If you read the title "From 1st World to 3rd," you may have noticed that I reverse the title of the book from the late former prime minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew "From Third World to First: The Singapore Story - 1965-2000." He was one of the world's greatest leaders of the 20th century -- a gigantic political figure on world stage. The former American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that he learned more from Mr. Lee Kuan Yew than anyone else. In 1965, Singapore was a dirt-poor, third-world, malaria-infested, resource-poor British outpost that just gained independence from Britain. In just 35 years, it has been transformed into one of the richest and dynamic countries in the world with one of the highest per capita in Asia with world-class universities, modern infrastructure, educated citizens. During that time, the U.S. has become more and more like a third world country with wage stagnation, decaying infrastructure, failing schools. The pictures below from the 19th Congressional district are an example of the decline of the U.S. There are many excellent lessons to be learned from his book and I will try to diagnose what go wrong with the U.S. using the lessons from his book as examples. From what I learn from his book, these are some of the principles that help Singapore becoming a first world country. a) Rule of Law b) Creating a fair society (not Welfare society) c) Expenses less than income   The way Silicon Valley treats Mr. Peter Thiel, a Trump supporter, is pathetic. He is a patriotic American who has spoken out against the current economic injustices in the U.S. He supports Trump's policies because they help Middle-Class Americans, not Mr. Trump's personal conduct as a private citizen. As an American citizen, he has the right to express his own opinions. Mr. Peter Thiel is treated like a pariah in Silicon Valley. Are we becoming like a Communist country or what where people are being harassed and ostracized for speaking against what is the "official" government propaganda at a particular moment? Mr. Thiel is right on the issues and I agree with him that it's delusional to think that the issues will go away if Mr. Trump loses. No, they won't go away because they are structural. Personally I think it's an economic paradigm shift that will influence the U.S. and the world for many years to come. By the way, Mr. Thiel, you don't need to go out of Silicon Valley to see how out of touch the elites of Silicon Valley are. Just come to California Congressional 19th District, I used to volunteer for Pacific Free Clinic a couple of years ago -- a medical clinic for the uninsured -- located right here in Silicon Valley, the desperation for healthcare services from uninsured American citizens is as bad as a Thailand refugee camp where I spent sometime before coming to America. The poverty and desperation that I hadn't seen in other industrialized countries such as Western Europe where I also spent considerable time (OK, maybe the condition at the "Jungle" in Calais is as bad before the French authority moved in to clear the camp since it has become an embarrassment for France). I won't vote for Mr. Trump nor Mrs. Clinton, but it's my personal choice. I would have voted for Mr. Bernie Sanders. However, since the Democratic establishment and Mrs. Clinton had schemed to get rid of Mr. Sanders as a choice. I don't see any reason why I have to vote for Mrs. Clinton given her hawkish view on foreign wars, her poor record as Secretary of State, and her corruption with the Clinton foundation. I like Mr. Thiel's ideas and I understand why he supports Mr. Trump, I will write more about what I think about Mr. Thiel's ideas in future articles.  - Franklin-McKinley Elementary: $6705 (44% below the national average) - Morgan Hill Unified School: $5928 (50% below the national average) - San Jose Unified School District: $7788 (35% below the national average) - Evergreen Elementary $6543 (45% below the national average) It's no wonder why the schools are FAILING and Lofgren wants to increase the number of low-income students even more by accepting illegal immigrants from Central America whose high-school drop-out rate is about 70%. Mr. Lee Yuan Yew actually has a chapter in his book why it's a bad idea for the U.S. to accept so many illegal immigrants from south of the border.  A panhandler/beggar at the Tully & King intersection. Today there is a beggar at every traffic light in the 19th Congressional District. It becomes more and more like a third-world country  (Afghan migrants in Paris, New York Times, Lionel Bonaventure/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)
For Zoe Lofgren, it's not enough to turn the California 19th Congressional District into a third world country, she also wants to bring third-world squalor to Paris and Europe with her YES vote on the Afghan War. 40% of the refugees in Europe come from Afghanistan due to the war that has been instigated by politicians like our Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren.    (San Jose Mercury News)She is at a rally supporting people who KNOWINGLY violate American immigration laws. She is pandering to a group of people who treat American law with contempt. Where is the responsibility? Where is the accountability? We need to hold her accountable. By the way, I do have sympathies and compassion for those who are illegal immigrants here in the U.S. since I am an immigrant myself. Having said that, the law must be followed. My family follows the U.S. immigration law. My parents didn't overstay their student visas in 1958 when they entered the U.S. as students. We were granted refugee status by the American Embassy in Bangkok during the time when there was no diplomatic relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam after the war. Twice a week, the staff at the American Embassy in Bangkok had to fly into Saigon to interview families like ours and they couldn't stay overnight in Saigon. They must fly out at the end of each working day. So everything took much longer and much more cumbersome. There are multiple American embassies and consular offices in the countries where the current illegal immigrants in the U.S. come from. When I went to France, I followed the French immigration law. I followed the Dutch immigration law when I came to the Netherlands to study. Comparing me to the illegal immigrants in the U.S., they have it so easily. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren loves to quote about the gang problem in Central America and said why we should give the Central Americans a pass. Well, I am sure the gang problem in Central America is not as bad as living under Communism and being harassed by them. Just ask my family or Mr. Segrey Brin's family, I am sure his parents must have quite a few stories to tell about life in the Soviet Union under Communism. His parents and my family waited for years to immigrate legally to the United States under a much more difficult circumstance than those from Central America. If I follow the immigration law of the countries that I have lived and visited, I expect them to do the same. Mr. Lee Kuan Yew stressed the Rule of Law as a unifying force between different groups of people and I agree with him. There are three main ethnic groups in Singapore: Chinese, Indian, and Malay. These groups are pulled in different directions due to their cultures. It's important for everyone to respect the law so that the society can function. This idea of the Rule of Law as a unifying force is even more important in the United States than Singapore since we have so many more different ethnic and cultural groups and the groups don't necessarily share the same values. Instead of the Rule of Law, we have "Identity Politics" as mentioned by Mr. Peter Thiel where White-Americans, African-Americans, Muslim Americans, Asian-Americans, Latino-Americans, etc think that their groups are not bounded by certain U.S. laws. When law-abiding citizens are being punished while law-breakers are being rewarded. It's no wonder why the U.S. is on the path toward becoming another third-world country. Here is our Congresswoman Zoe's Lofgren 20+ year record in Congress: 1. Pandering to the illegal immigrants who disregard and treat American immigration law with contempt. She completely ignore the rule of law. Lofgren is all about identity politics where illegal immigrants have more rights than American citizens who are being treated as 3rd-class citizens (behind the illegal immigrants and the H-1Bs). She even encourages more of the law-breaking behavior by encouraging economic child migrants from Central America to flood into American schools. As a law-maker, shouldn't she ask people to respect American law instead of telling people to ignore and to disrespect American immigration law? 2. Sell American citizens (especially her constituents who work in high-tech) to corporate interests. With her corrupt H-1B program, it's 20+ years of oppression, discrimination, humiliation for the American high-tech professionals. While American high-tech professionals are starving for food after being replaced by an H-1B. Congresswoman Zoe Logren is feasting in political contributions from the cheap labor lobbyists and the multinational corporations. She is laughing all the way to the bank after throwing American citizens under the bus. As a Congressman, shouldn't she represent the interests of American citizens and her American constituents rather than the interests of the cheap labor lobbyists and the multinational corporations who make political contributions to her? She did take an oath on that and she needs to be held accountable on the issues. Check out how much $$$ Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren got from the cheap labor lobbyists and the multinational corporations for throwing American high-tech professionals under the bus: While you are at the website, also check out how much $$$$ she got from pharmaceutical companies. She is blocking any effort to make drug prices cheaper for American consumers (see my Epipen Ripoff article). It's no wonder why American professionals call Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren "The Madam of Congressional Whorehouse." wgberger Zoe Lofgren? My god, this woman is the Madam of the whole H-1B Congressional whorehouse. Her customers in Silicon Valley pay her generously to keep them supplied with young, nubile STEM talent. 3. There is one thing that I agree with the terrorists (yeah you heard me right), is that there should be less American involvement in the Muslim world. Her vote for the war in Afghanistan has costed the American taxpayers trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives. She created a refugee crisis in Europe while at forcing American taxpayers to pay for the 35-million dollar gas station in Afghanistan (the most expensive gas station in the world), the thousands of Afghan generals (do you know that Afghanistan actually has more military generals than the U.S. military which is 3 times bigger -- all at American taxpayers expenses of course). And I haven't mentioned the billions of dollars have given to the Pakistani government who provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden. I would rather use the trillions of dollars that the U.S has wasted in the Muslim world to build 1st world infrastructure here in the U.S. Instead, our Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren voted for the costly war there while ignoring the decaying infrastructure in the U.S. with its potholed roads, crumbling bridges. 4. Bailed out the banksters who created the Great Depression of 2008 that destroyed the wealth of millions of American citizens. Progress? I don't think so and I agree with one of America's greatest President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  TESTIMONIALS Psysword NY 12 hours agoNYT is back with its steady drumbeat of illegal immigrant stories, and I would consider it one of the primary reasons why I switched from being an Obama voter to a Trump supporter here in New York. I am a medical doctor and papers and accreditation are everything. If we all stopped trying to get licensed and legal, would the healthcare system of the United States be any different from a corrupt third world country, like Nigeria? The United States and European countries are where they are because of their rules, their legal system, and their lovely people. But everyone has a breaking point and the George Soros liberal agenda, or neoliberalism, pushed on all these people has turned a socialism oriented people into a more nationalistic or unwelcoming people. Norway, Sweden and Germany do not deserve to have their countries ripped up by illegal aliens, or refugees, or "Dreamers", any more than we do in the United States of America. This battle needs to be finished with Trump once and for all with a gigantic wall, that will rival that of the Great Wall of China, which is a major tourist attraction and stretches over 12,000 miles built to keep, surprise suprise, to keep the the hostile Islamic mauraders out, even back then. History repeats itself and the liberal elites will do well to discard the Ostrich policy that the right finds so funny and with thousands of YouTube hits on "liberal tears". · 45 Recommend Stanz San Jose, CA 7 hours agoArguing
that a duly elected politician has the right to ignore his or her oath of
office by picking and choosing which laws they will enforce is an inherently
hypocritical and corrupt position to take. The underlying argument is that
since the American people don't want the law changed I will simply claim a
higher moral or intellectual authority and not enforce it. By that logic why
can't I or any other citizen ignore any law that we don't like? I don't like
the government stealing money that I've earned and giving it to strangers. So
would you defend my right to not pay taxes? Is that where you really want to
go?
· 130 Recommend alan haigh carmel, ny 6 hours ago
It is hard not to feel
empathy for those who came to this country as children, by no choice of their
own, were raised here and have no real connection to the countries their
parents brought them from. We need to show equal concern for all low skilled wage earners in this country, no matter where they came from.
· 148 Recommend william boyer kansas 6 hours agoWhy are "Dreamers" the responsibility of American tax payers and not the responsibility of their parents and the countries of their origins? Did American tax payers get a vote on whether the USA would become the social welfare dumping ground for the world? Didn't their parents put them in this spot not middle class American taxpayers? Wasn't all of this imposed on the nation in an authoritarian and arbitrary way by Obama and Democrats for personal political gain in the guise of humanitarian action? Yesterday low wage workers were protesting for an increase in wages but no one protested the drag effect of millions of illegals and "dreamers" on those wages and the lives of poor African Americans? Nor did they protest the corporate medias failure to report on that, the real unemployment rate and the failure of public education. Now most of these demonstrations are Democrat, SEIU and Soros AstroTurf but the media isn't reporting on that either. Yet, shouldn't the Democrats and media by now realize that much of this is why Trump won? Can some loyal liberal Democrats explain all of this to us, especially my first two questions?
· 71 Recommend Scott Bieller Illinois 2 days ago The article is partially correct. I still believe you must take into account the key issues that launched Trump which is immigration, globalization, and overreach on social issues. It was these wedge issues driving the anger against Democrats and causing blue counties to flip red. The endless coverage of Illegal Immigrants from latin countries committing crimes, the assignation of police officers by black lives matters, the forcing of boys into girls high school locker rooms, the slave H1B Visa holders taking American STEM jobs for penny's on the dollar. etc, etc, etc... All of these issues could have been felt with better by Obama and neutered Trump, but he didn't. He stood by Black Lives Matters, He stood by his transgender high school rule, he told the Union worker "Hey, those jobs are just never coming back". In the end, you MUST place the destruction of the democratic party at the feet of Obama.
· 170 Recommend StanzSan Jose, CA 7 hours ago Arguing
that a duly elected politician has the right to ignore his or her oath of
office by picking and choosing which laws they will enforce is an inherently
hypocritical and corrupt position to take. The underlying argument is that
since the American people don't want the law changed I will simply claim a
higher moral or intellectual authority and not enforce it. By that logic why
can't I or any other citizen ignore any law that we don't like? I don't like
the government stealing money that I've earned and giving it to strangers. So
would you defend my right to not pay taxes? Is that where you really want to
go?
· 130 Recommend |
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