A Frightening Study In Debasement — And More June 23, 2024 1. Andy Borowitz, famed for his satirical headlines, gets serious about V.P. hopeful Elise Stefanik. A frightening study in debasement. How good people can succumb to pressures that turn them into bad people. It happened in Germany 90 years ago, too. 2. This happened in Philadelphia Mississippi the summer I graduated from high school. As reflected on by today’s residents, black and white. One, Dawn Lea Mars Chalmers, was a freshman at Ole Miss when ‘Mississippi Burning‘ hit theaters. I was just so ashamed that I didn’t know much about [the murders]. I can’t even believe that the sensationalism of Hollywood is what made me understand what a big deal it was. I remember calling my parents and being, like, ‘What the hell?’ My father talked very little about it. [When] I pressed him, he said, ‘Dawn Lea, there are things that I just do not think it is safe for you to know.’ And that’s where he left it. All these years later, she concludes: “My God, can we not move forward while still talking and understanding what happened in the past?” 3. Campaigning on Inflation Leaves Egg on Trump’s Face — Yolk’s on Him. But as with immigration — his other big issue — the yolk’s on him only if enough people know the facts. And right now, most don’t. The fact on immigration, and the very real border crisis, is that Democrats have for decades been trying to work with Republicans to fix immigration. > Obama was all set to sign a bi-partisan bill that passed the Senate 68-32 and that would have passed the House with a bi-partisan majority — had the Republican Speaker allowed it to come to a vote. The Republicans killed it. > Biden was all set to sign a bi-partisan bill that would have passed Congress — and flooded the border with the resources and rule changes needed to solve the crisis — had Trump not killed it. But he did. That’s right: Trump killed it. He insisted the crisis continue so he could ride it to re-election, his only chance to shut down the three serious criminal prosecutions he faces. People need to understand: it’s his crisis now. He owns it. He‘s the only reason it’s been prolonged. He could solve it tomorrow if he told his stooges in Congress — like Elise Stefanik — to pass that bill. The fact on inflation is that COVID disrupted the global supply chain and sent prices soaring. Those high prices caused — and continue to cause — terrible hardship. But Biden didn’t cause the hardship; he averted a depression — while fighting to get inflation back down very close to where it needs to be, even as wages are rising and almost anyone who wants a job can find one. He wants to finish the job. Trump, by contrast, plans to send prices SOARING by imposing tariffs — which American companies and consumers will have to pay — on everything we import. And by tightening the labor market and disrupting supply by moving millions of undocumented workers into “camps.” (Of course, he doesn’t pitch it that way.) “Despite all the noise Trump makes about Biden’s inflationary policies, Trump’s own prescription—much higher tariffs, a politicized Fed, a devalued dollar, and record federal deficits—is sure to make inflation much worse.” If you can find time, read — and share — the whole piece. It even explains the price of eggs.
Macro Economics June 21, 2024June 20, 2024 Paul London in The Hill: History Tells Us the Danger the Economy Faces Is Recession, Not Inflation U.S. economic history warns that raising the cost of public and private borrowing increases the danger of recession. In 2024, this risk far outweighs the risk of renewed inflation. Geopolitical challenges from Russia, China and Iran, and today’s fast-changing, disruptive, tech-driven economy instead require more and less costly credit and spending to promote the expansion and modernization of defense industries and civilian economic transformation. Worth reading in full. As is: Ian Simmons in Forbes: Why Extending Trump’s Tax Cuts Should Concern Long-Term Investors . . . That Trump wants to extend his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act should come as no surprise. . . . [But the TCJA dramatically increased the national debt and was arguably a senseless giveaway to foreign investors, a topic I wrote about in March. Another one of the law’s troubling elements was a new deduction for owners of so-called pass-through businesses. The provision was 50 times more likely to help the top 1% of earners . . . than those in the bottom 50% . . . . . . Tax cuts for billionaires are a bad deal for the vast majority of investors. R.I.P. EDWARD RYAN Ralph M.: “Thank you for posting this. It reminded me of a moment early in the 2004 Presidential race. Howard Dean was campaigning in Iowa in what looked like a middle school cafeteria. An older woman in the back got the mike and expressed her displeasure over Vermont’s Civil Union law. His answer (paraphrased from memory): I understand your concern. I grew up in a conventional family and a culture that was not comfortable with homosexuality and I was no different. But as Governor, I was confronted by people who said that if civil marriage conveyed certain benefits and privileges then those same benefits and privileges should be available to anyone — no matter whom they loved. At a campaign rally, an older gentleman came up to me and said, “I was on the beaches of Normandy, and I think I earned the right to love whoever I love.” “Howard Dean won my vote that night and, more importantly, he may have won the vote of the woman questioner.” Diane D.: “I’ll always believe that love wins out; but it is often a small, quiet win. R.I.P. Edward Ryan — may you and Paul have the life in the afterlife that you should have been able to have here.”
R.I.P., Edward Ryan June 20, 2024June 20, 2024 One of you sent me this obituary from the Albany Times Union with no other explanation than to read it to the end. At first it made no sense — is this someone he thought I had known? — but then it did. It speaks volumes about the way life used to be and how much progress has been made. With our Republican friends fighting it every step of the way. Rest in peace, Edward Ryan.
WHY They Want Him To Win June 19, 2024June 18, 2024 But first . . . Glenn Price: “Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion elevates dogma and the dictionary over a commonsense interpretation of the Second Amendment. Originalism? Originally, bump stocks didn’t exist. Watch this video showing how a bump stock works and tell me it is not a machine gun.” Thomas and Alito are embarrassments to the Court and the nation. If Trump wins, they would be induced to step down, replaced by equally partisan right-wingers 30 years younger . . . extending their minority views beyond 2050. (Surely it is a minority view that abortion should be illegal and bump stocks, legal.) And now . . . PUTIN wants Trump to win so he can subjugate Ukraine and then move on to conquer adjacent states. THE KLAN wants Trump to win because they believe America should be a white Christian nation. CARL wants him to win because he believes trans women are “ruining women’s sports.” And because he is rightly distraught over the border crisis – though not so distraught as to favor the bi-partisan bill Trump killed that would have ENDED the crisis. TRUMP, a convicted felon surrounded by other convicted felons, wants to win so he can be the world’s strongest strongman — like Putin, Orban, and Kim Jong Un, only stronger — and because it’s his only way to beat the raps for attempting to overturn the election and for lying to the FBI about documents he claimed not to have and then took pains to conceal. TENS OF MILLIONS OF OTHERS want him to win because they have been misled into believing the country is going to hell when, in fact, unemployment is low; the stock market, at record highs; infrastructure, at long last being revitalized; manufacturing jobs, coming home; violent crime, down (murder, “plunging”); and the border in crisis — this bears repeating — only because Trump killed the deal to fix it. And inflation? His followers have been misled into believing that the sharp two-year spike in the cost of living was Biden’s fault, when it was largely the result of COVID’s supply-chain disruptions. Prices and interest rates are painfully high; but no longer rising as fast as wages. And even as Biden continues to make progress on inflation, Trump has vowed to impose huge tariffs, making imported goods more expensive; and to deport millions of workers, tightening an already tight labor market, driving up wages and prices. “In our nation’s 247-year history, there has never been an individual who is greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” — Dick Cheney, Sep. 7, 2023
Three Alerts June 18, 2024June 17, 2024 TERROR ALERT “The Terrorism Warning Lights Are Blinking Red Again.” Everything policy makers need to know. All I think we need to know is that, should a terrorist succeed between now and the election, we shouldn’t jettison democracy in favor of authoritarianism. That would be a tragic over-reaction — much like our over-reaction to 9/11 . . . strengthening Iran by attacking Iraq; attempting to remake Afghanistan at a cost of trillions; all while creating millions more potential terrorists. IRONY ALERT The 13-million-member Southern Baptist Convention has officially come out against IVF, a fertility method that now accounts for about 2% of American births. The next Republican frontier is to forbid women (and men) from having babies they desperately want, even as they force poor women (and men) to have children they desperately don’t. Both links tell powerful stories. TALENT ALERT Did you watch the Tony’s? They were hosted by Ariana DeBose, the Oscar winning actress named by TIME Magazine one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She’s one of the stars who’ll be joining the President and First Lady in New York a week from Friday. Come join us! Help save the democracy so many fought and died to create and preserve. Straight allies hugely welcome.
If He Wins June 16, 2024 Yesterday, I shared Norm Ornstein’s must-read essay. Today, Tom Hartmann’s take: If Trump wins, this will be referred to as “the age of Trump,” Laura Ingraham told her Fox viewers, dreaming of a repeat of the kind of consequential presidency that stamps political eras. “He dominates the policy debate in ways that no one has done since Reagan. And if he picks a strong VP… this coalition could be in power for 50 years.” Ingraham — who I also once debated, at a Heritage Foundation event — could be right. If Trump becomes president this fall, he and his Project 2025 allies will transform America in ways that go far beyond FDR’s New Deal or Reagan’s war on working people. The Christian Taliban that has surrounded him will take over public school instruction and birth control policy, racist militias and skinheads will be running elections and immigration policy, the media will be finally and fully seized by rightwing oligarchs like in Russia and Hungary, unions and equality movements will be functionally outlawed, and Trump’s “enemies” (including reporters and commentators like yours truly) will end up in prison. Each of those things is already promised explicitly by Trump himself or part of the Project 2025 program for the next Republican presidency. Unthinkable? So was the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Likewise, the idea that two-thirds of the Court would have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. Or that a twice-impeached convicted felon — an adjudicated rapist found liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties, now awaiting trial in three much more serious criminal cases — who cheated to get into college and cheated to get out of the draft, cheated on his wives, cheats at golf, cheated on his taxes, cheated contractors, cheated with his charity and stiffed creditors of the four companies he put into bankruptcy — “the undisputed world champion of destroying things,” as Tucker Carlson put it, whom dozens of his own former top staffers consider dangerously unfit for the job — could actually be the next president. If you’re not scared, you’re not paying attention — which is just what Trump and Putin want. If you can help, click here (cash) or here (effort). We’re going to win because, unlike the Germans or Italians 90 years ago, we have the benefit of hindsight. And if you think all this is alarmist — that even if he wins “the system will hold” — read Norm’s essay again and tell me where you think he’s wrong. THANK YOU!
We’ve Seen This Movie Before June 14, 2024June 13, 2024 The Economist predicts Trump has a two-out-of-three chance of winning. Norm Ornstein and Dahlia Lithwick predict what will happen if he does. “The system,” they say, will not hold. Let me know where, if anywhere, you think they’re wrong. If enough people understand this — and I think enough will — Trump will lose. Just as candidates in Germany and Italy would have lost 90 or so years ago if German and Italian voters had had the benefit of hindsight. Unlike them, we do. We’ve seen this movie before. Have a great weekend. Don’t forget to file your second estimated tax payment by Monday, if you need to. And please: read that piece and share it every way you can. If you can help, click here (cash) or here (effort). We’re going to win.
Religious Conflict — And Magic June 13, 2024June 12, 2024 A moving account: The Day My Old Church Canceled Me Was a Very Sad Day. A really thoughtful conversation on Gaza: this Ezra Klein podcast. . . . I wanted to know what it’s like to watch these protests from Israel. What are Israelis seeing? What do they make of them? Ari Shavit is an Israeli journalist and the author of “My Promised Land,” the best book I’ve read about Israeli identity and history. “Israelis are seeing a different war than the one that Americans see,” he tells me. This is a conversation about trying to push divergent perspectives into relationship with each other: On the protests, on Israel, on Gaza, on Benjamin Netanyahu, on what it means to take societal trauma and fear seriously, on Jewish values, and more. A BONUS: Exchanging Contact Info If you and a new acquaintance want to share contact info — and your iPhones are both up to date (even if they’re old), just touch the two together and tap the Share button that will appear. It’s magic!
BTC, DJT, And A Money-Back Guarantee June 12, 2024June 11, 2024 CRAPTO Crypto Just Got Exponentially More Dangerous: Meet Fairshake. Quoth the craven: “Evermore.” MORE CRAPTO The People Who Bought Stock in Trump’s Truth Social Are Very Angry. But not at Trump. BONUS My friend Marc Fest’s one-hour communications training costs $450 and comes with a money-back guarantee. Want to up your game? Or that of a non-profit you support? Or a start-up you’ve invested in? Want to give your recently-graduated child or grandkid a leg up as he or she enters the real world? Check it out.
Is This A Great Country Or What? June 11, 2024June 10, 2024 GREAT BOOK Bill Maher’s new book is terrific. What This Comedian Said Will Shock You. (That’s the title.) Everyone on the left and the right will find much in it to like. Those of us who feel we’re in the sensible center will feel affirmed. CAUTION The stock market is awfully high. Price/earnings ratios are at record levels. If you’re invested on margin, you shouldn’t be. if you’ll be needing to cash out some of your holdings in the next year or two, it may be wiser to sell now and put that cash into Treasuries. “Timing the market” — getting out when you think it’s going to fall and back in when you think it’s going to rise — is not a long-term formula for success. But neither is taking more risk than you can afford. NEWS FLASH The twice-impeached convicted felon Republicans are running for President — an adjudicated rapist who has been found liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties and now awaits trial in three much more serious criminal cases — who cheated to get into college and cheated to get out of the draft, cheated on his wives, cheats at golf, cheated on his taxes, cheated contractors, cheated with his charity and stiffed creditors of the four companies he put into bankruptcy — “the undisputed world champion of destroying things,” as Tucker Carlson put it, whom dozens of his own former top staffers consider dangerously unfit for the job — met with his probation officer yesterday. Is this a great country or what?