Author: A.T.

OUR UNCHECKED, UNBALANCED LEADER

To find your closest No Kings protest, check out this map, register, and share widely.  (Consider, also, joining tomorrow’s call.)

ISRAEL’S

This Israeli Government Is a Danger to Jews Everywhere.

But first . . .

Barack: “It won’t be as easy as just shouting” (60 seconds). 

Imagine!  A President who respects the role of Congress.

AOC:

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Fox News and the right wing would have you believe that my American values are something out of the communist manifesto.

But I don’t believe in healthcare, labor, and human dignity because I’m an extremist.

I believe these things because I was a waitress.

Because I’ve worked double shifts to keep the lights on.

Because I did lose a parent to cancer and I saw my mom open the hospital bill a couple of days later.

Because on my worst day, I know what it feels like to feel left behind.

I don’t want any of us to live like this anymore. We deserve better.

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And now . . .

Sawyer Hackett: How Trump personally profits from the tariffs Congress never authorized (90 seconds).

And:

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Trump Profits Like No Other President

When Hillary Clinton was first lady, a furor erupted over reports that she had once made $100,000 from a $1,000 investment in cattle futures. Even though it had happened a dozen years before her husband became president, it became a scandal that lasted weeks and forced the White House to initiate a review.

Thirty-one years later, after dinner at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about first lady Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket — 280 times the Clinton lucre and in this case from a person with a vested interest in policies set by her husband’s government. Scandal? Furor? Washington moved on while barely taking notice. . . .

The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and is opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join, all in the past few months alone.

Just last week, Qatar handed over a luxury jet meant for Trump’s use not just in his official capacity but also for his presidential library after he leaves office. Experts have valued the plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined.

And Trump hosted an exclusive dinner at his Virginia club for 220 investors in the $TRUMP cryptocurrency that he started days before taking office in January. Access was openly sold based on how much money they chipped in — not to a campaign account but to a business that benefits Trump personally.

By conventional Washington standards, according to students of official graft, the still-young Trump administration is a candidate for the most brazen use of government office in American history, perhaps eclipsing even Teapot Dome, Watergate and other famous scandals. . . .

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Retorts the White House: “The American public believes it is absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency.”

Really?

The dollar is our superpower.  We just print money and the world accepts it — “as good as gold.”

(Our other two?  The “soft power” we accumulated over 80 years, beginning with the Marshall plan, a mix of generosity and moral clarity that Trump tossed into the trash.  And our unmatched “hard power,” the kind that tyrants like Putin and Kim Jong-Un rely on.)

Yet Trump is doing all he can to weaken the dollar (and strengthen crypto).

Our enemies are thrilled.  Trump doesn’t care.  He’s long crypto.

And that Qatari 747?  Sure it’s a white elephant costing $23,000 an hour to run . . . but that will be the taxpayers’ $23,000 if he becomes president for life like Putin and Xi.  Or chickenfeed if he has to pay it himself out of the billions he’s accumulating as President.  He made money bankrupting casinos.  He’s making money bankrupting America.

PRIDE

> Sally Ride — first woman in space, closeted until death — debuts Monday.  Here’s the trailer.  Here’s a review.

> Gina Ortiz Jones won San Antonio’s mayoral race Saturday.

How the world has changed now that gays and lesbians don’t have to hide who they are and we can love and celebrate straight people, as we always have, but their LGBT+ brothers and sisters, too.  As someone one recently noted: “Homosexuality has been observed in over 1500 species. Homophobia is found in only one: humans. So based on science, the only thing that’s unnatural is homophobia.”

1.  Don’t specify your pronouns unless you think people need guidance.  It’s one thing to be supportive of gender nonconforming people; quite another to play into MAGA hands and lose elections.  For more on this, see: Enough With The Pronouns.

(If you have any doubt that we should support gender nonconforming people, watch this straight Navy flyer’s 60-second appeal.)

2.  Don’t spread the TACO meme.  I’ve been thinking this from the minute I first heard it and should have spoken up sooner: ‘TACO’ is an awful political slogan, and it could backfire terribly.

3.  Don’t vote with Oportun management.  This applies only to those bought OPRT before May 27 and should thus have received an e-ballot from your broker (probably this past Wednesday around 3am or 4am, if you’re searching for it).  I voted AGAINST retaining the first two board members and FOR the third, whom management recommends you reject.  (On the remaining questions, I voted FOR.)

If management defeats the challenge, I’d hope the stock doubles over the next year or two.  If the challenge prevails, I’d hope it quintuples.  (Needless to say: only with money you can truly afford to lose.)

BONUS

With all that’s going on . . .

. . . a fake wrestling entrepreneur tapped to head the Department of Education, a Fox News host tapped to head the Department of Defense, Chainsaw Musk battling with our twice impeached Commander-in-Chief — three examples that barely begin to scratch the surface . . .

. . . one would be forgiven to think (if one hadn’t just lost one’s job or weren’t about to lose access to healthcare or hadn’t lived through our last stagflation) that’s it’s all just a reality TV show of sorts, and really kinda fun.

This six-minute video about Alfred Hugenberg — of whom I had never heard — could make such a person think twice.

It will enrage anyone who thinks that I’m suggesting Trump is a modern-day you-know-who.  As Al Gore recently said, “I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich to any other movement. It was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it.”

I get it, too.  (And I apologize that Thursday’s link was broken.  Here are the 90 seconds I meant for you to see.  And here’s a transcript of to Gore’s full speech.)

That said, try to find six minutes to watch.  The parallels strike me as significant.

But first . . .

MUST-MUST-MUST -READ TOM FRIEDMAN

And now, three good ones . . .

1.  Watch what this guy has to say (90 seconds).

If only the votes had been counted in Florida, way back when — especially the tens of thousands of “over votes,” thrown out because people had punched Gore’s chad but also written in his name down below — he would have been our 43rd president.

There would have been no war in Iraq, the Court would not have become a tool of the right, the Voting Rights Act would not have been gutted, Roe would not have been overturned, climate change would have been confronted, we’d have been trillions of dollars less deep in debt, and inequality would have not reached the level required to allow a demagogue to seize power.

2. Take another 90 seconds for THIS guy, with his 610 plastic cups.  (Hint: it’s not about plastic cups.)

3.  Heather Cox Richardson on not just Ukraine’s amazing Operation Spider Web — which you already know about — but also on Darren Beattie, a Trump appointee I’d never heard of.  Speaks volumes.

OPRT

If, like me, you own a bunch, you’ll want to read management’s pitch for your vote . . . and Findell’s pitch to vote against management.  My hope is that Findell’s WHITE ballot prevails.  We could see a $30 stock in a year or two.  But even if it doesn’t, and management hits the $1.10 – $1.30 per share earnings it projects, the stock at $6.50 seems awfully cheap.

The headline says it all:

MUSK DERIDES TRUMP’S BILL, SAYING IT WILL “MASSIVELY INCREASE THE ALREADY GIGANTIC” DEFICIT

He calls it “a disgusting abomination.”

The CBO agrees the bill would add trillions to our National Debt.  But Trump has no real interest in lowering the deficit — nor in preserving the strength of the dollar or the enormous advantage its being the world’s reserve currency confers. He’s more of a crypto-corrupto kinda guy.

(My solution to the deficit problem.  All of 250 words.  With colors!  Green for revenues, red for spending.)

BONUS

HEGSETH ORDERS NAVY TO RENAME SHIP HONORING GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST HARVEY MILK

Kerry K.: “This is really insane.  The Harvey Milk is in the same class of Navy ships with the Sojourner Truth, the John Lewis, the Cesar Chavez and the Robert F. Kennedy.  I wonder which of them will be next.”

(Other vessels under consideration: the Thurgood Marshall, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Harriet Tubman, the Dolores Huerta, the Lucy Stone, and the Medgar Evers.)

June is Gay Pride month.  “A defense official said the timing of the decision was intentional.”

If you can find a few minutes, watch Tim Snyder explaining why he moved to Canada.

Last Year’s Move to Toronto

It’s not what I thought — and a completely absorbing call to action.

And, boy, do we ever need action!

Speaking of which, where are you protesting June 14?

The same day Trump is throwing a military parade for his birthday, with tanks in the streets.  (Did you watch yesterday’s 90-second clip?)

Here are your choices.

They’re everywhere — but none is yet set for the little gay beach community I can’t bear to leave in the summer.  (Patriotism has its limits.)  So I may organize my own.

The theme of the June 14 protests, as you probably know, is NO KINGS.

The obvious protest sign for my community would be:  “NO KINGS (Just Queens).”  But I’m one of those gays not comfortable being called a queen — no disrespect to the vast majority of gays who are less uptight — so in case you can think of a good alterative, let me know!

Alabama Al:

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Regarding the upcoming parade, and that clip you posted, I’m looking forward to three things:

1) Watching how badly tanks and other heave equipment will tear up Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C.  The surfaces of the venues in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, and other sites where grandiose military parades are held, are specially constructed to handle such stress. None of the streets in D.C. are. It may cost as much to repair the streets as the cost of the parade itself.

2) Watching how well American military units march.  In countries that do regularly stage military parades, if the soldiers marching look particularly sharp and precise it’s because the military units you see are specialty units that do nothing but train for these parades. Though there are a number of small ceremonial units, the American military generally see their personnel as having better things to do than parade down streets. Don’t expect soldiers who may not have marched in formation since basic training to be precisely in lockstep.

3) Seeing whether Trump wears his “Commander-In-Chief” uniform.  During Trump 1.0, he talked about having one designed, but was apparently dissuaded. He may be foolish enough to actually wear one this go around.

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→ Thanks, Al!

Another “headline that says it all,” added to yesterday’s. From FactCheck.org:

RFK Jr. Denies Cuts to Scientific Research While Slashing Staff, Funding

And finally, this message from the Patriotic Millionaires (whose ranks you should consider joining, if one of our crazy speculations hits):

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Stop Trump’s pick for IRS Commissioner!

After a slew of Interim Commissioners leading the IRS in just four short months, Trump has officially nominated someone to be the permanent Commissioner: former Congressman Billy Long.

While he was a member of Congress, Long sponsored legislation that would have abolished the IRS and instituted a 30% consumption tax instead. This would remove taxes such as the federal income tax, all while letting millionaires like us off the hook and taxing working people into (or further into) poverty.¹

Since he retired from Congress, Long has used his connections to enrich himself by exploiting a tax loophole commonly known as a “magnet for fraud.” He encouraged businesses to apply for the pandemic-era Employee Retention Tax Credit in exchange for a portion of the refund received by the company.²

Since his nomination to lead the agency was announced, we’ve seen several individuals who benefited from Long’s tax schemes donate to Long’s failed U.S. Senate campaign. In doing so, they are helping him pay himself back $130,000 that he’d previously lent his campaign years before.³

This is corruption in plain sight.

The Senate could vote on Long’s nomination as early as next week. Click here to send a message to your senators demanding they reject Billy Long as the next IRS Commissioner.

SEND A MESSAGE

If confirmed, Long puts at risk all of the progress the IRS has made in serving working people and businesses, and in cracking down on wealthy tax cheats.

If you ran a business, particularly a struggling one, would you ever fire your accounts receivable department? No. It would be the last department you would cut. But with Long heading the IRS, there’s a strong likelihood he will fire auditors or reassign them to other roles. He’s one of the lawmakers who continuously hacked at the IRS budget while in Congress. If he’s tasked with leading the agency, he’ll be sure to look after his wealthy friends and donors, because he doesn’t want them to get taxed and audited.

During the last year of Trump’s first term—2020—households earning $1 million or more were audited at a lower rate than low-income households receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit.⁴

In contrast, during the Biden Administration and under the leadership of the most recent Senate-confirmed IRS Commissioner, Danny Werfel, the IRS hired more staff, allowing it to begin audits on 60 major corporations with over $500 billion in profits and notify Microsoft that it owed $29 billion in back taxes.⁵ The IRS also recovered over $1.3 billion from millionaire tax cheats in less than a year.⁶

Recent moves from the Trump administration, coupled with the president’s nomination of Billy Long who wants to abolish the agency, demonstrate a mutual desire to allow their tax-cheating friends and donors to continue avoiding taxes with impunity. The Senate must reject this nomination.

Join us in calling on the Senate to vote against Billy Long’s nomination for IRS Commissioner.

¹ He Promised Huge Tax Refunds. Now Trump Wants Him to Lead the I.R.S.
² He Promised Huge Tax Refunds. Now Trump Wants Him to Lead the I.R.S.
³ Trump IRS Pick Was Just Enriched By Tax Schemers
⁴ New Analysis Shows Trump-Era IRS Audited Low-Income Workers at a Higher Rate Than Millionaires
⁵ IRS Investment Update: Business Account Launches, Noncompliant US Subsidiaries Targeted
⁶ IRS says it has recovered $1.3 billion in unpaid taxes from rich Americans

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→ My only quibble is the use of “tax cheats” as a blanket term for all the millionaires from whom audits produced that $1.3 billion.  Some surely were cheats.  But some underpayment surely resulted from simple error (the tax code is complicated!) and some because the IRS insisted on its interpretation in a gray area as opposed to the taxpayer’s accountant’s interpretation (the tax code has gray areas!).  That said: hurray for the IRS.  It needs to be strengthened, not weakened — and appreciated for the vital work it does.

Have a great day.

Happy Pride.

Trump’s Birthday Military Parade — 90 must-see seconds.

And if you have time, 4 quick ones and a superb #5 . . .

1.  The headline says it all:

World Scientists Look Elsewhere as U.S. Labs Stagger Under Trump Cuts

Why would we want to be pre-eminent in science?

2.  The headline says most of it:

RFK Jr. May Have Just Ruined Our Best Weapon Against Bird Flu

“He just made two bad decisions on vaccines, and he made them in the worst way possible.”

3.  Tech Bro Had to Go

Who knew? Maureen Dowd’s dad was a DC cop in charge of Senate security!  Smart words, as always.

4.  Click bait — but fun to take the quiz at the end:

Why Does Trump Keep Saying Harvard Teaches Remedial Math?

You may need to be a Wall Street Journal subscriber to see the quiz.

5.  Heather Cox Richardson on 1950 and today.

So worth everyone’s time. 

Happy Sunday!

From Joyce Vance’s interview with Princeton Professor Kim Scheppele:

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After the end of the communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, Hungary was the star pupil in the class of new democracies, quickly installing a stable multiparty democracy checked by a powerful constitutional court. Fast forward to 2010, and Viktor Orban was elected at a time when Hungary was reeling, like many countries at the time, from the global financial crisis.

As soon as he took office with a parliamentary majority big enough to allow him to amend the constitution with the votes of only his own party, Orban rewrote the entire constitution, weaponized the national budget against his opponents to destroy their ability to fight him, mass-fired many civil servants to replace them with loyalists, captured the constitutional court, brought most of the media under his control, attacked universities to eliminate academic freedom, used unlawful measures to fight immigration and eventually sidelined the parliament to govern by emergency decree. While it took the world nearly a decade to realize just how bad things were in Hungary, Orban had actually managed to capture virtually all independent institutions and destroy democracy within the first three years of his now 15-year rule.

No one who knew Hungary in the 1990s would have expected it to fall so far so fast. Hungary is now classified by virtually all observers as a “competitive authoritarian” regime, no longer a democracy.

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Ring any bells?

And isn’t it odd that America’s Conservative Political Action Conference — CPAC — has convened each year since 2022 in . . . Hungary?  

Professor Scheppele continues:

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The U.S. is on the same path as Hungary and Venezuela, whose autocratic leaders moved very quickly to destroy their previous constitutional orders and substitute personalistic rule. In Hungary and Venezuela, wholly new constitutions were written in the first year, and now the Trump administration is trying to swiftly and radically rewrite the U.S. Constitution in the only practical way available – through channeling a whole set of constitution-remaking cases to the Supreme Court that has already been packed in an irregular fashion with Trump-supporting justices.

. . .

Don’t think it can’t happen here. We are far along a path familiar from international examples that runs from democracy to dictatorship. A solid democratic history cannot save a country from autocratic capture once the key institutions that hold the executive in check are severely damaged. And we are witnessing the destruction of those key checking institutions with alarming speed.

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“Those Who Cannot Remember the Past Are Condemned To Repeat It” — George Santayana, 1905

We begin with two heartwarming stories, each of which will take you barely a minute to read:

1. Mammals helping mammals.

2. George Clooney, from years ago.  (Snopes verifies it’s true!)

In case you have time to take a few Harvard courses on government, politics, and democracy — free, on-line — click here.

David Brooks — a mentee of the late William F. Buckley, Jr. (who once took me out for an overnight sail on his little boat [he snored loudly] and who, more importantly to most, was the father of American conservatism) — clearly believes the world would be better off if Trump, Vance, Stephen Miller, et al, took those Harvard courses rather than try to destroy Harvard and, as he writes, the moral fiber of our country.

Robert Reich, at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Brooks, agrees.

His column, The End of Trump II, Part 1, is a breezy summary of the last four months.

And if you have time, this recent interview — Reich on the gerontocracy — covers a lot of interesting ground.  He discusses his forthcoming book, Coming Up Short, a nod to his height but really a reflection on how our generation (Reich, Trump, Bill Clinton, and yours truly are all the same age) has failed the country.

If we somehow get through Trump 2.0, he says, the silver lining may be that . . .

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. . . we will have gained a deeper appreciation of all sorts of things we took for granted.  I mean, how often did you have a conversation with anybody before Trump about the rule of law?  About habeas corpus?  About due process?  About the Constitution?  I think the Trump regime is bringing us back to first principles.  And thinking freshly about why these things are so important, including, obviously, democracy itself.  It is, over the long term, going to be very important for all of us.”

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DEPT. OF DESPAIR

ParkerVision got a terrible ruling yesterday in its long-running case against Qualcomm that sent the stock down to 30 cents.

On the theory that it’s sometimes darkest before the dawn, I bought more.

Well, not just that theory alone.  Two other things:

> A patent-savvy attorney believes the ruling was SO bad — effectively overturning the opinion of the appellate court, which in his whole career he has never seen — that, he thinks, the case may finally get reassigned to a new judge.  That would add months or years to the case . . . but if the jury ever does get to hear it, well, that’s one of the two reasons I bought more.

> Also, while Qualcomm’s patent infringement may be the most willful and egregious, PRKR has claims against several other deep pockets in front of an entirely different judge.

Only with money you can truly afford to lose!

New Yorkers: Consider Whitney Tilson for mayor (7 minutes).

Everybody else (including New Yorkers):

Trump is Destroying the FBI and trying to destroy Harvard.

The FBI tragedy is hugely more important than whether a trans high schooler can compete in the high jump — so I’d urge you to click that link.

With luck, he won’t be able to destroy Harvard.

It’s hard to see who can stop him from destroying the FBI.

As for the trans girl, here’s the story.  It’s not boxing or some contact sport — it’s the high jump!  And local sports authorities had already arranged for her to get a “duplicate medal” if she won, so no girl-from-birth could be deprived of her rightful recognition.  But the United States Government believes this is a matter too important to ignore.

(Climate change?  A hoax.  Violent insurrectionists imprisoned by Trump-appointed judges?  Pardon ’em.  Stagflation . . . slashing Medicare . . . crippling the IRS . . . eviscerating the Social Security Administration?  Fake news.  A trans participant in a high school high-jump competition?  There is a real and present danger the public demands we confront.)

Back to Harvard.

You may have missed the end of Tuesday’s post because of a MailChimp glitch.  It should have read:

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And here is the kicker (though Pinker’s whole piece is worth your time):

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. . . Mr. Trump’s strangling of support [for science] will harm Jews more than any president in my lifetime. Many practicing and aspiring scientists are Jewish, and his funding embargo has them watching in horror as they are laid off, their labs are shut down or their dreams of a career in science go up in smoke. This is immensely more harmful than walking past a “Globalize the Intifada” sign. Worse still is the effect on the far larger number of gentiles in science, who are being told that their labs and careers are being snuffed out to advance Jewish interests. Likewise for the current patients whose experimental treatments will be halted, and the future patients who may be deprived of cures. None of this is good for the Jews.

[His] concern for Jews is patently disingenuous, given Mr. Trump’s sympathy for Holocaust deniers and Hitler fans. The obvious motivation is to cripple civil society institutions that serve as loci of influence outside the executive branch. As JD Vance put it in the title of a 2021 speech: “The Universities Are the Enemy.”

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Join a No Kings protest Saturday, June 14 — or organize your own.  Use ChatGPT to make a clever sign; the nearest FedEx to print it on posterboard.  You’ll be a star!