“Next week’s special Summit is an exciting occasion for me and other members of President Obama’s Asia policy team because it brings full circle the commitment he made at the start of his presidency to refocus and rebalance our foreign policy to deepen our engagement with the Asia-Pacific region,” wrote Daniel R. Russel at the Department of State’s official blog:

“The President made clear at the beginning that the region’s youthful populations, fast-paced economies, and growing consumer base were important to America’s own economic future. While these qualities are abundant in Southeast Asia, the region’s leaders have long recognized that an additional ingredient was needed for their success – a regional order based on rules.”

Closing ranks

The Obama administration had labored last year to codify such rules in the form of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But that landmark agreement, signed by the parties earlier this month, has run up against stubborn bipartisan resistance in Congress and nationwide. “Dozens of labor, environmental and consumer groups are urging Congress to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-nation trade deal that President Obama hopes will be a signature achievement of his administration,” the Washington Post noted. “Meanwhile, business groups and major trade associations are lining up in support of the pact.”

With China posing a growing strategic challenge — but weakening economically — many of the ASEAN countries have looked to the U.S. to take a leading role even without the TPP in place. In California, analysts have followed suit, banking on the possibility of more trade cash flowing the Golden State’s way. “California already conducts a significant amount of trade with the ASEAN countries,” as the Desert Sun reported. “The ASEAN trade block — which comprises 10 countries, including Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia — is California’s fourth largest trade partner after Mexico, Canada and China. But experts say the potential for growth in the region is enormous for California’s industries.”

Dark clouds

Nevertheless, president Obama has weathered criticism over both the summit’s invitees and its agenda. As the military regime in Myanmar negotiated a power transition with longtime dissident Aung San Suu Kyi, its candidate, outgoing president Thein Sein, abruptly canceled his plan to attend the summit, according to Channel NewsAsia. Obama has also taken heat from “activists, opposition party leaders and scholars” objecting to his “decision to include Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, head of the junta that seized power two years ago,” the Washington Times observed. Concern has arisen “that the former army general will display the invitation as Washington’s endorsement of the military regime.”

In an apparent effort to strike a balance in reassuring domestic and international audiences, the administration released a statement focused on national security advisor Ambassador Susan Rice. “Ambassador Rice highlighted that U.S. support for civil society, good governance, and human rights is a focus area for the U.S. Rebalance to Asia and is a topic President Obama will stress at Sunnylands,” said National Security Council spokesman Ned Price in a statement. “Ambassador Rice reiterated the United States’ steadfast commitment to sustaining and supporting civil society in Southeast Asia and around the world, including through the president’s Stand with Civil Society initiative.”

Adding to the administration’s burdens, meanwhile, North Korea has also cast a shadow over the event, with its recently launched satellite literally looming over California. As the AP reported, one tech analyst noted the device “passed almost directly overhead Silicon Valley” just after the Super Bowl came to an end. “I would put it down to nothing more than a coincidence, but an interesting one,” the analyst wrote. But the technology behind the satellite’s illegal launch “could deliver a nuclear warhead into downtown Los Angeles,” according to Richard Grenell former U.S. spokesman at the U.N., who suggested that “the Obama administration is once again caught without a plan.”

So which sort of institution is particularly vulnerable? One would think the state of California because of its long history of incompetence in upgrading and installing computer systems.

This is from a 2010 Sac Bee story about the state being unable to adjust paychecks to reflect fewer hours paid during a furlough:

“California’s payroll computer system is so old that it relies on programming language, Common Business Oriented Language, or COBOL, that was introduced in the late 1950s, popularized in the 1960s and 1970s, and is no longer routinely taught to programmers.

“’When I was studying computer science in India, in 1973, none of us wanted to study because it was considered old-fashioned back then,’” said Prem Devanbu, computer science professor at the University of California, Davis.

State agency overwhelmed by computer chores

This is from a Governing magazine story the same year:

Dale Jablonsky, who until August was CIO of the California Employment Development Department (EDD), knows the situation all too well. The EDD runs California’s unemployment insurance program, where caseloads skyrocketed during the current recession. As the economic downturn deepened, Congress repeatedly extended the length of time individuals could draw unemployment benefits.

“In all, federal lawmakers approved seven benefit extensions since the recession began — and each was a nightmare for the EDD. Every extension requires changes to several hundred interconnected computer programs in the EDD’s eligibility system. Those programs are written in common business oriented language (COBOL), an ancient programming language, and modifications must be hand-performed by increasingly rare — and expensive — COBOL experts.

“’It typically takes two to three weeks to implement changes, depending on how complex the federal legislation is,’ Jablonsky says. ‘Sometimes the legislation is so complex it takes five to six weeks to implement.’ Indeed, implementing one particularly complex piece of legislation in late 2009 required changes to 650 programs in the EDD system. The resulting delay in mailing unemployment checks made front-page news throughout the state … .”

COBOL not hospitable to hackers

Oddly enough, however, using a computer language invented in 1959 actually is a deterrent to hackers. Computer World explained why in 2000. COBOL is a …

… simple language that’s so easy to read, it’s impossible to hide malicious programs. A language for mainframe data locked securely behind tried-and-tested access controls like the Resource Access Control Facility (RACF), Top Secret and ACF2…. Checking code for malicious programs is easy in COBOL.

COBOL can be part of a larger security problem when programmers try to connect it with newer software that can be accessed over the Internet. But by itself, its backwardness is an asset.

So now the government in the state that’s home to Silicon Valley and the birth of the information technology revolution has a reason to remain trapped in the mid-20th century on its IT.

Merry Christmas!

By John Seiler

Free countries let their people leave at will.

Tyrannies don’t let people out without special permission. And if they let anyone leave, they first rob them.

A good contrast is North Korea, a tyranny that bans leaving; and South Korea, a free country that let’s anyone leave without restraint. I know many South Koreans who have made some money, emigrated to Calfornia and used their savings to start little businesses, such as laundries or computer stores.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-Pyongyang, just introduced legislation to rob people leaving America. He’s joined by Sen. Bob Casey, D-Havana.

They’re upset that Eduardo Saverin, one of the new Facebook billionares, renounced his citizenship last fall and took asylum in free Singapore. The combined U.S.-California top income tax rate currently is 48.3 percent. If Dear Leader Barack Obama’s national tax increase goes through, and Commissar Jerry Brown’s tax increase does so as well, come Jan. 1, the top income tax rate in California will be 52.9 percent.

By contrast, Singapore’s top income tax rate in just 20 percent.

For the capital gains tax, it’s even worse. Currently, the top U.S.+ California rate is 24.3 percent. On Jan. 1, it could rise to 29.3 percent. By contrast, Singapore has no capital gains tax at all. Singapore loves it when people come there and invest in creating jobs and businesses.

At a news conference, the senators branded Saverin’s escape from tyranny to freedom a “scheme” to “help him duck up to $67 million in taxes.”

Ex-PATRIOT Act

Their bill in the Supreme Soviet is called the “Ex-PATRIOT Act,” after the word expatriate. It stands for “Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy.” A typical Soviet bureaucratic mouthful.

It’s also a play on the so-called USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, which should be called the USA TREASON Act because it destroyed essential American liberties by, among other things, shredding the Fourth Amendment right to protection from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” It was a bipartisan, Republican-Democrat assault on America freedoms. Commissar Schumer, naturally, supported it. Casey wasn’t in the Senate then, but a year ago voted to extend its Gestapo assaults.

Among other things, the new act would rob 30 percent of the capital gains of anyone renouncing his U.S. citizenship. And it would ban the expats from ever setting foot again in the USSA.

In California, we also have hundreds of thosuands of Vietnamese. I know many of them. Unlike most South Korean immigrants, the Vietnamese mostly did not come here peacefully. After Saigon fell in 1975, the “Boat People” (pictured above) fled Vietnam with few possessions. The new Schumer-Casey-style regime in Hanoi, after conquering South Vietnam, seized the property of those leaving.

The Boat People also commonly were assaulted by pirates on the high seas. Every family has horror stories. But the Boat People arrived in a then-free American that welcomed them as exiles from tyranny and seekers of liberty.

Ironically, since then the Vietnamese government has become much more free, allowing the free movementy of peoples and welcomes investments. Tax rates in Vietnam are about the same as those in the United States today, but lower than the USA would be under the Obama-Brown tax increases.

And of course, Vietnam today has many fewer regulations than in the socialist USA, and the cost of living is cheaper.

Currently, about 1,700 Americans a year self-exile from the ex-Land of the Free, more than five times what it was around 2008. Should the Schumer-Casey tyranny be imposed, before it goes into effect expect that number to rise to tens of thousands fleeing socialism for freedom.