A Flock of Protests

This isn't just happening in Florida, but I figure I should start in my home state (via David Ingram with NBC News):

Florida’s state transportation office on Monday revoked the ability of local police to put license plate readers on state highways, as a nationwide backlash continued to gain steam against Flock Safety and other makers of surveillance cameras.

Will Watts, the chief operating officer of the Florida Department of Transportation, informed local law enforcement agencies in a one-page memo that the department was revoking all previously issued approvals for license plate readers (LPRs) in state “rights-of-way,” or the strip of land that’s next to or part of a state road.

Watts cited a “recent exponential increase” in deployments of law enforcement cameras, as well as “concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes” that he said merit immediate action “to preserve Floridians’ sovereignty and quality of life.”

If you've paid attention along the sides of the highways, you might notice these thin black poles on portable mounts with cameras atop them. Unlike the CCTV cameras you'd see at traffic intersections - or the street corners of urban communities - these are cheap, easy to place, and even easier to abuse by law enforcement bullies stalking their exes or other women that caught their eye. Ingram's report provides an example of "a Kentucky police officer was arrested after authorities said he used the Flock system more than 2,000 times to track his ex-girlfriend."

They're investigating cops in Chicago who abused the data for their personal use. A cop in Texas got fired for using Flock to track his ex-wife. A cop is charged in Louisville KY for using Flock to stalk a woman for months.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes is in full effect here, kids.

As Ingram notes, the use and abuse of this new technology - tied into AI, and reaching further into personal privacy data than any previous tech our law enforcement ever wielded - has caught the attention and anger of thousands of fellow Americans:

NBC News has identified 50 areas across the country where Flock cameras have been damaged, spray-painted, smashed or cut down in acts of vandalism since 2024, while some drivers have sued Flock and organized themselves into a proposed class action.

Tim Swarens over at USA Today delves more into the legal concerns:

Unlike old-fashioned surveillance cameras, information gleaned from images captured by Flock cameras – including time, date and place – is stored as searchable text in databases. Law enforcement agencies can then mine the data without a warrant. 

The American Civil Liberties Union says the cameras can even record the bumper stickers slapped on the back of your car. Think about the First Amendment implications of that uninvited interaction with government snoops.

Invasion of privacy concerns have ostensibly motivated vandals across the country to sabotage the cameras. And while I don’t condone breaking the law, I do understand the opposition to unwelcome government surveillance...

Proponents of the cameras say they help police capture dangerous fugitives, stop car thefts and reduce other crimes.

But there is a necessary tension between public safety and our constitutional rights, including the right to privacy. We restrict law enforcement agencies’ power for good reason... 

News stories have cropped up across the country about misuse of the cameras. In 2025, police in Lenexa, Kansas, were accused of using the city’s license plate readers to track the movements of a man who wrote a guest column for the Kansas City Star criticizing the police department...

In February, police in Sherwood, Arkansas pulled over a couple after a Flock camera erroneously identified their vehicle as stolen. The couple was held at gunpoint, with their infant in the vehicle, before officers realized their error...

As much as the technology is cutting edge, the AI used by these cameras is still raw - AI is meant to learn - and prone to mistakes/errors/outright fabrications. We're running the risk of cops reacting to the wrong crimes and towards innocent people. We've had the risk of these same cops abusing their authority to harass and bully others, but now with these cameras and AI they can behave even worse.

I don't condom damaging or destroying any Flock cameras you see out there. But if you ever come across one, take the time to slow down well enough that you can flip the bird at the SOBs as you drive by.

Where The Hell *Are* The Billions Already Wasted At the Pentagon, If They're Desperate to Pilfer Even More Money?

What the HELL is going on here? According to the Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, Hegseth's Department of Defense is about to raid the National Institutes for Health's piggy bank:

House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) has learned that officials at the Department of Defense (DoD) are working to divert billions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to supplement the Department’s budget.

Without notifying Congress or the American people, DoD has signed an interagency agreement that could give the Department access to billions of dollars that Congress provided to NIH for critical biomedical research. These funds were provided to support research to develop treatments or cures for infectious diseases such as influenza, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, Ebola, and other dangerous pathogens...

We as taxpayers have witnessed billions of dollars going to Defense every budget, we've had Secretary of Steak and Lobster Dinners Hegseth come begging for even more money this summer as ammo and troops got thrown into a costly destructive war on Iran. We've seen the end results of our front-line soldiers and sailors suffering with supply woes, bad food, and lack of support from a logistics system broken under Hegseth's misrule.

Something is rotten in the Pentagon, if they're having to raid other agencies for funds. What the hell happened to the billions we already gave the Defense Department, to where they're now out of money?

There's been calls for years to have a full audit done on the DoD. This is a major red flag warning us that audit is way overdue.

It's a Breakdown. Go Ahead And Give It To Me...

A good sign of how incompetent a Cabinet Secretary is doing at the job is the high number of resignations of key persons from that Department. Just yesterday, Secretary of Defense Idiocy Pete Hegseth got a vote of no confidence with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll jumping the figurative ship (while Navy crews are literally jumping).

A worse sign of how bad it's going within a department is when leaks get out to the media. That's often coming from underlings unable to resign but desperate to cleave an exit route for themselves before the ship sinks everybody. How else to explain the release of rather classified internal briefs to the Washington Post this weekend, detailing how most of the military commanders Hegseth hasn't fired yet are issuing "non-concurrances" in opposition to Hegseth's ongoing mismanagement of unwanted wars.

Mark Hertling over at The Bulwark provides some context:

The Post reported Sunday that several of America’s senior military commanders have warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that continuing the current pace and scale of operations against Iran risks weakening the military’s ability to respond to crises elsewhere. The warnings appeared in the highly classified Secretary of Defense Orders Book.

The most eye-catching part of the Post story was that several senior commanders registered “non-concurs” with continuing some deployments. That sounds dramatic because it is—not because non-concurs are unusual in this process, but because of what they tell us about the condition of the force after six months of war.

The Book is essentially an operational and strategic assessment of how America’s military forces are allocated around the world. The people who assemble it are the staff for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Many sections with different responsibilities contribute: Logisticians assess the ability to move and sustain forces, strategists consider the effect on global commitments and other contingency plans, and the services and combatant commands then assess what providing or losing a particular capability means to their overall missions. The operations directorate takes all this expertise into account and prepares the Book for the chairman, who then reviews it and gives it to the secretary of defense.

The Book doesn’t just concern itself with infantry divisions, fighter squadrons, and aircraft carriers. Modern military operations depend as much on intelligence platforms, air-defense units, military police, engineers, communications specialists, medical units, transportation companies, postal detachments, and even organizations responsible for showers and laundry. Those units aren’t glamorous, but commanders can’t fight without them. Every one of those capabilities must come from somewhere. That’s why the Book is ultimately about risk...

I saw this firsthand when I served on the Joint Staff as the J7, which at the time oversaw contingency planning. We were routinely asked to assess what satisfying one combatant commander’s request would do to another’s war plans. It didn’t matter if it was an armored division, an aircraft carrier, or a single aircraft: If someone wanted it, it usually meant someone else didn’t want to give it up.

When I was in the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went through these Books weekly during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, questioning units and even numbers of personnel being deployed. The discussions were often painful for the Joint Staff briefers. But his purpose was straightforward: understand the consequences before deciding...

If there's anything we've seen from trump and from his lackeys like Hegseth, those two have no understanding of anything. /headdesk

This isn’t just Pentagon competition among commanders who want more forces. The reported non-concurs are occurring after months of munitions expenditure, extended deployments, deferred maintenance, and the movement of scarce capabilities from around the world to the Middle East. The Book is doing precisely what it was designed to do: expose tradeoffs to the secretary before he makes another decision.

It is also why the leak itself is so serious.

The Book is highly classified because, taken together, its contents provide an X-ray of American military readiness. It tells senior leaders not only where forces are, but where commanders believe they are short, which capabilities are being stretched, what war plans are accepting additional risk, and where the United States might have difficulty responding to a future crisis. That’s invaluable information for America’s adversaries.

But for the Secretary of Defense, it should be something else: a warning. The Book exists to identify risks before they become vulnerabilities—and the secretary’s job is not merely to read those warnings, but to act on them.

Hegseth can't. And won't.

The Secretary of Defense Pandering can't act on the warnings because they go against the fantasy narrative his boss trump has spun: Not only about the war on Iran, but also the overall fantasy that the United States is great under his leadership. Anyone in TrumpWorld who ruins that narrative gets exiled to the 2:00 am infomercial slots on the Newsmax channel.

Hegseth won't act on the warnings because of his own rage and frustration dealing with a military chain of command he views as "woke" or unmanly. This is a guy who's highest military rank was a major in the National Guard, obsessing over a "Warrior" ethos that remains at odds with the armed forces' focus on professionalism. Half of what he's doing to the military right now is expressing that rage towards generals and admirals he now "outranks", clearing out anyone who doesn't buy into that Warrior Code - or doesn't fix his racist/sexist world-view - he's trying to infuse into the troops at the detriment of morale and discipline. 

Leaking this information - that the upper ranks of the US military are at odds with their civilian (inept) bosses - is a major red flag: There is chaos instead of organization in one of the most important departments of our federal government; and there is a good chance the lower ranks of our armed forces are going to mutiny in some form or another when - not if - Hegseth and trump push them too far.

The Crimes of the DeSantis Power Circle, Symbolic of Statewide Republican Corruption

If you want to know how corrupt Republicans are, not only look to their crimes but also look to how they cover up said crimes when they're in control of the investigation. Right here in Florida is a perfect example as a grand jury probe dug into political fundraising misdeeds by those in power (via Jim Vertuno with AP News, linked through PBS Newshour):

A Florida grand jury found that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration "misappropriated" $10 million in taxpayer money it diverted to a charity connected to his wife, but it declined to file criminal charges due to a lack of evidence indicating who specifically was responsible.

DeSantis on Thursday did not dispute the legitimacy of the secret grand jury report obtained and published online by CBS News Miami, but he insisted no laws were broken and said whoever leaked the sealed documents would face "consequences."

What consequences? The report already indicated nobody in a position to do anything about this is pressing criminal charges!

The Leon County grand jury completed its report in January on investigations into Hope Florida, the charity started in 2021 by Florida first lady Casey DeSantis. Despite the lack of charges, the report ignited a new round of criticism aimed at DeSantis and other top state Republicans over the charity receiving $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement intended to help poor children get health insurance.

Basically, DeSantis' own wife stole from sick kids. SHE STOLE. FROM SICK KIDS. The sociopathy is bottomless with these crooks.

Also note, the grand jury completed their work in January but it's only NOW - after the August primaries were voted on - that the report leaked.

The Hope Florida charity is supposed to help financially struggling families connect with churches and aid groups to help keep them off publicly-financed assistance programs. The $10 million was instead moved to political action committees that used the money to oppose a 2024 statewide ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana for adults in the state...

The grand jury said no one would take responsibility for sending the money to the charity or had any memory of who did.

"We recognize that this would be an impediment to criminal prosecution," the report noted. "While we can't prove who is responsible, we can plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes and we would like to see changes made to prevent this from happening again."

The grand jury report concluded that James Uthmeier, who was DeSantis' chief of staff at the time, "was in a position of authority over those involved in settling," and that his Keep Florida Clean PAC was the prime recipient of the $10 million. The grand jury said then-state Attorney General Ashley Moody's office knew of the plans to divert the money. She was later appointed by DeSantis to the U.S. Senate...

Take note of all the players involved in both the crime and the cover-up, how they're all interconnected and relying on each other to stay in political power. Uthmeier and Moody both owe DeSantis their offices, and they have personal incentives to make sure they're never held accountable for any role they had in this.

The articles covering this story don't delve too much into how a grand jury investigation into this even started back in October 2025. That it was a fellow state Republican in the state House questioning the fundraising diversions seems a bit surprising unless you recognize it as an intraparty power play: Back then, Casey DeSantis was campaigning to run for governor to follow in her husband's footsteps, a blatant act of nepotism that arguably angered other Republicans ambitious for that office. The polls favored her well into February 2026, but the grand jury created enough scandal to keep her from running.

When she didn't show up on the ballot, you'll notice the other state-level Republicans didn't care to hold anybody accountable for it, even though clearly crimes took place. Their inaction reeks just as much as the DeSantis' power grabs and theft.

And this is what you get when one party runs everything at the state level for 28-plus years. The Republicans - driven more and more by their wingnut extremists - have been in control of Florida since 1998, packing the state courts with conservative judges happy to bend the laws to their favor, shredding every voter-backed referendums that supported funding schools and keeping ecosystems safe, denying local communities any sovereignty, and mocking any accountability to the voters who keep putting the same crooks back into office.

All I want - all I've been praying for the last two decades - is for my fellow Floridians to wake up to the reality that the state-level Republicans - as much as the national party - are a bunch of honest-to-God crooks. The Republican Party from trump on down to DeSantis and to every state legislator and county official are part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy to take taxpayer money for their own pockets and make most of us - even their own voters - suffer to their cruelty.

Please. I am begging every Florida voter. You want an end to criminal corruption in politics? You're going to have to recognize it's all coming from the Republicans in charge at Tallahassee, and you are going to have to vote every goddamn Republican crook out of office. Please.

When Wingnut Hypocrisy Is On-Brand

I don't think I've posted much about this guy here, and it's been some time since I shared any schadenfreude, so here's a report making the rounds of one of the extremist anti-immigrant wingnuts on the Far Right getting hit with his own cruelty (via Nicole Acevedo with NBC News):

Milo Yiannopoulos, a self-described libertarian and professional internet troll who became known for his controversial right-wing political views, is in ICE custody.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News that ICE arrested Yiannopoulos, a United Kingdom national, on Thursday at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana.

You might think a guy well aware of his own brand - making money off of hatred and bashing Muslims, women, anyone not White And Male - would discreetly make sure his own paperwork and legal status would be secure so he wouldn't get caught in the same dragnet he's cheering on, but ignorance about their own hypocrisy is actually part of the wingnut brand so...

The DHS spokesperson said Yiannopoulos legally entered the U.S. on May 14, 2019, through New York City, but then “chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.”

Yiannopoulos was taken into ICE custody Thursday after “failing to show up for his immigration hearing” on July 22, prompting an immigration judge to issue a final order of removal against him, according to the spokesperson. “He will remain in ICE custody pending removal,” the spokesperson added.

Not that showing up for his hearing back in July would have saved him: ICE thugs are happily arresting legal migrants at the hearings anyway.

I can't speak for Milo, but I'm willing to bet he operated on the belief that as a high-profile Far Right Influencer, he was untouchable. Wilhoit's Law - the conservative group-think that "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect" - on full display: Milo thought himself part of the In-Group that the law would protect while attacking Latino and other dark-skinned people who make up the Out-Groups.

He must not have gotten the memo that Stephen Miller - a higher-ranking anti-immigrant hater - wants his quota of 20 million migrants deported, which means ICE and DHS are also rounding up anyone in the Eurotrash ethnicity just so they can claim to the media "oh hey, we're not THAT racist!"

It's likely that someone in trump's administration will intervene at some point, give Yiannopoulos some face-saving act of mercy to let him out and flee to a friendlier European nation that won't bar him from entering. Going through the whole deportation process - the humiliation, the chains, the black site airflights to nations where the migrants don't even belong in order to prevent them from re-adjusting to strange locales - could expose the Far Right's cruelty to their own audiences if Milo gets to a smartphone and reaches his core followers to complain. Update: Never mind all that, the news is already reporting that Yiannopoulos was deported back to the United Kingdom today. Wow. He's really lost his friends in high places.

In the meantime, enjoy the "Leopards Eating People's Faces" moment for what it is.

The Sound and Fury of trump's Trade Wars, Signifying Nothing

It's not so much that trump decided to go back to yet another trade war with Canada this past week. We have to realize by now trump will never give up his belief that tariffs work the way he thinks (nor the belief that trade wars are easy to win). What's unsettling is how much of an asshole trump is being about it (via Adam Gabbatt at The Guardian):

...But not Donald Trump, who in a “hold my beer” moment this week demonstrated that he, at least, finds it easy to resent Canadians. The US president called the country “difficult and unreasonable”, and in a particularly hysterical moment, threatened to rename a lake, after trade talks collapsed...

Gabbatt is referring to trump's childish idea to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America" much in the same way he tried to relabel the Gulf of Mexico. As though something as useless as a lake's map designation would trigger Canadians into tearful begging for mercy.

Instead, Trump and his team demonstrated the art of collapsing the deal, as trade talks fell apart due to what Canada said were unreasonable, last-minute demands from the US side.

It meant that the US tariffs duly came in on Saturday, applied to various Canadian exports including hockey sticks and tongue depressors, but if Trump expected Canada to bow to his demands – the president was seeking more favorable terms on things like steel and aluminum – he was disappointed.

The last-minute demands trump insisted upon were a) ending the French language rights of Quebec, and b) forcing Canada into an exclusive trade deal with the U.S., insisting that Canada cannot start their own trade deals with other nations: Essentially turning Canada into a vassal state suffering from whatever economic whims fancied trump on any given day. No rational leader of another nation would have voluntarily accepted such bad-faith changes.

Anyone with any understanding of Canadian history and culture will tell you pissing off Quebecois is a bad idea - it took decades for the English-speaking Canadians to get them pacified with Kraft dinners - and anyone with any skill at diplomacy will tell you insisting on gutting another nation's sovereign powers would lead to (trade) war.

Add onto this trump's constant mocking of Canada as a 'terrible neighbor' and 'one of the worst nations to deal with,' along with trump's insistence on turning all of Canada into the 51st state - something that terrifies and angers Canadians who like their own nation the way it is eh - and you have a guy who is going out of his way to be a clueless, raging bully.

But why? What does trump - and his Republican buddies - gain out of aggravating people like this? The likelihood of compelling Canada - or any other nation - into annexation is impossible, not without force that trump can't afford to use at the moment. Making demands that violate Canada's own national identity would drive that nation to push back and refuse all compromise, ensuring no deals can get done.

It could be that trump is playing a longer game here, except we've seen over the decades trump's inability to think past the second - or even first - step. Other than wanting Canada's economy to collapse under the burdens of a trade war - which may not happen fast enough to satisfy trump - there's no other reason behind this madness.

The only remaining rationale is an irrational one. What we're seeing is trump in full imperial presidency mode: Fully convinced he can do whatever he wants on foreign policy and trade, trump would rather bully and harass his opponents into giving him more of what he wants without giving up anything in return. This is trump the mob boss: reveling in whatever cruelty he can inflict on others before they give in and surrender.

Hence the constant beratements, the constant mockery. Hence the annoying insistence on the whole '51st State' routine. trump wants to keep bullying what he sees as a weaker, smaller nation just waiting for his victim to punch back; so he can claim 'oh I'M the victim here' to anyone who'll believe him - which right now is the Beltway Media - and justify any further escalation (which may include massing troops at the border to trigger an even bigger international reaction out of the UK Commonwealth and NATO).

If there's any justice in the world, it's that trump's tariff war backfires on him through his own idiocy, to where the loss of goods and services we'd normally be getting from Canada triggers even worsening inflation, shortages, possible collapse of our bonds market, and nationwide panic (we're already facing the likelihood of another run on toilet paper).

All of trump's bullying isn't going to work if the target isn't going to roll over and play dead. And trump still doesn't understand how this isn't going to end the way he wants.

Can't Trust the Food Under trump and RFK Jr

Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for sharing this blog on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Just remember to get out the vote this midterms for every Democratic candidate, and for the love of GOD overcook that mystery meat trump is dumping on our markets!

I honestly cannot recall the last time we have SO MANY different food recalls and warnings at the same time. Edith Olmstead over at the New Republic is tracking the atrocities:

In the last week alone, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recalled twelve different products—a rate four times higher than the same week a year ago.  

In the past week, the FDA has discovered salmonella in granola, salad dressing, jalapenos, and animal food; glass in fruit popsicles; and metal in sourdough—just to name a few. 

Just yesterday they upgraded a recall on the frozen blueberries sold in my local Publix stores: it had been just a handful of places back in July but now they're worried the E Coli contamination spread to eight other states. Back to Olmstead:

Between August 14 and 20, 2025, the FDA recalled only three products. In the same week in 2024, the FDA recalled only two, according to the FDA website. 

It’s not immediately clear whether the increase in recalls can be attributed to increased enforcement or more hazardous food—but the rapid recalls really make you wonder, is this what making America healthy again looks like? 

This week of many public health announcements follows a national cyclospora outbreak that has sickened more than 13,000 people and caused two deaths. Last week, the FDA finally dispatched investigators to the facilities linked to the outbreak—nearly a month after linking the parasite to Taylor Farms. Before any of this, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly cut back on parasite monitoring.

Speculate all you want, but the evidence is right there: the federal government under RFK Jr's oversight is slow to respond, and understaffed unto uselessness.

This is the end result of various factors, all of them based on conservative Far Right dogma: The idea that deregulation saves money and reduces bureaucratic demands; the need to gut federal agency staffing to allow businesses - especially large corporations - to do whatever they want; and the libertarian-leaning belief in "enlightened self-interest" that would "encourage" those businesses to self-regulate so that they don't poison people and lose customer bases.

I once got into an online argument with a libertarian over a joke I posted on Twitter (that was another country, and besides the site is dead), which went "three people walked into a libertarian bar and died from toxic bacteria in the drinks. /rimshot" (I was on my pro-bear anti-libertarian rampage at the time) The guy took offense to that, arguing fervently that "enlightened self-interest" of keeping repeat customers would ensure the bar owner would serve only safe drinks. I pointed out the reality that without outside influences - either regulations enforced by law, or a local competitive bar serving their own drinks - a toxic owner will keep serving toxic drinks because a) he will make his profits however he can which means cutting corners and serving high-risk product, and b) because his customers will have nowhere else to go. 

(You may notice - as part of the big deregulatory push by Republicans since the Reagan years - a lot of the businesses getting caught with poisoned foods are part of Big Agriculture, which is turning into one monolithic cartel of a handful of corporations in dire need of anti-trust breakups. I digress.)

Well, here we are witnessing as a nation the sudden and dangerous increase of toxic poisoned food products, within two years of a more dangerous and toxic trump presidency that has gutted regulatory agencies - thanks, Elon and Russell Vought! - and allowed an anti-science buffoon like RFK Jr. to wreak havoc across our nation's collective well-being. There IS no "enlightened self-interest": There is only profit margins, and short-sighted self-interest also known as greed.

This IS what deregulation - wide-ranging, reckless, and absolute - looks like, America. And this is the end result, as Josh Johnson highlights:

Alas, the way things are going we are going to need a recall on the Choco Tacos...

trump and Republicans, Selling Us Out To the Crooks Every Day

Put a corrupt businessman in power, expect the only ones to benefit from that to be the other corrupt bastards ripping us off (via David Frum at the Atlantic): 

So it is with the news that the Department of the Treasury has ended ownership-reporting requirements for U.S. businesses and purged the existing database of ownership information. This seemingly technical-sounding change is a huge gift to financial crooks, who can now store and launder dark money in U.S. financial institutions with less risk of detection. But the gift comes at the direct expense of banks, mutual funds, insurance companies, and other financial institutions, which now have to shoulder the burden of verifying customer data themselves.

The Treasury advertises the measure as deregulatory, lifting burdensome red tape from business owners. But the relief to honest business owners is tiny. The added burden on the financial sector is huge. The real winners here are shady business owners. In 2021, Capital One, the Trump Organization’s then-bank, closed more than 300 of the Trump Organization’s accounts on suspicion that they violated anti-money-laundering rules. The action just taken by the Treasury may best be understood as payback for those who tried to enforce the law against Donald Trump.

After the 9/11 terror attacks, Congress took action to prevent terrorists and other criminals from using the U.S. financial system to move money around undetected. Congress enacted laws requiring U.S. financial institutions to “know your customer.” If someone tried to open an account for a shell company, perhaps owned by another shell company, the financial institution had to pierce the layers of concealment to know the human beneficial owners of the account...

Financial institutions have clamored for years for some relief from the tangled mess of reporting imposed on them. In 2020, Congress attached a new Corporate Transparency Act to the 2021 Pentagon budget, which imposed an obligation on most businesses operating inside the United States to report their ownership directly to the government. The Corporate Transparency Act authorized the Treasury to establish a database of this information. At first, the database would be accessible only to law enforcement, but the plan was to open the database to financial institutions too. If a financial institution sensed something amiss, the federal database would assist its investigation. The goal was less to exclude criminals from the banking system than to use “the banks to track the money and find the criminals,” Aaron Klein, an expert in banking regulation at the Brookings Institution, explained to me.

By destroying the database, the Trump administration has removed that help from financial institutions and foreclosed an essential avenue for tracking crooks.

Despite the Treasury’s claims that this purported deregulation of financial information “is a victory for common sense and American small businesses,” in the words of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the change provides scarcely any benefit at all to honest businesses. They still have to report the relevant names, addresses, dates of birth, and government-ID numbers every time they transact with a financial institution. That burden remains the law. They have been relieved only of the slight additional chore of filing the same information with the federal government—a chore that lowered their costs of doing business. Those costs are now destined to rise...

This isn't as much about costs or burdens as it is a loss of accountability, the lost of faith in institutions to do honest business with the vast majority of us who aren't crooks.

This isn't capitalism, at least not the way it evolved in the 20th Century with regulatory guidelines to keep our global economy from crashing every 20 years. This sure isn't socialism, not as "government control of the means of production" as much as trump is forcing businesses to kick him a piece of their action like a mob boss.

This is a rebirth of the economic conditions Mercantilism that created the corrupt East India Company: a small circle of political and business elites raging across the landscape using monopoly power and brute force to vacuum up every cent they can. It's the Five Families, the shakedown artists, the identity thieves who keep stealing our parents' and grandparents' debit card numbers.

Goddamn them. Goddamn the entire Republican Party for defending their only constant constituents: thieves and greedheads. Be honest to yourselves, voters: The modern Republicans have betrayed your trust with their economic malaise, destruction of communities, and desire to sell every inch of America to twisted techbros eager to consume our resources and privacy. 

We need to do better, America. We need to STOP voting for a Republican Party of the crooks, by the crooks, and for the crooks.

Looking for the Small Victories In a By-Election Gone Wrong

Regarding the by-election in the United Kingdom between Nigel "How Much Is 5 Million In British Money" Farage and Count Binface that happened this week...

Sigh. GODDAMMIT CLACTON VOTERS, YOU HAD ONE JOB (via Alexandra Topping with The Guardian (UK)).

Dawn had long broken in the Essex town of Clacton-on-Sea when the results for the byelection came in. After a gruelling count, an atmosphere of deep exhaustion had settled over the room. Even the man with a dustbin on his head looked weary.

As it was declared that Nigel Farage had won, as expected, there was no cheering in the room, which had been boycotted by the Reform UK leader and his supporters; instead there was only an overwhelming sense of futility.

Farage forced the byelection at the start of July in an attempt take control of a narrative tide that had turned against him. After the Guardian revealed he had received a £5m personal gift from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto billionaire, in April 2024, he had been dogged by questions about his financial backing. Other revelations followed and questions mounted...

And while the people of Clacton did back Farage again, it was no overwhelming victory. He won 22,239 votes, 63.34% of the vote. Convincing, yes, but significantly short of the 72% won by David Davis in 2008 when he resigned his seat and stood again as a protest over the issue of civil liberties.

With no other mainstream options, the parody candidate Count Binface, was Farage’s nearest competitor, winning 9,455 votes, or one in four of the votes cast. In his “victory speech” posted on X, he noted that this was a 10,000% increase on the 95 votes he managed against Andy Burnham in the Makerfield byelection. “A new dawn has broken, has it not?” he wrote, echoing Tony Blair’s 1997 victory speech. “Literally, because it’s past 6:30 in the morning here in Clacton-on-Sea.”

If there's any good news, it's in the "At least Farage suffered" category. A better measurement of how poorly Farage did this by-election is to look at the results of the more formal election that happened in 2024: In that election Farage secured 21,225 votes, which means he barely garnered a thousand more voters (22,239) who showed up this time around. It's a meager increase in a field where the only legitimate electoral threat was the court jester wearing the trash can. 

The overall vote count in 2024 was 45,958 people showing up, a better turnout than what showed for 2026 with 35,111. Farage did not prove himself a greater draw nor a good incumbent: Indeed, a large chunk of voters refused to show up for what was basically a circus. Without the major parties - Labour, Tories - and the viable third parties like Lib Dems and Greens to give Farage any targets, all he had going for him was a bland, racist campaign against "The Establishment" which exposed the reality that in this by-election he was the Establishment candidate.

The by-election also didn't save Farage from the fate he was facing when he resigned and forced this whole farce. He's still under investigation for his alleged financial misdeeds (from Rowena Mason and Peter Walker, also The Guardian (UK)):

Nigel Farage’s attempt to draw the sting from inquiries into his financial affairs appeared to have backfired on Friday as the standards watchdog reopened its investigation and MPs from all sides condemned the needless byelection.

The Reform UK leader declared victory in the Clacton vote as he was returned with an increased majority and gained more votes than in 2024, saying he had “stuck two fingers up at the entire political establishment”.

However, parliament’s standards commissioner immediately reopened an investigation into whether he should have declared a series of gifts provided to him shortly before the last general election.

These include a £5m personal gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, first revealed by the Guardian, and further financial support from his friend and convicted fraudster George Cottrell.

I'm not a political expert on how elections work in the UK, but I doubt they are going to let Farage resign again and force another by-election so soon. From what I've read, the investigation can lead to his suspension from Parliament (not outright removal or criminal arrest) and if it's longer than 10 days it would trigger a recall petition and if successful another by-election. However, in this scenario he won't control the by-election, he'll be publicly exposed for his sins, and the major parties will jump in with better odds - probably for the Tories - to defeat him then.

It might depend on how severe the investigations against Farage would go, if it's bad enough for the legal system to charge him criminally (given Farage's arrogance and knee-jerk reactions to the matter, he's hiding something worse). He could try to make himself a political martyr and run again for the seat in a borough that's "safe" for him, but Farage has made so many political enemies across the landscape that he'll likely lose.

In sadder news, the world could have had an elected trash bin in the British Parliament. Millions are mourning the lost opportunity. /weeps

The Coward of Mar-A-Lago

Apparently, on an overseas trip this past July to Turkey to meet with regional allies over the chaos and destruction of his war on Iran, trump got caught in a rather embarrassing security dilemma (via Marina Dunbar at the Guardian):

Donald Trump switched aircraft before departing Turkey earlier this month after US officials determined there was a credible threat from Iranian proxy forces targeting him and Air Force One, according to a new report from the New York Times.

The threat surfaced while the US president was attending the NATO summit. He had arrived in Ankara onboard the new Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, an aircraft that Trump acknowledged does not have the same advanced defensive systems as the older Air Force One.

According to the anonymous sources who spoke to the Times, after US officials detected the threat, the Secret Service recommended that Trump change aircraft before leaving the country. He later announced he would depart on the older Air Force One instead.

The embarrassment originally involved the uselessness of trump's gift grift airplane being unfit for security purposes.

Over the past weekend however, more news reports got out about how trump made the move from his gaudy airplane to the older practical one: By hiding like a coward (via Katherine Faulders with ABC News):

President Donald Trump reportedly underwent an elaborate plan to hide his flight from Turkey to the United Kingdom last month using a catering food truck and a military aircraft, according to the Washington Post, amid threats against him from Iran.

The secret mission, according to the Post, was carried out without the knowledge of the traveling press and even some White House officials aboard the decoy flight, all while the White House was saying Trump was aboard the old Air Force One jet...

The president was seen boarding the aircraft on July 8, but according to the Post, after boarding, Trump was transferred to a catering cart typically used to load food and beverages...

On the flight that was believed to be carrying Trump, reporters on board were told that the windows needed to be closed the whole flight and that it was a mandate from the Secret Service. Air Force One, despite the president not being on board, according to the Post, had its transponder turned off.

So not only did trump not fly on the backup AFOne, he left the entire press pool and most of his aides to fly on it as decoys to risk getting shot down. According to reports, trump brought with him Natalie Harp, Dan Scavino, Walt Nauta, and Defense Dumbass Secretary Pete Hegseth. Notable losers officials stuck on the target plane were Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, so they have to be thrilled at the realization of how much trump values their meager existence.

This is trump in his true form: Always the blustering bully who declares himself the bravest man alive and immediately hiding from the first whiff of danger.

The details of this latest incident hit social media like a firestorm, churning out mocking images of trump cowering under a serving cart or hiding under frozen chicken dinners. Comrade Misfit over at her blog rounded up a few cartoons and AI-spawned photos, so I direct you to visit her place and leave comments and suggestions for more mocking tidbits aimed at trump.

This is from Mike Luckovich

Ashlie D. Stevens at Salon is unforgiving:

Perhaps it is because I’ve been nursing a slight and recent obsession with zany detective movies of the 1960s... but when I first heard that President Donald Trump had reportedly escaped Turkey in an “airport catering cart,” the scene arrived in my mind already blocked and costumed: a white-tableclothed trolley, steered by a nervous waiter in a bow tie, perhaps topped with a silver cloche. Beneath the linens, taking care that his shoes did not give him away, Trump crouched while he was wheeled past a succession of unfriendly eyes, their owners somehow oblivious to the president concealed at knee height...

It is worth considering why this particular image struck such a chord. In another context, a president being quietly transferred between aircraft in a service vehicle might register as little more than a piece of security choreography — unusual, perhaps, but hardly ready-made for farce. Trump in a catering truck was different. For years, he has made food part of his political stagecraft: something to display, serve, pose beside and use as shorthand for abundance, familiarity and a particular vision of American life. 

The exquisite comic reversal of the Turkey episode was that, this time, he was no longer directing the tableau. He had been swallowed by the scenery...

There is, of course, nothing inherently funny about a catering truck, much less about the security concerns that reportedly put Trump inside one. But political imagery is not entirely under the politician’s control. Spend enough years standing behind pyramids of hamburgers, posing at fry stations and inserting yourself into the iconography of American restaurant chains, and eventually the props begin to accrue meanings of their own...

Which may explain why, when news broke that Trump had been spirited between planes in a catering truck, the internet required almost no time to dress the scene. The hamburgers were already there. So were Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders and the Burger King. Trump has spent years directing the food theater. The catering truck was funny because, for once, he disappeared backstage.

Tom Nichols at the Atlantic is taking the news more serious:

Meanwhile, military officers, enlisted staff, and several American civilians were left on a plane that was deemed too dangerous for the president. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, according to reports, was waiting for Trump on the C-32A, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent were on the original 747, and they were aware that Trump was on the other, secret plane. Several White House aides were reportedly on the decoy flight, including Stephen Miller, Steven Cheung, and others. The pool report from the 747, however, says that there were “no visitors to the press cabin” during the flight from Turkey to the United Kingdom.

The commander in chief is the most important person on any American aircraft, and his safety must take precedence over all other concerns or interests. If the Secret Service wanted Trump spirited out of Turkey for his security, then no one should second-guess that decision. But now that we know that Trump was getting shuttled around a Turkish airport in a food-supply crate with three of his courtiers, we also know more about this White House—and about the war in Iran.

One immediate question: If the situation was that dangerous, why send up the first 747 at all—and with two men fairly senior in the line of presidential succession aboard? Perhaps the threat wasn’t quite so dire, or its parameters were not well-enough defined, and the Secret Service acted out of a superabundance of caution. Or perhaps the president thinks it’s acceptable to send up an airplane full of innocent Americans as a decoy to draw fire so that he can evade enemy action.

This is where trump cannot shake the coward label, ever.

The way the Great Food-Truck Escapade unfolded—including who Trump chose to take with him—also reveals much about the president’s priorities. And why didn’t Trump take the press into his confidence, even if he couldn’t take them all on the safer plane? Granted, the president seems to resent most of the media, so maybe he just didn’t care about their fate, but what about his staff? Not only was it morally appalling to keep so many people in the dark about the threat; it was politically inept, on two levels.

First, imagine if something had actually happened to the decoy. Trump would later end up either having to lie or having to explain that he’d known that such a disaster was possible, and that he’d sent Air Force personnel and several American civilians—possibly including two Cabinet secretaries—to their death to cover his own escape.

And second, Trump missed a major opportunity. Had he brought a few reporters with him, they could have told the story of a clever evasion. The 747, meanwhile, could have been temporarily held and its passengers delayed until Trump emerged in Britain, when the Iranians would find out they’d been had.

That’s not how this White House works. Trump and his people operated under the kind of paranoia and callous disregard for military and civilian lives that have characterized the president’s time in office. The White House might argue that it cannot trust the media, but John Kirby, the retired rear admiral who served as a spokesperson in two administrations, noted yesterday on MS NOW that he often took the press into his confidence on similar classified matters and was never, in his word, “burned” by the decision to keep the American people informed.

The simplest explanation is that trump didn't care what happened to everyone else - save for the inner circle he needs to sustain his delusions and his cruelty - and was more intent on saving his own skin over any other practical matter.

As a result, the image of trump hiding - cowering, shivering under a tablecloth - should haunt him and his lackeys for the rest of their days.

Ever See the Caine Mutiny? We're Going to Learn How Hegseth And His Buddies Are Worse Than Queeg

An update on how our Naval force in the Persian Gulf fighting Iran is holding up since last taking note back in April:

It's getting worse. (via Nicholas Slayton at Task and Purpose):

Sailors and Marines aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are dealing with food shortages, moldy showers and poor morale, according to military family members concerned for their well-being. It’s the second time this year that an aircraft carrier on an extended deployment has seen poor conditions.

The poor situation on the Lincoln was reported this week by MS Now, citing conversations with a dozen family members of sailors and Marines on the ship, as well as recordings of meetings between family and Navy leadership. According to them, the crew onboard the aircraft carrier is worn out from the length of time at sea and long shifts as the carrier continues to take part in the war with Iran. Meanwhile, they are dealing with food shortages, long lines for meals, broken toilets and hygiene issues.

Roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines have been serving at sea aboard the Lincoln for nine months. The carrier spent 208 continuous days at sea, more than any other carrier in the modern era...

A lot of this is due to the extended deployment: My understanding from being in a Navy family is that these deployments should last six months, and the Lincoln has gone past that at nine months and counting. According to the report, the carrier has only been back to port in June, and obviously not long enough to undergo repairs and resupply.

Family members also expressed concern over how those conditions and operational pace could affect performance and lead to accidents on the ship. According to one of the military family members MS Now talked to, a Navy veteran himself, holes have been spotted on the carrier’s flight deck from wear.

In a statement to MS Now, a 5th Fleet spokesperson denied reports of holes on the flight deck and said that the Lincoln “remains fully capable of meeting all mission tasking...”

The Lincoln is the second carrier in recent months to suffer issues affecting sailors’ quality of life. The USS Gerald R. Ford sailed to the Middle East from the Caribbean, as part of a record-setting deployment that took it from participating in the January attack on Venezuela to Operation Epic Fury. During that deployment, the ship’s toilets kept failing, with sewage often overflowing and spilling onto the floor. During its time in the 5th Fleet area of operations, a fire broke out in the laundry room, causing enough damage that the Ford went to port for repairs.

This week, families of the sailors and Marines on the Lincoln met with Navy officials, including the acting secretary. MS Now, citing accounts of an in-person meeting and audio and video recordings of a virtual meeting, said that military families confronted Navy leadership over the matter Thursday night. During that meeting, per the recording, Navy leaders acknowledged issues with the ship’s toilets and said they are working to address shower concerns. They also admitted to a backlog of supplies of food and mail, saying that it was difficult to get supplies from Bahrain to the ship, due to the war.

This is where the fault is with the chain of command: The breakdown of basic logistics - our ability to get supplies to anywhere in the world as fast as possible - is all on a trumpian regime overseen by Secretary of Defense War Dumbass Hegseth that's more focused on gutting our armed forces leadership than on getting the job done.

What's striking now is how the report flags the phrase "low morale" in a way I honestly haven't seen since the unwelcome failures of Bush the Lesser's Iraq campaign as part of the post-9/11 response. By 2006, our occupation of Iraq had turned into a quagmire with glaring torture/human rights abuses and an ill-advised "stop-loss" deployment measure - due to the fact the U.S. went in with not enough troops in the first place - that kept too many frazzled troops on the front lines for years instead of months. 

trump and Hegseth are making similar mistakes, augmented by their mutual failure to take war seriously enough to prepare better. trump can't comprehend how things work period, and Hegseth is too obsessed with a toxic world-view of manly "warrior" conduct to realize true military leadership requires patience, long-term thinking, an eye on detail, and genuinely making sure the lower ranks are supplied, trained, and treated better than mere cannon fodder.

What our government is telling our sailors and marines in the field of combat is that they're not important enough to get proper food or work in safe conditions to ensure their jobs get done. They're getting taught that they don't matter except to "obey" and "kill" on command.

It's the kind of thinking that destroys any respect our troops could have for their officers and government officials, that in turn creates a breakdown in command.

We're running the risk of turning the Iranian quagmire into something worse: An American remake of the British Navy's worst mutinies - I'm thinking Spithead and Nore, but there's been others - at a time our nation can't afford this kind of breakdown.

Knowing trump - and understanding the foolishness of Hegseth - they are going to double down on the beatings until the key to the storage locker is found and the strawberries thieves punished.

This is not going to end well.

Update 8/13: oh ye gods, the morale is so bad on the Lincoln that crews are literally jumping ship (via Natalie Oliverio with Military Times):

Annabelle Loma has spoken with her husband only a few times since he attempted to jump overboard from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln during his current deployment.

Communication has been difficult to come by, and he is now on medical hold.

Loma, who lives in San Diego, said her husband had been repeatedly overextended before he tried to jump from the carrier.

“He’s scared,” Loma said. “He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out, his 13-year career is ruined, just like that. That’s not fair, that’s not right. That’s not what he should be worrying about right now...”

Separately, Stars and Stripes reported Tuesday that sailors described an incident in which watchstanders stopped a crew member from jumping overboard. Stripes reported that the crew was informed about the incident through a shipwide announcement...

The Navy did not provide a precise number of sailors who have attempted to go overboard or engaged in self-harm aboard Lincoln during the current deployment.

There's roughly 5,000 people on board a carrier that size. If you consider how one in five have serious depression/anxiety issues and how this crew is under serious stress, we might be talking about 1,000 people dealing with a lot of serious shit, especially as conditions on-board deteriorate. This is why you don't force extended service on people expecting just six months a rotation, especially in a war zone.

In Florida, the Exemption Amendment Will Get Too Costly

When the Florida Republicans have lost Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, you know DeSantis and his lackeys really f-cked up (via Bay News 9 Spectrum staff):

Polk county Sheriff Grady Judd is urging voters to reject Amendment 3.

He came out against the measure Tuesday during a news conference.

Judd argued that the Florida House made significant changes to the proposal Gov. Ron DeSantis initially made. He says the legislature then passed the measure without doing a proper financial analysis of the effect it would have.

"It's going to affect response times. It does not protect law enforcement, fire emergency services as earlier editions of it supposedly did," Judd said. "It doesn't provide for money to fix roads adequately, to clean stormwater adequately. It doesn't do any of that. It says what you can fund. It doesn't talk about libraries or parks. It's a train wreck."

Judd also suggested that for smaller counties, Amendment 3 could eliminate nearly half of their taxes, saying he would recommend voters reject the measure and instead called on lawmakers to revisit property tax reform that is "reasonable and responsible."

Judd - well-known among Floridians for hogging the spotlight whenever possible - normally is a staunch conservative figure in local politics... and yet here he is talking about paying for county/city services and defending the need for taxes like a New Deal liberal.

To provide some background: Florida is one of those states that does not have its own income tax to build revenues. The state relies on a statewide sales tax (at 6 percent) and separate corporate tax (at 5 percent, boooooooo hiss, they pay a lesser rate than us residents boooooooo), and then for the counties (and cities) a property tax that covers the local needs.

Thing is, at the state level - controlled by hardcore anti-tax Republicans since the late 1990s - they can interfere with property taxes by creating and expanding homestead exemptions. If you own one residence and call it home, you get a base $50,000 exemption: Say I own a house or condo worth $500,000, I will only be on the hook with the county/city for $450,000 when they apply millage rates to various expenditures like roads, water/sewage, trash pickup, libraries, fire rescue, law enforcement, etc. It's a way of reducing my tax burden as a resident.

Over the decades, the Florida GOP has pushed very specific exemptions - for veterans, widows of veterans, select classes of persons - through state amendment referendums to give those groups - many of them the Republican voting base - extra tax cuts. I've never really agreed or supported them over the years if you've ever kept track of my bi-annual "For the Love of God" election previews, but a lot of them still passed because most Florida residents didn't see the overall harm those exemptions caused for their local public services.

This latest amendment could seriously cause more damage to our state counties/cities than any hurricane ever would. It raises the exemption amount to $150,000 for 2027 and then $250,000 by 2028, with increases tied to inflation starting in 2029. It doesn't apply this exemption to new residents (or will that be new homeowners?) - only to those here for five or more years - who'll end up carrying a greater tax burden. 

All of a sudden, our counties and large cities could lose tens of millions in revenues. For example, Orange County (Orlando metro) one of our heaviest populated counties with millions rolling in from tourism and other major industries recorded $58.5 million in property tax for 2023/24, a huge chunk (81 percent!) of their overall $71.7 million intake.

Screenshotting this so I don't lose it

Just to keep county/city services the same as previous years, Orange County and the others would have to increase their millage rates to counterbalance... except this Amendment gives the state power to limit how the counties can spend their money on public services. The implication here is that the governor and legislature - currently in the grip of Far Right Republicans eager to prove their anti-tax bona fides - can stop the counties from adjusting their millage rates, or trying to maintain any ability to pay for any public services at all. 

The wingnuts in Tallahassee are determined to force spending cuts on social services wherever they want (mostly in any Democratic-friendly metros or minority-heavy rural counties: I doubt they want to anger their voting base in the Villages, the Panhandle, Naples, etc.). I wouldn't be surprised if their ultimate goal is to force all Florida residents - by squeezing local governments - to accept their Culture War bullshit against our own beliefs and existence.

As a Florida homeowner, for me that boost to a $150,000 exemption would be a boon... except for the fact that from that point on, my make that our roads won't be paved, the drinking water won't be clean, the trash won't get picked up, the fire department won't stop all the wildfires (we're in a drought right now and wildfires are a serious problem), my neighbors' kids are at greater risk of abuse, animal control won't keep up with rabid ferals, and Grady Judd won't be able to send out the sheriff cars to the surrounding rural areas where they're blowing up meth labs and running sex trafficking rings. I really will NOT save all that much from what I will pay in property taxes. These services matter. 

And as a city employee for a public library, if this amendment passes a lot of my co-workers (and maybe myself) are going to be out of jobs. In terms of essential services at the city and county levels, libraries and parks/recreation get hit with cuts first and hardest. You think libraries are just checking out books? Libraries provide public computer access, activities for kids and adults, means of doing your own work (we get a lot of self-employed people using our study rooms as temp office space), taking care of a lot of personal needs, above all a community hub. I wrote this back in 2018: You get a greater return on investment with public libraries than a lot of other privatized services out there. DeSantis' Amendment 3 will kill all of that, statewide. Mass unemployment just as half of everything goes to shit.

There is no goddamn way I am supporting this Amendment. I sure as hell do not want any of my fellow Floridians voting for this disaster, because it's going to hurt us all a lot more than any money you think you're saving from an unjustified and painful tax cut.

This is what Florida Republicans have wanted for decades: a tax-free "utopia" to gut any help for the poor people, and where the local communities won't be able to fight back against any Far Right social agendas - hurting gays, hurting women, hurting Blacks and Latinos, and shoving their toxic brand of Christianity down our throats - they wish to impose.

But I've noted this before: Utopias don't work. Tax cuts don't work. What the Florida Republicans - under DeSantis and other extremists - will get is a state falling apart faster than Mississippi, recreating that wonderful libertarian experience in New Hampshire of no functioning government and rampaging bears.

It's not a tax cut, Floridians: It's a massive expense you're going to have to pay in other ways. PLEASE VOTE NO on this.

Addendum: I just realized something - although someone better versed on the issue can explain otherwise - one thing that could happen with the increased exemptions is that the county property appraisers could scale the value of properties higher to compensate. A rundown house honestly worth less than that $150,000 exemption could get reappraised to $200,000 just so there's something to tax. This would have the effect of ruining the housing market across the board as property values skyrocket to unjustified values. I doubt the state-level Republicans will care much if houses get more expensive because their buddies the land developers could see more money out of it. But it's going to make it harder for anyone to buy a house - especially low-income first-time buyers - and it's going to make it harder for some to sell their houses if the appraisers make them too expensive for middle-income people. And if the property values go up, so do the insurance rates, which are pretty high in Florida already thanks to hurricane and flood risks.

It feels similar to how homes in California are over-valued to where there's a serious housing crisis in that state. Florida can well see the same problem.

The Dumbest War Since The One With Jenkin's Ear

Did you see CNN's report this morning about trump's not-so-smart war effort against Iran? (via Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen)

The request from a senior officer at the US military command carrying out President Donald Trump’s war with Iran came in an email: We need ideas.

“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.

The crowdsourcing-style query, which military officials said was unusual over email, is one sign of the limited — and potentially unpalatable —options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms. Hoping to find an alternative, the official at CENTCOM kicked off the brainstorming session via email to see if anyone had a better idea. The second source said CENTCOM is looking at everything, acknowledging it needs to reevaluate the strategy.

Granted, in previous wars we've never really had the technology to get instant feedback from the troops, but even *asking* for brainstorming sessions in the middle of a firefight is insane to contemplate.

I admit I am a novice at war - the closest I ever got was applying for a ROTC scholarship to please my dad - but even I understand the strategic necessity of planning your wars BEFORE YOU START THE DAMN THINGS.

trump jumped into this fiasco with ego inflated and eyes closed: Tempted by the glory of being a wartime mob boss president (even as he insists on getting Peace Prizes), and by promises from Netanyahu who needed the United States to inflict regime change on Iran. trump honestly does not understand how to manage wars, and refuses to realize that wars aren't just bombing targets and waiting for the other nation to beg for mercy. Because Iran isn't about to beg, and Iran was in stronger strategic position - control of the Strait of Hormuz - than trump understood.

The real strategists in the armed forces - the guys and gals at our war colleges and defense think tanks - would have warned trump, Hegseth, and the rest of the Republican neocon warhawks - and they likely did before Hegseth kicked them out of the Pentagon - that we needed more resources lined up by February of this year, and a plan already in place to keep that strait opened to deny Iran any bargaining power. A chastened trump administration - reaching out now for the experts to brainstorm - is already too late: Iran holds the high ground at this stage of conflict, and it is going to take more resources and manpower - a call for enlistments if not triggering a draft among 20-something men who didn't want wars, getting more money out of a Congress angry they hadn't been consulted or briefed, getting our industries on a war footing that most of them aren't set to handle - that our nation can't offer.

It's telling that trump's officials are asking their ideas people to come up with plans to "punish" Iran: Always thinking in the mindset of the bully, and unable to realize there is nothing trump and his lackeys can do to hurt Iranians more than they're doing now. All Iran has to do is wait, endure the ongoing cycles of "peace plans", threats of decapitation, bombing of civilian infrastructure, and outlast trump to where different people are sitting in the White House who aren't going to be murdering assholes.

How's that for a war plan, donald?

Who Owns What, When It's All Debt?

Update: Thanks again to Steve in Manhattan for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! 

P.S. I am waiting at home this morning to get new toilets installed, so while I'm sitting here I'd like to promote my book Notice a Trend to help pay the bills uh encourage more man reading! And women reading! And sentient rock creatures who travel through space! And...

This is something Comrade Misfit posted over the weekend, and I wanted to delve into this nightmare a little more (by Victor Tangermann at Futurism):

AI companies are pouring untold billions of dollars into enormous data centers in their efforts to sustain increasingly complex and resource-intensive AI models.

It’s an extremely costly undertaking built on seemingly bottomless hype — and a mountain of debt. As Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei Asia found in a recent investigation, just five US tech giants — Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle — are hiding an estimated $1.65 trillion in debt that doesn’t appear on balance sheets. That’s even more than the $1.35 trillion in debt the five companies officially reported in their financial data for the most recent quarter.

This is the sort of thing that screams FRAUD. And nobody's doing anything about it except let it pile up.

Meta alone has amassed around $420 billion in off-balance-sheet debt, according to Nikkei, highlighting how precarious the AI industry’s steep investment in AI has become, and inspiring comparisons to energy company Enron, which collapsed in spectacular fashion in 2001 because of similar debts hidden behind shell companies. Like Enron, they’re using special purpose vehicles, or off-balance sheet arrangements such as legally distinct subsidiaries, as a way to make their financial reporting look healthier than it actually is — often a glaring sign that something is deeply amiss behind the scenes...

That none of these accounting tricks - those shell companies or "special purpose vehicles" - were outlawed when we had the chance spells out just how broken our federal government is when policing the uber-rich megacorps that are "too big to fail."

For the love of God, in my own lifetime we've witnessed financial collapse - the bankrupting of Savings and Loans - after financial collapse - the era of Enron and other tech companies collapsing under their own greed - after financial collapse - the mortgage industry meltdown of 2007-08 that led to a near decade of unemployment and housing woes. That last one directly affected me and my poor parents when I lost my job in 2008, and spent four years looking for a job and unable to sell my home to afford relocating to places where jobs were available.

I've learned a lot from that last economic collapse. For starters, I learned that we shouldn't bail out the CEOs first, we should bail out their victims - us - first, and then send those goddamn bastards to jail for their incompetence and greed. 'Cause one of the things I guarantee you is that these tech companies are getting us to pay in some form or another to cover for the massive costs they're adding up to keep their bubbles afloat. We've seen what happens when those bubbles pop: us taxpayers foot the goddamn bills (again).

I've also come to wonder why these businesses are allowed to accrue so much debt in the first place. My basic understanding of economics tells me debt is bad, and too much of it is very bad. I understand that in the complexities of running a business, companies may borrow loans to cover for expenses today on an understanding that in the future they will have more money to be able to pay off such debts. That they can use those debts to obtain more loans and add more debt to where they have more debts than money on hand is where things start looking insane IMHO.

This is where something like regulations and laws should be in place demanding that businesses hold themselves accountable to some degree: To prevent them from building up too much debt in the first place. You know, some sort of debt cap that says "whoa there, pay this off first before you go putting yourselves into billions more in debt." Without those regulations in place - and we've seen the damage when we've deregulated financial systems like Savings and Loans and the securities/financial markets - those corporate idiots can't stop themselves, spiraling into an ongoing cycle of borrowing and debt all because they're hoping their ship of gold-pressed latinum reaches port that big tech breakthrough pays off.

And this begs the question "WHO is lending these greedheads more and more money to put them further into debt?" The large international banks, obviously, but you have to ask them "At what point do you call in those debts? At what point do you stop lending to these guys - these techbros addicted to their AI hopes - when it's clear they're not going to deliver on any profit?"

In what way is all of this debt any good? Who benefits from this?

Because debt leads to one thing: Control. Any person - or business - deep in debt to another person has to obey the creditor. Otherwise, you lose your business, your car, your home, your livelihood, your very identity.

Debt is another form of slavery.

And if the megacorps collapse under debt, that cascade of financial ruin spreads out: Every other person doing business with them loses money and goes into debt they can't pay, which spreads out even further. A lot of us fell into debt after the housing crisis almost 20 years ago (!), and a lot of us are still paying that off.

Who owns all that debt? We don't, and yet we're the ones who are going to get stuck paying for it (again).

Goddammit. This cycle of economic short-sightedness and greed needs to end.

trump's Vengeance Becomes a Whimper

In the ongoing saga of trump's damage upon our nation's Reflecting Pool in Washington DC, the sound and fury of trump accusing others of vandalizing what he wrecked has signified nothing.

The key target of trump's ire - a retired Olympian arrested for destruction of property when all he did was touch the already-peeling paint job on the pool - had the charges dismissed in court today (via staff with NPR):

Federal prosecutors have moved to dismiss the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool vandalism case against former Olympian David Hearn, saying instead that damage to the pool was "the result of botched installation and not vandalism."

The botched installation by the by is what got all the experts shouting months ago.

Earlier this month, Hearn, 67, pleaded not guilty to a single count of destruction of property causing more than $1,000 in damage to the pool. Hearn has repeatedly said that he simply touched the water in the pool out of curiosity last month. But the government alleged he had ripped a piece of sealant at the bottom of the reflecting pool after it had undergone a $14-million renovation.

"This was a deliberate act to damage the reflecting pool at the National Mall that members of the National Park Service actually have worked hard to restore and have witnessed," U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro previously said of Hearn's actions.

Pirro - more of a media hack than a practicing lawyer - had spent weeks in front of cameras claiming she had proof, insisting this was all vandalism... and now has to answer to the reality she exaggerated if not outright lied about all this the whole time. Pirro was in court claiming Hearn "forcefully pulled" huge chunks of material from the pool and now the Justice Department lawyers are saying "uh well..."

In a filing late Friday, the U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C. switched course, saying it had relied on initial reports provided by the Department of the Interior (DOI) and U.S. Park Police (USPP).

Friday's filing reads: "It was not until after the return of the indictment, that the DOI provided additional documents ... indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings ("AIC") and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026."

After the renovation was completed, the pool's blue lining began peeling off in chunks and algae blooms turned the waters a murky green. The project has been widely criticized as a waste of taxpayer money.

Lawyers for Hearn responded to Friday's decision in a statement, saying the Trump administration owes Hearn an apology for a case that should have never been brought.

There were others whom Pirro charged with similar accusations who deserve to have their cases dropped as well. 

This all happened for several reasons.

One: trump can never admit he makes mistakes, he can never be in the wrong. he couldn't blame the bad paint job on the guy he personally paid to do this shoddy work, and he couldn't admit that painting the Reflecting Pool was a bad idea; so he has to blame it all on "vandals" and enemies to soothe his spoiled ego.

Two: trump has to make examples of those he deems enemies, by threatening to sue or actually suing others who can't afford the excessive legal fees and emotional stress of facing criminal (or civil) charges. he's aided by a Far Right conservative army of lackeys who ascribe to the philosophy of "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." Punching down at everyone not of their tribe is what they live for, and it's turned a legal institution like the Justice Department into a mob of MAGA bullies.

These lawsuits and criminal filings may go nowhere, but it wastes his victims' time and financial well-being. And it sends a message - which any mobster like trump enjoys doing - to others not to get in his way or make him look ridiculous.

This is where Hearn needs to follow the example of E. Jean Carroll. She was a victim of trump, she called him out, he tried to ruin and defame her, she fought back. And she won in court, securing both a legal payment and confirming the court's ruling that trump is a goddamned sex offender.

Hearn and the others wrongfully charged for vandalizing something trump already ruined need to fight back. trump will never apologize like the lawyers demand (again, trump will never admit he's wrong). trump needs to get sued in civil court for his acts of defamation towards Hearn and others. Granted, it won't go anywhere while he's still in office - the Jones v Clinton ruling applied to matters before Clinton entered office - but it'll be waiting for him the second he's kicked out (thank you 22nd Amendment). Hearn's lawyers should also pursue going after the Justice Department hacks - Pirro especially - for prosecutorial misconduct, to push back against the Roy Cohn wannabes eager to please trump.

Marcy Wheeler over at Emptywheel shared this tidbit, something even she didn't know about until today:

Lastly, in a filing I had not seen reported before, Hearn revealed that after a witness testified that there was no way to attribute the damage to Hearn, given all the pre-existing damage, DOJ sent him or her back to the grand jury to falsely claim they had proof Hearn had done $1,000 of damage.

Presenting false testimony to a grand jury ought to count for SOMETHING towards misconduct, for God's sake. Every Justice lawyer on this fiasco from Pirro on down needs to face their own criminal charges, see how they like it.