Taking a cue from indefatigable civic watchdog Kelly Hammagren, who almost never misses an important public meeting and compiles a calendar every week for those who’d like to join her, I’m taking the holiday weeks off.

Local government is taking its own extended winter holiday, except of course for the ticketing brigade. Beware of street sweeping in particular, even on Christmas Eve. But don’t try to reach anyone at City Hall for a while.

The federal government is busily going to hell in a handbasket, ably steered by the looniest chief executive the country’s ever seen. Nothing we can say in Berkeley will do anything to stop the madness—we’ve already sent them our best and brightest in Barbara Lee, and if she can’t save us no one can.

Our representatives in Sacramento are not up to her standard. They’ve been busy hatching schemes to deliver local governments into the clutches of Big Development and it’s not clear how to stop them, but presumably they’ll take a pause for holiday observances after the office parties are over. Nothing we can do about them now, in any case.

So let’s just relax, take a walk in the clear winter air, watch the winter birds and re-charge our batteries. We’re not going to publish a new issue until January—maybe things will have calmed down by then,. 

Kudos to Judge Emmet Sullivan who expressed his disgust and outrage over Michael Flynn’s treasonable actions following months of fawning over President Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

Flynn and his ilk erroneously thought that regardless of the gravity of their crimes all would be forgiven and they could escape jail time provided they cooperated with prosecutors by offering them valuable information. Sullivan was right to accuse Flynn of treason. This should give pause to other miscreants who contemplate similar acts for personnel gain. Flynn is the same man who gleefully led the chant “lock her up” humiliating Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

We have a long history of failing to hold high government officials accountable for their crimes. 

For example America’s war in Vietnam, authorized by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was routed in deceit falsely accusing the North Vietnamese of firing on a US gunboat, the mythical WMDs launched the disastrous war in Iraq, hunting down our former ally bin Laden resulting in a never ending war in Afghanistan and finally the failure of the Obama Justice Department to punish the worst offenders in the 2008 financial crisis emboldened their shameless behavior.

You have probably heard that the American population has experienced an unprecedented three year decline in life expectancy. It is not surprising when we take into account the health related shortcomings in our society, some of which are getting worse. Air pollution, contaminated drinking water, exposure to radiation, dangerous viruses, and accidents due to official neglect are among the many hazards that people confront. And the considerable poverty and racism in the U.S. certainly shortens the life span of many Americans. Also, the number of suicides and deaths due to drug overdoses have climbed appreciably. Moreover, among the 33 developed countries, the U.S. is the only nation that lacks national health insurance for all its citizens.  

So you can understand, then, why current life expectancy is longer in more than 40 other countries. In some of these nations, much longer- almost 10 years longer in Monaco and five years more in Japan! 

Also very important is the enormous impact of the labor market on life expectancy. In recent years due to the restructuring of work earning a living has become more precarious and insecure. Instead of traditionally hiring employees, a growing number of businesses have been outsourcing employment. As a result, many workers who are unable to find regular jobs are being forced to become freelancers. In other words, they completely depend on finding different gigs, that is short term, temporary job engagements. 

Freelancers currently make up 34 percent of the workforce. The prediction is that within two years they will constitute at least 43 percent. By 2027 freelancers are expected to make up a majority of the labor force. As a growing number of workers are being forced to freelance for a living, many economists are claiming that the nation is well on its way to becoming a gig economy. 

Among the most difficult problem that freelancers confront is the considerable stress. Since almost 80 percent of freelancers do not obtain enough gigs, they are working only part-time and most often at a low pay rate. Their work life is unpredictable and precarious. They do not know where and when the next gig will come from. And since there are gaps between gigs, meeting living costs is very difficult.  

Because they are, so to speak, independent contractors, businesses are not obligated to provide fringe benefits. So employers are under no obligation to offer these gig workers a pension plan. For health insurance, they are also on their own. The freelancers must pay the entire premium. If they or their family members cannot afford the cost, the main option when ill is a hospital emergency room. 

The stress is costing these freelancers many years of their lives. In a study of 1,000 workers, those who experienced stress persistently had a 50 percent higher death rate than those who did not. Moreover, the mortality rate for those who suffered moderate levels of stress was the same as those who experienced high levels of stress. 

Their situation is also exacerbated by the isolation that is endemic to being a freelancer. Loneliness is a serious problem for most of these workers. Researchers who examined 70 studies involving over 3 million people found that those who reported being lonely had a 26 percent higher death rate. 

However, many other workers, who haven't (yet) met the same fate, are also suffering. Another ominous development has been the recent tendency of employers to convert full-time job into two or three part time jobs. According to the Economic Policy Institute there are 6.4 million involuntary part time workers. The number of people who work part-time involuntarily has increased since 2007 by more than 44 percent. The pay rate is typically much lower than what full time jobs pay, and fringe benefits if any are inadequate. As a result, about 75 percent of the involuntary part-timers are either in poverty or are at best earning low incomes. 

Also, in many of these part-time jobs the schedules change frequently and on short notice. It is particularly a problem for mothers with young children. In addition, part-time workers are unable to plan after-work activities. So for somewhat different reasons than the freelancers, these involuntary part time workers also experience long term stress and its adverse consequences. 

Unquestionably, Americans should be able to live many years longer than they do now. Looking elsewhere, we are able to obtain a concrete sense of what is possible. As already mentioned, the citizens of the nation Monaco enjoy the longest life expectancy, which is almost 90 years. The catch is that about 30 percent of its residents are millionaires and billionaires. But that should not discourage us from expecting our political representatives to provide us with a healthy environment As the health specialist, Geoffrey Rose, observed, "There is no known biological reason why every population should not be as healthy as the best". 

To live a long life does not require that we each own a swimming pool. However, this nation can certainly afford to provide, as many countries already do, affordable national health insurance for all. Many other problems that the population is confronting will still need to be favorably resolved. But the guarantee of affordable and high quality health care would be an important step to putting this nation on the road to sanity.

If it isn't the longest article ever written for Berkeleyside, the article "As staffing crisis continues for Berkeley police, officers who left reveal why" by Emilie Raguso in Berkeleyside dated December 20th, 2018, has to be in the running. It's a breathtakingly lengthy description of what Berkeley police officers consider their "morale" problems, which they blame on Black Lives Matter, the rush to police accountability, and what they consider a bewildering inability for the public to trust them.  

Those of us who've been unaccountably stopped, searched, arrested, and repeatedly falsely charged would have no difficulty helping them appreciate the "trust" issue. Some of us come from communities where the idea of trusting the police to play fair is simply laughable, but only a ratio of East Bay voters realize Berkeley is one of those communities. 

The police department's own data documents its racial disparities. The police department's own report on the 2014 Black Lives Matter march illuminated its own ham-handed interpretation of unsigned fliers to decide that everybody present had violent intentions, even those on their way to and from the Berkeley Repertory Theater.  

You don't have to stray far to find the stories of the police officers who helped themselves to the drugs in the property room, indulged in racist or homophobic language, or had no idea of changes in local laws years after they were enacted. The Berkeley City Council and the Berkeley City Manager usually eat the piles of excuses or justifications the police offer with gusto; just watch the hearings on the crying need, according to the Berkeley police, for bigger, better canisters of industrial strength pepper spray for crowd control and the eagerness with which the majority of the Berkeley City Council caved. Without those bigger, better canisters they would be helpless, the police claimed, even though studies show that capsicum is not reliably effective, sometimes kills, and sometimes aggravates the situation. Using such a weapon in a crowd control setting where wind, distance, and the proximity of innocent bystanders is probable is beyond ill-advised. And sometimes it's lethal. 

But most of the City Council ate the pile. Most reporters eat the pile once they've gone on a ride-along with the police. But the current leadership at the Berkeley Police Department didn't just get everything they wanted from the current Mayor and City Manager - they tried to tip the election in 2018 to undermine the election of a sitting council representative who supported a police accountability measure, a measure which only an extremist would argue put police at risk. 

Police accountability builds cooperation between police officers and the community they are supposed to serve and sensible police departments know it; if this were not the case, internal review, the arm of a police department which examines actions of and potentially disciplines its own officers, would not exist. Most police officers support fair policies which do not disproportionately target the poor, the black, the transgendered, and the homeless.  

A police department so frightened of rational accountability measures that it would target a sitting council representative ought to have the entire city council and the city manager rock back and have hearings, neighborhood by neighborhood, so that the police, the voters, and those who represent them are clear about the purpose of police accountability measures. So that nobody just eats the pile and thinks that's all there is to it. You can always tell who ate the pile in this town. Don't let it be you.

Where to start when discussing James Roy MacBean’s Arts & Events, “Esa Pekka Salonen: A Questionable Choice to Lead SF Symphony”? Besides the fact that he omitted the hyphen in the conductor/composer’s name—it’s Esa-Pekka Salonen—MacBean declares the 60-year old Music Director and, by implication, anyone of his age or older, “a bit long in the tooth.” MacBean's alternative: “a much younger Finnish conductor, 49 year-old Susanna Målkki.” Not only is this assertion reprehensibly ageist, but it also evidences an appalling lack of math skills. Målkki had better hurry up and land a major position in the next few years - that is, unless she is happy to remain at the helm of the 136-year old Helsinki Philharmonic, which is anything but a backwater orchestra - or prepare to invest in major dental rehabilitation. 

Then there’s his ridiculous thing about the “dead-end trajectory [of] visual special effects.” I hope MacBean has let YouTube, Facebook, Steven Spielberg and the Marvel Comics syndicate know that their approach is hopelessly outdated. I would love to know what he proposes as an alternative to engage young audiences and keep the symphonic experience of sitting quiet and still in seats for up to an hour at a time an alive and vital experience. 

There are many other absurdities in MacBean's commentary. Take, for example, his assertion that MTT rose to a major appointment at the age of 45, when he took over reins of San Francisco Symphony. I’m sure the folks at the London Symphony Orchestra, which MTT directed before coming to San Francisco, will be delighted to hear that they are not a major organization, and that Valery Gergiev and his successor, Sir Simon Rattle, are simply slumming in the position of Principal Conductor. 

Then there’s MacBean's “old guard” stuff. MTT co-founded and still leads the New World Symphony, a forward-looking Miami-based orchestra famed for its young musicians and repertoire of new music. Salonen, in turn, was responsible for a large amount of new music programming at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. While MTT can certainly be criticized for championing the same composers year after year, at least in San Francisco, calling these men “old guard” is meaningless unless you are prepared to show that the “new guard," which presumably includes Målkki and the Met’s Yannick Nézet-Séguin, are doing something entirely different. 

One final point. Both MTT and Nézet-Séguin are out gay men. This, in my book, counts for a helluva lot, especially in the polarized climate created by Trump & Crew.

Have you noticed that people are getting weird--in a bad way? To me, everyone is not quite the same. Trump's example of how to behave is giving bad people the green light that it is okay to overtly be a bastard, a racist, a sexist, and a money-hoarder.

It is not as though bad people didn't exist beforehand. They have merely decided that now is an acceptable time to come out of the closet with it. Then, there are the militant moral. These are the people who think they follow "the will of God," who believe that they are good because they go to church. Going to church and tithing to the church does not excuse obnoxiousness toward those who do not go to church and who can not afford to give away money. 

Politics and corporate abuses have hit a new low. People who could get by before are being pushed off the edges of society, just as, before Columbus, people believed if you sailed too far, you would fall off the edge of Earth. However, this is not a myth; people actually are falling off the edges of society, and this isn't good. 

Unemployment numbers are low; when people become homeless as a result of being fired, they probably aren't accounted for in the surveys and therefore are not counted among the unemployed. In unskilled work, firing is easily done, and some companies, as policy, fire people who've worked a few months in relatively unskilled positions. Rite Aide began this practice in the past year, if I judge from the turnover I have seen. 

Yet, also, people are acting weird. I mean, bizarre. People are seriously disconnected from facts. This is more so among the privileged. On the other hand, those who are closer to the brink are often more connected, since they have to be in order to avoid an increased level of dire circumstances. 

Many affluent people are out of touch with reality. Despite this, they are able to do well with finances. This, on the face of it, seems like a contradiction. It is analogous to putting blinders on a horse; only what is necessary is seen. If affluent people became aware of the ramifications of their actions or lack of actions on others, it might be excessively disturbing, and they would be unable to maintain their systems. 

The planet is systematically being killed by carbon emissions, by plastic and pollution in our oceans, and by other abuses. The quest for dominance and affluence is in contradiction with a sense of responsibility. People with money consider themselves superior. This is not accurate. 

When someone cries for help, we should help them. We should not put up a psychological, social, or physical wall to keep them out. While it is true that people abuse and slaughter mammals to get our food, this standard need not apply to the treatment of human beings. 

The U.S. President sets an example. This is part of the job description, whether or not it appears in writing, in our Constitution. The President should be one of the best examples of human beings, a role model for kids growing up and adults to look up to. The President should not be a con man, thug, and pathological liar. Trump is like Richard Nixon on steroids. If he believed he could, (and did believe he could, before he got into trouble) he would have the U.S. become a dictatorship, one in which rule could be passed down to his children. 

It is said of the Republicans that they lack spine, since, other than the late George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and the late John McCain, none of them dares defy the President. When the House of Representatives inevitably votes to impeach the President, I doubt that the Senate will do anything of significance. Because Republican philosophy entails serving oneself and not the American people. 

The U.S. needs to have some serious reforms if we are to remain viable as a democracy, or even to prevent more attacks from other countries resulting from Trump's weakness when dealing with foreign dictators. Our Constitution needs to be amended to account for modern-day levels of corporate and political corruption, as well as modern technologies that powerful thugs use to enhance this. 

In modern times, our political, social and psychological systems, that at one time seemed to work, are no longer adequate to deal with what we are up against. Human beings face dire consequences if we can not make ourselves evolve. 

*** 

Jack Bragen's new book, "An Offering of Power: Valuable, Unusual Meditation Methods" is available on LULU.com, and in another month, should also be available from other sources.  

Let me say at the outset that I welcome any feedback from what I write, even negative feedback. Far too often it’s as if what we write simply goes down a black hole. Just the other day, however, after the wonderful New Year’s Eve concert at Herbst Theatre given by American Bach Soloists with countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen and soprano Mary Wilson, I received some heartwarming feedback from none other than Mary Wilson. When I introduced myself to her in the lobby as she prepared to begin signing CDs, she broke into a wide smile and said, “I read you all the time. In loved your review of Handel’s Messiah we did at Grace Cathedral. It made me think about the Messiah in interesting new ways.” Where feedback is concerned, it doesn’t get any better than this. 

Let me turn, however, to the negative feedback offered in the December 21 issue of this paper by jason victor serinus (who signs his name in all lower key letters). In response to my December 15 article in which I voiced my reservations about the naming of Esa-Pekka Salonen to replace Michael Tilson Thomas as Music Director at San Francisco Symphony, Mr. serinus chided me for ageism because I called the 60 year-old Maestro Salonen “a bit long in the tooth.” He also chided me for saying that my favorite candidate to replace MTT was “a much younger” Susanna Mälkki, who is 49 years old. There is indeed a half-generation’s difference in ages here; and in the world of major symphony conductors a half-generation’s difference is quite significant.  

I should point out here that I would have had far fewer and less serious reservations about the appointment of Esa-Pekka Salonen if Maestro Salonen, in his first statements to the local press as designated Music Director, had not announced his commitment to continuing MTT’s exploration of video special effects to accompany the music. In my reviews of MTT’s work at SF Symphony I have consistently deplored his sophomoric attempts to gussy up the music (even Beethoven’s music, for god’s sake), with video animation. To now hear that Esa-Pekka Salonen intends to give us more of the same simply touched a nerve in me and was the main reason I voiced my reservations about his appointment.  

However, I also wrote that naming Susanna Mälkki to succeed MTT “would have been a major step forward in promoting women to top orchestral positions.” In saying this, I was thinking mainly about this country, where women conductors are few and far between, especially at major orchestras. Sure, Susanna Mälkki is Music Director at Helsinki Philharmonic in Finland, and Jane Glover, who was Music Director at London Mozart Players from 1984 to 1991, is currently at the helm of the Chicago ensemble Music of the Baroque. But I wish that a major American symphony orchestra would welcome Susanna Mälkki to a Music Director position. 

Moreover, when it comes to replacing the old guard of conductors, I pointed out that the Metropolitan Opera recently took a bold step in naming 43 year-old Québecois conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin to replace James Levine. I might also have pointed out that when the Los Angeles Philharmonic replaced Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2008/9 after his 17 year stint there, they chose the dynamic 27 year-old Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who quickly established himself and his LA Philharmonic as among the finest not only in this country but in the world. I can only say that I was hoping the San Francisco Symphony would take a similarly bold leap into the future instead of conservatively offering us more of the same.

In what seems a replay of recent German and Italian elections, an openly authoritarian and racist party made major electoral gains in Spain’s most populous province, Andalusia, helping to dethrone the Socialist Party that had dominated the southern region for 36 years. Vox (Voice)—a party that stands for “Spain First,” restrictions on women’s rights, ending abortion, stopping immigration and dismantling the country’s regional governments—won almost 11 percent of the vote. The Party is in negotiations to be part of a ruling rightwing coalition, while left parties are calling for an “anti-fascist front,”. It’s as if the old Spanish dictator Francisco Franco had arisen from his tomb in the “Valley of the Fallen” and was again marching on Madrid.

Actually, the results were not so much “stunning”—the British Independent’s headline on the election—as a case of chickens coming home to roost, and a sobering lesson for center-left and left forces in Europe. 

The Dec. 2 vote saw the center-left Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) lose 14 seats in the regional parliament and the leftist alliance, Adelante Andalucía, drop three. The conservative Popular Party (PP) also lost seven seats, but, allied with Vox and the rightwing Ciudadanos (Citizens) Party, the right now has enough seats to take power. It was the worst showing in PSOE’s history, and, while it is still the largest party in Andalucía, it will have to go into opposition. 

On one level the Andalucian elections do look like Germany, where the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany (AfG) took 94 seats in the Bundestag, and Italy, where the rightwing, xenophobic Northern League is sharing power with the center-right Five Star Movement. 

There are certainly parallels to both countries, but there are also major differences that are uniquely Spanish. 

What is similar is the anger at the conventional center-right and center-left parties that have enforced a decade of misery on their populations. Center-left parties like the Democratic Party in Italy and the Social Democratic Party in Germany bought into the failed strategy of neo-liberalism that called for austerity, regressive taxes, privatization of public resources and painful cutbacks in social services as a strategy for getting out of debt. Not only was it hard for most people to see a difference between the center-left and the center-right, many times the parties governed jointly, as they did in Germany. Andalucía’s Socialists were in an alliance with Ciudadanos. 

However, the rise of parties like Vox and the AfG has less to do with a surge from the right than as a collapse of the center-right and center-left. The Spanish Socialists did badly, but so did the right-wing Popular Party. In Germany, both the center-right and the center-left took a beating. 

In the aftermath of the Andalucian debacle, Susana Diaz, leader of the PSOE in Andalucía, called for a “firewall” against the right. But Diaz helped blow a hole in that “firewall” in the first place with politics that alienated much of the Socialist’s long-time constituency. In 2016 Diaz led a rightist coup in the PSOE that dethroned General Secretary Pedro Sanchez because he was trying to cobble together a coalition with the Leftist Podemos Party, the Basques, and Catalan separatists. 

After ousting Sanchez, Diaz allowed Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to form a government and pass an austerity budget. Making common cause with the PP was apparently too much for the SPOE’s rank and file, and they returned Sanchez to his old post seven months later. The Socialist rank and file also seems to have sat on their hands in the Andalucian election. Only 58.6 percent of the electorate turned out and there were a considerable number of abstentions and blank ballots in traditionally Socialist strongholds.  

The leftist AA took a hit as well, but that was in part due to some infighting in Podemos, and the Party did not mobilize significant forces on the ground. And because Podemos kept its distance from the crisis in Catalonia, it ceded the issue of separatism to the right, particularly Ciudadanos, which wrapped itself in the Spanish flag. 

Podemos actually has a principled position on Catalan independence: it opposes it, but thinks the matter should be up to the Catalans. It also supports greater cultural and economic autonomy for Spain’s richest province. But when Rajoy unleashed the police on the October 2017 independence referendum, beating voters and arresting Catalan leaders, Podemos merely condemned the violence. The Socialists supported Rajoy, although they too expressed discomfort with the actions of the police. 

Ciudadanos, on the other hand, enthusiastically supported the violent response, even provoking it. According to Thomas Harrington, a professor of Iberian Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, CN and an expert on Catalonia, Ciudadano members’ systematically removed yellow ribbons that Catalans had put up to protest the imprisonment of Catalan leaders, Harrington quotes Eduardo Llorens, a prominent member of the Ciudadano-supported unionist movement: “ ‘Violent reactions by the independentists must be forced. We’ve done a good job of constructing the narrative of social division, but violent acts on their part are still needed to consolidate it. In the end they will react. It’s just a matter of our being persistent.’ ” 

The PSOE had a generally progressive economic program, but it appears many Spaniards don’t believe them. The Leftist AA had a much better program, but was hobbled by internal problems and downplayed the Catalan issue. That left a clear field for Ciudadanos, which hammered away at the Catalan separatists. Ciudadanos ended up getting 18.3 percent of the vote, more than double what it got in the last election. The PSOE and PP are still the two largest parties in the province. 

As for Vox, it is surely disturbing that such an antediluvian party could get 10.5 percent of the vote, but it would be a mistake to think that Franco is back. In fact, he never went away. When the dictator died in 1975 the Spaniards buried the horrors of the 1936-39 civil war and the ensuing repression, rather than trying to come to terms with them: some 200,000 political dissidents executed, 500,000 exiled, and 400,000 sent to concentration camps. 

Vox tapped into that section of the population that opposes the “Historical Memory Law” condemning the Franco regime, and still gathers at Valley of the Fallen or in town squares to chant fascist slogans and give the stiff-arm salute. But the party is small, around 7,000, and part of the reason it did well was because of extensive media coverage. Most the Party’s votes came from PP strongholds in wealthy neighborhoods. 

Following the election, thousands of people poured into the streets of Seville, Granada and Malaga to chant “fascists out.” 

Certainly the European right is scary, particularly in Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Austria and France. It has absconded with some of the left’s programs, like ending austerity, a guaranteed wage, and resisting the coercive power of the European Union. Once elected, of course, it will jettison those issues, just as the Nazis and fascists did in pre-war Germany and Italy. And removing them will not be easy, since their only commitment to democracy is as a tool to chisel their way into power. 

The center-left and the left are still formidable forces in Europe, and their programs do address the crisis of unemployment, growing economic disparity, and weakening social safety nets. But the path to success will requiring re-thinking the strategy of the past 30 years and fighting for programs like those the British Labour Party adopted under Jeremy Corbyn: rolling back the privatization of public resources, a graduated tax scale based on wealth, investments in education, health, housing and infrastructure, raising the minimum wage, encouraging unions, and seriously tackling the existential issue of climate change.  

As we approach the solstice, San Francisco beaches are being hammered by 40-foot waves. It's an apt metaphor for the troubled times we are living in. Borrowing a phrase from Game of Thrones, "winter is coming;" with a vengeance. Here are some predictions for the next three months.

Trump Slithers Towards Impeachment: Dating from Watergate (1972-74), the average length of a special counsel investigation, involving a President, is 904 days. Robert Mueller's investigation has gone on 580+ days. My prediction: the Mueller inquiry will end in the Spring, around the two-year anniversary.

In the meantime, the mainstream media is going to be dominated by revelations of Trump's evil deeds -- my prediction: Trump will be implicated in dozens of felonies.

Eventually, evidence of Trump's treachery will be so overwhelming that the House of Representatives will have no choice but to initiate impeachment proceedings. Normal congressional work will halt. The U.S. will be transfixed. 

The White House will stop functioning. From the beginning, the Trump White House has been dysfunctional: it's been inadequately staffed, constantly "leaked" information to the Washington media, and been unable to rein in the President. Much of this is the responsibility of Donald Trump: he's a terrible executive. Donald is not good at attracting and retaining knowledgable staff members. He's bred a toxic culture of lying, name-calling, and back-biting. He's a "maverick" in the sense that he wears his ignorance as a badge of honor; Trump won't read briefing materials and typically makes decisions impulsively, depending not on a clear-headed assessment of the facts, but rather how he happens to feel at the moment. He has no long-term vision for America beyond filling the coffers at Trump, Inc. 

In 2019, under siege by the American legal establishment, the Trump White House will shut down. The Administration will be consumed by Donald's legal difficulties and, therefore unable to formulate any policy -- unable to do much of anything but Tweet. 

That's a problem for two reasons. First, there's a lot of serious work to be done: fixing Obamacare, resolving immigration, and passing an infrastructure plan -- to mention only the obvious. Second, 2019 is liable to be a difficult year for the United States; my prediction: the U.S. is heading into a a big storm. 

When the going gets tough, Trump will be absent -- sequestered in his White House quarters, watching Fox News while meeting with his lawyers. 

"It's my (Republican) Party, and I'll cry if I want to." At the same time that "leader" Trump will disappear from public view, he will be strengthening his hold on the Republican Party. (For example, Trump has dissolved the distinction between his re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee.) The result: in 2019, the GOP will have no national agenda other than "re-elect Donald." 

Prediction: the Republican-controlled Senate will turn mute and the news-making initiatives will come out of the Democratically-controlled House. As a result we'll see significant legislation roll out of the House -- Obamacare improvement, immigration reforms, and common-sense gun control -- only to die in the Senate. (By-the-way: in 2019 we'll continue to see Trump's crazed tweets; they'll be countered by the calm words of Speaker Pelosi, reminding us all how grownups behave.) 

2019 will see gridlock at it worst. One side of the Congress will function and the other will be quiescent. 

Take Me to Your Leader. (!) Having Trump as President has always been a risky proposition. Obviously, it's dangerous having an amoral narcissist occupy the Oval Office. In 2019, that problem will be dealt with in the courts and in the impeachment process. 

It's equally dangerous to have "the commander-in-chief" be someone who incapable of handling that responsibility. In his first two years in the White House, Donald Trump has not had to handle a major crisis. The closest incident has been the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi by the agents of Saudi Arabia. Trump mishandled this, saying in effect that it doesn't matter whether or not the Saudi rulers were responsible because: "The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region." (During this writing, Trump's steadiest adviser -- Secretary of Defense James Mattis -- resigned.) 

What will happen if there is a major crisis? We're surrounded by signs that something cataclysmic could happen. The economy could collapse. (God forbid) there could be another terrorist attack. (More likely) there could be a horrendous series of climate change events. There likely will be a major international problem. 

During the past 12 months, Foreign Policy hasn't been a major feature of the Trump Administration. Now, two of Trump's senior foreign policy advisers are gone -- Mattis and former Secretary of State Tillerson. Unfortunately, there are plenty of international hotspots that could blow up in 2019. Russia. Saudi-Arabia. China. England (Brexit). The European Union. India-Pakistan. 

What's Trump going to do when Russia invades Ukraine? What's going to happen when China starts selling off its Treasury portfolio? What's going to happen when Saudi Arabia launches a nuclear attack against Iran? What's going to happen when England crashes into a "hard Brexit" on March 29? 

Winter is coming and Donald Trump is a dysfunctional mess. Happy New Year!