Where the Rich and the Racist Disagree

Update: Many thanks and Happy New Year to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for adding this article to Mike's Blog Round-Up! Stay safe everyone, and meet me in Gainesville FL this February 1st for the Sunshine State Book Festival. ;-)

As part of the ongoing American meltdown this winter, we're witnessing a very public and very nasty spat between donald trump's MAGA voting base and trump's billionaire buddies. There's a quick refresher at NPR's All Things Considered with Stephen Fowler commenting:

So for people who are not terminally online, here's a quick recap. Trump made a number of smaller staffing announcements for his second term earlier this week. One of them is a high-profile tech entrepreneur named Sriram Krishnan, who's worked at Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. Far-right activists started trashing the pick on the social media site X, pointing out that Krishnan was born in India, that he previously made comments advocating for more green cards, and devolving into a lot of racist and anti-immigrant attacks on foreign workers that come to the U.S. on these H-1B visas...

the debate over H-1Bs and legal immigration and what Trump might do about them is not something new. In his first term, Trump said that certain visa programs were being abused to bring in foreign workers to replace American workers. He suspended the H-1B program during the pandemic for the same reason, but this time around, things could be different. People in the tech industry, with the Musk-Ramaswamy viewpoint that the U.S. needs more of these top workers no matter where they're from to keep an edge in fields like AI - they're more in Trump's ear and his good graces this time around.

There's also interest in reforming the visa process not just for these tech workers - from lawmakers across the aisle who say it's an overly complex system chock full of carveouts that benefit certain industries and, like Trump has said, are being abused. But there's also a lot of conservatives, especially among the base of the GOP, that shape primary elections, who believe Trump's hard-line immigration stances means reform should primarily come in a reduction of immigrants...

Fowler mentioned the "devolving into a lot of racist and anti-immigrant attacks" but didn't discuss it in detail, considering how that racism is foundational to the Far Right anger towards even legal migrants (like we saw during the elections with the spiteful attacks towards Haitian migrants in Springfield). Steve Benen over at Maddow's Blog (MSNBC) digs a little deeper:

It was against this backdrop that the president-elect announced early last week that venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan — a proponent of green cards for skilled workers — would work in Trump’s incoming administration, serving in a top artificial intelligence policy post. The news was not well received on the Far Right.

A highly controversial MAGA activist named Laura Loomer — who spent at least part of the year as a member of Trump’s inner circle — condemned the decision to hire Krishnan, pointing to his support for the H-1B program, which provides temporary worker visas for high-skilled tech workers. An ugly back-and-forth, which some have labeled the “MAGA civil war,” erupted soon after.

On one side of the divide are prominent far-right voices such as Loomer and Steve Bannon, who have spent the last week clashing with figures such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. They all remain Trump allies, of course, but they’ve also targeted each other in caustic and personal ways, culminating in the world’s wealthiest individual publishing a tweet in which he urged many of the president-elect’s supporters, “Take a big step back and f--- yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

Subtle, it was not.

We are witnessing the divide between the massive and anger-driven Far Right voting base that has been stirred up by fearmongering and racism to hate ALL immigrants (unless they're from Norway) and the upper elite billionaires of the Far Right who have fed all that fearmongering and racism to their masses while profiting - and hoping to profit even more - from that very immigration system that brings them cheap - and indentured - labor. From Janice Gassam Asare at Forbes (paywalled):

The support of H-1B visas by billionaires like Musk, Ramaswamy and others should come as no surprise. On the surface, these work visas seem like a win-win, allowing highly skilled workers in specialized fields to contribute to the U.S. labor force while being granted the ability to stay in the country. What isn’t talked about enough is the exploitation that these workers often experience. The Economic Policy Institute reported that a majority of H-1B workers are paid below median wages. Not only is paying employees lower wages advantageous for employers, but workers on H-1B visas may be less likely to report workplace harm and mistreatment due to fears of how the loss of an H-1B job could drastically impact their life. It’s not outside the realm of possibilities that because of what’s at stake, many H-1B workers are more compliant and less rebellious than American employees, which would naturally make them a more enticing hire. 

Billionaires like Musk need to rile up the voting base to keep them compliant and voting Republican - so that the Republicans can then gift those billionaires massive tax cuts and easy access to the federal pork barrel - but they need the current immigration system to hire thousands of workers who can't fight for better wages or defend themselves in a legal system skewed against them. This is a dynamic vulnerable to rebellion by the MAGA base when they realize their racism has limits. Back to Asare:

Ramaswamy and Musk’s posts on X have sparked a bitter debate among Trump’s supporters. Some Trump supporters have resorted to spewing racist and xenophobic rhetoric online based on fears of a “browning” America and anxieties about being replaced. Instead of uniting across party lines over class struggles and society’s collective disdain for rising inflation, racism has reigned supreme. At the end of the day, capitalism trumps nativism and regardless of one’s party affiliation, the almighty dollar rules. Many of Trump’s supporters may feel hoodwinked; voting for him because of his immigration promises, only to learn that Trump and his billionaire allies are more focused on how foreign workers make American businesses more profitable...

At the moment, this schism is mostly relegated to the social media arena where the MAGA haters are expressing their fury towards their GOP masters. There is no sign that this will translate into the Far Right voters from abandoning the Republicans altogether (after all, where can they go?), or any political factions in Congress turning against trump and Musk to make them suffer for their pro H-1B stances. 

But this all highlights one real fact: The voter anger that supported trump this 2024 wasn't really about inflation, or economic anxiety. It was about hating others who weren't privileged, who weren't viewed as American, who weren't "born here" and "needed to go back where you came from."

It was always the racism. It was always that fear - unjustified, uncontrollable - of the dread Others - even among the non-White communities - that the Far Right demonized for political gain.

That racism won't quiet down any time soon. In the coming year, we are going to see our fellow (White) Americans at their worst, on a scale we haven't seen since the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s.

Gods help us all, as that rage will consume more innocent lives and destroy more communities than the Far Right believes will happen.

Stay safe this 2025.

The Coming Congressional Chaos

Remember how crazy, how broken the House Republicans were in 2023 when they tried and failed around fifteen times to elect their own Speaker? 

The coming vote for the Speakership - currently held by Mike Johnson, who only got the job when the guy who struggled that first time around (Kevin McCarthy) lost a No Confidence vote by his own party not more than nine months later - is gonna be that mess but pumped up on steroids and PCP. The House GOP is riven by factions clawing at each other over who's More Conservative Than Thou (via Rebecca Morin at USA Today):

Even as President-elect Donald Trump threw his support to keep House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in his powerful leadership role, some Republican lawmakers are holding out on offering their endorsements.

“I respect and support President Trump, but his endorsement of Mike Johnson is going to work out about as well as his endorsement of Speaker Paul Ryan,” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., wrote Monday on X, formerly Twitter. “We’ve seen Johnson partner with the Democrats to send money to Ukraine, authorize spying on Americans, and blow the budget.”

House lawmakers on Friday are set to vote on the speakership amid dissatisfaction from key Republicans over Johnson's leadership...

The naysayers among the Republican ranks are upset with Johnson now over the recent efforts by the extremists - pushed by Elon Musk and his partial-presidency displays of power bullying - to stop a continuing resolution earlier this month in order to force a federal shutdown right as Christmas holidays were happening. Johnson, who is just as Far Right as most of the House GOP, still understood the madness and utter destruction to the national economy that shutdown would have caused, and so passed a weakened version of the resolution to keep government funded until March.

It was the same kind of "betrayal" for the House extremists - the so-called Freedom Caucus among them - that drove them to turn on previous Republican Speakers like John Boehner, Ryan, and McCarthy. A public display of Purity Testing their own leadership, to force either shutdowns or massive spending cuts that would tear down the social safety net that tens of millions of Americans rely on to survive.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Az., who has been critical of Johnson over the spending bill battle earlier this month, remains undecided about whether to support Johnson despite Trump’s endorsement.

“I haven’t publicly or privately committed yet,” Biggs told Fox News on Monday. “I do want to speak with the speaker just to see what his plans are because there are some issues that I think need to be worked out.”

Shortly after Trump’s endorsement, Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., spelled out a list of demands dealing with legislation, taxes and federal spending that she wants to see from Johnson before she backs him for the speakership.

“Congress has abandoned its constitutional duty to the American people to properly oversee the spending of their hard-earned money paid as taxes,” Spartz said in a statement. “Our next speaker must show courageous leadership to get our country back on track before this ‘Titanic’ strikes an iceberg at any moment.”

These Republicans want massive spending cuts as though that will "save the sinking ship" never caring how that federal spending actually keeps families and communities afloat. Anything to justify the massive tax cuts - the real cause of deficits and federal debt - to the uber-rich that a majority of Americans don't want to pass.

The fight for the Speakership is going to be crazier than the last time because the margin for error is smaller:

House Republicans will hold a narrow majority in the new Congress after they won a majority of seats over the Democrats, 220-215. But that number will be even smaller – 219 to 215 – when lawmakers convene Friday because Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., resigned from the House last month and won't take his seat on Jan. 3.

The math last time had it where the potential Speaker (McCarthy) couldn't afford five defections from his own Republican ranks. This time around, Johnson can't afford even two defections. And based on how the extremists behaved in 2023, we can predict that the holdouts are going to make harsher and more back-breaking demands for favors, deals, and greater power that Johnson or the rest of the House Republicans may not be able to satisfy.

There's only so many favors, so many seats in the powerful committees, so many internal rules to benefit only themselves that can get doled out before the other more Rational factions are denied any benefits of their own. I can still remember how one congresscritter Mike Rogers tried to punch Matt Gaetz because Gaetz was demanding Rogers' assignment to Chair the Armed Services Committee. Gaetz may no longer be there, but the other "Freedom Caucus" members are just as self-serving.

You would think the House Republicans would read the room - literally - to see how minimal their grasp on control of their wing of Congress really is, and how they need to tamper down their personal ambitions to secure their party's control of the House. They don't have a commanding 20-seat lead over Dems to set a mandate here. They're barely holding on even with the extreme gerrymandering at the district level across most of the Red states, propped up more by Fox Not-News propaganda and by angry billionaires who want things done their way at the expense of the nation's actual majority.

Given how craven and broken the party's leadership already is, they're bound to cater to the "Freedom Caucus" as much as possible. But how much can the GOP really give away to their own extremist factions?

This is going to get messy in 2025.

I hope the 77 million Americans who voted for this chaos understand just how f-cked they made our nation become. I hope the Leopards eat your faces first.

The Passing of a Good Man

His health had been failing for a long time, he'd been in hospice, and his wife Rosalynn had passed away earlier so there wasn't much else for former President Jimmy Carter to hold onto. It still hurts to hear this afternoon that Carter passed away (via Kathy Lohr at NPR): 

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, died Sunday at age 100. The Carter Center announced he died in his hometown of Plains, Ga.

Carter was president from 1977 to 1981, but he was perhaps more famous for the life he led after leaving office. Carter was one of the biggest advocates for peace, democracy and international human rights.

James "Jimmy" Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains, Ga., on Oct. 1, 1924, and spent his childhood on a farm just outside that tiny southwest Georgia community. His father was a peanut farmer; his mother, "Miss Lillian," was a nurse. He was the first president of the United States to be born in a hospital.

Just saying, my twin brother and I were born in Albany, GA just down the road from Plains. We both grew up considering Jimmy as a neighbor. I digress.

Growing up on the farm, Carter learned the value of hard work and determination. He qualified for the U.S. Naval Academy and became an engineer, working on submarines. But Carter resigned from the Navy in 1953 after his father died.

Back in Plains, he was elected to the Georgia Senate and became the first Georgia governor to speak out against racial discrimination.

A lifelong Democrat like most Southerners at the time, Carter was a political unknown when he began a national campaign in 1974 and was first referred to as "Jimmy Who?"

But a grassroots effort changed that, Hochman said. "He would campaign on the street corners and go to radio stations. Nobody knew who he was except that he was running for president."

Carter's friends and family from Georgia, called the Peanut Brigade, traveled to New Hampshire, Iowa and all over the country talking to voters and campaigning for Carter, the dependable Southerner who wanted to be president.

During the campaign, Carter told audiences, "I'll never tell a lie. I'll never make a misleading statement. I'll never betray the trust of those who have confidence in me, and I will never avoid a controversial issue..."

Carter won in a close election over Gerald Ford in 1976, happening at a moment where the national mood soured over Watergate, the failure of the Vietnam War, and an economy struggling between high inflation or bad interest rates. Carter's own administration grappled with the economic (and spiritual) malaise that worsened his chances at re-election, before getting blindsided by the Iranian Hostage crisis by 1979 that dashed any incumbent hopes for good.

What happened post-Presidency with Jimmy Carter was one of the greatest humanitarian efforts that Americans ever saw:

After leaving office, Carter became dedicated to promoting democracy, monitoring elections, building homes with Habitat for Humanity and eradicating disease in some of the world's poorest countries. In 1982, the president and his wife opened the Carter Center in Atlanta.

In an interview with NPR in 2007, Carter talked about his experiences. "And for the last 25 years, my life could not have been more expansive and unpredictable and adventurous and gratifying," he said.

In 2002, Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor some said he had earned a quarter century earlier when he negotiated the Camp David Accords. He ended his acceptance speech with a plea for peace.

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children," Carter said...

When I did the year-long summaries of Presidential Character back in 2013, I ended Carter's review rather abruptly without going into the graceful post-Presidential work he committed. I wasn't too sure back then how to properly phrase the many good deeds - the work towards world peace, moderating elections at home and abroad to promote democracy, building homes for families with Habitat For Humanity, fighting disease in Africa like the near-eradication of Guinea Worm - and I was kind of worried even back then if I said anything positive like that I might jinx him to an early death (his health had been failing for some time. Getting into your 90s will do that to you).

The thing about Carter was how genuine were his efforts to do the right thing. He fought against segregation in a Deep South state, he committed to advocacy for human rights over power plays on the international stage, he promoted his Christian faith through good works instead of beating everyone's head with a thick Bible.

Carter never once promoted himself at the expense of other people. He never worked to take millions of dollars for himself, giving instead to his charities. He never crowed about his successes unless it was to celebrate and honor the hundreds if not thousands of fellow volunteers and allies who worked with him.

If there was any person on the planet in the exact opposite of the - you know what, shouldn't even name-drop that orange guy here - it was President Carter.

God Bless the man, who served his post-Presidency in ways that other former Presidents would envy: with hard work, diligence, respect from others, and the love of a grateful nation.

I want to leave you all with a clip from Saturday Night, back in the days of Carter's tenure, with Dan Ackroyd portraying him. This may not have been the real Jimmy Carter but it honestly reflects the man himself: caring for others, well-versed and intelligent, and a huge Allman Brothers fan:

“Right, you did some Orange Sunshine, Peter. Everything is going to be fine, you’re just very high and you’ll probably be that way for about five more hours. Try taking some Vitamin B or C complex. If you have a beer, go ahead and drink it. Just remember, you’re a living organism on this planet, you’re safe, you’ve just taken a heavy drug. Relax, stay inside, and listen to some music. Do you have any Allman Brothers?”

All flags to half-mast, America, for the passing of a not-too-great President and the best ex-President we will ever know.

The Rattling of Sabers

trump's not even in the White House (again) and he's already causing our diplomatic corps and foreign policy experts to reach for the nearest bottles of Jack Daniels with his social media announcements raging against our neighboring nations and long-standing allies.

trump's fauxrage towards Mexico remains ongoing, left over from all of his "we're gonna build a wall to keep out the rapists and drug gangs" grandstanding during his first tenure. Since this November, trump openly plans to issue painful tariffs - painful for the United States, not Mexico - on our southern neighbors as retaliation for what he claims is an "ongoing invasion" of America. Mixed in with that are more unsettling threats to order U.S. military strikes on drug cartel locations across Mexico, violating their sovereignty and likely killing a high number of civilians. The kind of acts that lead to open wars.

Toss into this mix how trump repeatedly "jokes" about annexing Canada but does so as part of his ongoing - and spreading - obsession with raising tariffs on our major trade partners. It doesn't help that a number of Far Right pundits and MAGA followers fantasize about invading Canada (much like the War Hawks of 1812).

Now in the news, trump is making demands - threats - towards Panama regarding control of the canal, a vital shipping route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Coverage from the recent Turning Point USA conference has trump beating the war drums to "take back" control of the region (via Julio Ricardo Varela at MSNBC):

President-elect Donald Trump blurted out another outrageous promise at a Turning Point USA event Sunday in Phoenix: He now wants the Panama Canal back. Trump claimed that Panama’s shipping fees were “ridiculous” and threatened to demand the canal’s return if these fees aren't reduced.

“I can proudly proclaim that the Golden Age of America is upon us,” Trump said. “There’s a spirit that we have now that we didn’t have just a short while ago.”

Trump’s invocation of a “Golden Age” will always excite his supporters, who thrill at his call to “Make America Great Again.” But for much of Latin America, the era that slogan harks back to was defined by U.S. imperialism and exploitation. Panama knows this history better than most, having endured decades of American control over a canal that defines not just the country’s economy but its very identity.

Trump’s notion to take back the canal is not just inflammatory. It risks reigniting tensions between the U.S. and many Latin American countries, after those countries have worked hard to move past fears about American intrusions on their sovereignty. Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino swiftly rebuked Trump, stating, “Every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjoining zone is Panama’s and will remain so. The sovereignty and independence of our country is non-negotiable.”

If trump even hopes to build any foreign relations successes, he's burning bridges before he can cross them. /headdesk

And for the love of God, trump is making noises - again - about wanting to buy - or worse, seize - Greenland away from Denmark, a nation not in the mood to make any deals now or ever.

Just how many nations does trump want to anger / alienate / piss off before Inauguration Day?

If there is a simple or well-meaning reason for all of this, trump's behaviors and statements are all part of the blustering and bullying he inflicts on everybody when he thinks he's "negotiating" his deals. This is his game plan: 

1. Blow up any existing deal to cause chaos,
2. Bully everyone he has to make deals with,
3. Force them - or wear them down - to accept deals that pretty much were the same as before except trump himself gets a bigger piece of the action,
4. Claim he's the greatest deal-maker of all time.

I honestly don't believe any of that ever worked in his - or America's - favor every time he tried bullying his way to deals as President. trump did all of this when he blew up NAFTA to force Canada and Mexico into negotiating a new trade deal... that pretty much was the same deal but with stricter labor provisions that Democrats in Congress pushed through in 2019. trump's administration had a rougher go of it throughout their foreign policy efforts, because trump was not able to bully other nations into giving up more to him. One of the few foreign policy deals trump did accomplish... was signing a peace deal with the Afghani Taliban that gave them everything they wanted - prisoners freed, and the opportunity to take over Afghanistan within a year - while trump left Biden holding the blame.

For all the talk about military strikes into Mexico and "territorial expansion" as part of trump's agenda for 2025, he had talked like that before and never really followed through. trump DID expand a bombing / drone strikes campaign across the Middle East - especially an attack on an Iranian military leader while he was visiting Iraq - and at one point openly discussed missile strikes and possible invasion of Iran itself, but when push came to shove trump did not engage in direct warfare or military action against the nations he kept threatening. Hell, he turned into North Korea's best buddy when Kim Jong Il sent trump love letters.

However...

Back in trump's first term, trump had to rely on established political and military leaders within the government - his Joint Chiefs, his national security advisors, and foreign policy Cabinet figures - who counseled towards caution and who kept talking trump out of his more violent proposals. Going into his second term, trump is not relying on any of those people and is tapping some of the more... volatile talking heads on Fox Not-News who are less inclined to urge caution (and more inclined to sadistic punishment of others).

One of the things trump and his team remain focused on is a mass deportation plan to round up, imprison, and exile millions of "undocumented" Latinos (and Asians, Africans, and anybody else not-White) with the likelihood of just yeeting all those millions across the Mexican border in violation of the Constitution, international human rights treaties, and basic human decency.

It also runs into a wall of logistical headaches, as that deportation plan requires more manpower, facilities, and resources than our immigration services - and even local law enforcement - can provide. Which is why trump is all too eager to deploy the U.S. military to cover those logistical issues, even though the armed forces are not designed - or required by law - to perform those actions.

The only way trump can get around those legal constraints would be to invoke a national emergency - this is where his alarmist rhetoric of "invasion by illegals" comes into play - and what better way than to use executive powers to declare us in a state of war with the nations - Mexico and most of Central and South America - where most undocumented workers come from? Not only would that allow trump and his cohorts to federalize the National Guards - even the ones from Democratic states - but it would also serve as a big stick to threaten Mexico into either giving into trump's demands to accept the mass deportations or risk U.S. invasion to force them to.

Thing is, Mexico is going to do whatever is in their best interests, not trump's. Even submitting to trump's will in this matter for the short term would be a strain on Mexico's own resources and capabilities, not without financial concessions that trump and his wingnut allies will likely refuse to give. Even the risk and costs of war with a global superpower might prove a more palatable outcome for Mexicans...

...as well as the rest of Central and South America whose populations will be greatly affected by trump's deportation plan and who may well ally with Mexico, giving them the political - and military - support they would need.

As much as American arrogance will convince us that we're the world's greatest military, our own recent attempts at war - the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq - demonstrated our own abilities have their limits. Much like I noted before about the costs and hazards of a potential invasion of Iran, any war against Mexico has its own risks. 

We won't have the advantages of distance: This would be a straight-on border clash along a wide border that Mexico can exploit as much as the U.S. can. We won't have any advantages of allies: trump's overt belligerence and open inhumanity towards migrants would alienate every potential support even if he tries to insist on help from NATO or other treaty groups. Canada - and much of the UK Commonwealth across the Caribbean - would likely ally with Mexico, which is where the American wingnut threats to "annex Canada" would come back to bite America in the ass.

This may all be alarmist and unnecessary. Again, trump proved before he is more bluster than action. The problem is that this time, trump is more determined than ever to resolve his fixation - his rage and racist hatred - on an immigration "problem" he swore to end.

If "fixing it" requires going to war, trump will go there.

And Gods help us - not just Mexico, maybe not just Canada and/or Panama - all if he does.

Quick Share to Vagabond Scholar's Annual Jon Swift Memorial

Many thanks to Batochhio, who blogs on his own at Vagabond Scholar as well as working every so often at Crooks & Liars to promote their blog round-ups. He does an annual memorial sharing of political blogs in honor of a well-known blogger from the early years who went by Jon Swift (no, not the original guy) and who passed away in 2009.

So here's a link to this year's memorial round-up, of which I contributed one of my articles. I ask you to take the time to read all the other bloggers listed there, and get used to keeping up with them from time to time especially in 2025 when any oasis of sanity will be welcome.

In The Matter of Allegations Relating to Gaetz

Update: Io Saturnalia to Steve In Manhattan for tagging this article for Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. I hope everyone's safe and healthy and enjoying whatever there is of the holiday spirit. Except for Matt Gaetz. I hope he rots.

I need to get back into the blogging mindset, and what better way to get at it than to report on the nastiness of Florida's Worst Scuzzbucket (AKA Matt Gaetz)?

After all the storm and fury over the House Ethics' investigation into his misconduct with underage women - where the House voted to suppress the committee's report while trump was offering Gaetz control of the Justice Department, all of it rendered moot when Gaetz dropped out after a disastrous meeting with angry Senators poised to deny him the post - the committee decided to leak that report this week anyway.

Going by the summary, here are the things that Gaetz did that crossed a whole bunch of lines (skip to page two):

In sum, the Committee found substantial evidence of the following:

• From at least 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him.

• In 2017, Representative Gaetz engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl.

• During the period 2017 to 2019, Representative Gaetz used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions.

• Representative Gaetz accepted gifts, including transportation and lodging in connection with a 2018 trip to the Bahamas, in excess of permissible amounts.

• In 2018, Representative Gaetz arranged for his Chief of Staff to assist a woman with whom he engaged in sexual activity in obtaining a passport, falsely indicating to the U.S. Department of State that she was a constituent.

• Representative Gaetz knowingly and willfully sought to impede and obstruct the Committee’s investigation of his conduct.

• Representative Gaetz has acted in a manner that reflects discreditably upon the House.

Based on the above, the Committee concluded there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.

This is the stuff that the House Ethics committee uncovered in spite of a Justice Department's investigation into Gaetz's criminal behavior back in 2021 that ended up going nowhere. The DOJ argued at the time that they couldn't proceed to criminal charges on Gaetz because their witnesses were either unreliable on the stand or unwilling to testify. You can see that as well in the committee's work where most of the teenage girls claimed their Fifth Amendment rights to avoid self-incrimination, but even then the congresscritters and their staffs were able to put the pieces together that would have made a legitimate criminal case. Goddamn.

One of the horrifying elements of these reports is how much of Gaetz's misconduct was openly known. Not so much the prostitution, but his eagerness to sex women far younger than his own age range and his often drunken (now allegedly drugged) state of mind. Stories were rife about fellow legislators at both the state house and congressional levels how Gaetz would brag about and share pictures of his sexual exploits in the public forums. For all that his fellow congresscritters were bothered by his vulgarity, none of them cared enough to stop him until his business buddy Joel Greenberg got caught and revealed the nastier stuff hiding under the Florida GOP's foundations. 

While a solid number of our Republican elected officials DO care about their own personal conduct and ethics, they do happily turn a blind eye to a lot of this bad behavior because of two reasons: Some of them fear "rocking the boat" and disrupting their party's access to power; and Some of them honestly don't see the harm of sexually exploiting / abusing young women - even underage - because their own conservative philosophy - that women and the young are not part of their elite status and thus exploitable by their laws - allows it.

Granted, Democrats in power get caught in their own sex scandals and misconduct towards young women as well, but on this scale? With this level of disdain and disregard that Gaetz kept displaying towards his targets? You can feel from just reading the report the contempt he had, the lack of emotional connection to most of the girls he manhandled.

When you expand your view to examine the sexual misconduct we've seen over the years, you should notice that when it comes to Republican sex scandals there's an open display of misogyny and toxic masculinity driving most of that behavior. It's at a point where a more nonpartisan government would require full drug testing and ID checks of women under 40 at every Republican-based country club and convention gatherings just to make sure they're not violating laws.

And we STILL haven't seen a full accounting of Jeffrey Epstein's Client List containing the names of Men Of Power - both Republican and Democrat and CEO billionaire alike - who "flew the Lolita Express" engaging in sexual misconduct with seriously underaged girls.

Do us a huge favor, Joe Biden: Just before you leave office this January 20th 2025 PLEASE release the Epstein Client List (redacting the names of victims ONLY) not only to the general public but to every law enforcement agency on the planet.

Women remain abused as long as Men of Power retain that power to abuse them. THIS NEEDS TO END.

And ship Gaetz to the nearest prison for breaking drug use and statutory rape laws, please and thanks this Saturnalia season.

Regarding RPLA for Blogging

Just as a personal note, just got an email from the Florida Writers' Association that they are making changes for the 2025 Royal Palm Literary Awards, and one that impacts me is they are dropping the "Blog or Article" category from the Nonfiction awards.

It can boil down to how few submissions there seem to be for that category: Blogging is an obscure form of writing in this day, and fewer article writers for things like newspapers and magazines.

You may have noticed this year that the Royal Palms had no winners for that category. I had submitted four for 2024 and none of them made it past Semi-Finalist: Previous years I at least had one make it that far when I submitted that many (the one other year I didn't make Semi was when I submitted only two blog articles). 

This is for me rather heart-breaking. As a blogger, I'd like to think that this form of writing still has merit. There is a skill to creating nonfiction works, be it memoir or reporting or essay or opinion/persuasive. 

I think FWA will have Nonfiction awards going forward, but it's going to be a question if any of them can accept the type of blog writing - essay/opinion - I've been doing. I will see about submitting my other works - my short fiction - in due course.

It's kind of sad that I may be the last winner for Blog/Article writing for the Royal Palms.

Alas.

Unhappy Thoughts Part II

Update: I need to get back into the mood to blog, as Steve in Manhattan ended up using this from two weeks ago to share at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Blame it on the boogey(man) that is trump... /rage

The post-election blues continue on, obviously.

One of the things still haunting me a month later is how the results just did not fit the enthusiasm I saw among fellow Harris/Walz voters, how it just didn't seem possible that a deeply unpopular figure like trump could add to a popular vote count to win.

And now we have to cope with the "autopsy" as it were with people yelling and screaming where things went wrong.

Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up this Monday pointed me to another blog where the artist created a cartoon basically highlighting all the (hindsight) armchair quarterbacking taking place among the Democratic ranks after the loss:

 

Visit Amp's blog to view the full image, please

As the artist Ampersand noted:

Lacking any clear-cut truth, most people just go ahead and say that the election proves that the Democrats have to endorse whatever policy stance they prefer or they’ll never win an election again...

I understand the impulse. I think the Biden administration has been horrifically bad on Gaza. Now that Harris has lost, it would be very convenient for me if everyone agreed that Harris lost because of the Biden administration’s terrible policies on Gaza.

But “convenient for me” isn’t the same as “true.” (Which is a very unfortunate way to set up a universe, and as soon as I locate the management I will make a complaint)...

Everybody's got a pet peeve and policy issue to defend. I've encountered a number of the ones presented in that comic: I've met people who are obsessed over reports how Elon Musk's Starlink system got election counting data before any official counting was done; I know a few people online who were genuinely upset about Biden's failure to rein in Israel's genocide of Palestinian families in Gaza and West Bank; I've read the arguments from the media pundits who think Biden (and by proxy Harris) were getting punished for higher prices even as inflation was trending down.

I myself am convinced that the mainstream media - led by the cowards at New York Times and Washington Post - failed to keep voters informed about how criminal and corrupt donald trump was, underplaying his scandals while punishing Biden/Harris/Democrats with a "both siderism" narrative that made Democrats look old and broken themselves.

But even I know that's not the entirety of the problem.

The real answer why Democrats failed to win this 2024 election cycle is that donald trump - leading a squalid and cruel army of Republican officials and voting base - appealed to the worst nature of a large plurality of our fellow Americans and got them to back his election. He stuck to his decades-long campaign hating on immigrants, hating on Blacks, hating on women; getting more and more Republican figures and media cheerleaders to push that fear and rage. And he got more and more voters - and not just angry Whites but also angry men and angry women from the very ethnic groups he's attacking - to buy in, spreading Hate like a plague. 

trump went from 63 million voters - when we could explain it away as a failure of a broken Electoral College - to 74 million - where we could avoid it by accepting Biden's popular vote win of 81 million - to 77 million where there's no other way to avoid this.

Democrats lost because Republicans appealed to sadists and assholes who are greater in number than we realized. The Cruelty was the point, and now it's policy. 

Every attempt to appeal to any rational Republican or centrist voting group wasn't going to work. Trying to get more liberal and progressive voters to show up seems limiting, and not enough of them were willing to buy in to the Big Tent Biden and Harris tried to build.

The reason why a lot of us who voted for Harris - who voted for competency and sanity and justice and an America we thought we knew - are skittish and unhappy today is that we've learned our neighbors, families, and communities are full of people who knew trump was a monster - a convicted felon and sex offender, openly willing to commit more crimes as President - and voted for him anyway.

Gods help us.

The Fall of Assad, and the Fate of Syria and the Middle East

This had been happening over the past two weeks, but I didn't want to say anything about it because I'm tired of getting ahead of myself on historic events as they occur, but in the Middle East - alongside all the fighting and bloodshed - we're witnessing the swift and sudden downfall of a tyrannical regime in Syria (via Willem Marx at NPR):

A rapid advance by Syrian rebel groups on the country's capital has led to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's control of a nation his family had ruled for half a century.

Crowds celebrated the seismic political shift in the streets of Damascus overnight and into Sunday, as Syrian state television broadcast a statement from a group of rebels, one dressed in a black hoodie, who announced that all Syrian prisoners had been freed from jail and Assad had been deposed.

The man reading that statement on television, just hours after the city's fall, had echoed calls from the leading group in this lightning rebel offensive, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, demanding that citizens and fighters alike ensure the country's national institutions were protected. He ended his statement with a declaration after more than 13 years of bloody civil conflict: "Long Live a Free Syria..."

The British-based war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Assad had left the country to an undisclosed destination.

Hours later, Russia, which had long used its military to prop up the Assad regime against wide-ranging opposition forces, also said that the toppled president had left the country. The Russian foreign ministry did not say where he had gone.

There's a timeline at AP News that helps highlight just how quick this whole turnabout moved. A lot of foreign policy think tanks are working overtime - like this Atlantic Council - to figure out the massive implications that Assad's fall means not just for Syria but for the entire Middle East region.

We're talking about a key Arab nation that had long contributed to the violent instability and chaos in the region well back into the 1950s. Syria - alongside Iran, and backed by Russia - were themselves backers for such extremists groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, which contributed to ongoing violence with Israel and leaving Lebanon in political and economic turmoil for decades.

Syria itself has been broken by a decades-long civil war since 2011 - among a number of uprisings going back to the 1980s - that sent millions of civilians fleeing as refugees to avoid the indiscriminate bombing and gassing that Assad's regime deployed as means of putting down resistance. Gods, I last blogged about this civil war in 2015 when I pledged some financial support to help those refugees, and the war itself in 2013 when Obama's presidency attempted to defuse Assad's use of chemical weapons in that civil war.

The end of Assad means only a temporary respite in that war, unfortunately. Syria as a nation was cobbled together by a mix of differing ethnicities and religious groups - Kurds, Turks, Sunnis, Shi'a, Christians, dozens of smaller cultural communities - some of whom remain hostile towards each other even in this moment of possible nation-building into functioning coalitions.

This is the thing a lot of Western nations are dreading: the potential of Syria to backslide much like Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya into still-broken internally squabbling states that could become home to corruption and religious extremists.

In opposition to that dread, there looks to be a sizable amount of hope. The HTS rebels who claimed victory are posing - at the moment - as functional moderates looking to legitimize their rule. In the years that they've received training from their Turkish handlers, there is the decent possibility that they've learned how Turkey handles religious tolerance and can placate the larger Christian populations in Syria. The Turkish government - looking to reduce or end the ongoing Kurdish separatist movement in their own borders - would want Syria to take the burden of dealing with the Kurds: This would require genuine coalition-building.

A stabilized Syria should mean an end to one of the largest refugee crises facing the Middle East (and Europe/United States). Fourteen million displaced Syrians could start moving back - hopefully within weeks - just as long as serious rebuilding efforts are funded by foreign aid to rebuild cities and homes to move back to. Ending this crisis could well relieve a lot of discontent among the sanctuary nations - especially across Europe - that had their Far Right parties spewing racist outrage to promote their own agendas.

There is also the possibility that the end of Assad's regime - which was hostile towards Israel and a major backer of Hezbollah and Hamas - could shift the dynamics of the ongoing bloodshed that Netanyahu's government has been inflicting on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians over the past year. Cutting off Syrian support of Hezbollah ought to weaken their position in Lebanon to where the broken power-sharing system falls apart. Pacifying Lebanon ought to mollify Israel... although letting up on the ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank is going to require different tactics.

A lot of this is going to involve diplomacy - and money - and gods help us if any of this drags long enough until trump is back in the White House to break it all out of his greedy self-interest, but let's not stress about that just yet (get on Air Force One NOW Biden, and get to Damascus to hammer out a deal before Christmas goddammit!).

The most obvious thing to note out of all this is how broken Russia is right now. As Michael Scollon and Frud Bezhan at Radio Free Europe point out:

When Vladimir Putin took the reins of power in a post-Soviet Russia in shambles a quarter-century ago, he immediately set about restoring Moscow's status as a global power.

It took 15 years, but Russia heralded its military intervention in the Syrian civil war as proof of its return as a force to be reckoned with on the international stage.

Moscow leveraged that image to expand its influence throughout the Middle East and beyond as a counterweight to the West.

Now, the fall of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, a key ally of Moscow, has dealt a serious blow to Russia's great-power ambitions.

"Putin's military adventure in Syria was designed to demonstrate that Russia is a great power and can project its influence abroad," said Phillip Smyth, a Middle East expert. "Losing Syria is a huge slap in the face for Putin."

Assad's ouster represents not only a reputational hit to Russia but likely a major strategic setback.

Syria is home to two major Russia military installations: an air base in Hmeimim and a naval base in Tartus. The latter is Russia's only warm-water naval base and provides Moscow access to the Mediterranean Sea...

Reports were fast and furious on social media that Russia's fleet at Tartus sailed out days ago - abandoning Assad even then - arguably forced to travel the long way around to the Atlantic and Baltic Sea, as getting back into the Black Sea means facing an eager Ukrainian torpedo boat drone attack that would happily sink it (that is if Turkey reopened the path through Istanbul's waterway for them).

Moscow capitalized on its involvement in both Syria and Ukraine to sell itself as a power capable of challenging the United States, NATO, and the West in general while expanding its global reach from the Mediterranean to Africa and Latin America.

Following Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Syria became more of an asset for Moscow, experts say, while also presenting the challenge of maintaining military campaigns on two fronts...

Syria's fall quickly makes it clear that Russia can't handle a two-front war. Putin is so obsessed and focused on conquering Ukraine that he can no longer provide manpower or equipment or time to any of the client states he's been propping up across the globe. Russia - aside from their nuclear missiles, and there's even some serious doubt about that - is no longer a military powerhouse. Their political and economic influences are just as diminished.

In fact, he's been vacuuming up equipment and manpower from those client states - look at all the weapons manufactured in Iran, look at the North Korean troops "volunteered" to slam into the meat grinder in Kursk - in a desperate attempt to force Ukraine to a negotiation table where Putin hopes to retain his land gains to justify retreating and repairing his losses. Putin dares not make any more mass conscription efforts among his own Russian people without risking draft riots. And he can't provide any mercenary support - bye, Wagner! - overseas (especially now that his long-range bases are cut off).

It used to be from the Cold War onward that Soviet Russia - and Putin's Russia - were militarily and financially capable of spreading their influence and support across the entire globe. Putin was attempting to market Russia as an alternative to other global powers like France and the U.S. across Africa, but now those efforts seem empty and likely unfulfilled. Client states like Cuba and Venezuela are now literally struggling to keep the lights on. Other nations that could be allies in Russia's time of need - China and India - are now too self-sufficient and too powerful themselves to where they can stand on the sidelines and see what benefits them most as things fall apart.

There's a lot of chaos still out there - not just in Syria and in Ukraine - and a lot of it can get worse when a meddling and incompetent trump gets back into office.

Keep hoping the good things happen before then.

The Killing

Respectable little murders pay/
They get more respectable every day
-- "Sunset Grill," Don Henley

With all of the drama and madness in this Darkest Timeline, with all the gun violence our nation witnesses on a daily basis, it's telling that the shooting of a single person only matters when that person was the uber-rich CEO of a healthcare corporation (via Jake Offenhartz, Michael Balsamo, and Michael R. Sisak at AP News):

New clues emerged Thursday in the hunt for the masked gunman who stalked and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, including possible leads about his travel before the shooting and a message scrawled on ammunition found at the crime scene.

The words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” were found emblazoned on the ammunition, echoing a phrase used by insurance industry critics, two law enforcement officials said Thursday.

The words were written in permanent marker, according to one of the two officials, who were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

Investigators also now believe the suspect may have traveled to New York last month on a bus that originated in Atlanta, one of the law enforcement officials said...

One of the interesting developments in this story is how quickly social media jumped on the story... by satirizing (if not brutally mocking) the victim's status as an allegedly corrupt corporate boss of a major health care insurer with a known history of massive profits at the expense of denying millions of Americans any affordable health care. As Troy Farah over at Salon notes:

Violence is a strategy that never warrants celebration because it is crude, brutal and ineffective, not to mention immoral. There’s always a better way, even if it’s not as easy or as dramatic. Nonetheless, it’s not bizarre or surprising to see that Reddit is being flooded with memes mocking the murder, or that many on social media are seemingly trying (or failing) to suppress their glee. There’s now even a rush to cash in with merch, such as a ballcap using the company’s logo next to crosshairs and the phrase “We aim to please.” A chart from valuepenguin.com displaying the percentage of claim denial rates by insurance companies, with UnitedHealthcare topping the list, has gone super viral, with one user on Threads captioning it, “To paraphrase Chris Rock ‘... but I understand.’”

The overall justification for this celebration — the New York Times described it as a “torrent of hate” — lies in the widely understood the fact that health care companies inflict violence on thousands of people in this country, if not millions, every single day. Take the announcement this week from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, which couldn’t have had better or worse timing, depending on one’s perspective. That company proposed that its health insurance plans in Connecticut, New York and Missouri would no longer cover anesthesia care if a surgery or operation extends beyond an arbitrary time limit. That seems to have outraged the American Society of Anesthesiologists, which has called on Anthem to immediately reverse this proposal.

On Thursday, Anthem did just that, but the shock remains. If that’s not violence, what is? Whether you’re in an alley or on an operating table, if someone has a knife to you and demands your money, it’s violence. Or consider the innumerable examples that aren’t just proposals but routine policy: the tidal wave of denied or delayed claims, the noose of restrictive networks, costly deductibles, prescription refusals and on and on. There is also convincing evidence this walled garden especially excludes and discriminates against people of color, queer people and women, making this systemic violence not just prevalent, but also disproportionate...

Thompson's murder is not different from the many times a wingnut gunman went storming into a Planned Parenthood clinic to shoot at "baby killers," so celebrating the act would be monstrous hypocrisy for those us angered by Far Right violence towards women and the health care providers they need. If there is any difference, it's that most of those gunmen are pumped up on lies from Far Right media, whereas this gunman can well be acting out direct vengeance. Nearly every observer's comments/viewpoints on "motive" - something the police haven't confirmed yet, because there's a good chance of misdirection - are going by the things Farah highlighted about our nation's broken health care system: This shooter could well have lost a loved one to a fatal illness that Thompson's United HealthCare corporation refused to help.

That is of course pure speculation on my - and a lot of other people's - part. For all we know, the killer could have been a hired hitman: Thompson was under investigation for insider trading, for example.

Ah, as Farah noted: "...But I understand."

This killing brought to the fore news coverage of how hundreds - if not millions - of Americans are rightly angered by how our health care companies routinely deny any affordable health care. Just to share from Selena Simmons-Duffin's report at NPR:

Yolonda Wilson is one of many people who shared painful stories about health insurance gone wrong on social media this week.

Her insurer, UnitedHealthcare, denied coverage for a surgery about two days before it was scheduled, back in January. She finally got it approved, in the nick of time, with a lot of unnecessary stress and tears. "I did not know until Wednesday afternoon whether I would be able to have surgery Thursday morning," she told NPR.

Wilson, a professor of Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University in Missouri, noted that she was telling her personal story, not speaking on behalf of the university.

The shocking, targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson Wednesday struck a nerve on social media, triggering an outpouring of negative experiences with the tangled health care system in the U.S.

Many people shared searing stories of health care denials from health insurers. One person said his mom's scan to check on her stage IV lung cancer was recently denied. In another post, a dad shared the letter UHC sent him denying a wheelchair for his son with cerebral palsy.

"A lot of people are in deep pain, and maybe didn't have anywhere to put that pain," Wilson says.

UnitedHealthcare is the biggest private health insurer in the U.S., with an outsized market share in both the commercial insurance and Medicare Advantage markets. UnitedHealth Group reported $371.6 billion in revenue last year and faces an antitrust lawsuit to block its $3.3 billion acquisition of a rival home health and hospice service.

Americans generally say they're pretty happy with their health insurance, according to survey data from health policy research organization KFF — unless they're sick. Those with "fair" or "poor" health are nearly twice as likely to be displeased with their insurance compared to those with "good" health.

The sick thing about getting sick in America is that the moment you do, those insurers who'd been taking your money all those years suddenly refuse to pay any of it back to you. God forbid they cut into those billions of revenues.

Pam Herd, a professor of social policy at the University of Michigan who studies administrative burdens involved in accessing government services, says barriers to health care access are especially painful.

"It's one thing to be frustrated at the DMV because you have a ton of paperwork to fill out or you have to spend an hour in line," she says. "It's a whole other thing to face those barriers when they are the difference between whether you're going to get life-saving care or not."

Herd's research shows how barriers in the health care system can affect people's actual health — whether it's calling several times to just get an appointment or trying to find an in-network specialist or fighting to get a procedure covered...

For all the Far Right and Libertarian types out there who whine about the federal bureaucracy, the DMV ain't got shit on UnitedHealthcare or the other for-profit corporations out there that work to delay, defend, and deny any help to the people at all. Dealing with the stress of jumping through hoop after hoop and running into brick wall after brick wall is just as sickening as getting a life-threatening-yet-treatable illness.

One of the more shocking stories going public is how UHC under Thompson's reign implemented an AI-based automated process that generated 90 percent error rates while denying their clients the financial help they were supposed to get. That was originally a report from 2023, but only now are people really reading it.

Again: "...But I understand."

As of right now, the other CEOs of large corporations - not just in the insurance business - are hiring more bodyguards and clearing their names off the company websites to avoid getting on anybody's Naughty Lists. They are - obviously - not interested in responding to the growing public outrage towards their ravenous greed: They have, after all, just bought off the 2024 election cycle to guarantee trump and the Republican Party will grant them the massive tax cuts and deregulations they desire to add to the billions they already possess.

The CEOs - the true class-driven elite, the robber barons of the 21st Century - are mourning the death of one of their fellow greedheads while overlooking the body count of thousands of Americans who die because they didn't get their health care approved or covered in time, or worse the thousands who die because they can't get any insurance coverage at all.

THAT is why a lot of people suspect the assassin was acting out of vengeance. 

And yeah, we understand.

Which murders - the shooting of a CEO or the deaths of families and loved ones - get more respectable in the end?

The Problems with trump's Tariffs

This week's trumpian chaos focused a lot on his threat to impose broad and heavy tariffs on three of our major trade partners of Canada, Mexico, and China, something that the economic experts warn would trigger more inflation than U.S. voters realize and escalate retaliation and trade wars across the globe.

In the days following, there had been a good amount of punditry and pushback on the matter, during which trump's people walked back the comments or tried to reframe the topic. There are think pieces about how trump might be "bluffing," that he's trying to force the likes of Mexico and Canada to the negotiation table - much like how trump shredded the existing NAFTA deal to force a new USMCA agreement that barely changed anything - to gain more concessions he didn't get then.

My view on all this is to consider taking trump at face value when it comes to tariffs. he's had a long history of loving the concept of them, and he had spoken - early and often - that trade wars are "good and easy to win". And it's not even a trade war trump seems focused on: he talked during the 2024 campaign about the McKinley Tariffs of 1890 and how such tariffs could replace income tax as the government's main source of revenue.

There's no chess game here: trump genuinely wants to increase tariffs because he views them as win-win.

trump - and his pro-tariff allies in his transition team - refuse to see the larger historical trends surrounding tariffs, trade wars, and their impacts on economic stability. The non-profit Tax Foundation published Erica York's report looking into how other factors in the 1890s countered the negative economic impacts of the McKinley Tariffs... factors that were NOT in play during the later tariffs of the 1930s:

As a review, tariffs are a type of excise tax (a narrowly targeted consumption tax) applied to domestic consumption of foreign-produced goods. Since the depths of the Great Depression and the collapse in global trade after the 1930 Hawley-Smoot tariffs, US policy shifted away from restrictive tariffs in favor of multilateral cooperation to reduce tariffs (as economist Douglas Irwin explains in his book Clashing Over Commerce).

That shift in policy sent the average tariff rate on a downward path, from highs of 59.1 percent on tariffed goods and 19.8 percent on all imported goods during the Great Depression to an average of 4.7 percent on tariffed goods and 1.4 percent on all imported goods in 2017...

As Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, McKinley shepherded the Tariff Act of 1890 into law. At the time, the federal government was running a budget surplus of nearly 50 percent, and tariff revenues substantially outpaced government spending. The McKinley tariff was designed to fix that problem, moving sugar (which accounted for a large share of revenues) to the “duty free” list, providing direct subsidies to sugar producers (to replace the benefit of tariffs and increase spending), and raising tariffs on a variety of other imports.

The McKinley tariff and higher government spending brought a swift backlash, earning the Republican-controlled Congress the nickname of “Billion Dollar Congress,” and leading to Republican defeats in the 1890 midterm elections (McKinley himself lost his reelection). In 1892, while monetary and banking policies were larger issues, Democrats ran heavily against the protectionist tariffs and the “Billion Dollar Congress,” and won unified control of government.

Democrats did not get to make good on their promises to address protectionist tariffs immediately, because the nation fell into a deep recession (caused by monetary policies). In late 1893 and early 1894, Democrats took up the tariff issue, but as the bill worked its way through Congress, it strayed from its original goals: a House amendment added an income tax, Senate amendments added back many protectionist tariffs, and ultimately, President Cleveland allowed the law to take effect without his signature.

Dissatisfaction with the broader state of the economy, still in a monetary-policy-related downturn, led to a Republican sweep in the 1894 midterm elections and the election of Republican President McKinley in 1896. Just four months after convening, Republicans sent a new tariff bill, the Dingley Act of 1897, to McKinley, raising protective tariffs even higher than the Tariff Act of 1890.

Many at the time credited tariffs for the economic recovery that soon took shape. Likewise, Trump often credits these high tariffs with the industrial growth of the US during the period.

But as economist Doug Irwin explains, around the same time as the new tariffs were enacted, the global supply of gold began to increase, easing the monetary conditions responsible for the economic downturn and bringing about a recovery.

Further, many economic historians have cautioned that impressive growth in the late 1800s and early 1900s cannot be explained by high tariffs. Instead, labor force growth and capital accumulation—neither of which have strong links to tariffs—are responsible for America’s fast growth during this period. If anything, it is possible that the high protective tariffs of the late 19th century somewhat hindered America’s economic growth.

Ironically that period saw a massive increase in immigration, which fueled that labor force growth. Something that trump and his anti-immigrant allies are going to undermine the same time they'll push their tariffs plans. York and Irwin both point out how our gold reserves expanded - that Klondike Gold Rush by the by - back in a time when the gold standard established our currency's value. We won't have those resources today to balance out the economic chaos that trump's tariffs will unleash.

trump's agenda to replace our current income tax system - which would be a massive boon to the uber-rich - with tariffs would be a disaster all its own. Kimberly Clausing and Maurice Obstfeld at the Peterson Institute for International Economics - a nonprofit think tank - looks at the numbers on that:

To be sure, when Trump vents before friendly audiences, one has to take it with a large grain of salt. But a partial substitution of tariffs for income tax revenues is nearly inevitable under a Trump presidency. He has repeatedly proposed increased tariffs, including a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all trading partners as well as 60 percent or higher tariffs on goods from China. He has also called for extending the tax cuts enacted in 2017, which are due to expire next year, a step that could easily cost as much $5 trillion over ten years. And Trump has suggested further cuts, particularly on the corporate side...

Can tariffs replace the income tax?

Simply put, NO. Tariffs are levied on imported goods, which totaled $3.1 trillion in 2023. The income tax is levied on incomes, which exceed $20 trillion; the US government raises about $2 trillion in individual and corporate income taxes at present. It is literally impossible for tariffs to fully replace income taxes. Tariff rates would have to be implausibly high on such a small base of imports to replace the income tax, and as tax rates rose, the base itself would shrink as imports fall, making Trump’s $2 trillion goal unattainable.

A recent Peterson Institute policy brief calculated that revenues from Trump’s 10 percent/60 percent tariff proposals would total about $225 billion per year in current dollars. This figure is certainly an overestimate because it does not account for lower economic growth due to the inevitable economic shocks caused by retaliation against US exporters and the losses suffered by the import-dependent manufacturing sector. Exporters would also be hit by an appreciating dollar...

Another consideration that comes into play is that the United States already raises about $50 billion from tariffs on imports. That amount reduces the revenue potential of new tariffs relative to figure 1. In addition, a tariff as large as 50 percent would create very large distortions in Americans’ economic activity (moving resources away from sectors where the United States has a comparative advantage and toward sectors where it is less efficient), while increasing tax avoidance and evasion (including shopping abroad, smuggling, lobbying government officials for exemptions, etc.)...

trump is looking to replace an established - and deep - means of revenues for our federal government and installing a revenue source that's neither deep nor reliable. If we want to talk about "running government like a business," this is akin to price-hiking your goods or services to where you lose your customers who refuse to pay even if you're the only business in town.

Now you can see how trump kept driving his own casinos into bankruptcy.

If there's any good news about all this tariffs speculation is that for anything tariff increase on a large scale, trump could be stymied by the existing USMCA agreement as well as a Congress - even one that's Republican-controlled - that's not about to commit political suicide like this.

However, we exist in a new reality where the Supreme Court expanded presidential powers to where trump could get away with ANYthing without Congressional approval under the umbrella of "official acts." And given how he'd unilaterally forced tariffs during his first term, he's going to want to do that again, this time with more devastating results.

Thanks again, 75 million voters. You unleashed this economic chaos on us. I only hope the Tariff Leopards eat you first.

Personal Note: Appearing at the Sunshine State Book Festival in 2025

Just to let the 10 regular readers of this blog know, I plan on being at the upcoming Sunshine State Book Festival in Gainesville, FL the weekend of January 31st - February 1st this 2025.

 I'm promoting my humor story anthology Funny Locations, and using the opportunity to go visit my college stomping grounds again (GO GATORS) while I'm there.

The event itself is a bit far from the UF campus, but it should be easy to get to:

Best Western Gateway Grand
4200 NW 97th Blvd. Gainesville, Florida

(just off of I-75 in the northwest corner of the Gainesville area)

In the meantime, as the holidays approach, just a quick request to my peeps to hey BUY MY BOOKS please and thank you, they should make fine Saturnalia gifts...

Injustice For All

Update: Again, many thanks to Batocchio for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Sorry I'm not in a better mood. Please leave comments below, hopefully the revised Blogspot system is easier to navigate. I just want to hear from people. It's so lonely for me.

Ever since the election results, I've been dreading this moment. Special prosecutor Jack Smith - who had been pursuing two criminal cases against donald trump for both his involvement in the January 6th Insurrection AND the theft of thousands of classified documents - filed paperwork with the courts today to cancel those prosecutions now that trump will be legally protected with presidency. David A Graham at the Atlantic tries to cover the implications (paywalled):

Donald Trump will never face federal criminal charges for trying to corrupt the 2020 presidential election, the fundamental democratic procedure. Nor will he ever face consequences for brazenly removing highly sensitive documents from the White House, refusing to hand them back, and attempting to hide them from the government.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, representing the Justice Department, today filed to dismiss charges in the two federal cases he was overseeing against Trump. Smith effectively had no choice. Trump had promised to fire him and end the cases as soon as he took office on January 20. (The president-elect reportedly plans to fire not only Smith but also career attorneys who were assigned to his team.)

In both cases, these were crimes that only a president could commit: No one else could have attempted to remain in office by the same means, and few people could have made off with boxes full of these documents. And only a president-elect with nearly unlimited resources could have gotten away with them.

Trump pulled off this legal trick with a simple and effective strategy of running down the clock until being reelected president. Traditionally, defendants have had two ways to beat a rap. They could convince a judge or jury that they didn’t do the crime, or at least that there isn’t enough evidence to prove they did. Or they could look for a way to get sprung on a technicality. Faced with a choice between A and B, Trump chose option C: weaponize the procedural protections of the American justice system against itself.

The problem is not that these protections exist. They are a crucial part of ensuring fairness for all defendants. But just as he has done in other circumstances, Trump sniffed how the things that make the American system great can also be cynically exploited. If you have sufficiently deep pockets and very little shame, you can snow a case under procedural motions, appeals, and long shots, enough to slow the case to a crawl. And in Trump’s case, delay was a victory—not because he could put it off indefinitely, but because he will soon be president again, with the Department of Justice under his authority...

I decried trump's tactics, and I hated how the legal system seemed to go out of its way to play the game by his rules not theirs. And yet this is how broken our American Justice has become: 

But in Attorney General Merrick Garland, Trump drew the ideal foil. The man overseeing the two cases against Trump is obsessive about proceduralism. His view was that the best way to restore the justice system, and the Justice Department, after the first Trump presidency was to do everything precisely by the book, no matter how long it took. It took quite a while—Smith was not appointed until November 2022, two months after the paperwork coup began and three months after the FBI seized documents at Mar-a-Lago. By the time Smith brought charges, in summer 2023, the timeline was tight, either for verdicts soon enough to inform voters or to avoid dismissal if a Republican won the presidential election...

Most important, Garland’s attention to detail meant the system failed to do the basic work of holding accountable someone who had committed serious crimes in plain sight. And partly because of that, Trump will soon return to the White House with the power and intention to destroy all the independence and careful procedures that Garland took such pains to protect...

The lack of accountability for January 6 is an affront to the Constitution. But the lesson that Trump will take from charges being dropped, along with the immunity ruling, is that the system is not capable of holding him accountable for most rules that he violates. The affronts will continue.

With regards to the one criminal trial that did convict trump on 34 counts, even that is now facing turmoil as the prosecutors and judge try to figure out sentencing on someone who will be federally protected from the law. The civil trials that trump lost - the one involving tax fraud on his properties, and the ones involving his sexual assault and defamation on E. Jean Carroll - are likely to continue through the appellate process, but you can be damn sure trump will use every legal power the presidency can inflict on those rulings to weasel his way out of those matters.

I am angry at Garland - and at President Biden, who nominated Garland as a sign of professionalism and normalcy returning to the Justice Department - only as far as his inability to understand the seriousness and severity of everything trump represented. Dammit, man. trump was - still is - a clear and present danger to the United States.

I am more angry at a Republican Party that - confronted with multiple facts that trump was dangerous and criminal to boot - refused to hold trump accountable, and refused to regain any semblance of ethical responsibility towards the United States. They happily did something the Founders could never have imagined: They openly supported a convicted felon, tax fraud, and sex offender for the highest office in the land.

I am extremely angry at a Beltway media that repeatedly refused to remind the American public who and what trump really is. Not just the increasing signs of mental instability and the ongoing evidence of trump's sadism, sexism, and racism. They kept underplaying the facts that trump had been convicted of felonies, that he'd been exposed as a business fraud and gaslighter, that his contempt towards women drove him to acts of vulgarity. This is the same Beltway media that had fucking meltdowns over Hillary's emails, and they failed to point out how trump was the most corrupt person - in a field containing the likes of LBJ, Nixon, Harding, and Andrew Jackson - in presidential history.

But my deepest ire is for the 75 million or so fellow Americans who - with all the evidence that IS out there, with all the reporting that did happen that showed trump was a convicted felon and sex offender - still voted for a monster like him. There may have been a lot of low-information voters out there this cycle, and a number of them voted for trump without knowing - or comprehending - the facts that trump was a legal abomination. But enough of you knew. Enough of you knew he was a criminal and you voted for him anyway. Goddamn you.

trump is now the most dangerous person in America, because he's going to get granted executive powers - yet again - that he openly promises to abuse the minute he gets sworn into office. trump is going to twist the Department of Justice into his Department of Vengeance, attacking every person who exposed his criminal acts by turning them into criminals without evidence or rationale. Think of the disastrous Durham prosecutions that never proved trump's lies about the 2016 elections: Think of how worse it's going to be as trump pursues falsehoods and fantasies about 2020 being 'stolen' from him that four years of digging by his wingnut allies never confirmed. Think about all those people who were convicted for their roles in the January 6th Insurrection, that trump claims are 'heroes' and who'll get pardoned even after all those trials and juries proved how violent those insurrectionists are.

Think of how trump's entire existence - all the bankruptcies, all the acts of fraud he plead away - is proof that our legal system fails to hold everyone accountable. If you're poor, if you're a minority, if you're a woman, you won't find any justice with prosecutors or judges or cops who'll punish you even when you're innocent. If you're rich, if you're white, if you're male, you can buy and bully your way into favorable treatment and slaps on the wrist because you can afford the lawyers who play the game.

And if you're donald trump, you fucking get away with everything.

Goddamn us.