North Korea Is Back On Dotard Alert

I don't really like any of the characters in Silicon Valley, to which I've been addicted as I binge watch all 6 seasons but... if I had to pick one favorite, it would be Jian-Yáng (played by Hong Kong-born stand-up comedian and actor Jimmy O. Yang). Yang doesn't remind me of Kim Jong Un because they are both East Asian. Yang reminds me of Kim Jong Un because they are both hilariously funny assholes... even if one of them is nuclear-armed. If you're not familiar with Silicon Valley, watch the Best of Jian-Yang video clips above.

Yesterday Kim Jong Un threatened to resume insulting the Erlich Bachman of U.S. politics. Top North Korean officials have already reminded anyone who may have forgotten that Trump is a dotard.

Choe Son Hui, the first vice foreign minister, issued the warning via state media days after Trump spoke of possible military action toward the North and revived his “rocket man” nickname for North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un.

The comments came as prospects dim for a resumption of nuclear diplomacy between the two countries. In recent months, North Korea has hinted at lifting its moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests if the Trump administration fails to make substantial concessions in nuclear diplomacy before the end of the year.

Choe said Trump’s remarks “prompted the waves of hatred of our people against the U.S.” because they showed “no courtesy when referring to the supreme leadership of dignity” of North Korea.

She said North Korea will respond with its own harsh language if Trump again uses similar phrases and shows that he is intentionally provoking North Korea.

“If any language and expressions stoking the atmosphere of confrontation are used once again ... that must really be diagnosed as the relapse of the dotage of a dotard,” Choe said.

On Wednesday, the North’s military chief, Pak Jong Chon, also warned that the use of force against the North would cause a “horrible” consequence for the U.S. He said North Korea would take unspecified “prompt corresponding actions at any level” if the U.S. takes any military action.

During a visit to London on Tuesday, Trump said his relationship with Kim was “really good” but also called for him to follow up on a commitment to denuclearize.

“We have the most powerful military we ever had, and we are by far the most powerful country in the world and hopefully we don’t have to use it. But if we do, we will use it,” Trump said.

Kim, Trump added, “likes sending rockets up, doesn’t he? That’s why I call him rocket man.”

In 2017, Trump and Kim traded threats of destruction as North Korea carried out a slew of high-profile weapons tests aimed at acquiring an ability to launch nuclear strikes on the U.S. mainland. Trump said he would rain “fire and fury” on North Korea and derided Kim as “little rocket man,” while Kim questioned Trump’s sanity and said he would “tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire.”

The two leaders have avoided such words and developed better relations after North Korea entered nuclear negotiations with the U.S. last year. Trump even said he and Kim “fell in love.”

Kim and Trump have met three times, starting with a summit in Singapore in June 2018. But their nuclear diplomacy has remained largely deadlocked since their second meeting in Vietnam in February ended without any deal due to disputes over U.S.-led sanctions on North Korea.

Verizon Throttled Firefighters' Data As Mendocino Wildfire Burned

Thomas Middleditch, actor and star of the hit series Silicon Valley, taking "sellout money" (his phrase) and shilling for Verizon, the company most strongly associated with killing net neutrality

by Gaius Publius

There's no way to sugarcoat this. As one commenter noted, this is "pure evil."

It looks like Verizon, already the greedy face of the death of net neutrality, throttled the data speed of California fire-fighting equipment during a 300-arce wildfire in an attempt to force them to upgrade to a more expensive data plan.

During a 300-acre wildfire.

Sounds like blackmail for money to me, with lives and homes held hostage. ArsTechnica tells the story. Since their focus in on the net neutrality angle, I'll present what they present in a little different order (emphasis mine throughout).

Start here:

"County Fire has experienced throttling by its ISP, Verizon," Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a declaration. "This throttling has had a significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services. Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire's ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services."

[...]

"In the midst of our response to the Mendocino Complex Fire, County Fire discovered the data connection for OES 5262 [the county's command-and-control vehicle for in-the-field firefighting] was being throttled by Verizon, and data rates had been reduced to 1/200, or less, than the previous speeds," Bowden wrote. "These reduced speeds severely interfered with the OES 5262's ability to function effectively. My Information Technology staff communicated directly with Verizon via email about the throttling, requesting it be immediately lifted for public safety purposes."

Verizon did not immediately restore full speeds to the device, however.

"Verizon representatives confirmed the throttling, but rather than restoring us to an essential data transfer speed, they indicated that County Fire would have to switch to a new data plan at more than twice the cost, and they would only remove throttling after we contacted the Department that handles billing and switched to the new data plan," Bowden wrote.

All "in the midst of our response to the Mendocino Complex Fire."

This is not the first time Verizon has done this to the Santa Clara County Fire department, and the department anticipates it won't be the last:

Verizon throttling also affected the department in a response to previous fires in December and June, emails show.

Bowden argued that Verizon is likely to keep taking advantage of emergencies in order to push public safety agencies onto more expensive plans.

"In light of our experience, County Fire believes it is likely that Verizon will continue to use the exigent nature of public safety emergencies and catastrophic events to coerce public agencies into higher-cost plans, ultimately paying significantly more for mission-critical service—even if that means risking harm to public safety during negotiations," Bowden wrote.

In other words, this is part of the plan — disaster capitalism, county by county.

Psychopathic Corporate Capitalism

It's difficult to use a word like "psychopathic" to describe this behavior and still be taken seriously, but it's hard not to use it too. Among the characteristics of psychopathic behavior are these: "antisocial violence, a selfish world view that precludes the welfare of others, a lack of remorse or guilt, and blame externalization."

Verizon's "antisocial violence" is clear, as is their world view, which "precludes the welfare of others." As for "blame externalization," this was their initial response:

Verizon also noted that the fire department purchased a data service plan that is slowed down after a data usage threshold is reached. But Verizon said it "made a mistake" in communicating with the department about the terms of the plan.

"We made a mistake in how we communicated with our customer about the terms of its plan," Verizon said. "Like all customers, fire departments choose service plans that are best for them. This customer purchased a government contract plan for a high-speed wireless data allotment at a set monthly cost. Under this plan, users get an unlimited amount of data but speeds are reduced when they exceed their allotment until the next billing cycle."

In the meantime, here's what their serial "mistakes" make worse:

Ranch fire takes another 4,000 acres for new acreage total of 361,562 

The Mendocino Complex fires now are at 410,482 acres, having added about 4,000 acres to the total Tuesday night into Wednesday.

The newly burned acreage, part of the gargantuan Ranch fire, is an incremental increase to the combined totals of the Ranch and River fires. The two fires took off in late July and raced east into and across Lake County, threatening numerous towns and communities and burning at least 157 homes. One firefighter has been killed.

Cal Fire officials early Wednesday reported the added acreage came in the Ranch fire’s north and northeastern sections. Some of the growth came from backfiring operations by firefighters. More backfiring was slated for Wednesday if weather allowed.

Containment on the Ranch fire, which is at 361,562 acres, remained at 67 percent. Cal Fire officials still are looking at Sept. 1 for full containment.

By the way, human beings at Verizon did this; corporations are just buildings and paperwork. I don't think a legal construct, acting alone and in secret, pulled those switches and shut down their data feeds. Policy start with a person saying yes.

As I said, it's hard not to use "that word" for this behavior. Ask yourself how the law would react if a living person had acted in this way. Then ask what the newspapers would call him.

The Net Neutrality Angle

Now the net neutrality angle, which ArsTechnica featured up front in the story:

Bowden's declaration was submitted in an addendum to a brief filed by 22 state attorneys general, the District of Columbia, Santa Clara County, Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, and the California Public Utilities Commission. The government agencies are seeking to overturn the recent repeal of net neutrality rules in a lawsuit they filed against the Federal Communications Commission in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Verizon did say something about whether the throttling had anything to do with net neutrality. They said it didn't:

Update: The Santa Clara fire department has responded to Verizon's claim that the throttling was just a customer service error and "has nothing to do with net neutrality." To the contrary, "Verizon's throttling has everything to do with net neutrality," a county official said.

The death of net neutrality — which Verizon and its former counsel (and now FCC chair) Ajit Pai want desperately to bring about — is all about money, very large piles of it. And while this (that word) industry successfully killed net neutrality at the federal level, the issue is very much alive in California:

California’s net neutrality bill is back and as tough as ever

California lawmakers will be moving forward with tough provisions in a legislative proposal that could turn into one of the most ambitious net neutrality laws in the country. [...]

“This will be the most comprehensive and the strongest net neutrality protection in the United States, where we are restoring what we lost when Donald Trump’s FCC obliterated net neutrality,” [state Sen. Scott] Wiener told reporters Thursday, referring to the Federal Communications Commission’s decision last year to repeal its national-level regulations for Internet service providers.

The California proposal goes further than the defunct federal rules. The revised bill will contain tougher language that not only bans Internet service providers from blocking and slowing websites, but, for example, it will also ban “abusive” forms of a practice known as zero-rating, the lawmakers said. Zero-rating occurs when an ISP exempts its own apps and services from customer data caps but counts other app usage against those monthly limits.

Which takes us back to Thomas Middleditch, the cool new Verizon spokesman. You probably love him if you like the cool series Silicon Valley. Verizon bought his services so his cool lovable persona would rub off on them, and he happily sold his services to them. 

Interestingly, Middleditch called their cash "sellout money" in this glowing interview with the New York Times:

Did you ever expect that playing [Richard on Silicon Valley] would also land you a Verizon endorsement deal?

Ten, 15 years ago, if you were on a successful TV show or in a movie, and you did a commercial, everyone would go, “Oh, his career’s over.” But now, it’s the opposite. Studios look at it and go, this major corporation put a ton of money behind this person — he must be marketable. You get your sellout money and a nod from studios.

I don't for a minute think his is behavior could be characterized by ... that word. He just sounds clueless. Dangerous, of course, given the rest of this story, but clueless in that Hollywood way.

Maybe someone should talk with him about his choices. Yes, the cash is good, but cash isn't everything — unless you're (that word) Verizon, who pays him to cover for their crimes. Which he does.

GP
 

Diversity Vs Free Speech At Google

Google had a good idea. They're trying to encourage diversity in hiring and the company suggested employees use an internal electronic bulletin board for a company-wide discussion. Then they fired someone who discussed.

I remember when I would sit through executive meetings at Warner Bros Records at one point and marvel at how few women and young people and people of color there were around the table. It wasn't just that women and young people and people of color were the bulk of our customers, but that it was tedious, stifling and soul-killing to be in a room filled mostly with old white men for hours on end every week. There was resistance to change-- primarily from old white men but there was a commitment at the top of the company to change and eventually-- and slowly-- it did... a bit.

A friend of mine who works in a top tech firm in Silicon Valley told me about the Google mess. He seemed to be enjoying a rival's distress. The distress started when a male engineer shared a long sexist, anti-diversity screed, "Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber," with Google employees. His point, the kind of right-wing perspective anyone who spends time watching FOX News would take as a matter of course is that women are underrepresented in Silicon Valley not because they face bias and discrimination in the technology world but because of "inherent" psychological differences between men and women. The author immediately portrays himself as the victim in "our culture of shaming and misrepresentation [that] is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber." He insists that "alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is require for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company." He lists 6 bullet points that comes straight from mindless libertarian orthodoxy:

• Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
• This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
• The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.
• Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
• Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression
• Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

"At Google," he wrote, "we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we rarely discuss our moral biases. Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices... At Google, we’re regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership. Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story.

On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:

• They’re universal across human cultures
• They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
• Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males
• The underlying traits are highly heritable
• They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective

When I first started reading about this story, I was horrified Google fired this guy. Eventually I realized that he needs to see a psychiatrist STAT and that it would have been a dereliction of duty for Google to keep him around normally functioning employees. This is coming from a very, very sick mind straight out of the Republican Party. His fear and hatred of women is frightening-- and far from atypical. He claims women are more directed towards "feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas" and that partially explains why "women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics. He claims "Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)... may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs" and that "women generally hav[e] a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support."

This is followed by all the regular Bronze Age patriarchal bullshit brought forward into the Silicon Valley miniverse. "We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life. Status is the primary metric that men are judged on[4], pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths." it never ends and it's almost painful to read his baseless drivel but Danielle Brown, Google’s VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance tried responding in an internal memo to employees:

Many of you have read an internal document shared by someone in our engineering organization, expressing views on the natural abilities and characteristics of different genders, as well as whether one can speak freely of these things at Google. And like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I’m not going to link to it here as it’s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages.

Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our values and the culture we continue to cultivate. We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company, and we’ll continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul. As Ari Balogh said in his internal G+ post, "Building an open, inclusive environment is core to who we are, and the right thing to do. ‘Nuff said."

Google has taken a strong stand on this issue, by releasing its demographic data and creating a company wide OKR on diversity and inclusion. Strong stands elicit strong reactions. Changing a culture is hard, and it’s often uncomfortable. But I firmly believe Google is doing the right thing, and that’s why I took this job.

Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.

We asked Ro Khanna (D-CA), the thoughtful and progressive congressman who represents Silicon Valley, for his perspective on the controversy in his own backyard. Here's what he sent us:

James Damore’s appalling and sexist memo, which claimed that women’s biology explains their lack of leadership opportunities, highlights how far the tech community needs to go to address gender and racial stereotypes. I was moved by Susan Wojcicki’s personal essay in response to that memo and appreciate that so many tech leaders are speaking out against Damore’s ignorant views. I am also pleased to see Google’s recent partnership with Howard University and other historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to take real steps on improving diversity in the tech industry.

As a company with an immigrant founder, an immigrant CEO, and prominent women leaders, Google should strive to set the standard for diversity in the workplace.

Workplace diversity is an issue that all of us have to be more aware of and work hard to correct. Most of us have implicit biases or blind spots that we need to recognize and take steps to overcome. Building diversity in the face of historical inequities is not easy. It requires conscious effort and hard work from all of us who have positions of power or responsibility.

My hope is that this incident will inspire thoughtful men and women at Google to redouble their effort in building a Valley where people truly have equal opportunity regardless of race, gender, or faith. Anything less would be unworthy of the Valley’s core values and principles.

James Damore, the fired Google engineer, is already a hero in certain predictable circles. This one is as incredible as it is twisted:

Not Everyone Hates The Republicans-- The Big Silicon Valley Firms Are Selling Out

You probably saw the new Gallup poll from yesterday showing how badly Trumpanzee is tanking with Americans watching his daily antics during the transition. Independents are sickened by him already and the majority of Americans disapprove of his transition efforts.

Trump's 48% transition approval rating in December was already the lowest for any presidential transition Gallup has measured, starting with Bill Clinton's in 1992-1993. Trump's current rating only further separates him from his predecessors -- particularly Barack Obama, who earned 83% approval for his handling of the transition process in January 2009, up from 75% in mid-December 2008... Americans view Trump's Cabinet as worse than the Cabinets chosen by Obama, Bush and Clinton... The chief differentiator for Trump is that many more Americans rate his appointments as "below average" or "poor": 44% say this about Trump's Cabinet choices, compared with 13% for Bush's, 12% for Clinton's and 10% for Obama's.

But this week Thomas Edsall reported in the NY Times that not everybody is moving in the same direction politically. Silicon Valley seems to have taken a right turn. The political money flow has reversed course-- from Democrats to Republicans over the past cycle. The Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Amazon PACs all contributed money money to Republicans than to Democrats. Employees of these companies are still supporting Democrats over Republicans, but the companies themselves are tilting heavily towards the GOP.

As these technology firms have become corporate behemoths, their concerns over government regulatory policy have intensified-- on issues including privacy, taxation, automation and antitrust. These are questions on which they appear to view Republicans as stronger allies than Democrats.

In 2016, the PACs of these four firms gave a total of $3.6 million to House and Senate candidates. Of that, $2.1 million went to Republicans, and $1.5 million went to Democrats. These PACs did not contribute to presidential candidates.

The PACs stand apart from donations by employees in the technology and internet sectors. According to OpenSecrets, these employees gave $42.4 million to Democrats and $24.2 million to Republicans.

In the presidential race, tech employees (as opposed to corporate PACs) overwhelmingly favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Workers for internet firms, for example, gave her $6.3 million, and gave $59,622 to Trump. Employees of electronic manufacturing firms donated $12.6 million to Clinton and $534,228 to Trump.

Most tech executives and employees remain supportive of Democrats, especially on social and cultural issues. The Republican tilt of the PACs at Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook suggests, however, that as these companies’ domains grow larger, their bottom-line interests are becoming increasingly aligned with the policies of the Republican Party.

In terms of political contributions, Microsoft has led the rightward charge. In 2008, the Microsoft PAC decisively favored Democrats, 60-40, according to data compiled by the indispensable Center for Responsive Politics. By 2012, Republican candidates and committees had taken the lead, 54-46; and by 2016, the Microsoft PAC had become decisively Republican, 65-35.

In 2016, the Microsoft PAC gave $478,818 to Republican House candidates and $272,000 to Democratic House candidates. It gave $164,000 to Republican Senate candidates, and $75,000 to Democratic Senate candidates.

Microsoft employees’ contributions followed a comparable pattern. In 2008 and 2012, Microsoft workers were solidly pro-Democratic, with 71 percent and 65 percent of their contributions going to party members. By 2016, the company’s work force had shifted gears. Democrats got 47 percent of their donations.

This was not small change. In 2016 Microsoft employees gave a total of $6.47 million.

A similar pattern is visible at Facebook.

The firm first became a noticeable player in the world of campaign finance in 2012 when employees and the company PAC together made contributions of $910,000. That year, Facebook employees backed Democrats over Republicans 64-35, while the company’s PAC tilted Republican, 53-46.

By 2016, when total Facebook contributions reached $3.8 million, the Democratic advantage in employee donations shrank to 51-47, while the PAC continued to favor Republicans, 56-44.

While the employees of the three other most valuable tech companies, Alphabet (Google), Amazon and Apple, remained Democratic in their giving in 2016, at the corporate level of Alphabet and Amazon-- that is, at the level of their PACs-- they have not.

Google’s PAC gave 56 percent of its 2016 contributions to Republicans and 44 percent to Democrats. The Amazon PAC followed a similar path, favoring Republicans over Democrats 52-48. (Apple does not have a PAC.)

Tech giants can no longer be described as insurgents challenging corporate America.

“By just about every measure worth collecting,” Farhad Manjoo of The Times wrote in January 2016:

American consumer technology companies are getting larger, more entrenched in their own sectors, more powerful in new sectors and better insulated against surprising competition from upstarts.

These firms are now among the biggest of big business. In a 2016 USA Today ranking of the most valuable companies worldwide, the top four were Alphabet, $554.8 billion; Apple, $529.3 billion; Microsoft, $425.4 billion; and Facebook, $333.6 billion. Those firms decisively beat out Berkshire Hathaway, Exxon Mobil, Johnson & Johnson and General Electric.

In addition to tech companies’ concern about government policy on taxation, regulation and antitrust, there are other sources of conflict between tech firms and the Democratic Party. Gregory Ferenstein, a blogger who covers the tech industry, conducted a survey of 116 tech company founders for Fast Company in 2015. Using data from a poll conducted by the firm SurveyMonkey, Ferenstein compared the views of tech founders with those of Democrats, in some cases, and the views of the general public, in others.

Among Ferenstein’s findings: a minority, 29 percent, of tech company founders described labor unions as “good,” compared to 73 percent of Democrats. Asked “is meritocracy naturally unequal?” tech founders overwhelmingly agreed.

Ferenstein went on:

One hundred percent of the smaller sample of founders to whom I presented this question said they believe that a truly meritocratic economy would be “mostly” or “somewhat” unequal. This is a key distinction: Opportunity is about maximizing people’s potential, which founders tend to believe is highly unequal. Founders may value citizen contributions to society, but they don’t think all citizens have the potential to contribute equally. When asked what percent of national income the top 10% would hold in such a scenario, a majority (67%) of founders believed that the richest individuals would control 50% or more of total income, while only 31% of the public believes such an outcome would occur in a meritocratic society.

One of the most interesting questions posed by Ferenstein speaks to middle and working class anxieties over global competition:

In international trade policy, some people believe the U.S. government should create laws that favor American business with policies that protect it from global competition, such as fees on imported goods or making it costly to hire cheaper labor in other countries (“outsourcing”). Others believe it would be better if there were less regulations and businesses were free to trade and compete without each country favoring their own industries. Which of these statements come closest to your belief?

There was a large difference between tech company officials, 73 percent of whom chose free trade and less regulation, while only 20 percent of Democrats supported those choices.

Ferenstein also found that tech founders are substantially more liberal on immigration policy than Democrats generally. 64 percent would increase total immigration levels, compared to 39 percent of Democrats. Tech executives are strong supporters of increasing the number of highly trained immigrants through the HB1 visa program.

Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University who writes about demographic, social and economic trends, sees these differences as the source of deep conflict within the Democratic Party.

In a provocative August, 2015, column in the Orange County Register, Kotkin wrote:

The disruptive force is largely Silicon Valley, a natural oligarchy that now funds a party teetering toward populism and even socialism. The fundamental contradictions, as Karl Marx would have noted, lie in the collision of interests between a group that has come to epitomize self-consciously progressive mega-wealth and a mass base which is increasingly concerned about downward mobility.

The tech elite, Kotkin writes, “far from deserting the Democratic Party, more likely will aim take to take it over.” Until very recently, the

conflict between populists and tech oligarchs has been muted, in large part due to common views on social issues like gay marriage and, to some extent, environmental protection. But as the social issues fade, having been “won” by progressives, the focus necessarily moves to economics, where the gap between these two factions is greatest.

Kotkin sees future partisan machination in cynical terms:

One can expect the oligarchs to seek out a modus vivendi with the populists. They could exchange a regime of higher taxes and regulation for ever-expanding crony capitalist opportunities and political protection. As the hegemons of today, Facebook and Google, not to mention Apple and Amazon, have an intense interest in protecting themselves, for example, from antitrust legislation. History is pretty clear: Heroic entrepreneurs of one decade often turn into the insider capitalists of the next.

In 2016, Donald Trump has produced an upheaval within the Republican Party that shifted attention away from the less explosive turmoil in Democratic ranks.

Hillary Clinton’s failed bid to finesse the inherent conflict between her dependence on corporate contributions and her need for a strong turnout by union workers, minorities and idealistic millennials embodies the Democratic Party’s long term struggle.

High tech and virtually every other special interest poured money into her campaign: finance, insurance and real estate, $115.4 million; communications/electronics, $59.6 million; lawyers and lobbyists, $41.5 million; organized labor, $35.2 million-- the list goes on and on.

The public, at least for the moment, is not willing to support the continued compromise of principle that has been a hallmark of both parties. Trump has provided a temporary solution for the Republican Party; the Democrats need to find a legitimate and more lasting one.

Much of the $2.5 Trillion in Corporate “Overseas Cash” Is Already in the U.S.

How can you miss what never leaves town?

by Gaius Publius

Coming out of the season of merry and bright we'll be coming into the full blast of news about "what Trump will do." One thing he's going to do is drastically lower taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. Another thing he'll do is declare a "tax holiday" on corporate profit that's (so-called) "held overseas", the (so-called) "unrepatriated" pile of cash that extremely favorable U.S. tax laws allow corporations to delay paying taxes on.

To be fair, Clinton would likely have done the same thing — declare her own version of a "tax holiday" — probably in return for private investment in a public-private "infrastructure bank." Will Trump's sweet deal to corporations take the same shape? It's possible.

For example, we find this, the possibility of a huge tax giveaway on "offshore profits" to Silicon Valley high-tech companies, via Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF):

Trump Tax Plan Would Let Tech Industry Permanently Dodge Hundreds of Billions in U.S. Taxes

High-tech corporations hold 29% of all untaxed offshore profits held by U.S. multinationals

WASHINGTON, D.C.—President-elect Donald Trump met with CEOs of some of the most profitable corporations in America today [December 14] and likely promised them a massive tax giveaway on their untaxed offshore profits, which would mean American families have to pick up their tab.

A spokesman for Trump said one of the topics of his meeting with high-tech executives would be “access to capital,” which likely referred to the huge tax break he plans to offer U.S. multinational corporations to bring home the untaxed profits they are holding offshore.

U.S.-based Fortune 500 companies have $2.5 trillion in profits booked offshore [pdf], mostly in tax havens, on which no U.S. taxes have been paid. Researchers calculate that these companies would owe more than $700 billion [pdf] in taxes if they were to pay what they owe.

Trump wants to cut the tax rate on profits held offshore from 35% to just 10%. That would cut their tax bill to just $150 billion, losing $550 billion in revenue [pdf] that could be used to fund education, infrastructure, healthcare, veterans’ benefits or other domestic priorities.

Trump’s guests today are all members of the technology and information sector. Technology corporations have 29% of all untaxed offshore profits reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Fig. 9). Just 10 corporations hold 40% of the total untaxed offshore profits, five of them attending today’s meeting with Trump: Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Google and Oracle.

As The Los Angeles Times reported, many of the executives invited to today’s meeting are “invested in Trump’s plan to enable corporations to move tens of billions of dollars currently sheltered in off-shore accounts back into the United States by slashing the taxes firms would owe on the money. The overhaul of the tax code Trump envisions would give Silicon Valley a financial boost.” ...

ATF smells a deal involving the high-tech portion of those trillions in "offshore" profits. So do I. (Note the estimate of the size of Fortune 500 "offshore" profits — $2.5 trillion.)

"Money doesn’t stop at borders. Tax accounting does."

But there's a "given" in this discussion — an unexamined assumption — that those trillions in corporate "overseas" profit is, in fact, held overseas. Wolf Richter is here to tells us the assumption is false. A great deal of that money, perhaps most or all, is already in the U.S.

Richter (my emphasis):

Come on Moody’s, Spare Us These Falsehoods: That $1.3 Trillion “Overseas Cash” Is Already in the US

Some falsehoods simply refuse to die. No matter how many times they get stabbed in the heart, and no matter who stabs them, they rise again in their full glory.

The falsehood that a vast amount of US corporate cash, including much of Apple’s $250 billion, is “locked away overseas” is one of them. We’ve known since May 2013 from the Senate subcommittee investigation and hearings into Apple’s tax-dodge practices that a big part of corporate “overseas cash” is actually invested in the US.

Now Moody’s Investor Services repeats the same falsehood and explicitly lobbies Congress to give our poor, multinational Corporate Titans with their hardscrabble businesses another tax break.

Here's the quote from Moody's itself:

Most of the cash that companies have is generated and being held overseas. Moody’s estimates that the amount of overseas cash will reach about $1.3 trillion, or 74% of total cash, in 2016. That’s up from an estimated $1.2 trillion, or 72% of total cash a year earlier.

Note that Moody's estimate of "$1.3 trillion" is considerably less than the AFT estimate of $2.5 trillion, but Moody's may have an interest in keeping its estimates conservative when it comes to companies that most of us would call "tax cheats."

Richter is having none of it, the claim that the most of the "overseas" money is actually overseas:

But here’s the thing. In May 2013, Apple got into a pickle because it had decided to fund its stock-buy-back and dividend program by taking on a record $17 billion in debt rather than “repatriating” part of its “offshore” cash and paying income taxes on it.

The Senate subcommittee investigation and hearings, chaired by Senator John McCain, showed that Apple had sheltered at least $74 billion from US income taxes between 2009 and 2012 by using a “complex web” of offshore mailbox companies. The investigation found untaxed “offshore” profits of $102 billion held by Irish subsidiaries – which Apple refused to “repatriate” in order to keep that income from being taxed in the US.

But according to the Senate report, Apple doesn’t have to repatriate that moolah because it’s already in the US. The Irish mailbox subsidiaries, on whose books this money is for tax purposes, transferred it to Apple’s bank accounts in New York. The money is managed by an Apple subsidiary in Reno, Nevada, and is invested in all kinds of assets in the US. Apple’s accountants in Austin, Texas, keep the books[.]

Money doesn’t stop at borders. Tax accounting does.

There's much more at the link, but you get the gist. A very large amount of that money is already in the U.S., invested in U.S. assets, held in U.S. banks, and is only nominally held by offshore "mailbox" subsidiaries, since those subsidiaries are free to invest it anywhere in the world, including in the U.S.

Will declaring a tax repatriation holiday on "offshore profits" create new investments in the U.S.?  It would seem that all of these companies, Apple for example, are already invested in the U.S. to whatever extent they want to be. So to answer the question, No.

Bottom line — When you hear Trump (or anyone) claim that "bringing the money back home" will mean "new investments" in the U.S., you're being lied to. You're also being treated like a fool, since Trump knows as well or better than anyone on the planet what hiding assets behind "holding companies" and post office addresses actually means.

It means you can do anything you want with your money, send it anywhere at any time in almost perfect secrecy.

 L'il Abner's goin' fishing for Saddam's WMDs. He's been told exactly where they are. He's also going to hunt for some of Apple's "offshore" money. Let's try not to join him (source).

These are just flat lies, that all "offshore" profits are really offshore. Believing them is like believing the Bush lies about WMDs in Iraq. Accept those stories if you like, but they'll call you a rube and a bumpkin if you do, then laugh as they dine on frogs' legs before heading to the bank. Just saying.

GP
 

Has Ro Khanna’s Disgraceful Campaign Against Mike Honda Finally Flamed Out?

Khanna, a corporate Democrat eager to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits to lower the tax rates for his wealthy supporters, sounds like a Republican. And Republicans and conservative pseudo-Democrats have financed his jihad against progressive icon Mike Honda in the Silicon Valley. Plenty of rich Silicon Valley tycoons with far too much money are behind Khanna’s relentless bid for office. Many of the companies, like Google and Facebook, who have helped the NSA and CIA with unconstitutional domestic spying against their customers, are Khanna’s biggest contributors. Google, in fact, is his biggest single donor. Big money has flowed into his campaign from the Wall Street banksters as well, particularly from Morgan Stanley, venture capitalists Kleiner, Perkins, Goldman Sachs, Pershing Square Capital Management, US Venture Partners, Artiman Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures and Cambrian Ventures. As of the last FEC filing deadline, banksters had shoveled $529,800 into Khanna’s campaign against Honda. Further Dark Money has poured into a slimy attack PAC formed specifically to smear Honda, the so-called “Californians for Innovation,” which spent $109,724 sending out misleading mailers just last week— bringing their total expenditure in CA-17 to $211,034 so far. The contributions to this group that are not secret come from wealthy Republicans eager to get Khanna into Congress and, especially, inside the Democratic House caucus. Enron crook and hedge fund billionaire John Arnold alone, who drools at the prospect of cutting pensions, gave $250,000. Another shady venture capitalist, Chamath Palihapitiya, one of Ted Cruz's biggest financial backers, is also pouring sacks of cash into smearing Honda.

Polls, however, don’t indicate that’s going to happen. The most recent polling was done last week by Lake Research and it not only shows a gigantic lead for Honda, it shows Khanna unable to even get to 30%— after spending millions of dollars. Worse yet, the new FEC report issued today shows that Khanna has basically burned through all those millions of dollars he’s collected and doesn’t even have enough funds to meet his payroll and rent for the remainder of the campaign— an indication that his vendors are about to be left holding the bag.

Khanna has spent around $4 million and has been unable to gain traction outside of the salons of the one percent. He spent three times more money than Honda in the primary and still lost by 20 points.

Yesterday, Howard Dean was horrified at Khanna’s latest right-wing-inspired attack on Honda as a liberal and sent a note warning DFA members about Khanna’s perfidy. Remember CA-17 is a solidly progressive district— other than in the rarified precincts where his rich donors live… who love the idea of Khanna, cutting and then privatizing Social Security. “Why would someone running as a Democrat,” asked Dean, “attack a fellow Democrat for wanting to repeal the reckless Bush tax cuts?” The mailer up top is what brought Dean— who has never attacked a fellow Democrat in a primary before— down this path.

George W. Bush's tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible. At a time when the nation was at war-- and when we had important investments to make here at home-- President Bush pushed Congress to pass a huge and unprecedented tax cut that favored the rich and caused our national debt to soar.



Yet Ro Khanna is now attacking Mike Honda for opposing Bush's disastrous tax cut. His congressional campaign is sending mailers to voters in California's 17th District calling Honda an "old-school liberal" and criticizing him for wanting to do the right thing in repealing Bush’s tax cuts.



Let's show Ro Khanna that we won't tolerate his attacks from the right against a progressive Democrat who has been a hero for working families.

Being a "liberal" isn't an insult, it's a badge of honor -- one shared by Senators like Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown. But there's nothing good about supporting reckless tax cuts that benefited the super rich and exploded our nation's deficit. Mike Honda showed true leadership and fiscal responsibility in pushing to repeal Bush's tax cuts. It's just one big reason why I endorsed Mike Honda.



As the former Chair of the Democratic National Committee, it's obvious to me that Ro Khanna is campaigning like a Republican. Real Democrats don't use "liberal" as an epithet or attack fellow Democrats for standing up for progressive values like making sure the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.



This race is a battle for the future of the Democratic Party. Don't let Ro Khanna get away with moving our party to the right by attacking Democrats for standing up for our values.

Does The Silicon Valley Really Want A Serial Election Fraudster As A Congressman? Meet Ro Khanna

We've been doing some reporting here about what a sleazy character Ro Khanna is and how, from his earliest forays into politics, he's been subverting the rules to win. Predictably, Khanna is up to his old tricks in the CA-17 race against progressive icon Mike Honda. In their endorsement of Honda yesterday, the PCCC told their supporters that "Progressive Congressman Mike Honda is facing a conservative primary challenger on June 3 who calls himself a Democrat-- but is he really? Honda's opponent is open to cutting Social Security. And he opposes the congressional progressive budget that would tax millionaires, invest in jobs, and invest in education! Instead of fighting for progressive ideas, Honda's opponent says Democrats should try even harder to compromise with House Republicans." That's music to the ears of his wealthy Republican financiers.

Once Khanna betrayed India's fascist leader Narendra Modi, Modi operatives in the U.S. recruited a Republican, Vanila Singh, to run pulling conservative votes from him and making it look like he wouldn't make it out of the June 3 jungle primary. So Khanna recruited his own second Republican, Joel VanLandingham, to run against Singh. Josh Richman of the San Jose Mercury News has been reporting how Khanna supporters have been behind VanLandingham's campaign. Vanila Singh "insists Khanna and his supporters recruited VanLandingham to split the GOP vote and boost Khanna’s chances of getting into the June primary’s top two with Rep. Mike Honda. She has used this as an excuse for skipping candidate forums, saying she’ll not take part in any event in which VanLandingham participates."

Now comes new research from Margaret Okuzumi, a Honda supporter who is the Democratic Club of Sunnyvale’s incoming president.

Okuzumi claims Khanna’s campaign moved to “hijack” that club by having more than 45 of campaign staffers and supporters-- and even Khanna, who lives in Fremont-- become members in the latter half of last year in order to sway the endorsement vote.

“People would only do that if directed by a campaign to do so. Otherwise, they are hardly likely to know that our Democratic Club even exists or that our endorsement is considered of strategic importance, especially if they live as far away from Sunnyvale as Fremont,” she said. “I wouldn’t have minded as much if they’d actually recruited new people from Sunnyvale to join our club. Instead they recruited over 30 people who didn’t care about our city and who weren’t interested in our activities other than our endorsement.”

But Nancy Smith, the Sunnyvale club’s cofounder and former president, said Monday that Honda’s and Khanna’s campaigns both were notified of the club’s endorsement rules-– namely, that a person would have to sign up and attend at least one meeting before being allowed to take part in an endorsement vote. “I would have to say Ro’s campaign took that more seriously than Mike’s did,” she said.

The club eventually voted overwhelmingly not to endorse anyone in this race-– which some might see as a win for Khanna, given Honda’s incumbency.

However, five of those new Sunnyvale Democratic Club members-– including Shivani Sanan, Rajesh and Madhu Gupta, Priya Kapil and Tanu Kalra, all of Fremont-– later signed VanLandingham’s Alameda County nominating petitions, Okuzumi found. Another one, Mahesh Pakala, reportedly asked a Fremont couple affiliated with the temple to sign Vanlandingham’s petition. And several of VanLandingham’s petition-signers either themselves gave money-– more than $10,000 total-– to Khanna’s campaign or had immediate family members who did.

“Without Khanna campaign involvement, VanLandingham would not have received enough signatures to qualify for the ballot,” Okuzumi said.

“It’s clear that Ro Khanna’s supporters and donors made a concerted effort to help Republican Joel VanLandingham get on the ballot,” Honda campaign manager Doug Greven said in an email Monday. “If Ro Khanna himself really had nothing to do with this, he should publicly condemn his supporters who orchestrated this scheme, and refund the more than $10,000 in contributions he received from them.”

It's amazing that Khanna was caught in a campaign financial fraud case and forced to resign from office and then, a few years later, was caught lying, claiming he had been endorsed by Bill Clinton who was so angry that he endorsed his opponent and sent out a press release saying "I regret that Ro Khanna has misled the people of the 12th District in this mailing." Khanna doesn't learn from his errors and is at it again-- with a huge bankroll provided by some of the sleaziest anti-family right-winger financiers in American politics. Khanna's greasy attacks against Honda are something new. When he was trying to win seats in other districts, this is how he would talk about Honda:

Brand New Polling Shows Corporate Shill Ro Khanna Fading Into Oblivion

This morning, PPP released polling of CA-17, commissioned by DFA, and it was absolutely catastrophic for corporate shill Ro Khanna who has wasted well over a million dollars already, relentlessly trying to smear progressive champion Mike Honda. Khanna's campaign is rolling in big dollar contributions from obscenely rich Republicans who feel Khanna is the next best thing to a Republican in this D+20 district which Obama won over Romney 72-26%-- and in which Honda vanquished his last GOP opponent 74-26%.

This was the first round of polling that included Republican Vanila Singh who was recruited by U.S. allies of India's neo-fascist Narendra Modi. Her inclusion cut into Khanna's right-wing support drastically. Singh actually came in second in the polling for the jungle primary, indicating that despite all the money wasted by Khanna, he won't even make it into the general election. The results for the primary:

• Mike Honda- 45%
• Vanila Singh- 29%
• Ro Khanna- 26%

The head-to-head match-ups are equally encouraging for Honda. He bests Khanna 61-39% and beats Singh 69-31%. Honda's approval rating among district voters is a healthy 61%. I'm guessing that Khanna's expressed desire to cut Social Security benefits as part of an Austerity agenda advocated by Republicans and his wealthy donors is not going over well in the district. Honda, on the other hand, has been one of the strongest advocates of strengthening Social Security, not weakening it-- whether the schemes to weaken it come from Republicans or from corporate Democrats:

"I believe, as millions of other Americans do, that our deficits are a problem that deserve our attention, but Social Security spending is not the cause of our deficits. Any attempts to draw down our debt should be done in a sensible, responsible way, and not on the back of those who can least afford it-- struggling American families, seniors, veterans-- including our 3.2 million disabled veterans, individuals with disabilities, and children on survivors’ benefits.

"I’m eager to see what protections the President’s proposal has for vulnerable populations, but I am wary because every chained CPI proposal I’ve seen would affect veterans, people with disabilities, seniors on fixed incomes, and would institute compounding benefit cuts that would hurt future retirees harder as time goes on. The average annual Social Security benefit for retirees amounts to a very modest $15,000, yet one-third of seniors rely on Social Security for 90 percent of their income. These seniors cannot afford any reductions. As we face a looming retirement security crisis, with the majority of our workforce lacking private pensions and over one-third of all workers unable to save any money at all for retirement, we should be working together to make Social Security stronger, not weaker, to make our future retirees more secure.

"Americans all over the country depend on every single dollar they get from Social Security for the food on their table, and the roofs over their backs. At a time when so many of our Americans are already struggling, I strongly oppose benefit cuts to Social Security and will work with my colleagues to ensure that our government fulfills its promise to its future retirees."

Please consider helping keep Congressman Honda competitive against the millions of Republican dollars flooding into his district for Khanna and Singh. You can contribute directly to his campaign here.

India's Corrupt, Dysfunctional Politics Comes To California

The first time I got to India, in 1969, I went the hard way-- overland in a VW van from Europe. What a trip, and I stayed in India, Nepal, Ceylon and Pakistan for two years. Over the years, I've been back many times, most recently over the Christmas holidays in 2012. And in the last decade, every time I went, there was some kind of election involving a fascist Indian politician, Narendra Modi, head of India's far right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which, in the right-wing constellation, is as more akin to the Nazi Party than the Republican Party. Imagine Paul Ryan's economic agenda meets genocide. I've wound up blogging about Modi and the BJP from India several times and I always get a lot of animated responses from Indian-Americans on the right of the political spectrum who tell me Modi may be best known internationally for as an anti-Muslim terrorist-- who facilitated (to put it mildly)-- the slaughter of at least a thousand Muslims in 2002, but that they admire him for his economic policies. Remember how fascists excused Hitler;s and Mussolini's quirky excesses? They made the trains run on time. (Never mind what was in the trains.) Modi, they claim, has been very good for Gujarat's economy. Maybe-- for the rich, but certainly not for the millions of poor people in the state. According to wikipedia, while Modi has been boasting of an economic miracle as Chief Minister, Gujarat has been the "13th in India for poverty, 21st for education and 44.7% percent of children under five are underweight and 23% are undernourished putting the state in the 'alarming' category on the Hunger Index… Political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot states that the development in Gujarat has been limited to the urban middle class, whereas rural dwellers and lower castes have become increasingly marginalised. He cites the fact that Gujarat ranks 21st among the 28 Indian states in terms of its Human Development Index, due to the lack of development in rural Gujarat. He states under Modi the number of families living below the poverty line has increased, and that particularly rural adivasi and dalits have become increasingly marginalised."

Because of his role in the massacres of Muslims, Modi has been banned from traveling to the E.U. and the U.S. And here's where the Modi story starts to intersect with American politics. Meet Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar, Chicago "businessman" and Modi's man in America. He's behind a SuperPAC working for one thing: rehabilitating Modi in America. He brought 3 shady Republican congressmembers-- Aaron Schock, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Cynthia Lummis-- to India to meet Modi, complements of his National Indian American Public Policy Institute in Chicago. A few months ago Kumar got slapped down by Republicans in Washington he had bribed when he used their names in a Modi event without their permission. He doesn't understand that bribing congressmen isn't the same thing as owning them.

The Coalition Against Genocide (CAG) has successfully exposed that Narendra Modi’s purported event on "Capitol Hill" as a fraud and an exercise in illegal and criminal misuse of US Government symbols. After five days of phone calls, letters, document verification and hundreds of emails between CAG activists and Congressional staffers, several members of the House Republican Conference whose names had been used to endorse the Modi event have washed their hands off the event. First reports in the media also suggest that the congresspersons were unaware that their names or the Congressional seal were being used to promote the Modi event and that the fraud had been enacted by a an organization called National Indian American Public Policy Institute (NIAPPI) and one Mr. Shalabh Kumar, a person with a checkered history of ethics violations.

CAG has learned that the office of Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has issued a "Cease and Desist" order to Mr. Shalabh ’Shalli’ Kumar and NIAPPI, who are organizers of the event outside Capitol Hill, where Modi is expected to appear via satellite video on November 19, 2013.

The promotional material for the event has illegally used the seal of the House of Representatives as well as names and pictures of the top Republican Leadership without their consent. It purports to have the support and endorsement of the House Republican Conference, a top Republican body chaired by Rep. Cathy Rodgers.

The "Cease and Desist" Notice seeks immediate cessation of all activities to promote the Modi broadcast in the name of Congresswoman Rodgers and the House Republican Conference. Even as the office of Rep. Rodgers issued the "Cease and Desist", other Republicans namely Congressman Sessions moved swiftly to put a distance between themselves and the Modi broadcast. In a statement issued by Congressman Sessions received by CAG via email, Congressman Sessions stated clearly:

"It has come to my attention that the National Indian American Public Policy Institute (NIAPPI) recently used my name and image on an invitation to an event that it is hosting in Washington, DC, on November 19. At no point in time did I agree to attend this event, nor did I approve of the use of my name or image on this invitation. Further, I did not see the invitation until it had been distributed publicly. Had I known that my name and image were on this invitation before it was distributed, I would have requested that they both be removed. Additionally, I have contacted NIAPPI to request that they remove my name and image from this invitation and that they explicitly ask my approval before using my name or image in any of their materials going forward." – U.S. Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX-32)

NIAPPI, the key agent behind this misrepresentation and fraudulent promotional tactics, is a Hindu nationalist front organization posing as a public policy institute. It is a resting ground for RSS stalwarts like Bhailal Patel. In the case of this event, Kumar and company tried to run piggyback on an event titled the "Indian American Meetup" that has nothing to do with NIAPPI, and that is indeed taking place inside the Capitol Hill building on November 19. The program schedule for this event clearly shows that neither Mr. Modi nor any functionary of the RSS are scheduled to speak at this event. This GOP "meet and greet" event with Indian Americans was projected as a Modi promotional by Shalli Kumar and the NIAPPI.

And that brings us to the incendiary Ro Khanna campaign against progressive icon Mike Honda in CA-17, a D+20 district that takes in most of the Silicon Valley, much of Santa Clara County and the cities of Fremont, Newark, Sunnyvale and Cupertino. First elected in 2000, Honda has never been reelected with less than 2/3s of the vote and in 2012 he won with 74% (beating Obama's 72%). This year, as we've been writing, conservatives trying to knock off Honda have found an anti-working class fake Dem, Ro Khanna as a patsy. And wealthy Republicans and other conservatives have poured-- literally-- millions of dollars into Khanna's campaign.

Predictably, Khanna has been playing footsie with the proto-fascist Modi forces in the hope of getting money from Kumar's Republican SuperPAC. After consulting the State Department, the weasly Khanna pulled back and Kumar felt he had been stabbed in the back. So he recruited another Indian, this one an outright Republican, Vanila Singh, to run against Khanna and Honda. In California's jungle primary, she will pull votes and support directly from Khanna's conservative and Republican base. The San Francisco Chronicle's Carla Marinucci, who has been covering the campaign from the perspective of a Khanna partisan, was upset that Singh tossed her hat into the ring.

If Silicon Valley’s Democrat-versus-Democrat House race wasn’t already combative enough, now a first-time Republican candidate has jumped in and ignited a new drama-- one starring a conservative, wealthy Indian American donor and a politician at the center of ethnic conflicts raging half a world away.

Vanila Singh, a Stanford Medical Center anesthesiologist, says she entered the South Bay contest because it is “time to do my civic duty.”

But critics say the man who recruited her to run, Chicago businessman Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar, has a far more divisive agenda.

Born in India and brought to the U.S. as a toddler, the 43-year-old Singh acknowledges she never considered a political career until Kumar, founder of a super PAC, Indian Americans for Freedom, asked in October whether she would be interested in jumping into a race that featured two Democrats-- the seven-term incumbent Mike Honda of San Jose and his main challenger, former Obama administration trade representative Ro Khanna.

Kumar was “a very nice gentleman” seeking “Indian Americans who might be interested in running,” said Singh, who lives in Fremont. After “multiple conversations” with him and other Republican insiders late last year, she filed to run Dec. 26-- one day after switching her voter registration from “decline to state” to Republican.

In recent weeks, Singh met in Washington, D.C., with Kumar, who chairs the Indian American Advisory Council of the House Republican Conference.

“Because of him, I was able to meet the congressional leaders,” Singh said. He also opened the door to introductions to other key players in the National Republican Congressional Committee and the chairman of the California Republican Party, Jim Brulte.

The GOP committee designated her “one to watch” in its national “Young Guns” program to encourage promising candidates.

Kumar-- who did not return phone calls or e-mails from the Chronicle-- told the publication IndiaWest that he approached Singh to be part of a “project” he founded with Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas. Their plan, he told the paper, was to build a GOP congressional “team” that supports a “pro-India” agenda.

Kumar told IndiaWest that had Khanna-- who, like Singh, is Indian American-- been “free of (House Minority Leader Nancy) Pelosi’s whip,” and willing to sign on to his agenda, he would have received the Indian super PAC’s support.

That agenda, according to several Indian American publications, includes securing a visa for the man Kumar has called his “idol,” Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist and leading candidate for prime minister in India’s upcoming elections.

…Kumar’s super PAC could alter the dynamics of the South Bay race, should he choose to back Singh financially. In 2002, the super PAC spent $500,000 in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., including producing an ad set to Middle Eastern music that showed the double amputee Iraq war veteran wearing a headscarf during a visit to a local Muslim community center.

The Republican candidate that year was a Tea Party favorite, Joe Walsh. This year, Kumar is backing another candidate to oust Duckworth-- an Indian American health care executive, Manju Goel.

…Pressed about her views regarding the denial of Modi’s visa, Singh said the U.S. should “take another look” at the decision. “It would be regretful if certain groups that have certain agendas would make the policy for the United States,” Singh said. “U.S. policy came about because people pressured them.”

Her position stands in contrast to Honda and Khanna-- and to Rep. Ami Bera, D-Elk Grove (Sacramento County), the only Indian American member of the House-- who have said there is no reason to change the State Department’s ruling.

Singh’s links to Kumar raise alarms for Khalid Azam, a member of the American Indian Muslim Council and longtime resident of the district, home to one of the highest concentrations of South Asians in the nation.

“It is definitively a matter of great concern for the South Asian community-- the Muslim community and the entire Indian community,” Azam said.

Singh’s candidacy is “even more alarming,” he said, because of her activism with the Hindu American Foundation-- a group whose more fundamentalist factions back a Hindu supremacist movement in India.

Many people have questioned how much money is illegally funneled into Kumar's SuperPAC, Indian Americans for Freedom, from Modi supporters in India. The PAC refuses to disclose donors and backs right-wing Republicans with shady money. And now a word from Ro Khanna