Be Happy! January 26, 2025January 27, 2025 I’m not entirely a Don’t Worry, Be Happy type, though it’s a pretty great song. (“In every life we haf some trahble! When you worry, ya make it double. Don’t worry! Be happy!”) There is, after all, a lot to be concerned about. Fascism and climate change spring to mind. (And bird flu, a toppy stock market, tariff and deportation policies that could spike inflation that could spike interest rates that could tank the toppy stock market, unintended consequences of artificial intelligence, disinformation, cyber terror, unprecedented levels of inequality that rend the social compact, the San Andreas Fault . . . ) Maybe the difference between worry and concern is that worry implies stress and unhappiness; concern suggests responsibility and purpose. As in: We need to fix this. Or at least the parts we can. Hence yesterday’s post asking your help with the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Paul W. pushed back: “Judges should not be elected. They should not make policy. Political parties should not be involved. I don’t care or want to care who sits on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.” → Fair. Except that control of the House in 2026 could turn on Congressional redistricting in Wisconsin — so you might consider caring anyway. I was heartened to see Nate Silver give Democrats an 85% chance of winning back the House in 2026. A win in Wisconsin April 1 would definitely help. And he gives us a 40% chance of winning a trifecta in 2028! The House, the Senate, and the Presidency! Less than even odds but a real shot. So there’s reason to stay engaged. Two reasons, really. The obvious one: it helps us win. Less obviously: It animates the spirit and improves mental health. Purpose is a powerful thing. As is hope. David Hogg, 24-year-old survivor of the Parkland massacre, has hope in spades: Four years from now, it won’t be a Republican entering the White House. I feel completely confident in that. Because while Republicans would LOVE it if we gave up, we’re not going to. Instead, we’re going to make the Democratic Party the strongest it’s been in over half a century. How? By electing young leaders all over the country with a bold vision for the future. Leaders who fight for us, not the uber-rich. If you can, will you rush a donation to Leaders We Deserve to help us elect the next generation of leaders so we can win – resoundingly – in four years? Our work relies on your support. Thank you. And thanks to Glenn Sonnenberg, who recently posted this song on his wonderful blog. Gonna be a bright, bright sunshine-y day. And — oh, what the heck. If Trump can bafflingly try to repurpose one gay anthem (hey! I’m friends with one of the Village People!), then, in the spirit of defiance, I can offer another. If we pull together — and treat our Republican friends with respect as we offer our alternative — we will survive. BONUS Hope For Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.
Fight Back! January 24, 2025 The race for Wisconsin Supreme Court April 1 has huge national implications. If Judge Susan Crawford wins: The Court will continue to lean 5-4 blue, with fair districts protected. If the (ferociously anti-choice) guy running against her wins: MAGA redistricting could cost us our chance to win back the House in 2026 . . . And — because Wisconsin is the swingiest of swing states — even the White House in 2028. It’s that important. The MAGA team is pulling out all the stops. Musk has already tweeted against her. And yet we have a real chance to win, just as we did two years ago when Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s win gave us that 4-3 majority. We have to do it again, because one of our 4 is retiring. Here’s how to help stop the MAGA takeover of the Wisconsin Supreme Court! If you’re unhappy with Trump so far — as a majority of the country is — it’s a great way to fight back. Spread the word!
I Mean: Just Wow January 23, 2025January 23, 2025 Trump moves to raise drug prices. One of the nearly 200 executive orders that newly inaugurated President Donald Trump signed on Tuesday reversed several critical policies that President Biden had put in place. Among those was lowering drug costs for Americans. With the stroke of his pen, Trump removed a $2 price cap on certain generic drugs, did away with a provision that would improve access to high-cost therapies for Medicaid recipients, and ended an effort to expedite the evidence-gathering process for new drugs. To put it another way, President Trump just opened the door for drug prices to skyrocket . . . That should help with inflation. Here is the new whitehouse.gov . . . all about Trump. He won nearly 50% of the popular vote (49.8%), which he considers a landslide; and his approval rating stands at 47%; but it’s only been two days and he’s already got unemployment at near record lows, inflation within a hair of where the Fed wants it, the stock market near record highs, oil and gas production the greatest of any country in history, gas prices, adjusted for inflation, back to where they were in 1955 (when gas mileage was far worse, so the cost of driving a mile is now half what it was), tens of thousands of infrastructure projects underway — and in many parts of the country he seems to have solved global warming! Indeed, on that one, he may have overshot the mark. Here are the Biden executive orders he’s rescinded so far. You might agree with some of them. But really? Here is the way the world should be: Convicted US Capitol rioter turns down Trump pardon . . . Accepting a pardon would only insult the Capitol police officers, rule of law and, of course, our nation. I pleaded guilty because I was guilty. Accepting a pardon would serve to contribute to their gaslighting and false narrative. We were wrong that day, we broke the law — there should be no pardons. . . . Imagine that. And here is 10 minutes mostly about a brave judge who speaks truth to power. What the judge writes is so obviously true and important. I hope you can find time to watch.
Things Now Okay To Do January 22, 2025January 22, 2025 It’s now okay to threaten, attack, and bludgeon law enforcement officers — so long as it’s done on behalf of Donald Trump. If for any other reason, there will be hell to pay. It’s okay to commit seditious conspiracy, for which Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio was sentenced by a Trump-appointed judge to 22 years in prison, and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, by an Obama-appointed judge, to 18 . . . so long as your treason was on behalf of Donald Trump. They’re now back out on the street. It’s okay to steal classified documents from the government . . . . . . okay to lie to the FBI about having them . . . . . . okay to move them around to keep the FBI from finding them . . . . . . but only if you’re Trump. This is how it works in Putin’s Russia; and now, tragically, here. Conservative George Will reviews Monday’s inaugural address — “memorable for its staggering inappropriateness.” (Of the national “energy emergency” Trump declared, he notes that, adjusted for inflation, gas cost less Monday than it did 70 years ago, in 1955.) [Correction: The tax cuts for the rich expire at the end of this year, not in 2027 as initially posted yesterday.]
Our To Do List — And His January 21, 2025January 21, 2025 OUR LIST “Authoritarians thrive on fear and hopelessness,” write George Lakoff and Gil Durán. “Here are 17 things you can do to not give into negativity:” 1. Be Brave Avoid helpless/hopeless talk. Authoritarians want you to feel powerless because it makes their work easier. Courage, faith, and optimism are essential. Fascism feeds on cynicism and pessimism. Starve it. No regime lasts forever. Resolve to do your part to ensure the survival of democracy. Choose to believe that we will find a way to come out stronger. 2. . . . To which I’d add an 18th: Watch Rachel Maddow every night for the first 100 days of his presidency. Last night — after I’d written the rest of this post — I learned the details of Trump’s pardons and commutations of all the convicted insurrectionists, including those who attacked and injured police officers. Republicans are the “law and order” party, tough on crime, unless that crime is committed on behalf of the Dear Leader. Now that’s officially okay. Indeed, those 1,500 Proud Boys and Oath Keepers may become the core of his own private paramilitary force, as Rachel and her guests explained. That’s how autocrats do it. And it began yesterday. HIS LIST That said, I think it’s important, for the good of the country and to maximize our chances of winning the mid-terms, to applaud — and surely not resist — any good things he tries to do. His speeches yesterday were horrible. (And by the way? China does not run the Panama Canal, and our ships are not charged more than anyone else’s.) But look: If he finds a way, with the approval of their governments, to destroy the Mexican and Central American gangs and drug cartels . . . and find ways to help spur those countries’ economic development . . . that would be great. > Renaming the Gulf of Mexico, by contrast, is what a bully, not a good neighbor, would do. And there are two reasons not to be a bully: one, it’s a terrible thing to be; two, everyone hates bullies and will, in the long run, find ways to do them in. And look: If he and Musk can find ways to make the government run more efficiently . . . and/or to remove needless red tape that impedes our economic productivity . . . that would be great, too. > Eliminating the Department of Education or firing competent civil servants because they are not loyal to Trump — let alone shrinking the IRS — are examples of really bad ideas that should be resisted like crazy. Likewise: His vow to extend his 2017 tax cuts, expiring at the end of this year, would be fine if it applied only to almost all Americans — namely, those whose taxable income does not exceed $400,000 a year. Maybe even go ahead and raise that ceiling to $500,000. Or $1 million! Let’s support that. > But extending the tax cut on income above $1 million? Above $50 million? Above $1 billion? When we’re running huge deficits and the gap between rich and poor grows ever more corrosive? Over that, we should be crying bloody murder. There will be lots more examples — e.g., I can see ways a very narrow exception to birthright citizenship might be something we should support — but let me end with one of my favorites: Social Security Reform. If he proposes to make the kind of modest adjustments to Social Security that people have been suggesting for decades, we should applaud, or at least not resist. It would be a meaningful step in shoring up our national balance sheet and reassuring the bond market that, no, we don’t plan to go bankrupt. Here’s what I wrote 20 years ago: . . . You would just take a little from column a, column b, and column c: (a) Right now, the age at which you can retire with full benefits inches up to 67 by 2027. What if it kept rising one month per year, to age 68 in 2039? You could still take partial benefits as early as age 62; for full benefits, you’d have to wait one more year. But you would have 30 or 40 years (if you started now) to save a little extra to keep this from being a hardship. (b) Few advocate raising the already hefty payroll tax RATE, currently 6.2% each from you and your employer (plus a further 1.45% each for Medicare). But what if, instead of having that 6.2% drop to zero on income above $90,000, as it does now, it dropped to 1% instead? Annoying, but not a killer; and worth paying so that grandma – much as we love her – doesn’t have to move in. (c) Once you start receiving benefits, they rise with inflation, as they should. And in calculating your initial benefits, your prior years’ contributions are adjusted for inflation as well. If we made those adjustments based on ‘price inflation’ rather than ‘wage inflation,’ the system would save a fortune. Indeed, we probably wouldn’t need to do (a) and (b) – just (c). But some combination of the three is likely to go down easiest. So that’s it. As I wrote in PARADE a year or so ago: ‘A bit of pain around the edges, with plenty of time to prepare for it – and the Social Security problem is solved.’ . . . The numbers could be easily updated for 2025 (this first appeared in 2003). And in the years to come, AI and other tech advances might have made us so productive and prosperous that Congress could responsibly repeal some of these changes before they even kicked in! I.e., before they actually affected retirees. But in the meantime, with a better a balance sheet and a reassured bond market, our borrowing costs would have been lower. Bottom line: Tuning out is not constructive. Staying engaged will be hard; but surely not as raising a family working two or three jobs at $12 an hour, let alone the $7.25 federal minimum wage the Republican oligarchy refuses to raise. Onward to the midterms!
January 20, 2025 January 20, 2025 Today the nation’s attention is focused on two men, one who survived an assassination attempt, one who did not. The contrast between the two could not be more stark. Has the world gone mad?
Three Bessent Takeaways And A Bonus January 17, 2025 I watched all three hours of Scott Bessent’s confirmation hearings. My three major takeaways: 1. He’s highly competent, thoughtful, and decent. In many respects, he’s likely to be a fine Treasury Secretary. 2. Whether out of conviction or greed, he and his team are blind when it comes to taxing the wealthy. To them, the top tax brackets are either perfect just as they are . . . or else too high. At no income level — be it above $1 million a year or $10 million or $1 billion — would they consider even a small rate hike. This is terrible for our economy, our National Debt, and our social fabric. Yesterday, Scott called billionaires “the job creators.” His fellow billionaire, Nick Hanauer, debunked that notion in a 6-minute clip I’ve been linking to for 12 years. 3. Scott and his husband John and their kids could not have been more warmly welcomed. Watch these 4 minutes with Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina. Trump’s “trickle-down economics” — horrible. His judicial appointments — horrible. His Project 2025 agenda — horrible. The example he sets for our children — horrible. His preference for dictators over NATO’s democratic leaders — horrible. There’s so much about him, and many of those around him, that is horrible (see the BONUS, below). But here and there, there will be something good that should not go unnoticed. That the incoming Treasury Secretary, his husband and kids would be welcomed as a beautiful American family by Republican senators — on TV, no less? When I was growing up, it would have been unthinkable. Democrats have been fighting for 50 years to make this possible, with Republicans fighting us every step of the way. Some still are. But, boy, have we come a long way. Hats off to those Republicans for whom it is now basically a non-issue. Love is love. Live and let live. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. BONUS Trump and Mike Johnson to Los Angeles: “Your Suffering Can Be Helpful To Us” Appalling.
Milk, Doris, Claude — And Yesterday’s Tax Payment You Forgot January 16, 2025January 15, 2025 I have the most wonderful readers. DEPT. OF THE NAVY Responding to yesterday’s post, Heidi F. writes: “Doris Miller, whom you referenced yesterday, was featured along with my grandfather (commander of all US ships in European waters during WWI) and two others on a set of four stamps of “distinguished sailors” in 2010. I always thought Miller was the most impressive of them. At the dedication, a Texas congresswoman told how he was ‘the pride of Waco’, his home town.” DEPT. OF LATE TAX PAYMENTS Brian G.: “What? No 4th Quarterly Estimated Tax Payment reminder yesterday?” → Oh, no! How could I forget? Well, if you pay on-line today, you’ll be hit with only one day’s interest (currently calculated at 7%). My bad. DEPT. OF MAKING A BETTER WORLD My friend Marc Fest sent me “this new video I made”. Okay . . . . . . but made how? Who’s that singing? He’s not bad! Turns out, he’s not a human, either. I made it with a combination of AIs: Claude to write the lyrics that I fed to Suno (for making the music) and Runway/Sora (for getting the videos). I created 20 different songs on Suno to find one I liked. But it still required a lot of editing on Final Cut Pro. And it’s still just proof of concept. The footage is somewhat too repetitive. But the idea is there — we’re all in the same boat. My dream is for it to take off with people around the world who are fed up with confrontation and ready for a more cooperative mindset. A new unifying movement. In my day-dreaming imagination I picture someone like Taylor Swift seeing the video and feeling inspired to create her own song about the idea of all of us being in the same boat. The latest version (and some merch) will always be at inthesameboat.org. I’ve got a German version, too: imselbenboot.de. My parents love it. DEPT. OF MILK AND ChatGPT Responding to last week’s post in praise of soy milk: David M.: “Don’t forget unsweetened flax milk: it has zero cholesterol and saturated fat; is low in calories (25-50 per cup); rich in omega-3 fatty acids (alpha-linolenic acid, or ALA), which are heart-healthy and anti-inflammatory; fortified with calcium, vitamin D, and B12 (most store-bought brands); and may help lower LDL (bad) cholesterol due to its omega-3 content. Good Karma is my favorite brand.” JVC: “Just FYI, Starbucks no longer charges extra for non-dairy alternatives. Now if they would just stop carrying almond and coconut milk. (Coconut milk contains 4.5g of saturated fat and 150-200 calories per cup, according to Perplexity, and presents its own environmental challenges.)” Linda T.: “How can skim milk use fewer resources than whole milk? In my simple brain, you make skim milk by starting with whole milk and performing some kind of processing (skimming, I presume!) to separate and remove the fat. Therefore, skim milk should use MORE resources than whole milk.” → I went back to ChatGPT and asked specifically about water use: ME: Which uses more water to produce: skim milk or whole milk? CHAT: Skim milk uses more water to produce compared to whole milk. Specifically, the production requires around 518 liters of water per liter for skim milk and about 628 liters per liter for whole milk. This difference is mainly due to additional processing steps involved in making skim milk and more cleaning required to remove the fat content. Interesting, right? Anything else you want to dive into about milk or any other topic? ME: Wait. That doesn’t sound right. How can 518 liters of water be MORE than 628 liters? CHAT: My apologies for the confusion. You’re right, 518 liters is actually less than 628 liters. I appreciate you catching that mistake! So, to clear things up: whole milk does use more water to produce than skim milk. Skim milk requires about 518 liters of water per liter, while whole milk needs around 628 liters per liter. This still makes no sense. (And ChatGPT should have known that gerunds require the possessive. She should have said: “I appreciate your catching that mistake!”) ME: If skim milk is made from whole milk, you first have to use whatever water is required to make the whole milk. So even if the process of turning that into skim milk took NO water, for extra cleaning or whatever else, how could it possibly take LESS water to produce a gallon of skim milk than whole milk? CHAT: You make a valid point, and I apologize for the confusion. When comparing the overall water usage for skim milk versus whole milk production, we have to consider the entire process from farm to final product. At the Farm: The initial production of whole milk (including the water needed for the cows and growing feed) uses the same amount of water for both skim and whole milk. Processing: After the milk is collected, it is transported to the processing plant. At this stage, additional water might be used for pasteurization, homogenization, and cleaning equipment. Removing fat to make skim milk also involves some extra processing steps. The main misconception might arise from not taking into account all stages of milk production. While the additional steps to produce skim milk do add some water usage, the increase in efficiency in processing and water recycling methods might help reduce overall water usage. However, when you sum up the entire process from the farm to your fridge, the total water usage is quite similar for both skim and whole. AI improves with incredible speed, so I guess it’s likely to become ever more trustworthy (unless agents of disinformation find ways to mess with it). But as Linda — a human — shows us, it ain’t yet entirely there. Now back to the hearings . . . mid-East peace . . . the Farewell Address . . . TikTok’s tick tock . . . L.A.’s tragedy . . . there’s so much going on.
Two Hopeful Snippets January 14, 2025 #1 This Pearl Harbor story by Heather Cox Richardson (6 minutes, if you listen at 1.25X). It concludes: Now, once again, democracy is under attack . . . Donald Trump and his cronies have vowed to replace the nonpartisan civil service with loyalists and to weaponize the Department of Justice and the military against those they perceive as enemies. They have promised to incarcerate and deport millions of immigrants, send federal troops into democratic cities, silence LGBTQ plus Americans, prosecute journalists and their political opponents, and end abortion across the country. They want to put in place an autocracy in which a powerful leader and his chosen loyalists make the rules under which the rest of us must live. Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch? When America came under attack before, people like Doris Miller refused to let that happen. For all that American democracy still discriminated against him, it gave him room to stand up for the concept of human equality, and he laid down his life for it. Promoted to cook after the Navy sent him on a publicity tour, Miller was assigned to a new ship, the USS Liscombe, which was struck by a Japanese torpedo on November 24, 1943. It sank within minutes, taking two-thirds of the crew, including Miller, with it. I hear a lot these days about how American democracy is doomed and the reactionaries will win. Maybe. But the beauty of our system is that it gives us people like Doris Miller. Even better, it makes us people like Doris Miller. #2 Republicans won big in the 2024 election, but the streak might not last long: . . . [A] deep dive inside the numbers suggests that while the election results were bad for Democrats, they aren’t quite as awful as they seem. For starters, it’s important to remember that Democrats were fighting an uphill battle this year. Around the globe, in 2024, every single incumbent party in a developed democracy lost vote share. You know the last time that happened? Never. Moreover, while President-elect Donald Trump emerged victorious, his margin of victory, 1.6 points, was the fifth-smallest in the last 100 years. As much as the MAGA world wants to portray his victory as a landslide, it wasn’t. . . . . . . [I]f the last few election cycles tell us anything, political power in America is fleeting. After all, in 2008, Democrats won a governing trifecta … and by 2016, the GOP controlled Congress and the White House. Four years later, the tables were completely turned, and Democrats won back a trifecta … only to lose it to Republicans four years later. Quite simply, it might not be long before the election postmortems are being written about the GOP. BONUS A government of billionaires, by billionaires, for billionaires — 2 minutes. BONUS QUOTE “When Jesus talks about poverty and lifting up the poor, we call it Christianity. When a politician does it, we call it socialism.” — Rev. William Barber
Which Is Worse: Evil Or Stupid? January 14, 2025 Thanks to Glenn Sonnenberg’s Musings Beyond the Bunker for this timely quote from philosopher Bertrand Russell: Bertrand Russell on fascists: “First they fascinate the fools. Then, they muzzle the intelligent.” And then, on a related note, there’s this 90-second answer to the question posed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer before he was hanged by the Nazis: Which is worse: evil or stupid? This is by no means to say that most Trump supporters are fools, stupid or evil. In this 15-minute interview to promote his new HBO special, Bill Maher says he’s just not willing to hate half the country. There are less-than-admirable-people on both sides. (Notably, one of the least admirable people, has taken over the Republican Party and the presidency.) Yet as insufferable and off-putting as the elites can be, it probably is a good idea to have really smart, experienced, honest people running our government, as you would want really smart, experienced, honest people managing your money or drafting your will or performing your kidney transplant. Is running the world, or even just the $800 billion Defense Department, not as complex, important, or demanding? And yet people who once called Trump all sorts of terrible things — and probably still think those things privately — capitulate. Which brings us to this timely piece by neoconservative columnist Bill Kristol: How To Capitulate “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” – Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926) How do you capitulate to power? Gradually and then suddenly. If you’re an unimaginably wealthy and powerful billionaire, you start by spiking an editorial in a newspaper you own. You then visit the president-elect and publicly bend the knee. You donate a relatively modest amount—$1 million—to that president-elect’s inaugural fund. You then spend $40 million for a “documentary” on the wife of the president-elect. Submission occurs gradually and then suddenly. If you’re an undistinguished but ambitious young federal judge, you start by slowing down an open-and-shut case against the presidential candidate who appointed you. You then decide that the long-established practice of appointing special counsels is unconstitutional. You then reach into the internal workings of the Justice Department to try to prevent the attorney general from releasing a report by that special counsel. Currying favor occurs gradually and then consistently. If you’re one of our two major political parties, you first go along with the presidential nominee of your party, however distasteful he is. You then support him as president while still expressing some reservations. But the reservations recede, and you stick with him through his attempt to get a foreign country to help with his re-election. You then downplay his efforts to overturn the election and stop the peaceful transfer of power: ”What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” You object briefly to his actions on January 6th, but vote overwhelmingly a week later in the House against impeachment, and a month later in the Senate against conviction. You nominate him for president a third time and support him unreservedly. Now you eagerly seek to confirm his nominees, however unqualified, and say not a word against any of his agenda, however irresponsible. Appeasement occurs gradually and then thoroughly. There was one person who understood this all along. As he explained twenty years ago: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything . . . Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” This has been our president-elect’s guiding principle. Our country hasn’t yet proved him wrong. Now that he’s set to go back to the Oval Office and once again actually be president, the appeasement, the submission, the capitulation will probably get worse. And it will probably work, at least for a while. The billionaire will get richer. The judge may get promoted. The party will enjoy all the perquisites for power. They and many others will be far better off for having bent the knee than if they had taken a different course. [As, say, Liz Cheney did.] Still, there is a different course. When I quoted Hemingway above, I thought of John McCain. He loved Hemingway, and often quoted his favorite Hemingway character, Robert Jordan, from For Whom the Bell Tolls. “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.” Is it too much to hope that we might turn the corner at some point soon, and see, in the spirit of John McCain, more fighting and less capitulating? BONUS The 2017 Trump Tax Law Was Skewed to the Rich, Expensive, and Failed to Deliver on Its Promises . . . . . . so the Koch brothers’ “grassroots” PAC is now spending $20 million to build support for renewing it.