Not So Sure About This One

 Krugman makes the case that today we have more oligarchic politics than the last Gilded Age. He uses a few crude numbers to argue that we have more wealth concentrated in the hands of a few individuals now than we did 140 years ago. I think that is probably true, because the nature of wealth overall has changed. I also agree with him that there were some cultural guardrails that encouraged men of great wealth to fund some form of charitable work. In fact, I remember Ted Turner working to shame people like Bill Gates into throwing some of his wealth into charity - and it worked!  The Gates Foundation does great work.

Some of the comparisons Krugman makes are not very apt. The Gilded Age did not see a president as corrupt as Trump - no such figure has ever existed. However, just about every other level of government was absolutely saturated with a depth of corruption that is just inconceivable today. This corruption launched two broad political movements: Populism and Progressivism. 

These two movements were demographically dissimilar, but they shared ideological DNA: namely that American democracy had become a corrupted oligarchy. This was why the Progressive Amendments were addressing. The income tax, the direct election of Senators, even woman suffrage and Prohibition, were all efforts to redeem American democracy. 

Why Prohibition? Because alcohol and the saloon were at the heart of vote-buying and machine politics. You think partisanship is bad today (it certainly is), but in the Gilded Age the parties largely existed to distribute graft rather than public services. This was at the heart of Garfield's assassination. In order to win elections and control the distribution of graft, votes were bought with alcohol. Additionally, the parties were not ideological but rather demographic. Violence often attended elections, as mobs roamed the streets looking for people from the opposite party. Voting was not done by secret ballot, so people knew who you voted for. 

Finally, while we have more wealth inequality than we had back in the Gilded Age, we also have more overall wealth. Every vice of poverty that we can imagine today existed back then. The poor of 1890 were crushingly poor. Tuberculosis would cut through tenements like a scythe carrying off children by the hundreds. Farmers were so burdened by debt that they stormed the Kansas capital with guns trying to get relief. 

There was no food assistance, no public health, no income tax, no worker safety measures, no medical care for the young or elderly, no protections against child labor, no protections against monopolies, no civil rights for anyone but white men, no protections for women...it was grim.

I don't think things are going great. However, the one restraint Trump is facing is the fact that there are still laws in this country and they still have force. Go look at the tarps on the Kennedy Center. 

Things are bad. The Gilded Age was crushingly awful.

Freddie The German

 The World Cup is off to a great start, with compelling victories, heroic losses, honest draws. However, the star of the Cup so far is not Messi, Mbappe or Yamal; it's a German tourist who has won over the country and social media. During his travels - which are mostly narrations of food he has eaten and normal American shit that he's done - he has earned the attention of sports teams and American stars. JJ Watt hooked him up with a hotel room and a bunch of swag, including a signed jersey.

There are a few things about Freddie that have people embracing him. 

First, he blanks out his face (or rather covers it with his favorite player Renaldo's). Anyone else - any American - would likely be seeking to grab those fifteen minutes of fame. They would be trying to seize their monetized moment, like the Hawk Tuah girl. This guy is just looking to have a blast and largely succeeding.

Second, I think Freddie is seeing us the way we would like to be seen. America is going through some shit right now. Trump turning the White House into a trailer park is just deeply shameful. Our politics - especially online - has degenerated to Trump's level of invective nastiness. Lies and insults shape our public discourse.

But Freddie is simply reminding us that BBQ tastes great. That Buc-ees are both hilarious and impressive. That this really is a beautiful country and that most Americans are really nice. 

People are good. A person - some more than others - can be bad, but people are generally good and most of the damage they do to the world comes from fear, pain or ignorance. This World Cup is already full of moments like Freddie's that remind us that the best way to live is with open hearts and open arms. 

What A Lovely Evening

 Last night, we saw the best half of soccer that a USMNT has probably ever played - given the stage. 

We also saw them start to chisel Trump's name off the Kennedy Center.

Small victories, maybe, but we will take what we can.

Blood For Oil

 WAAAAAY back in 1990, as the United States gathered together a coalition backed by the United Nations to restore Kuwaiti sovereignty after Saddam Hussein invaded that country, the antiwar Left held rallies crying "No Blood For Oil." That never seemed persuasive to me, as we could have bought oil from Iraq as easily as Kuwait. In fact, I guarantee that's what Trump would have done. Bush 41 was a true internationalist and institutionalist, and he wanted to restore the purpose to the UN and the luster to American arms. He more or less accomplished both. 

However, now that Trump is president, we have a clear case of him moving towards a literal "blood for oil" scenario. Trump really got a kick out of his video game heroics in Venezuela, and a bunch of cronies and Netanyahu convinced him that a similar outcome was in the offering in Iran.

It was not.

This has now led us into a dangerous impasse. America has struck more or less what it could strike and damaged a lot of Iranian leadership and military hardware. Iran, however, has already placed many of its eggs in the drone basket that is changing 21st century warfare. Iran also has decided that it can weather the very real economic pain that the war if creating in Iran, whereas the Americans cannot. A lot of this is because this war was never explained to Americans and never supported by us. You can ask people to sacrifice, but there must be a Glorious Cause to enlist their sacrifices. 

Trump, meanwhile, has of course telegraphed his next move, because he's a senile old dipshit that can't resist opening his festering gob. He is considering an attack on Kharg Island. This would certainly hurt Iran, but it will lead to significant American casualties. 

In Venezuela, he was able to pull off an almost bloodless operation that deposed a dictator and replaced him with a dictator that will follow Trump's lead. It is completely plausible - almost inevitable - that we find out that Americans close to Trump and Trump himself are profiting off Venezuelan oil. Sending US ground troops to Kharg would be another oil grab. Pure and simple.

Now, this operation could conceivably force Iran to negotiate in earnest - if they felt they could trust the US, which they do not. More likely hundreds of Americans will die, thousands will be wounded, Iran will hunker down, oil will spike to $150 a barrel, Americans will be pissed, no one will bail Trump out from a quagmire of his own making and...Yeah, that's the most likely outcome. America takes the island with many dead and it solves nothing in the short term.

Trump was sold another Venezuela: quick strike, profit! Instead, he's being mugged by reality. He's too dumb (with a "b") to understand that, so he's liable to be manipulated by the evil and stupid people around him to make this even worse.

The Party of Bill Clinton

 The Big Dog has taken some reputational hits in the past decade. The #MeToo movement was not kind to his serial infidelity and the unequal nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Balancing the budget - an extraordinary achievement in many ways - was largely derided in left wing economic circles amid the lunacy of Modern Monetary Theory. The wreckage of 2008 argued, correctly, for Keynesian deficit spending. If you want to see what the wrong thing to do in 2008-2010 was, look at Britain's austerity program.

All of which brings me to the debate about what Democrats should do if they win in 2028 (which they almost certainly will if we have free and fair elections). The problem is that, much like Clinton, this hypothetical Democratic president and Congress will face fiscal realities arguably more dire than Clinton faced.

This includes Social Security.

The problem, as I see it, is that we have an ideological schism in everyone to the left of Mitt Romney. Right now you have a vague sort of Bernie Bro, DSA type of leftist and they have been countered by a technocratic prioritizing of "abundance." The argument is fiscal policy, which is taxing and spending. There is a broad acknowledgement that we need to tax the rich more, but when it comes to Social Security, something like Elizabeth Warren's "wealth tax" might not work. To shore up Social Security, you need to increase the steady stream of revenue. 

Some of that might come from moving from a payroll tax to more of an income tax. As Krugman notes, the explosion of the wealth gap comes not from a divergence in salary, but in equities. A CEO might have a large salary, sure, but he also has a ton of stock options that are taxed differently than salaried income. 

Capturing that will piss off a lot of people, though doing it subtly - a scalpel rather than a battle axe - might ease some problems.

By the time Trump is finally forced off the national stage, America will be facing multiple crises of his and the Republican's making: a galloping climate crisis, America's diminished standing in the world, poisonous divisions within the body politic, an AI movement largely unfettered from public accountability, a degraded military from numerous misadventures, a need to re-attract immigrants to a place that doesn't feel as safe as it once did, widespread public corruption...the list goes on.

The fiscal crisis will not be a "Trumpist" crisis; it's a Republican crisis. It's the old "starve the beast" form of governance that will require the next government of adults (ie Democrats) have to clean up the mess. 

American politics really went off the rails after the 2000 election. Some of that was 9/11, but if Nader doesn't run and Gore actually wins, the track of American history might not include 9/11. It certainly wouldn't include Iraq. It wouldn't include Bush's wasteful tax cuts. Gore was as exciting as a Saltine cracker, but his governance could have built on Clinton's and created a financially solvent country that felt no need to elect the charlatan from the tabloids and reality TV.

If Democrats swarm back into power in 2028, they will have to make actual hard governing decisions on boring shit like how to shore up Social Security, how to reduce the deficit. When Clinton did it, interest rates fell, businesses expanded and the economy boomed - and not just at the top. 

The question is: Would an angry Democratic primary electorate vote for this candidate?

No, He's Responsible

 Yglesias writes a decent column about Trump's war on government competence, best exemplified by DOGE. He notes how cuts to various agricultural and public health programs are running into real world consequences, notably screwworm, measles and Ebola. Yet, he then says that some of this isn't "Trump's fault." His argument is that - unlike the disastrous war against Iran - these are not direct policy consequences. Trump didn't CAUSE screwworm or measles or Ebola to exist.

I honestly don't even know how you get yourself into that rhetorical space. 

Krugman - famously called "shrill" by his editors - tends to lean the other way. He makes a much more expansive case for things like the problems farmers are having because of Trump's trade policies and that same war in Iran. Of course, many of those deep rural voters are both upset with Trump's policies that have actively immiserated them, but they are also unlikely to vote for Democrats. 

Leaving aside the fact that they won't switch parties, let's look at how they won't hold Trump accountable. Elections are how you hold elected officials and indeed all the organs of government accountable. It is precisely this accountability that makes democracies more functional in the long run - even if they short run is messy as hell.

If farmers are pissed about Trump's policies, then they should vote for Democrats to force a course correction. However, if you start adopting Yglesias' framing of Trump not being responsible for shit that happens even though he gutted the institutions designed to keep that shit from happening on to your head, then you can make the easy walk to "both sides are to blame, I guess I'll just keep voting Republican."

I realize Yglesias is not a partisan propagandist, but technically neither is Krugman. They both purport to be part of the "reality based community." At school, we are urged to practice scrupulous non-partisanship, but Donald Trump IS a felon, and pointing that out - or that tariffs and wars are inflationary - is not being partisan. 

We have a measles and screwworm outbreak in this country, because Donald Trump and the Republican Party have waged war on technical expertise and government capacity. Yes, he didn't actively infect kids with measles or cows with screwworm, but his policies are making this a growing health and economic crisis.

There is simply something very strange about how Yglesias frames his political discussions, and excusing Trump for the destruction of public health measures because he didn't cause the illness is top of the list in strangeness. 

Gordon Wood

 Gordon Wood died yesterday at the age of 92, amazingly struck down by a car and not his advanced age. Wood was one of the finest living historians of US History and certainly the Dean of Historians when it came to the American Revolution. Himself a student of Bernard Bailyn, Wood argued for the essential revolutionary nature of the American Revolution. He stood against some - and I occasionally include myself - that argued that it was more a War of Independence than a true "revolution," especially if compared against the French or Russian Revolutions. In this telling, the Civil War and Reconstruction Era is much more of a revolution than replacing the monarchy with a representative government.

But of course, establishing a Republic - over so large an area no less - was a revolutionary act. It was fraught with pitfalls and dangers that the generation that framed the Constitutions was very much aware of. 

None more so than James Madison.

It was Madison who spent years thinking about how to preserve liberty and self-government. Today, we think of them as being reinforcing, but it was understood at the time that self-government tended to degenerate to anarchy, which led to the rise of a dictator. As Madison wrote in the Federalist: 

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

This framework is at the heart of our long practice in representative government, of combining democracy and republicanism to create something truly new over 235 years ago when the Constitution was written. 

As Richardson notes at the link above, Madison was also the author of the Bill of Rights. Initially reluctant, he came to see how writing down fundamental rights was part of the needed constraints on those who governed, especially the desire of those who - once in power - might wish to restrict the freedom of the press to blunt criticism of themselves, or perhaps ban public assemblies and petitions to the same purpose. 

It also extended to the free practice of religion, which had been pioneered by Roger Williams of Rhode Island in the 17th century, but then picked up by Virginians like Madison and Thomas Jefferson. If a government could dictate religious belief and practice, what couldn't they dictate? The free exercise of conscience preceded all other rights.

As we begin to mark the commemoration of the Declaration of Independence, we can see these "inalienable rights" under assault from a cabal of wicked people who surround a fundamentally ignorant and weak bully who would destroy those very rights that the Revolution was fought over. Pete Hegseth wants to tell servicemember how to worship. Various creatures wish to destroy the free press and outlaw protests. This is not hyperbole. 

Wood's death - just a few weeks before the 250th anniversary of the declaration of universal, inalienable rights - should help us reflect on how those rights which were so revolutionary 250 years ago are not self-enforcing. Wood reminded us that we are heirs to a revolutionary tradition, and at the heart of the revolution was the belief that government must belong to the governed. 

The Upside Down

 Among the more infuriating thing about living in Trumpistan is that basic reality is upside down. Yeah, sure, there's the lying, but I'm not even talking about Trump's incessant falsehoods. Trump largely benefits from "vibes" in terms of his being a "businessman" and "dealmaker" when his track record is quite the opposite.

No greater example of this upside down dynamic exists than "Trump is a tough guy." To recap:

- Trump avoided Vietnam by getting the family doctor to write up his bone spurs.
- Trump wears a LOT of makeup.
- Trump is fastidious about his hair.
- Trump refused to go to a veteran's service in France, because it was raining, and it might make his hair look bad.
- Trump rolls over on his back and piddles on his belly anytime he's around a dictator.
- He has a child's conception of what strength is.
- He, like all bullies, is a physical coward.

Yesterday, Meet the Press aired part of an interview with Trump. Only part, because Trump got pissy and red in the face and then walked off the set when called out on his lies. Not even "called out", Kristen Welker pressed him to provide evidence for his farrago of falsehoods. He of course has no evidence for electoral fraud or FBI complicity on 1/6 or any of the bullshit he spews forth all over the national discourse. Welker, unlike the usual sycophants he surrounds himself with, continued to press the man-baby on the lack of evidence. He lost his shit.

If you ever wondered what a decompressing narcissist looks like in real time, watch the clip. He gets rid in the face. He blusters. He hurls more lies. He hurls insults. He uses spurious ad hominem attacks to try and change the subject. He storms off in a pissy little huff. He even lays hands on Welker in a way that was likely meant to intimidate her, but it honestly looked like he was unsteady on his feet as he rose to pout his way off camera. 

Trump moral unfitness for office has been explained away by his cultists by saying, "Sure, he's a bit rough around the edges, but that's because he is a tough as nails businessman."

Bull.

Shit.

Finally Too Far?

 Whiskey Pete Hegseth has been a national embarrassment since he was plucked from Faux News to lead the biggest, most important bureaucracy in the country. (Technically, he was an embarrassment before that, but only to his friends and family.)

Recently, his remarks at the D-Day commemoration seemed to suggest that he's a Nazi. Or that he would have, at least, been manning a pillbox overlooking Omaha Beach (O-MAGA beach?). The sad thing is that this is not, by any stretch of the imagination a disqualifying statement in the Trump Administration.

No, what might finally rid us of this bothersome pest is his decision to strip Mormonism from the approved list of Christian religions serviced by Christian chaplains in the military. This is a BIG deal for Mormons. Mormons have always been unusually skeptical of Trump for a deeply conservative group of people. Despite - or perhaps because of - their pious religiosity that have resisted MAGA. They still largely vote for him, but with deep misgivings.

If the Mountain West had a competent Democratic Party, they would be flooding the airwaves with this. Not just Utah, but Idaho, Wyoming and Arizona, where there are a lot of Mormons. Again, maybe you just get them to stay home in November, but this is not a brick that Republicans can let slip from the coalition.

Or maybe Trump (or the people telling him what to do) will finally fire this foolish asshole. 

Good Take On Platner

 As is so often the case, Josh Marshall expounds on a point I've been trying to make.

In this case, what Graham Platner says about the factional divisions within the Democratic coalition.

Markets

 The jobs report was unexpectedly strong yesterday. It wasn't historically good or anything close to it, but it was a solid report. As Krugman points out, the stock market - especially the NASDAQ - fell off quite a bit. Why would the stock market fall on a decent jobs report?

The answer is interest rates. Tech companies are highly dependent on debt and that's why the NASDAQ fell. Given that we have not entered a cratering job market BUT prices are continuing to rise because of Trump's Iran Misadventure, the Federal Reserve is not going to cut rates. This is the '70s oil shock dynamic, and if inflation becomes an expectation then you will have to see a Fed Recession to kill it. Not a good dynamic.

So, the Fed won't cut interest rates. Secondly, the budget deficits are growing so incredibly large that government borrowing is going to start squeezing out private borrowing, if it hasn't already. That will make interest rates rise, too. This cost of borrowing is going to bite everywhere: credit card interest rates, meeting payroll, mortgages, college loans...And as inflation heats up, people will need to borrow more simply to meet their living expenses. That will happen in a lending environment that will be quite tight.

The real question is whether a Fed increase will burst the AI bubble. Sure, some of those companies are likely in decent shape, but there are a LOT of AI start-ups, and they aren't making money, they are living off their perceived future value and operating off of borrowing. If that tanks, then we are possibly in the stagflation dynamic.

You Should Support Talking Points Memo

 Right now, they are doing impressive investigative work on the corruption by US Attorneys, beginning with the so-called Broadview Six case.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

With media like 60 Minutes falling under the sway of bootlicking lickspittles, you really need to support independent media.

Vandalism

 Buried in Richardson's "documentation of the atrocities" is this nugget:

Aligning with Project 2025, which criticizes federal science programs for paying too much attention to climate change, the Trump administration is also tearing out a $368 million deep-ocean observation system along the Pacific Coast that monitors marine ecosystems, coastal environments, and the ocean currents that affect climate change. Eric Niiler of the New York Times reported that the U.S. began operating the system in 2016 and expected it to continue for 25 years.

The system is in place. It is not a budgetary drain, and I would guess tearing it out will cost money. As we enter a "Super El Nino" cycle, monitoring these ocean currents is really important to understand what the weather will be for the next two years.

There are countless other examples of this rampant vandalism, of which the destruction of the East Wing of White House and turning the reflecting pool on the National Mall into an aboveground pool are only the most obvious physical examples.

We are building our retirement home, and as we have a decent sized pile of money to pay for the build, we wanted to place solar panels on the roof to reduce our monthly bills, once we become fixed income retirees. There had been in place a sizable tax credit for installing solar, and because we want to have as robust a solar array as possible, we could really have benefitted from that. Without getting into details, the difference in cost between what these panels would have cost us last year versus this year is enough to buy a small car.

The only reason to do this is from an ideological obsession with hurting the plans of anyone to operate independently of large utilities and petrochemical companies. It hurts Americans who just want to control their (spiking) energy costs. 

These are policies, and policies are easily changed by future Democratic administrations (providing we have democratic elections), but man, this is going to hurt, ironically because the median voters was upset over nominal prices.

Vengeance As Governance

 Krugman picks up on the Pulte clown show at DNI. He argues that while this is obviously about Trump requiring slavish loyalty and a desire to persecute Trump's many enemies, it also demonstrates that he has given up on governing.

I would actually argue that Trump never was interested in "governing" in any previously understood meaning of the word. He wanted to be the CEO/CFO of America so he could loot the country as his personal ATM. His first term was characterized by the "Adults in the Room" holding his most base instincts at least somewhat in check. (I think a lot of us were appalled by the framing of "Adults in the Room" in his first term, but boy howdy has it proven to be true.)

If Trump wanted to avoid future Iran catastrophes, then appointing a hatchet man at DNI would be a terrible idea. You absolutely need a functioning intelligence service and a credible leader of that apparatus if you want to protect the country that you were elected to serve. Of course, Trump doesn't want to serve anyone but himself.

In some ways, this is another example of the way in which authoritarianism fails. Democracy provides feedback to leaders. Democrats learned in 2024 just how damaging inflation was (and a president unable to articulate himself publicly). They have adjusted accordingly. The current GOP is an authoritarian cult of personality. They cannot course-correct. So, you get unqualified hack after unqualified hack, which will lead to more disastrous policy decisions like the Iran War.

JFC

 Trump has selected Bill Pulte to be interim Director of National Intelligence after Tulsi Gabbard steps down. Pulte has less than zero experience to hold this important position. This piece by The Hill is telling. The Senators aghast at Pulte's nomination are...Thom Tillis (retiring), Bill Cassidy (defeated by Trumpist in primary), John Cornyn (ditto) and the Very Concerned Twins of Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. 

This clown whose only qualification is his sycophantic attention to Trump's puckered asshole has already used mortgage data to go after Letitia James and Adam Schiff. He cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to take this job. Gabbard, with her pro-Russian politics, was terrible enough, but Pulte will make this country less safe while arguably turning the intelligence apparatus of the United States on Trump's political enemies.