The Billionaire Economy

 Yglesias makes a bullshit defense of billionaires - or more accurately, he erects some strawmen to knock down regarding anti-billionaire politics. It's true that many leftists and socialists have some nutty ideas about economics, and it you just go by the online posting of some of them, there are strawmen aplenty to attack.

The problem isn't exclusively billionaires and many billionaires are not exclusively evil people. The problem is that we have a system that tilts away from equality and towards plutocracy. The problem is that Republicans have stripped away campaign finance laws so that there is no way to regulate the millions that a billionaire can leverage to warp an election. This is fundamentally corrosive to democracy.

As Krugman points out, Republican policies purport to be "business friendly" but they are far more likely to hurt small business owners - many of whom vote Republican. The most obvious example is GOP hostility to the ACA, which many small business owners rely on. Tariffs are a new wrinkle created by Trump, but they are another policy that hurts small business owners.

I'd go further and note that rising inequality reduces consumer spending, which is an overall drag on the economy. How much of the recent GDP growth was simply building AI data centers and how much was consumer spending? One of the fundamental causes of the Great Depression was weak and narrow consumer spending. Demand fell, because whole segments of the economy had no disposable income. 

This seems to be the supply side argument of the so-called "Abundance" movement in the Democratic Party. Housing is a real problem and supply is part of it. (A sizable part of that supply issue is higher interest rates that freeze housing stock, but building more housing would be a net positive.) Reduce prices by increasing supply is not a crazy idea. There is the inevitable leftist pushback that Abundance doesn't solve everything, so what good is it really? 

Permitting reform is a good thing and not something that necessarily gores the oxen of Democratic constituencies. However, if you really want to increase housing stock, you very well need to fund it. If you want to help small businesses, you need to fund the ACA. If you want to develop a poorer region, you will need development funds.

That comes from taxes. I think we've reached a point where we need a far more aggressive and progressive capital gains tax regimen. We also need a wealth tax. 

One of Yglesias' arguments is that Elon Musk got rich by building something people need. The problem is that Musk is the richest man in the world not because Tesla makes the best or more affordable electric cars. They don't. He's the richest man in the world, because Tesla stock is ridiculously overvalued. Tesla makes money of its batteries, which are excellent, but Tesla is not a great automaker. Still, people think he's the future and are investing in Tesla stock accordingly. That seems, for lack of a better word, fake. 

What's more, that stock price - being inflated - absolutely should be taxed, especially if that tax money then turns around and funds the ACA or Medicaid or infrastructure or housing or whatever a society needs.

Shamelessness As A Superpower

 I think I've mentioned in passing that the Trumpist superpower is shamelessness. Richardson, in the course of her recap, mentions the increasing understanding of just how Trump is abusing his pardon power. There really is no restriction on the pardon power, though there is a prohibition on bribery. It seems that there is more than a little smoke in regards to bribery for pardons.

On December 23, Rebecca Ballhaus, Josh Dawsey, and C. Ryan Barber of the Wall Street Journal examined Trump’s use of the president’s pardoning power to cash in, with “lobbyists close to Trump” saying that “their going rate to advocate for a pardon is $1 million.” Some of those eager for a presidential pardon have offered lobbyists as much as $6 million if they succeed.

The Justice Department’s former pardon attorney, Liz Oyer, was fired in March. She told the Wall Street Journal reporters that Trump “appears to be considering political, personal and financial interests and not the interests of the American public,” subverting the pardon process.

Trump sees everything as a business deal. Everything is a transaction that he either "wins" or "loses." We cannot be surprised if he is simply accepting bribes in return for pardons - or that the corrupt legions around him are doing so. If you are a Trump Loyalist, you can freely accept bribes knowing that Trump will pardon you on his way out the door. Given the near impossibility of their being 67 votes in the Senate to convict under impeachment, Trump knows he's immune.

The evidence of that corruption is therefore not likely to result in criminal charges. All that is left is the public shame of being a corrupt hack...but if you have no shame to begin with, then the final measure of consequence and thus of reining in their criminality is removed.

Hopeful

 Richardson flags something I missed. SCOTUS ruled that Trump could not deploy the National Guard without satisfying the stringent requirements of the Posse Comitatus Act. Basically, unless Congress authorizes martial law, the President may not nationalize the National Guard for law enforcement purposes. What Richardson flagged was Brett "I Like Beet" Kavanaugh wrote in a footnote.

Earlies, Kavanaugh had written a decision allowing people to be stopped for the probable cause of their ethnicity. Guilty on account of being Brown. These became known as "Kavanaugh Stops" which must have stung a bit, because the new footnote reads as follows.

The Fourth Amendment requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force. Moreover, the officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity.”

We have work to do when it comes to restoring meaningful democracy in this country and for the most part SCOTUS - with its 6-3 Republican majority - stands in the way of that. 

However, Kavanaugh clearly amended his previous position either because he felt he was misinterpreted or because the phrase "Kavanaugh Stops" stung. 

You can't shame MAGA. Their shamelessness is their super power. But maybe you can shame some of the Republicans that are otherwise enabling this shitshow.

Yeah, That's Odd and Stupid and Dangerous

 Martin Longman notes something I noted when I heard it. Yesterday's strikes in Nigeria don't make a ton of sense geographically. Most of the ISIS/Boko Haram activity has been in northeast Nigeria, not the northwest. What's more, while we coordinated with the Nigerian government, that government does not want to make this a sectarian conflict. Nigeria works very hard but only somewhat successfully at keeping the idea of sectarian violence in the background. The Muslim/Christian divisions in the country are very strong and often violent, even without the psychopaths in Boko Haram making things worse.

It seems that if you want Trump to do something - as he did in this case - you just have to get it on Fox News. We heard this in his first administration; Trump doesn't (can't?) read, so he gets most of his "information" from the TeeVee. This is...suboptimal. This is why Hague-seth is Secretary of Defense and Tulsi Gabbard is DNI: they were on Fox.

This really is the stupidest timeline.

Alexandra Petri Is A National Treasure

 I hope at some point, her trip to the Kennedy Center is to pick up her Twain Award. Still, this will do for now. It is not actually easy to be both funny and spot on with your political satire, but what she pulls off is a brilliant sketch of Trump's inherent thirstiness and his being perpetually mired in the '70s and '80s.

The Gift Of Incompetent Facists

 On this day to celebrate the return of light into the world, of finding holiness in a stable, let's talk about how we are blessed that our Wannabe Fascist overlords are basically incompetent boobs.

Merry Christmas

 Ya filthy animals.

Rats

 Somewhat in conjunction with my skepticism of the economic health suggested below are the stories that suggest that MAGA knows what's coming.  Trump is slapping his name on everything he can. At the recent Turning Point confab, the whole thing turned into a display of backstabbing, with Ben Shapiro attaching the antisemites in the room, and the antisemites striking back. The Epstein files will continue to trickle out. Trump's approval rating is hovering in the mid-30s in the Gallup and ARG polls and moving downwards. 

Republicans' great advantage over my lifetime has been obedience to the leadership. As James Carville famously put it, "Democrats have to fall in love, Republicans just fall in line." Conservatism is largely about service to hierarchies, so that tracks. However, MAGA is not "conservative" it's a revolutionary reactionary authoritarian movement, and revolutionary movements are prone to factionalism. We are already seeing Republican House members balk at some of the most egregious MAGA programs.

Keep an eye on the divisions that are creeping into the GOP. Some rats flee the sinking ship, but they will also turn on each other when cornered. 

Do We Believe This?

 The Commerce Department released economic growth numbers that seem superheated at 4.3%. As Krugman noted before the numbers came out, we have a "K-shaped" economy now, with disproportionate wealth being funneled upwards. We had a brief compression under Biden, as wages grew more robustly at the bottom of the wage scale, due to labor market constraints. Right now, we have a frozen job market, as employers aren't hiring, so people aren't leaving for a better job elsewhere. There aren't mass layoffs, but the hiring freeze - which really hits recently college and high school grads the hardest - suggests that businesses are wary of the underlying economic conditions. Wary in ways that would be hard to square with 4.3% growth.

One economist in the Times piece suggests that growth was being driven by consumption in higher income households. The problem is that there aren't enough high income households to sustain the economy. A healthy economy distributes consumption throughout the population. The economy isn't driven (pardon the pun) by the corporate lawyer buying a Lexus or the hedge fund guy buying a Maclaren. It's driven by fifteen middle class people buying Toyotas or Kias. 

The Times piece also mentions defense spending as driving growth, but that would be a legacy of Biden sending military aid to Ukraine. It's difficult to see where the new defense spending is coming from. Another source of growth might have been ICE prison construction, but that seems unlikely to have started, given the appropriations were done in the spring. Consumer spending is up - 3.9% from last year's holiday - but some of the increased spending would have to be increased prices. 

What's worrisome is that lower income households are taking on debt in order to maintain their living standards. If that's a fixed rate loan then that's just bad, but if it's variable interest rate then there is likely to be a consumer debt crisis. The national debt is exploding at a time when it should not be. That will drive up borrowing costs, and if people are putting Christmas on credit cards, that could be catastrophic in the long run.

I'd highlight this 'graph:

Lower-income families are wrestling with slowing wage growth and rising costs of various household goods, like beef, coffee and furniture. Still, even as some major corporations have announced work force reductions, the limited extent of overall layoffs is still buttressing activity. And much of consumption growth has come from spending by affluent and upper-middle-class Americans, who have continued paying for travel, recreation, restaurants and other discretionary purchases.

That's the K-shape. I confess that we have not restrained our spending. In fact, because of the sale of an inherited property, we are building our retirement home, and because the property we sold was quite valuable, we aren't having to borrow (yet). If we did not have that pile of cash, we would not be able to engage in the build. What's more, if we were relying solely on our wages - which aren't bad, but aren't high - I don't know how we could buy a retirement home. (We live in campus housing at the moment.) Left solely to our wages, we would be in trouble.

Finally, there's AI.

Spending related to A.I. contributed to almost half of “year-over-year growth in G.D.P.” in the first half of the year, according to estimates by Principal Asset Management. Most analysts expect that these investments are likely to persist. But the data from the third quarter shows that the trend may be lumpier than some have projected, as intellectual property investments declined, as well as investments in structures, compared with previous months. Other newly released numbers also showed orders for durable goods also fell in October, even as an expansive build-out in data centers marches on.

This is a distorted picture of economic health. Josh Marshall has a note about his new iPhone, which has an unwanted AI feature. Basically, it's a supercharged autocorrect/text suggestion. He says the following:

The iPhone texting overhaul is of a piece with almost everything (not everything but almost) about AI at this moment, which is overwhelmingly a supply- rather than a demand-driven revolution.

I think this is key. A lot of people don't really like AI, but they are using it because they are kind of being forced to use it. You no longer do a "Google search" but a "Gemini search." Some of that IS great. AI search engines are a real advance. Still, the primary use for ChatGPT seems to be cheating. It seems inevitable that it will lead to job loss. We are being given something we aren't asking for and it is coming at great cost. We are building this sector of the economy that we don't really seem to be asking for.

Yglesias has a piece comparing what we assumed about magazine reading versus what we know about reading online. Magazines were supposed to be a leisure time activity, yet we can see in the data that people read online content at work. The computer revolution has not really led to an explosion in productivity, because while people do work faster, they then spend their time fucking about online. 

What will happen with AI, which seems able to further speed up work? At what point does THIS become the hiring freeze? At what point do employers simply replace NEW workers with AI?

The Times piece concludes about AI:

The boom, which several skeptical financial analysts fear may transform into a bubble, has helped buoy broad-based gains in the stock market. The benchmark S&P 500 index has risen by about 17 percent year-to-date and the tech-heavy Nasdaq index has performed even better, with gains of over 20 percent.

The bubble theory is that we are building out AI at a breakneck pace providing a service that - in many ways - people aren't asking for and that might degrade the job market even further. The gains are going to the investor class, which constitutes maybe one on eleven Americans (if we define it as households that have more than $50,000 in stocks), then there is the broad swath of Americans who aren't benefitting from this boom in the stock market.

Finally, we have to consider that the likelihood of the Commerce Department juicing the numbers is pretty high. The economy isn't cratering. It feels unsound, but it's not cratering. 

One shock, though, and it could get very dicey very fast. 

Catch And Kill

 Donald Trump was an ardent practitioner of "catch and kill" through his friend at the National Enquirer. Damaging stories would be bought by the Enquirer, the sources would sign NDAs and then the Enquirer would toss them in a vault. 

Given the advances in autocracy that Trump and the GOP have made recently, we should not be surprised that unqualified hack, Bari Weiss, is now playing this game at CBS News, including 60 Minutes. 

There are two things to note here.

The first is that the story is obviously going to leak out, and it will be more popular, precisely because it was censored. However, unless it comes out on 60 Minutes proper, it's not going to reach your Great Aunt who gets her news from the TeeVee.

The second is that we REALLY have a corporate news problem in this country. I suppose it's always been a problem, but the naked attempt to cow corporate leaders via government action means that news rooms will become more and more risk-averse. 

Not great.

The Twin Horns That Will Gore Trump

 Morris looks at Trump's approval on the economy and health care, and it ain't pretty.  This is fundamentally important, because so much of what Trump is doing that is really, really bad simply does not register with most voters...UNTIL they start to see their money shrink.

All the OTHER stuff will only really land with people once they are angered at his economic policy malpractice. There are two main engines that are driving this: deportations and tariffs. A third factor is high interest rates, but his deficit spending spree means that even if the Fed lowers rates, long term interest rates will remain high. This was the situation in the early '90s, and it required some austerity to make things work.

Since Trump is an idiot surrounded by other idiots, anyone think he will do the right thing? The hard thing?

Is You Taking Notes On A Criminal Conspiracy?

 I saw a clip of the Rich Eisen Show, where he's interviewing Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, where Eisen asked him where some of the characters are now. When they got to the charming but corrupt lawyer, Saul Goodman, Gilligan quipped, "I think Trump pardoned him." The set erupted in laughter.

As Simon Rosenberg points out, the Trump Administration is more accurately categorized as a crime spree. The Epstein Files released yesterday were in clear violation of the letter and spirit of the law requiring them to do so. It was 119 pages of blacked out text.

Richardson notes that are seeing some cracks in the dam. A handful of House Republicans are starting to sign on to discharge petitions that are passing and forcing the human cypher known as Mike Johnson to actually bring popular measures to a vote. Let's posit that, for instance, Republicans finally get some sort of extension of ACA premiums passed through both Houses with Democratic support. Do we really think Trump will honor that law? 

More accurately, do we think that the creatures that surround this empty man will honor that law? Richardson points to the role that ghoulish fascist Stephen Miller has played in the illegal strikes against Venezuelan boats. Miller is basically taking the logic of Republican rhetoric since Reagan to its gruesome conclusion. There is at least some reporting that many of the people around Trump are basically trolls; they don't really mean anything they say, they just want a reaction. Miller is not a troll, he's a monster. 

I recently enjoyed Death by Lightning on Netflix about the assassination of James Garfield. The central importance of Garfield's death was the impetus it gave to civil service reform - a reform that dramatically reshaped the capacity of the federal government to actually carry out complex tasks. The spoils system that had existed since Andrew Jackson's presidency created strong party loyalty, but it left the government without capable people able to leverage expertise for good governance. You can't have a Department of Labor with statisticians to give you the information to stop child labor. 

My hope - not, I pray, a forlorn hope - is that the awfulness of Trump 2.0 will shock the jaded sensibilities of the American public in much the same way that Garfield's death did. These are corrupt, vicious people and they aren't especially smart. They are operating as if there will be no accountability. That's the subtext of the joke about Trump pardoning Saul Goodman.

Former Special Counsel, Jack Smith, wants to testify in public about what he found out about Trump's role in January 6th. Sure, we all know that this was his doing, but he's now effectively immune from prosecution, so a public airing of his misdeeds is the best we can hope for. If, as I suspect, Trump pardons everyone as he heads out the door, then we will need these sort of "truth and reconciliation" moments to come as close to exposing the criminality of these thugs as we are likely to come.

There Is A Club

 And you aren't a member.

Jeffrey Epstein was. (These types of stories is why the NY Times, for all its faults is invaluable.)

Is Today Epstein Day?

 Theoretically today is the day that the Epstein Files are to be released to the House. I am skeptical that there won't be some sort of partial hiding of materials, but I wonder if the release of the partial files will give cover to people to leak the parts that the Department of Justice will try and hide.

What seems to be happening is that we are getting a lot more stories about what we might call the Epstein Class of billionaires and their hangers-on. Those stories can feed into Trump's overall cluelessness and detachment. If you are going to flip the Senate and create a Blue Tsunami, these stories really matter. 

One thing we are seeing is the overload of Trump Fluffing from his sycophants. The "renaming" of the Kennedy Center (yes, it's illegal) is a great example of how warped the Washington, DC GOP class has become as they reshape their whole worlds to provide a constant stream of superficial plaudits to his fragile ego. Trump's need for gilded ballrooms, vanity projects and his indifference to actual policy simply gibes nicely with this idea of an Epstein Class.

His efforts to "change the narrative" with his bizarre rant the other night isn't working. Authoritarians don't course correct easily, and Trump is stupid and a narcissist making a course correction even harder.

If the files really are damning, how quickly does he fall?

Candidate Quality

 One of the perennial questions in elections is asking whether or not the degree of candidate quality matters. How much does having a talent like Clinton, Obama or - in his own perverse way - Trump win elections? I think on the question of presidents, Democrats used to rely on low propensity voters, so having a preternaturally talented politician was necessary to turn them out. It's now Republicans who rely on those irregular Trump voters, so maybe that's changed somewhat, and that helps explain why Democrats are romping in special elections.

As long as the elections next November are reasonably free and fair (beyond the gerrymandering), I think Democrats win the House. The Democratic gerrymanders will not only counteract the Republican ones, but in a true wave, moving a district from R+13 to R+7 to help win a D+4 district elsewhere makes that R+13 district a potential, even likely Dem pick up. It's the so-called dummymander. 

Senate seats aren't exactly gerrymandered, but the states themselves are a sort of rough gerrymander. There is not a Democrat - living or dead - who is likely to win statewide races in West Virginia, Oklahoma or Idaho. The Senate map is always unfavorable to Democrats, given their strength in population centers and weakness in rural areas. The good news is that Senate terms are six years, and any Democrat who picks off a seat in 2026 will serve through the first term of whoever wins in 2028. 

Yglesias writes about the need for Democrats to compete in Florida. He notes that they are heavily recruiting candidates in places like Kansas, Iowa and Alaska. I do think that they can win in those places, because a lot of Trump's tariff policies are especially damaging to farmers. Florida and Texas, though, are the biggest prizes. Flip those states and you are sending shudders of dread through Republican strategists. 

As Yglesias points out, Trump has dramatically changed his immigration policies since his first term in office. The first term was mostly about border enforcement - the big beautiful wall that Mexico would pay for. This time around, the adults are gone and Stephen Miller is furiously masturbating to images of children being ripped from their parents arms by Border Patrol goon squads - not on the border but in American cities. 

Hispanic citizens don't like illegal immigration anymore than most blue collar workers do. They are either citizens stretching back to the 19th century, or they came here legally, so they don't have any special affinity for people who may have crossed the border. However, the ICE raids are everything liberals said would happen, but really didn't happen from 2017-2021. 

As Krugman notes, Trump has unleashed all the latent nastiness in our culture. I do think a lot of working class men were tired of "You can't say that" type of scolding, which is why they shifted to Trump. However, that does not mean that they want to be racially profiled. Even the White guys don't want their buddy from the job site to be rounded up by masked goons. The whole point of "You can't say that" was prevent the sort of demonization and dehumanization that leads to things like we are seeing on the streets of our cities. Yeah, it's annoying, but it wasn't pointless.

Trump has ripped the scales from the eyes of a lot of Hispanic voters, and that could mean the final flipping of Texas and Florida in the 2026 Senate races. Personally, I am dubious that Jasmine Crockett can flip the votes of suburban and exurban Texans who might otherwise be sick of the cruelty of Trumpistan or the economic malpractice from Liberation Day. I really do think that the blander, whiter candidate is a better fit for Texas. James Talarico is the sort of guy who can articulate liberal ideas in ways that resonate with swing voters, whereas Crockett tends to play to the base. 

In Florida, though, I really think that the best candidate is a Hispanic man. I really do believe that Hispanic male voters are more steeped in a sort of machismo political culture. It's not destiny, Mexico has a female president, but when it comes to candidate quality in Red or Purple-Red states, it feels like a "First, do no harm" strategy.

Party loyalists want to "fire up the base" but in 2026 - if it is indeed a Blue Wave - the base will be there. "Fire up the base" was necessary back when Democrats relied on low propensity voters. The Democratic base IS fired up. The key to winning Florida and Texas (and Ohio and Kansas and so on) is finding the candidate that soothes the fears of those who don't usually vote for a Democrat. John Tester of Joe Manchin would be a terrible Democratic candidate in Massachusetts, but they sure were good in Montana and West Virginia.

Where I routinely disagree with Yglesias is whether a candidates positions on the issues really matters. I do think that "vibes" matter and a candidate's gender or skin color or where they're from does matter. Politics are intensely visual when you are dealing with non-ideological voters. 

After Trump's bizarre, Adderall fueled rant last night, there is more and more evidence that the wheels are coming off. Authoritarians can't course correct, because they can't admit that they were wrong. That's why I think a Blue Wave feels extremely likely. If we tip all the way into a recession, it's a lock. However winning the Senate is critical, because that would allow Democrats to stop Trump from packing the Courts, the Cabinet and the Federal Reserve with his incompetent cronies.

The Left won't like it, but it's best to remember "First, do no harm."

UPDATE: Another take on Texas.