Author: A.T.

The Least-Harm Principle

But first . . .

Treat yourself to the opening segment of yesterday’s Morning Joe.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

SFT: “Professor Aaron Tang argues that Constitutional law is broken because it lacks a coherent principle for deciding hard cases.  Textualism tends to favor “conservatives”; evolutionism (the “living constitution”), tends to favor liberals; and these two principles are simply irreconcilable.  He discerns a possibly emerging principle in the past term’s surprises, consistent with the Court’s proper role as a moderating influence, which he calls the ‘least harm’ principle.”

A perspective worth considering.

Have a great weekend!

 

Musical Interlude

I’m a closet Country & Western fan.

And not just for the titles.

“Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life”

“She Left Me for My Best Friend and I Miss Him”

And 102 more.  (“Tennis Must Be Your Racket ‘Cause Love Means Nothin’ To You”)

Four-times-married Willie Nelson has so many great songs, but this old one was new to me — and I thought pretty amazing.  Coming from Randy Rainbow, it could make some people nervous.  But from Willie?  “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other.”

BONUS

And, related only by genre, how great is this 1990 performance of “Riders in the Sky?”

 

In Just Two Years . . .

Yes, he’s old.  (Me, too.)

But . . .

In just two years he’s:

  • Defeated the biggest threat to democracy we’ve ever faced — by 7 million votes.
  • Restored our alliances and strengthened NATO.
  • United all of Europe in support of Ukrainian sovereignty, setting Russia back decades.
  • Eliminated the leader of Al Qaida.
  • Restored competence and professionalism to the State Department . . . and to the rest of the executive branch.
  • Restored integrity, decency, dignity, modesty, and compassion to the Presidency.
  • Ended the deadly Covid plague for anyone choosing to be vaccinated.
  • Rescued the economy and brought the unemployment rate to its lowest level in half a century.
  • Made clear that he and almost all Democrats want to FUND the police, not defund them as the other party voted to do.
  • Appointed a wonderful Supreme Court Justice and dozens of federal district court and appellate judges.
  • Signed into law a massive infrastructure bill to help revitalize the country, after decades of prior presidents’ failing to do so.
  • Signed into law the strategically and economically spectacular Chips-Plus package.
  • Signed into law a gun safety bill that, while wholly inadequate (an 18-year-old can’t buy a beer but can a deadly weapon?), nonetheless did something for the first time since 1994.
  • Is poised to sign into law a bill that will reduce the cost of prescription drugs, meaningfully restore our global role in confronting the existential climate crisis, and levy tax on the uber-wealthy and most profitable corporations while not seeking a dime from anyone else.
  • Is poised to sign into law the PACT Act, extending benefits for veterans.
  • And more.

The country is moving forward.

Many of you helped make this possible.

Thank you.

Have you done all you can to fund the organizing effort that is our best chance to save democracy and keep America moving forward?

 

BOREF And Monkeypox

But first . . .

. . . one 60-second Republican spot I am truly pleased to share.

And now . . .

MONKEYPOX

Matthew Yglesias offers as clear and sensible a discussion as I think you’ll find.

Of broad interest because — in addition to monkeypox — it addresses pandemics more generally and our public-health communications failures in dealing with them.

Someone widely known for his prescient concern is Bill Gates.  His 2014 TED talk warned that microbes, not missiles, are humanity’s biggest threat.  His new book: How To Prevent The Next Pandemic.

Someone not widely known is Sam Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old deci-billionaire “effective altruist” spending tens of millions (at least) to elect Democrats and Republicans who understand the urgency.

BOREF

Stephen W.: “We still have our BOREF since 1999.  It gives me something to stay alive for.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who would appreciate your explanation to the release they just sent out.”

→ The company has long believed there may be a massive “naked short” interest in its shares.  That when people have placed orders to buy, their brokerage firms have recorded the transactions — and taken their money — without ever having actually purchased the shares.  (If this were true — which I highly doubt — the brokerage firms would be betting BOREF would go down and eventually disappear so they would never have to make good on the purchases.)

The press release suggests three options.

If you take their first or second suggestion — instruct your broker to deliver your shares to Transfer Online — the shares become even less liquid than they are now.  This makes sense to me only if you think your brokerage house is so shady or shaky that one day it will disappear into the night.

Their third suggestion is to trade your (somewhat liquid) Borealis shares for (entirely illiquid) WheelTug shares, “ten for one.”  This makes even less sense to me, inasmuch as each ten BOREF shares effectively own approximately six WheelTug shares (because Borealis owns most of Chorus Motors which owns most of WheelTug).  Why take one share instead of six?

There is a fourth option: just do nothing.  Around 2028 — as the September 29, 2029, deadline to do something approaches — we can revisit.  Though I like to think WheelTug will get FAA certification and begin flying before then, and that — if they do and they are — any resultant short squeeze — if there is one — will be glorious.

That’s a lot of ifs.

It’s been 23 years, so I’m not counting any chickens.

But — more ifs — a decade from now WheelTug were on most 737s and A320s . . .

. . . as “power steering” — once just a dream — comes with every automobile (who wouldn’t want it?) . . .

. . . and if the company were throwing off $100 million or $200 million a year in dividends . . . then Borealis would be receiving $60 million or $120 million a year in cash.  Not bad for a company currently valued at $30 million.

Only with money you can truly afford to lose.

Have a great weekend!

 

What He’s Taken From Us; And Hopes To Give Back

PART I:

What Trump Has Taken From Us
He has made civic involvement a life-threatening proposition.
By Tom Nichols

. . . I’ve spent most of my career studying authoritarian governments, and I’ve spent a lot of time in some repressive places, from Greece under a military junta as a boy to the Soviet Union as an adult. I always felt, on returning to the United States, that I had returned to a fortress of democratic stability and civic cooperation.

I no longer feel that way. . . .

Our elections work because they are run by ordinary citizens at the state and local level who either were elected or volunteered to help administer the vote as a matter of civic duty. This is a wondrous thing: community volunteers overseeing the vote and counting the results. I love voting in person for just this reason; having seen people in other nations too terrified even to talk about politics, it always filled me with quiet joy to have my fellow townspeople hand me a ballot and protect my privacy while I voted.

Trump and his people, however, have made it clear . . . they will hurt anyone who gets in their way. Their goal is to make public service a hazardous undertaking, to create an environment in which people working on elections—their fellow American citizens—fear for their lives if they don’t cough up the results they want. . . .

Worth reading in full.

PART II – What He Hopes To Give Back:

A radical plan for Trump’s second term

Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios. . . .

. . . The preparations are far more advanced and ambitious than previously reported. What is happening now is an inversion of the slapdash and virtually non-existent infrastructure surrounding Trump ahead of his 2017 presidential transition.

Even more important to read or skim in full.

Should he run and win, we will have a whole new form of government.

And unlike Windows 11, you won’t be able to switch back if you don’t like it.

Which is one more reason to make every effort to keep control of Congress, win Secretary of State races — and more — 96 days from now.

Have you joined your local chapter of the League of Women Voters?  Joined Field Team 6? Joined Vote Forward? Done all you can to fund the organizing effort that is our best chance of saving democracy and moving the nation forward?

BONUS

Federsmith has dropped four new tracks.  Are you ready to dance?

 

Burying Ivana By The First Hole

If you haven’t already read The Latest Trump Grift? Burying Ivana At Their Golf Club, lend Dana Milbank your eyeballs.

“Is the former president going after her grave’s apparent tax benefits?”

It’s very funny — and, of course, appalling.

And speaking of grifters . . .

BONUS

. . . you will enjoy this Dr. Oz video clip and come to understand why Trump has endorsed him.

BONUS II

My friend R.E.Y.’s new song, “Slow Down,” just dropped on Spotify and other platforms.

 

 

Andrew Yang’s Terrible Idea

Before we get to the Doberman, the lion, and the squirrel, here is Trey Beck on Andrew Yang’s Third Party.

I’m a proud Yang fan.  I’ve hosted him for dinner.  I’ve recommended both his books.

But I’m also a Beck fan — and on this, Beck is 100% right:

Hard Pass on Andrew Yang’s Third Party

I respect Andrew Yang’s energy, intellect, and sense of humor. And yet I feel obliged to say that his third party, which he announced has merged with the efforts of other self-styled moderates like Christine Todd Whitman, is dumb.  At best, it will be ineffectual.  At worst, it will be actively unhelpful in accomplishing the “moderate” goals they claim to champion.

Others have set out how American history shows this newish political party they variously call Forward, the Forward Party, or Forward America is, er, unlikely to work, a challenge even Yang acknowledges in the title of his Washington Post piece announcing the merged party.

I have two more immediate beefs with Yang’s Forward, though. (Actually, three, because the name itself is terrible, given the inevitability of confusion with the eleventy thousand progressive groups with the name “Forward” in it.)

Let’s start with the fallacy of its fundamental premise, which is that millions of Americans in the “moderate, common-sense majority” are faced with a hopeless choice between two parties offering equally unpopular, radical programs. According to Yang and his allies, “far right” Republicans ban abortions, block voting rights, and oppose gun safety measures, while “far left” Democrats want to defund the police, ban all guns, and allow late-term abortions.

No. This is complete “both sides”-ist bullshit. Yang himself participated in multiple Democratic presidential debates with a comically large gaggle of candidates, precisely zero of whom advocated a single one of the things he cites in his WaPo piece as examples of radical Democratic policies. Voters who wanted moderate positions were ultimately given a choice between Donald Trump and Joseph Biden, not an angry sophomore at Oberlin. Voters chose Biden in part because he was the flaming centrist Yang says they deserve.

It is hilariously unself-aware that Andrew Yang, a guy who was proposing a form of universal basic income for every American (a perfectly worthy idea to discuss, and also not high on the list of the average voter’s priorities), is implicitly saying the Democrats who trounced him in the primary are too radical. Yang and Whitman are maddeningly silent on the fact that so much progress on voting, child poverty, climate, and such has been tragically thwarted by the centrist triangulations of a mere two U.S. Senators whose names rhyme with Schmanchin and Schminema. (Yes, Schmanchin sorta showed up this week.)

No. It is the Republican establishment alone that has come unmoored. It is not some fringe wing of the GOP proposing outlandish things. It is great heaps of Republicans in positions of immense power doing outlandish things. It is party leadership, governors, state legislators, and partisan Supreme Court justices who have for the first time ever revoked a constitutional right, who are trying to make it hard for poor people to vote, who say the answer to shootups at schoolhouses is to arm teachers, who punish corporations for criticism, and who deflect or lash out at critics when confronted with the inevitable real-world consequences of abortion being made inaccessible in dozens of states. Republicans—not far right Republicans, but Republicans broadly—now by and large reject the outcome of the 2020 election, and they condemn a legitimate inquiry into a violent break-in of the U.S. Capitol as a witch hunt. It is huge numbers of Republican, not Democratic, voters who say political violence is now justified.

The second, and bigger, problem here is that running third-party candidates, as Yang et al pledge they’ll do, will give us really bad electoral outcomes. His “we need another option” argument in 2022 is essentially the same one Ralph Nader, and to an extent Bernie Sanders, has used. It’s just that instead of the pitch being there’s no real distinction between two parties captured by corporations and elites, we’re now hearing that the two parties are just different flavors of bonkers. In either case, the invitation is to vote for some magic independent who will whisk us off to the Place of Achievable Solutions If Only We Had the Will. We saw how that worked out in 2000. And Sanders did HRC no favors in 2016.

Now, it is a credit to Yang and his partners that they profess, I am sure sincerely, to want to protect voting, promote ranked choice voting, and end gerrymandering, and they’d be doing something useful if that was the extent of their program.

The bitter irony, though, is that running moderates against both Republicans and Democrats is directly counter to the defense of democracy. Our elections are mostly built for a two-party contest, and ignoring that is folly. In most states, our primary system, our first-past-the-post voting that allows winning with a mere plurality, the winner-take-all Electoral College, and campaign finance rules mean that running third-party candidates as an “alternative” to “extreme” Dems and Republicans will just give us more Republicans.

It is fantasy not to see that third-party moderates will disproportionately siphon votes away from Democrats who are, for all their warts, generally on the side of democracy and against authoritarianism. If Andrew Yang or a surrogate were actually to run as a bona fide third-party presidential candidate in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2024, I can pretty much guaran-damn-tee you a Republican president, and the Rs won’t even have to cheat. Considering how thin the margins tend to be in those states, I think the damage may be done even if such a candidate just gets on the ballot but later endorses a Democrat after seeing, all too predictably, how the winds are blowing.

Come on, Andrew, the name alone—Forward!—is inherently attractive to progressives and repellant to conservatives. Talk to your messaging people!

There already exists a party whose rank-and-file members and leadership are advocating for policy reflecting what Americans broadly want on, say, guns. It is the Democratic Party. It is Republicans, armed with anti-democratic tools like the Senate filibuster, who stop them. And then the government does little and the GOP says, “Look, the government is useless!”

Hard pass. Shelve this terrible third-party idea, Andrew, and roll up your sleeves to get Democrats elected and to protect that endangered species of pro-democracy Republican.

Amen.  But read Andrew’s books.  They offer important ideas.

And now (unattributed, sadly) . . .

An old Doberman starts chasing rabbits and before long, discovers that he’s lost.

Wandering about, he notices a young lion heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of having lunch.

The old Doberman thinks, “Oh, oh! I’m in deep dodo now! Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. 

Just as the lion is about to leap, the old Doberman exclaims loudly, “Boy, that was one delicious lion! I wonder, if there are any more around here?

Hearing this, the young lion halts his attack in mid-stride, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees. “Whew!,” says the lion, “That was close! That old Doberman nearly had me!

Meanwhile, a squirrel who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the lion. So, off he goes.

The squirrel soon catches up with the lion, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the lion. The young lion is furious at being made a fool of and says, “Here, squirrel, hop on my back and see what’s going to happen to that conniving canine!

Now, the old Doberman sees the lion coming with the squirrel on his back and thinks, “What am I going to do now?,” but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn’t seen them yet. Just when they get close enough to hear, the old Doberman says, “Where’s that squirrel? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another lion!

Moral of This Story

Don’t mess with the old dogs. Age and skill will always overcome youth and treachery!

 

Kudos To Karine

The White House Press Secretary, when she had time on her hands, used to beat me regularly at Words With Friends.

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin has found something else — possibly more important — that she’s good at: Responding To GOP Lies.

If you didn’t have time to watch the White Christian Nationalist clip  Thursday, I offer it again.  It strikes me as really important.

That said, I want to stress: I love white people!

Most of my best friends are white!

Including many who are straight and go to, or whose ancestors regularly went to, church.

Being pro-women and pro-equality and pro-equal opportunity — and anti-defamation — are entirely compatible, it seems to me, with having numerous heroes who are straight white patriotic Christian men.

Barack Obama and Martin Luther King, Jr. are heroes of mine, but so are George Washington (who invented the peaceful transfer of power), Ben Franklin (who invented so much else) — Jefferson!  Hamilton!  Adams!  Edison! the Wright Brothers!  Lincoln!  Roosevelt!  Eisenhower! — up to and including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Biden and Liz Cheney.

You may not agree they’re all heroes, but surely you’ll agree they’re all white men.  Except for Cheney of course, but how can anyone make a list of heroes today without her?

Anyway, watch.

Millions of fundamentally good people have been misled into an unAmerican way of thinking.

We so need to win 101 days from now — and we can.

To wit:

Path To A Democratic Victory

The DC chattering class convinced themselves a remarkably long time ago that the Democrats were doomed, doomed, doomed in the 2022 elections. The pundits happily ignore any actual facts contradicting this narrative in their rush to judgment.

In this memo, we intend to offer a contradictory view, supported by real data. . . .

Have you joined your local chapter of the League of Women Voters?  Joined Field Team 6? Joined Vote Forward? Done all you can to fund the organizing effort that is our best chance of saving democracy and moving the nation forward?

Have a great weekend.