Banking

Inflation


First: E. Jean Carroll Won

her civil lawsuit against Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation of character. She was awarded $5 million in this unanimous verdict. I hope she publishes a picture of the check.

Trump responded to the verdict on his imitation of Twitter, “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace — a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!”

Might be, but it’s sure great when a witch hunt uncovers and punishes an evil witch.

I repeat:

While it doesn’t always happen on the timetable we’d prefer, what goes around often does come around. Watch for this same sentence following each of the guilty verdicts against Trump.

Now On To Inflation

Ever since we started fighting inflation following the pandemic I’ve wondered about how this has been handled.

First there was the supply chain craziness, with container ships anchored outside our ports unable to unload because there weren’t enough trucks to move the goods, so supplies of many things shrunk. That was made worse by our decades long insufficiency of truck drivers. And all of that was just a small piece of worldwide supply challenges, including raw material shortages due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

That was happening as we were coming out of pandemic lock downs. Those kept us from consuming as we did before Covid and that caused a pent up demand for goods – stuff we like to buy. Once the pandemic was receding and lock downs were over, demand became un-pent up and soared.

Let’s see: greatly increased demand occurring at the same time we had greatly constricted supply .  .  .  PRESTO! Adam Smith’s invisible hand shoved prices way up. That’s called inflation, but it was made worse.

At the same time those things were happening our oil industry started raising prices faster than anything propelled upward by that invisible hand. That has often been labeled “price gouging.” Gas prices at the pump rose day and night, even though there were no oil supply shortages or supply price hikes of any kind to justify those prices at the pump. The result was huge profits – some would say windfall profits – for the oil producers and a huge financial hit to ordinary people every time they filled their gas tanks. And gas was a major player in spiking inflation.

Click me

The Fed is limited in what it can do to counter inflation. Its most powerful, albeit indirect, tool is to raise interest rates. Doing so makes borrowing, and really everything, more expensive, so demand drops. That’s the theory. And that’s what the Fed has done. Over and over.

This year the Fed rate went from near zero to over 5% in short order. Sounds great for fighting inflation, but along with the decreased demand due to higher prices came job layoffs, small business disruptions and a stick in the spokes of the wheels of new construction. Workers were laid off.

In other words, the pain of fighting inflation has been dumped entirely onto the backs of we ordinary folk and the pain for some of us has been enormous. But that isn’t the only way to fight inflation.

Government can create price controls to stop the gouging by industries that are reaping huge rewards just because they can get away with otherwise unjustified price increases.

Yes, I know that’s heresy to our absolutist market economy proponents, but this isn’t a pure market economy and it never has been. Example: we have rules to prohibit monopoly. Not the board game. They’re called anti-trust laws and they are designed to protect competition, smaller businesses and consumers from unfair monopoly power.

Another example is that we subsidize fossil fuel companies with the depletion allowance, farmers with gimme money and many more. More on that in a future post. Politicians may bloviate about the free market, but they’re all too happy to deliver non-free market paychecks to their constituent corporations and benefactors.

We know that people will act in accordance with their perception of their best interests. That alone led to the profiteering of oil companies and others in different industries in this opportunistic environment of overall rising prices. In some industries that becomes moderated by buyers choosing to refrain from buying overpriced goods, perhaps switching to cheaper alternatives. But that’s nearly impossible to do in some areas. People need to fill their gas tanks for all the usual reasons, like getting to and from a job, regardless of the price of gas.

It’s much like the hospital bill for heart surgery. Nobody decides not to get life saving healthcare and instead decides to die because of the price of the service. Healthcare and fuel are examples of inelastic demand, in that demand doesn’t adjust much based on price.

So, we can impact inflation by reducing demand by means of raising costs, which is what the Fed has done. That also causes workers to lose their jobs. Or we can impact inflation by controlling certain prices, which cuts corporate profits a bit. Perhaps there are other things government can do. But I can say with certainty that even as the fat cats aren’t listening to them, the people who are shouldering the bulk of the burden to fight inflation now aren’t any too happy about things as they are.

Quote of the Fiscal Year
  • “We shouldn’t even be talking about a world in which the U.S. doesn’t pay its bills. It just shouldn’t be a thing.”
  • – Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Chair
  • Note: If Biden were to submit to Republican extortion over paying our debts, he would be dooming us to extortion in every year to come.
  • In Other News

There’s a test strip that can identify contamination with fentanyl in drugs like heroin. Because fentanyl is such a powerful drug and is so often lethal, being able to test for its presence can be life saving (as in: death avoiding) for users. But tough-on-crime legislators (read: Republicans in red states) have insisted upon seeing these test strips as illegal drug paraphernalia and have criminalized them. That seems to be changing.

Several states are decriminalizing the test strips. Indeed, there appears to be a shift from criminalizing illegal drug users to harm reduction. That will put a dent into the number of users going to prison and also the number of users going to graves. Here’s what’s interesting about that.

Over 100,000 Americans die from illegal drugs every year and over 67,000 of those are from fentanyl. There is a significant change, though, in the population that dies from overdoses. Now opioids are used a lot more and many more White people are dying from drug overdoses.

I’m sure that shift in the race of the corpses is unrelated to red states’ drug policy changes. Aren’t you?

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Banking Crisis and Words


Of course, you thought we had wrung all the stupid out of the banking system back in 2009 following the banking meltdown and the bailout you and I paid for. We passed Dodd-Frank to prevent a repeat performance. We pointed fingers. We threatened prison terms. And nobody was held accountable.

Glass-Steagall had been designed to prevent another Great Depression. That law separated commercial banks from investment banks and was intended to prevent banks from being market speculators – wild-eyed gamblers – with your bank deposits and it worked really well for decades. Then Congress cut off its legs.

Dodd-Frank had been designed to protect us from another crash like the Great Recession, but shortly after its passage Congress once again went on a leg chopping spree.

Then, in his mania to be maniacal with regulations, President Shoot-Our-Foot and his Congress passed a law in 2018 that effectively ended the last vestiges of Dodd-Frank, to the point that all that is left of it is a recipe for spaghetti sauce.

With that protection gone, banks were once again allowed to grab the handle of sketchy investment slot machines in search of huge profits for executives and stockholders. Too bad about your deposits when they lost big.

Here’s a piece that will help you to understand how we create global crisis with our anti-regulation craziness. And here is a comment that was posted to that article:

“JPM” is J.P. Morgan Bank. “Derivatives” are the key evil buggers that caused the 2008 – 2009 crash. They’re also called credit default swaps. Insightful people call them crap. Almost nobody actually understands them.

They are essentially an aggregation of phenomenally risky subprime mortgages. The banksters stuffed a huge number of these risky mortgages into a sack, called that sack an asset and then traded it or pieces of it to other investors and investor banks. They sold lots of those sacks of non-assets and created an entirely unstable house of cards.

it doesn’t require any banking insight to know that committing banking sleight of hand with risky mortgages doesn’t make them any less risky. Just ask anyone at Lehman Brothers or Washington Mutual Bank. Oh, wait: you can’t ask them because they invested in those stinky things and they crashed and burned in the Great Recession.

Nevertheless, that crazy, phony “asset” idiocy is what the banksters did in 2008. They’re gambling big time now, too. Indeed, the big banks are now too bigger to fail than they were in 2008.

That leaves me wondering yet again why Congress seems astonishingly unable to learn from the past or, really, from anything.

  1. It was the financial Wild West in the 1920s and that led to the Great Depression. Congress passed laws which were designed to prevent a crash from happening again (Glass-Steagall). Then they let that Wild West thing happen once more and we got the Great Recession. Congress created Dodd-Frank to prevent that crash from happening again. But later the geniuses in Congress began to chip away at those protections until in 2018 they effectively removed all the safety guardrails, leaving nothing but the aforementioned recipe for spaghetti sauce. What could possibly go wrong?
  2. They authorized George W. Bush’s idiotic land wars in Asia, this in the face of centuries of examples to tell them not to do that because we were certain to fail. And, of course, there was the then-recent example of Russia’s failure there. How could Congress fall for Bush’s lies and authorize those wars?
  3. We had years of the President of the United States inciting division and violence, accompanied by members of Congress doing the same and that led to a bloody insurrection on January 6. Now members of Congress are gaslighting an entire nation, claiming the insurrection wasn’t an insurrection. They say it was just a bunch of tourists visiting the Capitol Building. Those same members of Congress are still inciting. Do you suppose these insurrection stokers think the results will be different the next time? Maybe they think We The People need to purge our nation of the evil of democracy. Or they think that Jefferson’s comment about the blood of patriots means that we should start shooting one another. Oh, wait: we’re already doing that.

This is not Monday morning quarterbacking. All of this was plain to see at the time and it’s still plain to see. None of it requires any special understanding of complex issues. All it requires is a copy of a high school history book, the ability to learn and the clarity that George Santayana was right when he said,

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

And so we are led by our Congress, which apparently hasn’t a history book in their entire building and too many members of Congress refuse to learn. Consequently, we continue to repeat the past.

Now Marjorie Taylor Greene and others are calling for a “national divorce” and “Second Amendment remedies.” Maybe we should try that again, because we only killed 600,000 of our fellow citizens the last time we tried a national divorce. Note that if we express that number as the same percentage of our population today as then, a national divorce would murder more than 6.3 million Americans, or two of every ten people you know. Still want to listen to that woman?

To understand our current banking craziness, please read Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (R-MA) explainer, as well as Paul Krugman’s slightly different take. And here’s a piece to explain some of the global implications of our self-destruction.

Definitions

The far right loonies are all about culture war: Demonization-R-Them. Maybe it’s a power trip, but it sure isn’t an intellectual exercise.

Take, for example, their attack on “woke.” Florida Governor Ron DeSenseless proudly tells anyone standing still for more than two seconds that “Florida is where woke goes to die.” We understand the braggadocio, the chest thumping, but we’re left with a hollow spot where meaning should be.

What is “woke?” Click and watch. You’ll be left where you started, in your present state of not knowing because there is no definition.

What is the “deep state?” Click and watch the first idiot squirm trying to avoid the question and then doing the standard off-topic attacks. We’re left with no clarity at all.

Same question about “elites.” And what does “own the libs” mean. Are they talking about bringing back slavery or is it just another power trip grounded in cruelty?

Does it mean anything when terms don’t mean anything? I think it does, because all these terms are calls to division and hatred and sometimes violence. Words matter, even when they don’t mean anything.

And while we’re checking definitions let’s have a look at the false and idiotic claims of equivalencies.

The alt-right, focus-group-named “Freedom Caucus” is populated by renegades, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, Louis Gohmert and more. They call for truly awful things, including the aforementioned “national divorce” and “Second Amendment remedies,” insurrection, civil war and more. Truly awful and dangerous stuff.

There is no equivalent on the far left. Nobody, not “the squad” or socialist Bernie Sanders or anyone else is calling for assaulting others or trashing the Constitution. The far left legislators might promote policies some don’t like, but none of them is trying to suppress the rights of others, harm people or do anything anti-American.

Journalists and pundits often look to balance what they say by invoking a “both sides” comment, but most often there isn’t a “both sides.” If you think I missed a real world equivalence, educate all of us in the Comments section below. Otherwise, the terms “both sides” and “equivalent” used in the political arena are meaningless. Don’t fall for them.

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Debt Ceiling Question


Once again the Republicans are threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling. This is a form of “If I don’t get what I want, I’m going to hold my breath until I turn blue.” If this were one of Trump’s breath holding threats I’d say fine, go turn blue. Please. But it isn’t painless for the rest of us.

The debt ceiling is a relic of dealing with our debts from the World War I years. We had purchased the guns and airplanes and ships and uniforms and were left with quite a stack of bills we had to authorize and pay. Our country has been operating that way ever since. Buy stuff. Authorize payment. Pay for stuff.

The hitch in the system is that Congress, with its impenetrable defense against wisdom, is the body that authorizes payment of our debts. To accomplish payment, a majority of those people must agree to pay for what we already purchased. If they don’t agree to do that, bad things will happen.

It’s just like your credit card bill. You can refuse to write a check to pay for the stuff you bought and which is already in your hands. If you do that, it will be very bad for your credit rating and huge interest charges will smack you upside your wallet. It will work the same way for our country if Congress were to refuse to allow us to pay our bills. Our system really is as stupid and self-defeating as that. Nevertheless, that’s the system.

The debt ceiling has nothing to do with future spending. It is entirely about paying our already incurred bills, just as it was following WW I. That’s a significant point, because everyone to whom we owe money for goods and services already delivered is expecting to be paid. Here are three key points about that:

  1. If we refuse to pay those to whom we owe money, they will not only be very unhappy with us, but they will be most justified in refusing to do business with us again. That will affect all nations. In fact, there will be worldwide economic chaos if we default. See point 3 below.
  2. If the US is no longer trustworthy, anyone still willing to take a chance on us will want a lot more financial up-side to take that risk. In other words, interest rates will soar and everything will cost way more, including everything our country buys and even everything you buy. “Way more” means huge increases in both interest charges on the national debt and the price of goods and services. It won’t be just the few percentage points of our current inflation; it’ll be way more.
  3. If the US is no longer trustworthy, all other countries will scramble to find a country that is, some nation that can be the world economic leader. Which country do you think might be up to that task? Right: China. If we want to make this the Chinese century, US debt default is a most effective way to accomplish that. That would be a major result of our turn blue debt refusal chaos.

I haven’t any facts that indicate that the Chinese are behind Republican threats of debt default, although they could be. On the other hand, I am wondering who else might benefit from a national debt default and might be urging Republican fools onward toward our self-inflicted destruction. That’s

The Debt Ceiling Question
.
Who would benefit from our Congress telling the world that we won’t pay our bills?
.

Mark Felt aka Deep Throat of Watergate fame

A useful way to explain people’s actions was articulated by Watergate’s Deep Throat: “Follow the money.” If we do that with debt default, who, other than the Chinese, might make a killing from that?

Perhaps the super rich would benefit, because they already have so much money (an extra $50 trillion since 1975 and now growing by $2.5 trillion every year) that they can tolerate an economic crash and still have plenty of money to buy up what’s left of the country. Mel Brooks said it clearly: “It’s good to be the king.” And the owner of everything.

That’s just speculation, of course, but a lot of politicians are submerged so deep into the bottomless pockets of extremely wealthy people that they can’t see daylight. The super rich guys could be the ones calling the Republican turn blue debt default dance steps.

Go ahead and do your own speculation. In fact, speculate in the Comments section below to make us all better informed. Remember that we’re talking about our Congress – specifically, the Republicans, because the Democrats aren’t playing this suicidal game – so no answer to the Debt Ceiling Question is too stupid.

NOTE: If the Republicans huff, and they puff, and they blow our house down by stiffing our creditors, we won’t have a house.

Top Stupiditude of the Week
.
The three ring circus that is the Republican controlled House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Epidemic is underway!
.

The job of this committee is to ascertain the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In their quest for the truth the Republicans on the committee are using their most powerful tools: they’re pointing fingers and blaming.

“IT’S CHINA!” “IT’S WUHAN!” “IT’S A WET MARKET BAT CONSPIRACY” “IT’S SOME BIDEN DIRECTED WEAPONIZED GOVERNMENT AGENCY!” “IT’S THE JANUARY 6 COMMISSION!” “IT’S HUNTER BIDEN!”

O’, the fine, self-serving pontifications they’ve put on display!

Not a single member of that august select committee is a doctor or an epidemiologist or a medical researcher or a scientist or an investigator of any kind. They’re just politicians. In an epidemiological investigation or in any medical environment at all, not one of them could find their own ass using a flashlight and both hands. That’s why this committee is the winner of the Stupiditude of the Week Award.

Well, okay, there’s one additional award that must be given.

Donald Trump, Jr., pretender to the throne of Cruelty, Retribution And Powerlust (“CRAP”), weighed in on the insolvency of Silicon Valley Bank with his customary flamboyant inaccuracy. He tweeted,

This is a beautifully layered stupiditude. The first layer is that 16 banks failed during the Trump presidency. Eight of them went insolvent before the pandemic.

The second layer of his stupiditude is his apparent amnesia about the 2018 trashing of the regulations that had been designed to prevent bank insolvencies like that of Silicon Valley Bank. His daddy did that regulation trashing, same as he did the deregulation of the railroads. Think: East Palestine, OH. Doesn’t matter that Junior doesn’t remember. We do.

That leads us to question the motives of Junior (as if we needed prompting). Is he intentionally misleading us or is he just a walking stupiditude? You be the judge. Regardless, he gets a dishonorable mention this week. Same for all weeks.

Just For Fun

Click the pic

Today is a good day to be the light.

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


    Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take a lot of us to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

I Admit It – Plus Abusing My TV


I have bashed Trump supporters.

(Parenthetical: Isn’t that backward? Aren’t our elected officials supposed to support us?)

I’ve called them names. I’ve accused. I’ve assumed and projected. And I stand by all of that for the violent crazies. But for millions of them who voted for Trump I’ve been wrong because I’ve largely missed the facts that animate them, although I’ve periodically mentioned those facts.

Every one of these people sees him/herself as a patriot. And their anger is based in the reality of the betrayals that stab them in the back to this day. They really have been taken for granted and left behind.

They lost jobs because of the “offshoring” of jobs, the closing of the factories, the hollowing out of whole towns and the rest of the destruction of abandonment. They lost jobs because of the “right-sizing” of businesses (which means to layoff people, most of them permanently), all condoned by Congresspeople more focused on themselves than on We the People. They never lifted a finger to help those who were losing their jobs.

Former House Speaker John Boehner proclaimed over and over that jobs, jobs, jobs was the number one issue. Then he proceeded to kill every attempt at creating, protecting and enhancing jobs and wages with only one exception: jobs for vets. These were vets coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan and Boehner had to be shamed into putting the bill on the floor of the House twice before anything good happened for those vets.

These people suffered while the fat cats grew multiples richer, as three huge “tax reform bills” were promised to increase jobs and wages, but they never did. They just stuffed the pockets of the rich elites.

They suffered because Reagan introduced what became known as “Reaganomics,” which has been an over 4 decades long theft of wealth from 99% of us that has been treansfered to the super wealthy. Nothing “trickled down” to the rest of us.

They watched us slip into a gigantic recession driven by bank bigwigs, some of whom broke laws. Only one went to jail. Then We the People were forced to bail out the banks, the people who sold us fraud.

These people were lied to over and over and fed the red meat of blame wrapped in cultural issues that came rapid fire and were shoved down their throats.

All of that was done by “the elite” of our country. It was done by Congress, the President and the ultra rich corporate titans interested only in their own welfare. Can you guess why Trump voters might hold a grudge against anyone who can be labeled as an elite?

By this point it’s so easy to blame “coastal elites” for anything and everything, as they promote cultural issues that just don’t resonate in the lives of people in the middle of the country. That made it easy for Trump to snatch their loyalty and get them to support candidates whose sole position is a constantly raised middle finger. And all that pent up rage made it easy for them to ignore Trump’s horribles.

Read Bret Stevens’ piece, I Was Wrong About Trump Voters. That essay got me restarted thinking about this issue.

And that rethinking brought back to mind that most of the betrayal of middle Americans has been done by Republicans. That makes it more than curious why anyone would vote for a Republican.

They told people that up is down, that whatever terrible things the Rs did wrong was actually what the Ds did. You know: “alternative facts.” Back in the old days we used to call them lies. And there was shame on the liars when they were caught, but, of course, this is now a shame-free world. Gotta give credit for the stunningly well done Republican propaganda, the Big Lies and the rest that made victims love their victimizers.

I don’t take back any of the things I’ve said about the haters, the violence practitioners or the spineless politicians. They deserve every scathing word.

But the millions who appear to be voting for anti-democracy and against their own best interests believe fervently that they are voting against elites who have stolen America and their American Dream. For the most part it appears that their passion has run too far ahead of their otherwise good sense, but these are not fundamentally flawed people, nor are all of their grievances baseless.

Their anger has roots in a reality that has hurt them. They have been ignored by leaders with policies and ideologies that have  left them far behind, but which has been pedaled to them by disingenuous opportunists.

We cannot abide the destruction done by or promised by angry people. What we can do is to look at the realities that have stolen the American Dream from Americans and take action to restore it for everyone.

Christopher C. Miller official portrait.jpg

Christopher C. Miller, Acting Secretary of Defense stooge for Trump, November 9, 2020 – January 20, 2021

Abusing My TV

As I watched the January 6 insurrection become worse, bloodier, more violent, more destructive, I was screaming at my TV, “WHERE THE HELL IS THE NATIONAL GUARD?” Not long after that I heard rumors that Trump had frozen all of our military so that they could not respond to the crisis. That turned out to be true.

According to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller’s own testimony, on January 3 he was ordered by Trump to “do whatever was necessary to protect the demonstrators” on January 6. The next day, January 4, Miller issued a one page edict that buried the feet of the DC National Guard in cement. They were ordered not to act. They were prevented from stopping the carnage and restoring the peace, jobs that they are trained to do. Here’s a download of Miller’s order to the DC National Guard. Read it sitting down, because it is stunningly evil. Watch Miller’s testimony to the January 6 Committee here.

At Trump’s explicit order, the Capitol Police, the DC Metro Police, the Vice President, every member of Congress, every Secret Service agent, every news crew and every worker in the Capitol Building that awful day were all left bare to the violence of Trump’s murderous mob.

That’s why I was screaming at my TV.

————————————

Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
.
Fire the bastards!
.
The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!)

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
  5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town vibrant.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Kavanaugh Lessons – Good News, Bad News


Reading time – 1:21  .  .  .

Immediately following the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford before the Senate Judiciary Committee about her claim of having been sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) stopped to talk with reporters in the hallway outside the committee room. He went on a long, angry rant of accusations against Democratic members of the committee. He impugned Dr. Ford’s claims and falsely declared that there is no corroboration for her testimony. He demeaned the FBI by saying that they would never be able to find useful information on what happened three decades ago. He also proudly declared himself to be a victim. Later, during interrogation of Judge Kavanaugh following his own angry rant, Graham used his five minutes of questioning for a second temper tantrum.

Publishing date TOMORROW!

Graham spewed a lot of vitriol and it might seem that there’s no good news to be found there, but that isn’t so. The good news is that regardless of his occasionally seeming to be thoughtful, fair-minded and even senatorial, Lindsey Graham has once again shown us exactly who and what he is.

All the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee abused the nominating process, insulted justice, the Constitution and all Americans and voted in lock-step for Brett Kavanaugh. They continued to refuse to release any of the 100,000 documents pertaining to Kavanaugh’s record that the Republicans hid from the Democrats. They, like Lindsey Graham, have shown us once again exactly who and what they are. You can let go of your doubt. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that we’re now facing accusations that President Trump shook down the president of Ukraine in order to get dirt on Joe Biden’s son. What are the chances that Congressional Republicans will aggressively pursue this forehead-slappingly obvious abuse of power and criminal action?

Cast your vote in the Comments section below.

For further elucidation of Republican inclination to discharge their duties, read this.

————————————

Ed. Note: I don’t want money or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. So,

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

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NOTES:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
    2. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling or punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    3. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

(Mostly) Quick Hits – They’re Linked, I Promise


Reading time – 6:49; Viewing time – 9:59  .  .  .

First, a heads-up for the impatient: The lede is buried at the end of this post.

A Really Tough Time for Republicans

Judge Roy Moore was removed from the bench twice for flaunting our laws in favor of his absolutist religious beliefs. Yes, he was an Alabama Supreme Court judge who disrespected the rule of law – that’s why he was removed from the bench – did I mention “twice”? Apparently, in Alabama that’s not a disqualifier for becoming a United States Senator. As you know, though, the story gets far worse.

Several women have gone public, accusing Moore of sexually violating them and  most were minors when the accused sexual predator allegedly violated them. We’re talking pedophilia. Here are some peculiars about this:

  1. There are only allegations of Moore’s wrongdoing – nine as of this writing – there have been no legal proceedings. If we still believe in innocent until proven guilty (and that’s questionable, given the Trump hysteria of “lock her up”) why are so many calling for Moore’s political lynching?
  2. We all know he’s a slime ball, with a history of his absolutist views being the only ones he deems of value, and his taking a million dollars from his charity for his personal use. He’s hurt both the Constitution and a lot of people and has that self-righteous stink of a hypocrite. That makes it easy to leap to a public opinion conviction of this guy.
  3. Donald Trump has slithered his tweets about how awful are the two wrongdoings of Sen. Al Franken (D-MN).  Oddly, even with the multiple accusations of Moore’s pedophilia, Trump hasn’t said a thing about him. That’s a mistake. I believe that the best thing that can happen is for Trump to weigh in on Moore’s alleged sexual predatory behavior. After all, other than Harvey Weinstein, Trump is the guy with the most experience in this field. Okay, that was snark.
  4. Why aren’t all Republicans leaping at the opportunity to fry Roy Moore? This is a political no-brainer.
  5. This is a really tough time to be a Republican with a spine, with a moral compass, with a drive to do what’s right for others and for our country. If such folks stand up for what’s right, the extremists will fire them from from their jobs in Congress and the state houses. That’s because about half of us – most of the reasonable, centrist Americans – don’t bother to vote, leaving to the extremists the decisions about who goes to Congress and our state houses. The solution to this is obvious. So, help a good-guy Republican by showing up and voting for the reasonable folks in every election.

Education

George W. Bush created the No Child Left Behind plan, which forced teachers to instruct students how to take standardized tests, rather than teaching them what they need in order to succeed in life. The name of that plan is something we all support and encourage, so the spinmeisters did their job. The only problem is that No Child Left Behind left millions of children behind.

Speaking of our children being successful, it seems we don’t actually want that to happen. We continue to provide the majority of funding for our schools through property taxes, which is a great plan if the properties are in a wealthy area. It doesn’t work quite as well if the area is poor, because that results in low tax revenue for schools and inadequate resources for turning out well educated kids. That’s how we systematically condemn poor kids to poverty and our country to less than our best possible future.

Leadership

Being clear about what’s going on and about what needs to be done is hard work. Someone needs to stand up and declare, “THAT WAY!” and it isn’t at all obvious who’s up to the challenge. The call has to be inspirational and it must be clean and crisp and memorable so that we maintain focus and continue putting one foot in front of the other and in the right direction. But that call seems as yet uncrafted. In the face of challenges all around us, which way should we go? And who will you follow?

Monopoly (not the board game)

The Justice Department case against Microsoft 17 years ago for anti-competitive practices is the most recent enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, legislation designed to prevent monopoly. The  purpose of that act was to keep excessive economic power from being concentrated in too few hands, because otherwise society – that’s the rest of us – would be harmed. Ronald Reagan essentially terminated the Sherman Anti-trust Act through non-enforcement and not much has been done to prevent anti-competitiveness since then, even as large corporations buy competitors and consolidate power for themselves and largely at the expense of you and me. Think: airlines; investment companies; accounting firms; pharmaceutical companies; and banks.

Taxes

You already know that the basic fact of the proposed Republican tax plan is primarily a cash giveaway to the rich. That’s accomplished by taking benefits from poor and working class Americans. The Republicans are claiming that this corporate and rich people’s mattress-stuffer bill will deliver the wondrous magic of driving economic growth, new and better jobs for Americans and rising income for all. Plus, everybody gets their own pony in the back yard. But what if all the goodies (other than the cash gift to the wealthy) are really just a phantom that was dreamed up years ago in order to sell trickle-down?

Bruce Bartlett was a key guy in creating the trickle-down myth in the 1980s, so he knows something about this. Read his piece in the Washington Post, where he ‘fesses up to having been a true believer in trickle-down and now unmasks the fraud that it is. He pulls back the curtain about the claim that reducing taxes primarily on the wealthy will result in rising income for working Americans. Be sure to pass along his piece to your fiscally conservative brother-in-law and be sure to remind him of the $1.5 trillion debt the Republicans’ plan will create. That should make for a spirited Thanksgiving discussion.

Banking

The Glass-Steagall Act was passed following the Great Depression as a preventative against some reckless banking practices that helped lay waste to our economy and devastate millions of Americans. In 1999 that law was repealed, allowing investment banks, commercial banks and insurance companies to merge and invent heretofore unimaginable products that put the entire world on the precipice of economic disaster.  There have been many calls for the big banks to be broken up since then, precisely because they enjoy de facto monopoly of our financial world and can pose an existential threat to our country. Those break ups haven’t happened and the banking instruments that put our economy in peril in 2008 are vastly larger today. What do you suppose might happen?

Freedom

It’s time to pay attention to what’s going on and make sense of it all. Here’s a sampling of what some very wise people had to say about that.

Our government . . . teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. Justice Louis Brandeis

He Screwibus Union

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. Edmund Burke

The people of every country are the only safe guardians of their own rights, and are the only instruments which can be used for their destruction. And certainly they would never consent to be so used were they not deceived. Thomas Jefferson

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.  W. Somerset Maugham

We need clear, rational thinking and action in order to protect what we hold dear. Who would have thought that doing so would require courage on the part of those in Congress?

What we’ve seen so far are extensive connections to Russia and fatuous lies told about those connections by nearly everyone high in the Trump administration. What has been confirmed by 17 intelligence agencies of the U.S. is that Russia hacked of our election and tried to influence the votes of millions of Americans. Instead of believing our own experts, Trump believes Putin when all he offers is, “nuh-uh.” Trump maintains a submissive, lapdog posture toward Putin and his manipulation of and access to information makes it look like there’s been a bloodless coup, a Russian theft of America.

You are incrementally being put at greater risk by powerful people concerned solely with their own wealth and power and apparently without the slightest concern for our country. I assure you that staying quiet about this, doing an ostrich, will allow more harm to be done to you and to America. Robert Mueller is doing his job, but that may not be enough. Perhaps it’s time for you to stand up and speak up.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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