define the issue as a “subsidy,” but a no less accurate description would be this: Between its dollar-buying and low interest rates, the central bank is imposing a tax on the public and using it to subsidize businesses and their owners.
The Bank of Israel has good reasons for continuing the policy. It worries that without keeping the shekel weak, many manufacturers would be forced to lay off workers or even close their doors. The biggest threat is not to high-tech employees, but to workers in older industries who won’t be able to find other employment so easily. This is exactly the dilemma that other currency warriors face.
Unlike most of the other world’s fighters, Israel has an economy that’s in good shape: Unemployment is low, consumer spending is brisk and gross domestic product growth is not at all bad.
The Bank of Israel and its defenders say that these fundamentals show that its policies are successful and there is no reason to risk it all by changing course. Opponents say Israel’s good situation gives policy makers the kind of flexibility to make changes.
Without calling the debate for one side or the other, the Bank of Israel should at least undertake serious discussions about a policy that was adopted in the darkest days of the global financial crisis of 2008. It should also strive for greater transparency in its policy. If the government wants to aid exports, it can do it directly. That way, Israelis will know exactly what they’re paying for.
Trump Embraces Pillars of Obama’s Foreign Policy
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech during a memorial ceremony for Ron Nahman, the founder of Ariel, one of the largest Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.CreditJack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WASHINGTON — President Trump, after promising a radical break with the foreign policy of Barack Obama, is embracing key pillars of the former administration’s strategy, including warning Israel to curb construction of settlements, demanding that Russia withdraw from Crimea and threatening Iran with sanctions for ballistic missile tests.
In the most startling shift, the White House issued an unexpected statement appealing to the Israeli government not to expand the construction of Jewish settlements beyond their current borders in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Such expansion, it said, “may not be helpful in achieving” the goal of peace.
At the United Nations, Ambassador Nikki R. Haley declared that the United States would not lift sanctions against Russia until it stopped destabilizing Ukraine and pulled troops out of Crimea.
On Iran, the administration is preparing a set of economic sanctions that are similar to what the Obama administration imposed just over a year ago. The White House has also shown no indication that it plans to rip up Mr. Obama’s landmark nuclear deal, despite Mr. Trump’s withering criticism of it during the presidential campaign.Continue reading the main story
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New administrations often fail to change the foreign policies of their predecessors as radically as they promised, in large part because statecraft is so different from campaigning. And of course, today’s positions could shift over time. But the Trump administration’s reversals were particularly stark because they came after days of tempestuous phone calls between Mr. Trump and foreign leaders, in which he gleefully challenged diplomatic orthodoxy and appeared to jeopardize one relationship after another.
Mr. Trump, for example, made warmer relations with Russia the centerpiece of his foreign policy during the campaign, and European leaders were steeling for him to lift the sanctions that they and Mr. Obama imposed on President Vladimir V. Putin after he annexed Crimea. But on Thursday, Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador, Ms. Haley, sounded a lot like her predecessor, Samantha Power.
“We do want to better our relations with Russia,” Ms. Haley said in her first remarks to an open session of the United Nations Security Council. “However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions.”
Similarly, Mr. Trump presented himself during the campaign as a stalwart supporter of Israel and sharply criticized the Obama administration for allowing the passage of a Security Council resolution in December that condemned Israel for its expansion of settlements.
“While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace,” the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said in a statement, “the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.”
The White House noted that the president “has not taken an official position on settlement activity.” It said Mr. Trump would discuss the issue with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel when they meet Feb. 15, in effect telling Mr. Netanyahu to wait until then. Emboldened by Mr. Trump’s support, Israel had announced more than 5,000 new homes in the West Bank since his inauguration.
Mr. Trump shifted his policy after he met briefly with King Abdullah II of Jordan on the sidelines of the National Prayer Breakfast — an encounter that put the king, one of the most respected leaders of the Arab world, ahead of Mr. Netanyahu in seeing the new president. Jordan, with its large Palestinian population, has been steadfastly critical of settlements.
The administration’s abrupt turnaround also coincided with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson’s first day at the State Department and the arrival of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in South Korea on his first official trip. Both men are viewed as potentially capable of exerting a moderating influence on the president and his cadre of White House advisers, though it was unclear how much they had to do with the shifts.
With Iran, Mr. Trump has indisputably taken a harder line than his predecessor. While the Obama administration often looked for ways to avoid confrontation with Iran in its last year, Mr. Trump seems equally eager to challenge what he has said is an Iranian expansion across the region, especially in Iraq and Yemen.
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In an early morning Twitter post on Thursday, Mr. Trump was bombastic on Iran.
“Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile,” he wrote. “Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!” In a second post, he said wrongly, “Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion.”
Still, the administration has been careful not to specify what the national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, meant when he said on Wednesday that Iran had been put “on notice” for its missile test and for its arming and training of the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The new sanctions could be announced as soon as Friday. But most experts have said they will have little practical effect, because the companies that supply missile parts rarely have direct business with the United States, and allies have usually been reluctant to reimpose sanctions after many were lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear accord.
Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, replied, “This is not the first time that an inexperienced person has threatened Iran,” according to the semiofficial Fars news agency. “The American government will understand that threatening Iran is useless.”
Some analysts said they worried that the administration did not have tools, short of military action, to back up its warning.
“Whether the Trump administration intended it or not, they have created their own red line,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “When Iran tests again, the administration will have no choice but to put up or shut up.”
Mr. Netanyahu will cheer Mr. Trump’s tough tone with Iran. But the American statement on settlements may force him to change course on a delicate domestic issue. His coalition government seemed to take Mr. Trump’s inauguration as a starting gun in a race to increase its construction in occupied territory.
After Mr. Trump was sworn in, the Israeli government announced that it would authorize another 2,500 homes in areas already settled in the West Bank, and then followed that this week with an announcement of 3,000 more. On Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu took it a step further, vowing to build the first new settlement in the West Bank in many years.
For Mr. Netanyahu, the settlement spree reflects a sense of liberation after years of constraints from Washington, especially under Mr. Obama, who, like other presidents, viewed settlement construction as harmful to the chances of negotiating a final peace settlement. It is also an effort to deflect criticism from Israel’s political right for Mr. Netanyahu’s compliance with a court order to force several dozen families out of the illegal West Bank outpost of Amona.
Mr. Trump had also promised to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But in recent weeks, the White House slowed down the move, in part out of concern that it would cause a violent response.
The policy shifts came after a turbulent week in which Mr. Trump also clashed with the leaders of Australia and Mexico over one of the most fraught issues of his new presidency: immigration. He defended the tense exchanges as an overdue display of toughness by a United States that has been exploited “by every nation in the world, virtually.”
“They’re tough; we have to be tough. It’s time we’re going to be a little tough, folks,” he said at the prayer breakfast Thursday. “It’s not going to happen anymore.”
Yet later in the day, the White House felt obliged to put a more diplomatic gloss on events. Mr. Spicer said Mr. Trump’s call with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia had been “very cordial,” even if Mr. Trump bitterly opposed an agreement negotiated by the Obama administration for the United States to accept the transfer of 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention camp.
A senior administration official disputed a report that Mr. Trump had threatened to send troops to Mexico to deal with its “bad hombres.” The official said that the conversation with President Enrique Peña Nieto had been “actually very friendly,” and that Mr. Trump had been speaking in jest.
In an interview with the New York Times, Steve Bannon said the media should “keep its mouth shut.”Photograph by Chris Kleponis / Bloomberg via Getty
Somewhere in the West Wing of the White House, I’m guessing, Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump’s chief political strategist, is chuckling to himself. A quick call with a Times reporter, and, a day later, there was his mug on the paper’s front page, next to a story in which he was quoted as saying, “The paper of record for our beloved Republic, the New York Times, should be absolutely ashamed and humiliated. They got it 100 per cent wrong.” Talk about hitting the enemy where it lives.
Of course, the Gray Lady didn’t give Bannon front-page treatment simply for trolling her. In his interview, Bannon delivered a broadside at the press more generally, saying, “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.” Bannon also said, “I want you to quote me on this. The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”
When the Times posted its story online, the reaction in some quarters was one of righteous outrage. Jacob Weisberg, the editor-in-chief of the Slate Group, said on Twitter, “ ‘The media should keep its mouth shut’ is a terrifying, tyrannical comment. It’s coming from inside the White House.” CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked, “Sorry, what country are we living in?”
Outrage is evidently what Bannon intended to produce. A former Goldman Sachs investment banker and Hollywood producer who remade himself as a leading figure in the alt-right, he enjoys playing the role of provocateur and bomb thrower. At a cocktail party in November, 2013, he described himself as “Leninist” to the writer and historian Ronald Radosh. In a piece at the Daily Beast, Radosh recalled that Bannon had said to him, “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” (Bannon subsequently told Radosh that he didn’t recall the conversation.)
To a good Leninist, the very notion of an objective press is a liberal piety. Media outlets like the Times and the Washington Post are merely the ideological arm of highly educated urban cosmopolitans, liberals, and financiers—the “donor class,” Bannon calls them—who have benefitted from globalization and large-scale immigration. “I’m not a white nationalist,” Bannon told the Hollywood Reporter’sMichael Wolff shortly after the election. “I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist. The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia.”
The first part of this statement was dubious. Regardless of Bannon’s personal views, about which there is some dispute, he undoubtedly provided a platformfor white nationalists, racists, and other right-wing extremists when he ran Breitbart News, a conservative Web site. But Bannon’s reading of the past thirty years of American economic history wasn’t entirely off the mark, and neither was his claim that some in the media underestimated Trump’s appeal—and still do. To many of Trump’s critics, myself included, his first week has amply demonstrated why he isn’t fit for office. But many of his supporters, I’d be willing to bet, see a strong President who is carrying out his campaign pledges to build a wall, protect American jobs, and put America first.
Where Bannon lapsed into hyperbole was in claiming that the media is the “opposition party.” During any Administration, the relationship between the White House and the press corps is somewhat adversarial. All Administrations try to spin things their way, and the media, to a lesser or greater extent, depending on the circumstances, tries to push back. But there is also a symbiosis between the two sides. The news media needs content, which the Administration provides. The Administration needs distribution, which the media provides.
Even the advent of the Internet—and Trump’s 22.5 million Twitter followers—hasn’t altered this logic. While Bannon was lashing out at the Times and other media outlets, his boss was busy exploiting the huge amounts of free airtime that the broadcast networks continue to afford him. On Wednesday and Thursday alone, Trump conducted two hour-long interviews in prime time (ABC and Fox News) and delivered two speeches, which the cable-news networks carried in full (one at the Department of Homeland Security, the other at a Republican retreat in Philadelphia). On Friday, he held a press conference with Theresa May, the British Prime Minister. A host of networks carried the event live.
What’s new isn’t that we have a President who uses the media whenever he can. It’s that, simultaneously, he has made demonizing the press a central part of his political strategy. During the campaign, Trump’s attacks on the “dishonest media” fired up his base and kept him in the news. Now, judging by Bannon’s remarks, the aim is to portray the media as a political adversary rather than an independent monitor, so that when damaging stories appear the Administration can dismiss them. “Much of the media—not all of it—is very, very dishonest,” Trump told Sean Hannity, of Fox News, on Thursday. “Honestly, it’s fake news. Fake. They make things up.”
To repeat what I’ve said many times before: Trump is a menace. And Bannon is his eager accomplice. Even Richard Nixon at his most demented never levelled the sort of charges that Trump hurls on a daily basis. And as far as I know, there is no precedent for a senior White House official telling the press to “keep its mouth shut.”
In the months and year to come, if the Trump Administration goes beyond merely berating reporters, and tries to restrict their activities, journalists might well have to fall back on the foundations of a free media, starting with the First Amendment, which says that “Congress shall pass no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” However, as two law professors—RonNell Andersen Jones, of the University of Utah, and Sonja R. West, of the University of Georgia—pointed out in a recent Op-Ed in the Times, the Constitution provides “only limited protection for the press,” which doesn’t necessarily include the ability to gain access to information or to protect the anonymity of sources. Moreover, public confidence in the press has fallen to a historic low, many lower courts have become less favorable to reporters, and the Supreme Court hasn’t taken on a major press case in more than a decade. “Like so much of our democracy, the freedom of the press is only as strong as we, the public, demand it to be,” Andersen and West wrote.
Fortunately, large numbers of Americans are rallying behind the media just when their support is most needed. The unprecedented protest marches all across the country last weekend demonstrated the existence of a huge and active popular resistance, which is urging the press to hold Trump to account. While Bannon may be tempted to portray the marchers as out-of-touch intellectual-property lawyers and globalists, their sheer numbers belie such a description. (According to some accounts, Saturday’s marches were the biggest political demonstration in American history.) As Trump’s Presidency gets under way, marches and protests provide an essential reminder that, although he rallied an impressive number of alienated and dispossessed white voters, the majority of Americans rejected him, and still reject him. They are the real opposition, and they are too many for Trump and Bannon to silence.
Another reason not to despair is Trump himself. During his first week in office, he was the person who did most to undermine his credibility and authority. By repeatedly saying things that weren’t true, or even nearly true—that his Inauguration drew the biggest audience ever; that he would have won the popular vote but for enormous voter fraud—he invited criticism and ridicule, which duly poured down upon him. Perhaps his ravings didn’t do him much damage among his core supporters: they tend to cheer anything he says. But the impetuous behavior unnerved Republicans on Capitol Hill, some of Trump’s business supporters, and, judging by the steady stream of leaks to reporters, even some of his own staff and appointees. On Friday, Brian Beutler, of The New Republic, pointed out that, in the past few days, the Times, the Washington Post, and Politico have all published stories “sourced to the White House—portraying Trump as a fragile, erratic, television-obsessed snowflake.”
Trump’s tender ego and impulsiveness aren’t his only vulnerabilities. In refusing to divest his businesses, he has invited the suspicion that he intends to enrich himself and his family. In cozying up to Vladimir Putin, he has invited speculation about whether the Russians have some sort of hold over him. Going forward, both of these areas will continue to provide target-rich environments for investigative reporters and other Trump antagonists.
Bannon, by the way, has had some critical things to say about Putin in the past. “I think that Putin and his cronies are really a kleptocracy . . . an imperialist power that wants to expand,” he said in a speech in 2014, according to a transcriptobtained by BuzzFeed. The next time a reporter gets Bannon on the phone, that quote might be worth bringing up. On Friday, Trump confirmed that he is weighing whether to lift economic sanctions that are aimed squarely at Putin and his cronies.
Taiwan’s Democracy Challenged: The Chen Shui-bian Years is a difficult book to read, not because the writing is awkward or sloppy – though the quality is undoubtedly uneven across the different contributions – but because each chapter is abundantly filled with detailed material and analyses. Together, they make this edited collection on Taiwanese democracy during Chen Shui-bian’s presidency a must-read for Taiwanese scholars and students of Taiwan. Academics should strongly consider assigning selected chapters, or even the entire book, as required reading for their Asian studies, political science, law, communications or sociology courses.
This collection tells the story of the development of democracy in Taiwan between 2000 and 2008 when Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the first non-Kuomintang (KMT) president of Taiwan, was in office. By the time his second term ended, Chen’s approval rating was in the gutter, and soon after he was convicted of corruption and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. In the last few years, the perception of Chen has begun to improve, and this increase in public support was likely to have been partly responsible for his release on medical parole. Taiwan’s Democracy Challenged, co-edited by political scientists Yun-han Chu and Kharis Templeman and political sociologist Larry Diamond, is situated as part of this larger project to critically evaluate Chen’s presidency in a more systematic, impartial and evidence-based manner.
While the book is temporally defined by Chen’s spell as president, he was just part of an ensemble cast. The DPP, its various factions, the KMT that still controlled the legislative branch, civil society, China, the United States, other branches of the government, the business sector and the media – all were important characters in the advancement, and at times obstruction, of democracy in Taiwan, and all are analysed in the book.
After the introductory chapter (which does not waste space on a brief history of Taiwanese history like many other books on Taiwan), the collection is divided into four parts, each containing two to four chapters. The first, ‘Politics and Public Opinion’, provides analyses on party politics and elections, the performance of the DPP in elections, the false narrative of the Taiwanese public becoming more polarised during the Chen years and party biases in the support for democracy and opinions on the quality of governance. This is followed by the ‘Democratic Institutions in Action’ section, which discusses the relationship between the executive and legislative branches, the Judicial Yuan and Control Yuan in the development of horizontal accountability and the rule of law and the debate on constitutional reforms to alleviate the deadlock created by different parties controlling the presidency and the legislative branch.
Part Three, ‘State-Society Relations’, concerns the engagement of civil society in politics through participation in government commissions; the role of the media in the decline of the political environment; the new state-business relations with the appointment of DPP members to lead state-run businesses which ultimately led to the various corruption scandals; and the DPP’s failure to take over and emulate the KMT’s system of patronage. Finally, the collection ends with Part Four, ‘National Security and Cross-Strait Relations’, comprising chapters titled ‘Depoliticizing Taiwan’s Security Apparatus’ and ‘Troubled Waters: The Conflict over Cross-Strait Relations’.
A noteworthy characteristic of this collection is the number of scholars who are based in Taiwan, part of a trend of recent English-language academic literature written by Taiwanese scholars or scholars based in the country. Out of the nineteen contributors, including the three editors, only four are based outside of Taiwan.
Two omissions are particularly notable. First, the mass protests against Chen’s corruption in 2006 are only mentioned twice in the collection, once in Chu, Min-hua Huang and Yu-tzung Chang’s ‘Polarized Politics and Support for Democracy’, and then in ‘Restructuring State-Business Relations’ by James W.Y. Wang, Shang-mao Chen and Cheng-tian Kuo. Dubbed the ‘Million Voices Against Corruption’, the street demonstrations and sit-ins lasted three months and were led by former DPP chairman and political prisoner Shih Ming-teh. That a long-term fellow activist – Shih was a defendant in the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident while Chen was the criminal defence attorney for a co-defendant – aligned himself with the KMT that once imprisoned and tortured him to call for Chen’s resignation surely contributed, whether positively or negatively, to the development of democracy in Taiwan. A more substantial treatment of this episode to unpack its layers may provide a fuller story of Chen’s final two years in office.
Second, Weitseng Chen and Jimmy Chia-Shin Hsu’s ‘Horizontal Accountability and the Rule of Law’, which investigates the independence, supremacy, accountability and capability of the judicial branch, overlooks the crucial composition of the Constitutional Court that decided the cases discussed. What effect, if any, did a Court consisting solely of Chen appointees after 2003 have on its political influence? ‘After the change in ruling parties in 2000, the [Constitutional] Court struggled to have the positive impact that it had had in the 1990s’ (150), the authors argue, as having two parties instead of just the KMT looking to it to resolve disputes meant that it had to tread more carefully in order to insulate itself politically. While that may be the overarching explanation, is it not possible that the appointment of justices by Chen to a Constitutional Court that was always packed with KMT members complicated the issue? The Court, while an institution, is composed of individual justices whose backgrounds may have affected the internal politics of the Court and its interactions with other branches of government.
Taiwan’s Democracy Challenged leaves one with mixed feelings about Chen’s legacy, which probably is an indication that the volume has succeeded in portraying at least some version of reality. Democracy in Taiwan during Chen’s presidency developed but also stalled. Nonetheless, this book shows that, despite low public opinion when he left office, much of what happened was beyond Chen’s control. He was an easy scapegoat whose corruption scandals were convenient to latch onto. As the co-editors note: ‘The ugly headlines and incendiary political rhetoric of the era have overshadowed subtler but more important political changes that occurred, both good and bad, in Taiwanese politics and society’ . A clearer picture of the role of Chen and other players during his presidency in the democratic consolidation in Taiwan will emerge in the years to come, but for now, this collection’s contribution to the literature and the field should not be missed.
As I was writing this book review, I came across a popular online forum on which a US user sought legal advice regarding her father’s death due to injuries sustained from a fall while shopping at a store. She enquired whether her family could request the store pay for the funeral expenses. Based on the limited facts supplied, the case appeared to be a slam dunk for substantially more compensation than the user realised due to the store’s negligence. The poster did not speak to a lawyer before seeking assistance online because she was afraid of the costs; she was unaware that these types of cases are typically accepted on a contingency basis – meaning the lawyer will only get paid if she wins. In a subsequent post, she stated that she had talked to a personal injury lawyer at the urging of other users and may pursue litigation.
Had she not posted her message, she may very well have committed ‘lumping’. In The Myth of the Litigious Society: Why We Don’t Sue, David M. Engel defines lumping as instances where the victim does not take action to seek compensation from the wrongdoer. Lumping, according to Engel, is not merely refraining from filing lawsuits, but also ‘not confronting the injurer in any significant way to seek redress’ to instead ‘rely on whatever resource – financial, psychological, and spiritual – they can muster on their own’ (21).
Contrary to popular belief, people do not usually sue when they are injured. The oft-repeated narrative that personal injury lawsuits and the damages awarded by juries in the United States are out of control is simply not supported by evidence. The cases reported in the media and used by tort reform advocates to justify limiting people’s access to civil justice are either outliers or framed in ways that distort the facts and legal reasoning. This myth is so pervasive and durable that many law students and lawyers also buy into it because of the nature of legal education where, for the most part, only legal opinions – situations in which the victim has already sued – are studied. In reality, the vast majority of people – nine out of ten in the United States according to studies cited in the book – forego their claims.
Engel thus asks not why the USA is such a litigious society, because that is the wrong question; rather, he explores the reasons why victims of injuries do not seek compensation. He examines the experiences of people harmed by others and offers eight main reasons for lumping. First, suffering may ‘create a sense of existential change and identity confusion’ (172) and affect the victim’s decision-making. Second, society holds a negative view of those who seek compensation, stereotyping them as greedy and deceitful. Third, the victim’s cognitive abilities may be biased by the injury, leading to irrational thinking. Fourth, as injury is a cultural construct, what may be compensable is not seen as an injury due to cultural framing. Fifth, dangerous situations leading to injury are perceived to be part of the natural environment and inevitable, so the victim may blame their own carelessness instead of external factors. Sixth, deliberate choices made by manufacturers and service providers are seen as unavoidable and thus the blame is again placed on the user. Seventh, causation is a cultural and social concept, and victims may not make the link between the actions of the injurer and the injury. Eighth, ‘friends and relatives tend to reflect the societal consensus that it’s bad to claim, and the victim who demands compensation will become a social pariah’ (175).
Ultimately, Engel seeks to ‘find another voice that is more true to the experiences of injury victims’ (189), so that policy debates can focus on meaningful redress for victims. Currently, the existence of a significant amount of lumping leads to three negative consequences for victims and the society. First, the aims of tort law – compensating victims, deterring injurers, redistributing losses and enacting moral justice – cannot be adequately fulfilled. Second, the signalling function of tort law, which brings new sources of harm to the attention of government regulators and frames the cultural construction of injuries, cannot be met. Finally, injury victims who cannot be adequately compensated under the current system and their social networks bear the brunt of the costs – monetarily, professionally, socially and psychologically – instead of the responsible wrongdoer. Though Engel offers existing work-arounds, he argues that a cultural change is necessary to fundamentally address the problem. A ‘more balanced, humane, nuanced, and respectful framework for understanding injuries, injurers, and injury victims’ must replace the unsympathetic view of victims and their lawyers so the goals that tort law purports to address but has failed in practice can be fulfilled (190).
Engel presents a convincing argument for a shifting of the dominant narrative based on evidence of the insufficiency of the civil justice system and social science studies that explain why human nature and societal forces have led to the current predicament. Although transforming the system requires public policy debates, widespread acceptance and investment in public relations, as Engel proposes, there is no reason that personal injury lawyers on the frontline, social workers and television writers cannot actively do their part by injecting this perspective into their daily work to transform the narrative through everyday forms of resistance.
One minor criticism of this book is that the basis of Engel’s claim that victims lump are all decades-old studies. While lumping inevitably still exists today, it may be worth questioning whether the rate holds true. The world has changed at a more rapid pace in the last decade with the widespread use of the internet. The way people connect, communicate and share information has revolutionised. A decade ago, the aforementioned poster may have simply buried her father without asking the store for compensation. She may never have approached a lawyer due to her assumption that it would be too costly. There may not have been an appropriate and easily accessible online community. While social scientists and law and society scholars should investigate whether the frequency of lumping is negatively correlated with the rise of technological advances, ultimately the results of such studies, whatever they are, should not diminish the general thrust of Engel’s thesis and its import.
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend.......dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The Faust legend has been the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works that have reinterpreted it through the ages. "Faust" and the adjective "Faustian" imply a situation in which an ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to achieve power and success for a delimited term - Wikipedia
Quisling is in rhetoric an antonomasia is a kind of metonymy in which an epithet or phrase takes the place of a proper name, such as "the little corporal" for Napoleon I. Conversely, antonomasia can also be using a proper name as an archetypal name, to express a generic idea. 1942 to 1945 he served as Minister-President, heading the Norwegian state administration jointly with the German civilian administrator Josef Terboven. His pro-Nazi puppet government, known as the Quisling regime, was dominated by ministers from Nasjonal Samling, the party he founded in 1933. The collaborationist government participated in Germany's genocidal Final Solution. Quisling was put on trial during the legal purge in Norway after World War II: he was found guilty of charges including embezzlement, murder and high treason against the Norwegian state, and was sentenced to death. He was executed by firing - squad at Akershus Fortress, Oslo, on 24 October 1945. The word "quisling" has since become a synonym for "collaborator" or "traitor," reflecting the very poor light in which Quisling's actions were seen, both at the time and since his death.-Wikipedia
Beelzebub is thea fallen angel in Milton's Paradise Lost ranking next to Satan.Beelzebub, prince of devils, from Latin, from Greek Beelzeboub, from Hebrew Baʽal zĕbhūbh, a Philistine god, literally, lord of flies
Old Nick The Dick Old Nick an English name for the Devil in Christian tradition. The Dick... Richard Nixon. Old Nick The Dick ..... Antonomasia ACorrupt Republican GOP Politician in Devils Clothing
Many Republican members of Congress have made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump. They don’t particularly admire him as a man, they don’t trust him as an administrator, they don’t agree with him on major issues, but they respect the grip he has on their voters, they hope he’ll sign their legislation and they certainly don’t want to be seen siding with the inflamed progressives or the hyperventilating media.
Their position was at least comprehensible: How many times in a lifetime does your party control all levers of power? When that happens you’re willing to tolerate a little Trumpian circus behavior in order to get things done.
But if the last 10 days have made anything clear, it’s this: The Republican Fausts are in an untenable position. The deal they’ve struck with the devil comes at too high a price. It really will cost them their soul.
In the first place, the Trump administration is not a Republican administration; it is an ethnic nationalist administration. Trump insulted both parties equally in his Inaugural Address. The Bannonites are utterly crushing the Republican regulars when it comes to actual policy making
The administration has swung sharply antitrade. Trump’s economic instincts are corporatist, not free market. If Barack Obama tried to lead from behind, Trump’s foreign policy involves actively running away from global engagement. Outspoken critics of Paul Ryan are being given White House jobs, and at the same time, if Reince Priebus has a pulse it is not externally evident.
Second, even if Trump’s ideology were not noxious, his incompetence is a threat to all around him. To say that it is amateur hour at the White House is to slander amateurs. The recent executive orders were drafted and signed without any normal agency review or even semicoherent legal advice, filled with elemental errors that any nursery school student would have caught.
It seems that the Trump administration is less a government than a small clique of bloggers and tweeters who are incommunicado with the people who actually help them get things done. Things will get really hairy when the world’s problems are incoming.
Third, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the aroma of bigotry infuses the whole operation, and anybody who aligns too closely will end up sharing in the stench.
The administration could have simply tightened up the refugee review process and capped the refugee intake at 50,000, but instead went out of its way to insult Islam. The administration could have simply tightened up immigration procedures, but Trump went out of his way to pick a fight with all of Mexico.
Other Republicans have gone far out of their way to make sure the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam or on Arabs, but Trump has gone out of his way to ensure the opposite. The racial club is always there.
Fourth, it is hard to think of any administration in recent memory, on any level, whose identity is so tainted by cruelty. The Trump administration is often harsh and never kind. It is quick to inflict suffering on the 8-year-old Syrian girl who’s been bombed and strafed and lost her dad. Its deportation vows mean that in the years ahead, the TV screens will be filled with weeping families being pulled apart.
None of these traits will improve with time. As former Bush administration official Eliot Cohen wrote in The Atlantic, “Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity — substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment.”
The danger signs are there in profusion. Sooner or later, the Republican Fausts will face a binary choice. As they did under Nixon, Republican leaders will have to either oppose Trump and risk his tweets, or sidle along with him and live with his stain.
Trump exceeded expectations with his cabinet picks, but his first 10 days in office have made clear this is not a normal administration. It is a problem that demands a response. It is a callous, bumbling group that demands either personal loyalty or the ax.
Already one sees John McCain and Lindsey Graham forming a bit of a Republican opposition. The other honorable senators will have to choose: Collins, Alexander, Portman, Corker, Cotton, Sasse and so on and so on.
With most administrations you can agree sometimes and disagree other times. But this one is a danger to the party and the nation in its existential nature. And so sooner or later all will have to choose what side they are on, and live forever after with the choice.
