Category: Democrats 2020

Biden’s Win and Trump’s Economic Stimulus

The Daily Escape:

This week’s Supermoon over Three Fingers, WA – March 2020 photo by Alpackie

Today we’ll talk superficially about two topics. First, a quick take on Tuesday’s Democratic primary, and second, about whatever it is Trump is cooking up with Republicans as an “economic stimulus” in this time of Coronavirus and stock market volatility.

Here’s Jameson Quinn with a pithy summary of the primary:

“Right now, the best-case scenario is that Joe Biden will be the next president of the USA; the worst-case is that Trump is the last one. That is to say, we will have a choice between a guy whose primary campaigns twice flamed out from self-inflicted errors and who, the day he takes office, will be the oldest president the country has ever had; and a narcissistic, mobbed-up reality television star whose platform is focused on his core base of racists, trolls, and racist trolls.”

But how do you really feel?

That said, Wrongo was always for Elizabeth Warren, but now, that door has closed. Wrongo like many others, overestimated the importance of competency and policy. Most people don’t read policy papers, and they knew that Biden had been Obama’s VP. That was enough to get them to vote for Biden.

People make their voting decisions based on things like personality, perceived connection to their tribe, perceived electability and an “X” factor, vague trust in a candidate’s judgment. Would Biden be a good president? Who really knows?

Moving on to Trump’s economic stimulus: It isn’t surprising that Trump promises some more corporate socialism and the stock market likes it. And it isn’t surprising that no one in the media notices that the Party of Obama Derangement Syndrome had zero concerns about debt/deficits once Orange became the new black.

But, rather than proposing tax cuts, good policy starts with identifying the problems:

  1. Sick people: They require costly medical care. Many can’t afford it, even if it’s available, and even if they have insurance.
  2. Unemployment: Unemployment will rise. Sick people without sick leave will lose their jobs. Businesses will have less revenue.
  3. Goods shortages: Much of our goods come from China, including medical supplies and drugs. Trade has already been disrupted, and it will get worse. Italy finds it needs thousands of ventilators, and China is supplying them.
  4. Childcare: Schools and daycare centers are closing, and working parents are in a jam. Worse, parents will be hospitalized with no care arranged for their kids.

Tax cuts won’t address these problems. Most sick people don’t have much income, so tax cuts won’t matter to them. Unemployed people won’t have income either. The idea that the government can wall off the economic impacts of a virus-caused recession is correct. Once the economic slowdown spreads, the right kinds of government programs could soften the blow.

Here’s Wrongo’s prescription for Trump and Congress:

  • No bailouts for any industry
  • Targeted financial help for hospitals and the health care sector
  • General financial relief paid directly to workers and families

America’s businesses and capitalists had a fantastic decade. Let them and their rich executives weather this economic downturn on their own.

Trump’s people floated the idea of a push back of the April 15 Tax Filing Deadline. This does nothing for people, and shows just how little the administration is prepared to do.

Trump’s suggestion of a payroll tax cut is also misplaced. It’s been tried in the past, including by Obama. But tax cuts are less effective than simply providing lump-sum payments to families below a certain income threshold.

Also, payroll taxes are the primary source of funding for Social Security and Medicare. So this opens the door to another GOP stealth attack on Social Security. Trump has already said he plans to cut Social Security if reelected.

Jason Furman, Obama’s head of the Council of Economic Advisers, proposed an immediate, one-time payment of $1,000 to every adult, plus $500 for every child. Such payments would help cover rent, food and other costs, without a large administrative burden of trying to determine who got sick, or who lost work due to the Coronavirus.

Furman’s proposal would add up to $350 billion. The right wing will say no financial stimuli for Joe Sixpack. Those things must be paid for.

But Trump thought it was fine to dig a $ trillion hole in the budget for an unnecessary tax cut during good economic times.

What we need now is urgent. It requires smart, humane, and energetic action.

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The Health Crisis Now Coincides With a Financial Crisis

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, St. Augustine Beach, FL – March 2020 photo by Carl Gill

The WaPo reported that a Coronavirus-sparked oil war sent crude prices down on Sunday by 32.3%. That triggered a forced temporary halt of stock trading on Monday, when the S&P 500 index sank 7% shortly after the market’s opening.

This occurred on the 11thanniversary of the current bull market. But, as Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, wrote:

“The uncertain economic impact of coronavirus continues to grip markets, with stocks, commodities and interest rates all dropping sharply. Markets hate uncertainty and there is a ton of it currently in play.”

There is no question that there will be more angry Americans now that a health crisis coincides with a financial crisis. Who they focus their anger on remains to be seen. Trump took credit for each rise in the stock market, so will he take ownership now that it’s tanking?

He’s not a broadly popular president, and this will make him less popular, so fewer people will believe him when he tries to lay the blame on others.

The oil price plunge was triggered when Russia announced on Friday that it would no longer stay within the OPEC+ quotas after April 1st. Saudi Arabia then said it would slash prices for its customers in April. In addition, they hinted at increasing production from the current level of 9.7 million barrels per day to 10 million barrels per day.

This is the start of an oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia over market share. But the real target for both may just be the US shale oil sector. US banks and other investors have been fueling the shale oil sector’s growth with hundreds of billions of dollars of loans over the years. And the shale oil producers keep ramping up production, despite it being largely unprofitable. They continue to burn through cash.

Brian Sullivan at CNBC warns us: The US oil industry valued its oil reserves, as collateral for its loans, at $60 a barrel. Today’s price is now about $30/barrel.

By sending some of these shale-oil companies into bankruptcy, Saudi Arabia and Russia are hoping that new money will refuse to support the US shale oil sector. Then production in the US will decline and take some oversupply out of the oil market.

Their timing is impeccable. Oil demand is down due in part to the Coronavirus. Chinese manufacturers are producing less and airlines in particular have less need for jet fuel. If OPEC and Russia increase production, and assuming US production still increases while demand globally is in steep decline, then global markets will be awash in oil.

And what does an oil glut do for Iran, already fighting a severe Coronavirus outbreak, and needing higher oil prices for their own economy?

But no worries! We can count on the competent leadership in the White House. And if that doesn’t make you comfortable, you might ask yourself, “Is this 1929 all over again?”

Maybe not, but if it is, who will be our FDR? In the 1930s and 1940s, FDR spent money on America’s democratic infrastructure. That money gave jobs to people. He created a social safety net, and allowed industry to again flourish.

But in the past 30 years, all the money has gone to our industrial infrastructure and to the rich, through tax cuts and subsidies. The easy money party has helped to pump up both stock prices and asset prices, giving us an ever-growing income and wealth gap.

What happens to the health of the people and to the health of economy between now and November is going to be a huge political concern. There’s always a tension between the best health policy, and the best economic policy.

Trump wants economic policy to win out, but the primary beneficiary of that is industry and the rich.

We should remember that when leaders are seen to be incompetent and/or ARE truly incompetent, they try to divert the voters’ attention. What Trump attempts to do in order to divert our attention, is worthy of discussion.

As of today, the fuse is lit. It’s an election year, and we know that Trump won’t go away quietly.

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Monday Wake Up Call – March 9, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Zion NP sunset from Watchman Overlook, UT – 2019 photo by kaushik612

Random thoughts on Monday:

Many of us have a tough time waking up on the first Monday after Daylight Savings Time kicks in. It’s more a case of “spring forward, fall flat”. Isn’t it ridiculous that a period that’s around for only 4.5 months out of 12 months is called “Standard Time“?

Who thinks that a 70-year-old (Trump) going on TV and telling a bunch of other 70-year-olds (Fox News viewers) that the Coronavirus is no big deal because it only kills old people, is a winning message?

Wrongo would like to think Trump can’t bullshit his way through an epidemic (“The tests are perfect!”). But GW Bush managed to bullshit his way through years of war in Iraq, including refusing to let us see lots of American body bags flown back to Dover AFB on TV.

The latest body bags now contain virus victims, and we’re seeing them up close and personal. Maybe that will matter to Americans who still think Trump is doing a helluva job.

You should read this article from The Atlantic on our botched test kits. South Korea has tested 200,000+ people, but The Atlantic could only confirm 1,895 tests in the US.

The region of Lombardy in Italy has enacted a forced quarantine for around 16 million residents. A doctor in Lombardy Italy reports that 9% of cases require hospital admittance. Recall that yesterday, Wrongo said that even a 5% admittance rate would overwhelm America’s ICU bed capacity.

Your virus coping strategy may be different than this one, since you follow the news:

The AP is telling us that the White House overruled the CDC, who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the Coronavirus. The administration has since suggested certain people should consider not traveling, but they have stopped short of the stronger guidance sought by the CDC.

We learned that an attendee at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which Trump also attended, has tested positive for Coronavirus. Trump and Pence spoke at the gathering, which took place two weeks ago. Secretary of State Pompeo, Health and Human Services Secretary Azar, and newly-appointed White House chief of staff Mark Meadows also attended.

This is hilarious. Will they believe their own stories, or what?

Trump’s plan is simple. Offload the crisis to Pence. Run a bus over him if it goes wrong. Take credit if it goes right. There are no steps after that.

Finally, to banish the grogginess of your first “spring ahead” work day, take a moment and watch this video panorama of the Mars landscape. It was taken between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 2019. It’s composed of more than 1,000 images carefully assembled over the ensuing months, and contains nearly 1.8 billion pixels of Martian landscape that look surprisingly sharp and clear:

Think how far we’ve come in our ~200,000 years of Homo sapiens existence: Our ancestors were fascinated by the bright orbs above, and here we are, seeing the geographic features of another planet in mind-boggling detail from our home/office on a magical screen thingy.

We take this all for granted, but we’ve come a very long way in Wrongo’s lifetime. Mars looks so familiar, yet at the same time, so alien. It’s hard to fathom that we’re looking at another planet.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Trump’s Coronavirus Disinformation Campaign

The Daily Escape:

Mount St. Helen’s WA – July 2019 photo by NathanielMerz

The Coronavirus global tally as of Saturday March 7th is 105,612 cases with 3,562 deaths. Yesterday was the first day where we saw over 3,000 new cases in a single day since there was routine reporting of those levels in China a week or so ago.

That means the focus of new infections has shifted from China to the west. Wrongo saw a meme comparing flu deaths to Coronavirus deaths, saying that “54,000 people die from the flu each year and no one bats an eye, but people are freaking out over 3,500 coronavirus deaths”.

This is disinformation of the worst kind.

We’ve written about the differences between the flu and the Coronavirus: Coronavirus is at least 20 times as deadly as the flu, and is currently trending at 35 times as deadly. It is more contagious. This means that for 54k people to die from flu, 54 million people have to get the flu. But, for 54k people to die from Coronavirus, only between 1.8 million and 2.7 million people have to get sick.

This kind of disinformation is also spewing from the president. He has repeatedly downplayed concerns about Coronavirus. Just this week he:

  • Said he wanted to keep sick people on a cruise ship to fudge the numbers
  • Called the governor of Washington state, who has the most cases, “a snake”
  • Was preoccupied with his ratings on Fox
  • Said anyone can get tested, when they can’t

Meanwhile, the number of US cases have gone from 5 to 260 since he claimed it was all a hoax.

America can’t seem to get sufficient numbers of tests in the hands of health professionals. Connecticut, for example, has one examination kit that allows only 600 tests to be conducted. Do Trump & Pence realize that when you test fewer people, you do keep your number of confirmed cases low, but your death rate percentage is going to be higher?

The disinformation is reflected in polling. Reuters reports:

“Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to say the coronavirus poses an imminent threat to the United States, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this week. And more Democrats than Republicans say they are taking steps to be prepared, including washing their hands more often or limiting their travel plans. Poll respondents who described themselves as Republicans and did not see the coronavirus as a threat said it still felt remote because cases had not been detected close to home and their friends and neighbors did not seem to be worried, either.”

Overall, about four of every 10 Democrats said they thought the new Coronavirus poses an imminent threat, compared to about two of every 10 Republicans. This is looking like a battle between the scientists working on the Coronavirus, and the political complacency of the right, who say that the virus is no big deal.

But this is a binary situation: One side or the other will turn out to be correct. The complacents assume that the number of cases will remain small (in the hundreds), so the number of deaths will also remain small. From Charles Hugh Smith:

“Given the scientific evidence that Covid-19 is highly contagious, let’s do a Pareto Distribution (80/20 rule) projection and estimate that 20% of the US population gets Covid-19. That’s 66 million people….higher than the 54 million who catch a flu virus in a “bad flu” season.”

Smith’s analysis paints a daunting picture: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Using the lower CFR (case-fatality rate) rate, 2% of 66 million is 1.3 million, so if Covid-19 infects only 20% of the US populace, current data suggests 1.3 million people will die.”

That should be a reason for panic.

Some final points: If even just 5% of all cases required hospitalization/intensive care, that would equal about 3.3 million people. Thus, America will quickly run out of hospital intensive care bed capacity. Smith says that there are just 94,000 intensive care beds in the US. Once the number of patients needing hospitalization exceeds the number of ICU beds, the death rate can grow dramatically.

And today, using disinformation, the Trump administration is trying to deflect and minimize what the scientists are saying. Trump’s handling of the Coronavirus in America is dangerous, and needs to be stopped.

A final word from Brian Schatz, Senator from Hawaii, on Trump:

“Today is a three dimensional demonstration of the consequences of electing someone like this. He’s not lying about his wealth. He’s not lying about his polling. He’s not lying about his opponent or his ratings. He’s lying about a pandemic and the government response.”

If in another 2-3 months, the hospitals are overflowing and surrounded by armed guards to keep the uninsured out of the building, we’ll be riding in a shit storm of Trump’s incompetence.

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Super Tuesday Turnout Wasn’t So Super

Many in the media echoed this from Newsweek:

“Turnout was higher overall in every state except for Oklahoma, but the percentage of voters who were 17 to 29 years old was lower than in 2016.”

That’s true as far as it goes, 2020 was higher than 2016. But 2020 turnout was nearly one million fewer than in 2008, 972,443 to be exact. So Democrats shouldn’t be getting their hopes up just yet.

Here’s a helpful chart from Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

Sabato says:

“Turnout overall is definitely up when compared to 2016, but not when compared to 2008, the blockbuster Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton primary…remember that population size naturally grows almost everywhere, so even matching 2008 doesn’t necessarily mean turnout was better.”

(California is excluded in the above, because so many votes remain to be counted. States marked with an asterisk have not fully reported yet.)

What does it all mean? That’s TBD, but everyone should look clearly at these turnout numbers. We know that Bernie’s reason for running is that he can turnout young voters, and other disaffected non-voters. But Sanders hasn’t performed consistently with his strategy. He hasn’t turned out more young voters, nor has he expanded his base. It’s now clear that at least some of his support in 2016 was a function of being the alternative to Hillary Clinton.

Biden’s surge shows our pent-up demand for a return to normalcy, a place where we wouldn’t be shocked by politics 24/7.

But Biden’s winning won’t fix the problems underlying our politics. A vote for Joe is a vote for the status quo, and that’s not going to work out so well for the millennials or younger Americans. Biden’s nomination will not do anything to deal with the malaise among America’s youth, who worry about climate change and college debt, and the minimum wage all of which will get back-burnered by Biden and the DNC. So, how can we get them excited enough to turn out and vote?

What’s Biden’s strategy to do that in November?

 

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Monday Wake Up Call – March 2, 2020

The Daily Escape:

St. Augustine, FL – photo by Wrongo

Hot takes:

First to politics: Joe Biden rolled to a big win in South Carolina, and billionaire Tom Steyer and former mayor Pete Buttigieg both folded their tents. Some in the media say that Biden is once again the front runner, but Sanders’s win in Nevada remains significant, and he remains on track to pick up a lot of delegates in California and Texas.

The real news from South Carolina is that Biden has become the Not-Sanders candidate. For Super Tuesday, Bloomberg essentially replaces Steyer as the billionaire in the race. Super Tuesday results are less than 48 hours away, and after that, we’ll have a real idea of who really remains a viable candidate.

Second, peace in Afghanistan: After 18 years of war, we signed an agreement with the Taliban. The deal does not end the civil war, but it has placed the outcome of the conflict in the hands of the Afghan people. Heather Cox Richardson quotes Laurel Miller, the former deputy and then acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2013 to 2017 for the State Department: (emphasis by Wrongo)

 “There’s nothing new in the Joint Declaration signed in Kabul today. It reaffirms existing commitments and it re-states some of US-Taliban agreement. Its purpose is evidently political symbolism.”

She explained: It includes the Afghan government and its opposition in future discussions. It draws down US troops to 8600 people—the number who were there when Trump took office, and promises “all” will be gone within 14 months. The 8600 drawdown has long been planned. In exchange, the Taliban will “not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qa’ida, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.”

Miller’s conclusion:

“The Taliban got a lot. It got its main goal—a clear timeline for US withdrawal—and fast removal of sanctions and prisoner releases. The US got the power to decide whether “vaguely-stated conditions are met, so that in reality can withdraw when it chooses—will be political not military decision.” The Afghan government didn’t get much, but “this deal wasn’t really about the Afghan government.”

Trump, America’s Man of Peace. This looks a lot like what he did in North Korea, a PR moment that resembles a deal, but turns out not to be much of a deal.

Finally, the WaPo features a new report published by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, that clearly demonstrates the disconnect between the “great” economy described by economists, and the economy experienced by regular people. This chart shows the problem:

 

From the article (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In 1985, the typical male worker could cover a family of four’s major expenditures (housing, health care, transportation, education) on 30 weeks of salary….By 2018 it took 53 weeks. Which is a problem, there being 52 weeks in a year.”

Lead study author Oren Cass (formerly Mitt Romney’s domestic policy director) calls this calculation the Cost-of-Thriving Index. It measures the median male annual salary against four major household expenditures:

  • Housing: the annual rent for a three-bedroom house in the 40th percentile of the local housing market
  • Health care: the annual premium on a typical family health insurance policy
  • Transportation: the average cost of owning and operating a car driven 15,000 miles per year
  • Education: the average cost of tuition, fees, and room and board at a four-year public college

In 1985, the typical male breadwinner could cover those costs, and still have 22 weeks of pay left for other family needs, such as food, clothing, entertainment and savings. Today, the typical salary doesn’t even cover the four basics.

They also looked at female earners. The typical woman needed to work 45 weeks to cover the four big annual expenses in 1985. Today she needs 66 weeks. The most astonishing conclusion is that it was easier for a female breadwinner to provide for her family in 1985 than it is for a lone male earner today.

Remember that the study comes from a conservative-leaning institute. Here’s Cass:

“You can have a rising GDP….but if it’s in the context of collapsing families and people no longer getting married and declining fertility rates and so on and so forth, you haven’t necessarily enhanced well-being.”

Wake up America! The GOP has undone 50 years of economic gains that produced a robust middle class and vastly more economic and social justice than the country had ever known before, or since.

They have chosen candidates whose real agenda was to assist the corporatocracy in fleecing the very people who voted for them. Their candidates ran on issues like the Second Amendment, abortion, gay marriage and immigration. And then, the GOP shifted the tax burden onto the middle class. They deregulated industry and socialized corporate losses, eliminating any downside risk for banks.

We can begin undoing these things by electing Democratic majorities in the  House and Senate in November.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 1, 2020

Trump in charge of the Coronavirus crisis? Sure, that will work. He’s the guy who believes climate change is a hoax created by China. He claimed raking forests prevents fires. He asked advisors if a hurricane could be stopped by dropping a nuke on it. He thinks HIV and HPV are the same things. He tried to tell us the direction of a hurricane had changed by changing its trajectory on a map with a Sharpie.

Elections have consequences, and our consequences suck. On to cartoons.

What do we need to take on the Coronavirus?

Pence’s treatment plan seems to be working:

Trump’s new plan is revealed:

Stocks also need a Coronavirus cure:

Bernie faintly praises Castro and the wailing begins:

DNC is working hard to “help” Bernie:

Weinstein’s new casting couch:

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Monday Wake Up Call – February 24, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Rainier from Crystal Mountain – 2108 photo by papageorgio120

At lunch this week with a wealthy owner of a commercial construction company who is also a committed Trumper, Wrongo said that the Democratic Party could split into two parties, assuming that the Dems fail to unseat Trump in November.

That’s because neither of the two wings of the party seem likely to gain majority victories in the primary elections over the next few months. That could lead to a weak national candidate heading the ticket. The race remains static, with a progressive Democratic wing led by Sanders and Warren, and a center-right wing, comprising Bloomberg, Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar.

Bernie’s Nevada win indicates that he’s on a path to consistent, 30%-40% finishes in many states. The only age demographic Sanders did not win last Saturday was the 65-and-older vote. We know that the older cohort votes heavily, while younger voters historically have not. If Sanders can bring along a portion of the older demographic, while turning out the youth, he changes the delegate game, and maybe the 2020 presidential election.

On his current track, Sanders could have the delegate lead in July when the Democrats meet in Milwaukee, but since he’s winning pluralities not majorities, he’s unlikely to have the 1991 delegates needed to win the nomination on the first ballot. Depending on how large his delegate lead is, the other candidates should concede, but none of them have to.

And that means there will be a second ballot, when the dreaded Democratic Super delegates will have their say. We know that the Establishment Democrats are not Bernie fans, and they comprise the majority of the Super Delegates, so we could see a Democratic schism in July.

While Bloomberg looks like a terrible campaigner, he forces the other moderate Ds to compete with each other, because they aren’t going to get much, if any of the voters who are committed to Sanders. And they can’t compete monetarily with Bloomberg. If they all stay in the race and keep going after each other instead of Bernie, it guarantees that Bernie will get pluralities, with few opportunities for majority wins by anyone.

What will the average Democrat do when faced with a choice between Bernie the democratic socialist, and if it comes to that, the 12th richest man in the world? The Democratic Party has always been a coalition of varied interests but in July, Dems could face the choice between either concentrated ideology or concentrated wealth.

Many are concerned that Bernie or any of the center-right Dems, won’t deliver the necessary voter turnout in the fall. But the 2020 election really has two parties, the Trump and the Not-Trump Party. Who really believes that the Not-Trumpers won’t come out to vote?

The Not-Trumpers came out to vote in 2018, when there was no one at the head of the ticket. In 2018, Not-Trumpers won in suburbs, in the cities, in some conservative districts, and in liberal districts.

The Dems running as the 2018 Not-Trump Party ran women, children of refugees, men, black people, white people, gay people, and won some races with all of them. So we know that team Not-Trump will be motivated, but we don’t yet know how motivated Team Not-Socialist will be.

So the questions (that we have asked before) remain:

  • Will the Dem progressive and center-right wings coalesce on a Not-Trump candidate?
  • Will that candidate appeal to all of the Not-Trumpers?

Regardless of which Democrat is the Party’s candidate, the anti-Democrat messages from the Republicans will be unprecedented. That will scare many middle-of-the-road voters, and possibly depress turnout. Whatever the pundits’ and the party establishment’s misgivings, right now, Sanders is clearly doing something right, while the others are spinning their wheels.

Next Saturday’s South Carolina primary will show us whether a different candidate can be a serious challenger to Sanders.

A brokered convention would, and should be hotly-contested. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bloodbath. If it is a bloodbath, that’s on the people who make it one, and they will be the people who break the Democratic Party into two distinct minority parties.

So, it’s time to wake up, Democrats! The divide(s) in the Party are clear: Older candidates vs. younger candidates. Progressive candidates vs. moderate-right candidates.

It’s time for the Party of inclusion to figure out where it’s going in 2020.

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Saturday Soother – February 22, 2020

(There will be no cartoons posted this week)

The Daily Escape:

Bass Harbor Head Light, Acadia NP, ME – 2019 photo by York Chen

Some are saying that the Democrats have abandoned the House as an instrument of power, and that it might be lost forever. The idea is that Democrats have surrendered the power of oversight, because they haven’t been able to use it effectively, and they can’t enforce their subpoena power.

This was the calculus of the Trump administration. If you stonewalled the House Democratic majority, their only option was to declare contempt. Once contempt is declared, it is up to the Department of Justice to enforce the order, an impossible expectation so long as it’s Trump’s DOJ.

After a contempt order has been issued, Congress can pass the order on to the DOJ or, to the DC US Attorney’s Office for prosecution as a civil or criminal matter. In theory, a charge of contempt could result in a fine or jail time, though in reality, that’s unlikely to happen.

After that, it’s up to the courts. That process takes a long time, and the outcome is far from certain. If a judge rules against Congress and in favor of the Trump administration, it could set new legal precedent that could make it easier for future presidential administrations to withhold information from future congressional committees.

The House did exercise its impeachment power, but it’s clear that regarding oversight, Trump has no intention of cooperating, nor will his administration. So the Democrats are facing a Constitutional question: The House is either an independent instrument of power and authority, or it is not.

We’d like to think that the next president and those that follow will not abuse their powers. Or if/when they do abuse power, they will be confronted by a Congress controlled by the other party, and both contempt and impeachment will be taken seriously by the president.

If a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress were elected, they could agree on a series of changes to limit presidential overreach and misconduct. Here are a few options:

  • Statutory penalties for contempt of Congress followed by swift review by the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit
  • Tightening time limits for responding to Freedom of Information Act requests and enacting penalties for abuse
  • Restatement and enforcement of whistleblower protections, including penalties for outing and retaliating against whistleblowers

Even these moves may not be enough to rein in a president who has operational control of the DOJ. It will take the Supreme Court to settle the issue of the power of Congressional oversight vs. the power of the president’s executive privilege.

Trump’s presidency has revealed great vulnerabilities in our politics. Americans must want democracy badly enough if democracy is to survive. Despite our adulation of the framers, the Constitution works because Americans have made it work, not because of the brilliance of its design.

We’re facing a critical presidential election. There must be serious soul-searching by all of us regarding who should have political power.

The question for November is why have so many Americans lost faith in democracy, and what must we do to restore that faith?

No coffee recommendation today, we’re already waay too amped up from Trump’s pardons of bad actors along with his threat to pardon convicted liar Roger Stone. Or, maybe his arguing in Colorado Springs that Obama should be impeached put you over the edge. Maybe you were interested in seeing Mike Bloomberg take the debate stage, only to find out that Bloomberg brought a wallet to a knife fight.

Bloomberg was probably wishing he had bought a podium in a better neighborhood!

It’s time to get some distance from the circus in DC and forget about the shouting and posturing. It’s time to take a break with a Saturday Soother. This week settle back and listen to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” performed by the 5th grade chorus from PS22 in Staten Island, NYC. Wrongo promises you will be happy that you watched:

Think about how a public school music teacher reinvents his chorus every year with a new 5th grade class. This is one reason why we need to fund arts in public schools.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Facebook Could Destroy Democracy

The Daily Escape:

Pond, Greenville County SC – February 2020 photo by Ninjiteex. It’s rare to see snow in SC

On Facebook, Wrongo mostly reads the posts of friends who are involved in showing dogs at AKC events. People who show dogs skew older and female, and thus, so do Wrongo’s Facebook friends. Many share a constant amount of pro-Trump (dis)information.

So, Wrongo tried a week-long experiment, letting some of those posters know that their posts were factually incorrect. Let’s focus on one, a picture of a very young Bernie Sanders being hauled away by police:

The photo’s caption says:

“In 1963 Bernie Sanders was arrested for throwing eggs at black civil rights protestors. This is the side of Bernie that CNN and the fake news media don’t want you to know”

The picture is real, the caption is false. Sanders was actually protesting police brutality and segregation, and was arrested for “resisting arrest”. Facebook has now taken down the post, but it was up for over a week.

When Wrongo told friends that their posts were false, everyone deflected, and minimized their intent. One, a fervent Trumper, said, “I just wanted to post a picture of him when he was young”. Never mind that this photo is available all over the internet with the simplest of searches, all with the correct reference.

Despite a week’s worth of trying, no one was willing to delete a false post. Many of these people post disinformation six or more times a day, so it was an exercise in futility to try and make these “friends” admit the truth about their posts, much less show any awareness about their biases.

This is a small example of what McKay Coppins wrote in his Atlantic article, “The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President.” As an experiment, Coppins signed up at many pro-Trump social media sites, and soon was deluged with alternative facts: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“What I was seeing was a strategy that has been deployed by illiberal political leaders around the world. Rather than shutting down dissenting voices, these leaders have learned to harness the democratizing power of social media for their own purposes—jamming the signals, sowing confusion. They no longer need to silence the dissident shouting in the streets; they can use a megaphone to drown him out. Scholars have a name for this: censorship through noise.”

All of this is helped by Facebook’s excellent micro-targeting tools. They allow an advertiser to slice the electorate into narrow and distinct niches and then reach them with precisely tailored digital messages. More from Coppins:

“An ad that calls for defunding Planned Parenthood might get a mixed response from a large national audience, but serve it directly via Facebook to 800 Roman Catholic women in Dubuque, Iowa, and its reception will be much more positive.”

The results can be overwhelming. The Trump campaign runs hundreds of iterations of ads. In the 10 weeks after the House of Representatives began its impeachment inquiry, the Trump campaign ran roughly 14,000 different ads containing the word impeachment.

No one has the bandwidth to sift through all of them, and then call them out.

It gets worse. Coppins says that the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign have compiled an average of 3,000 data points on every voter in America. They have spent years experimenting with ways to tweak their messages based not just on gender and geography, but on whether the recipient owns a dog or, a gun.

Raw Story quotes former Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) saying that Donald Trump intentionally wants America to be anxious: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“I had a colleague that was in a meeting in the Roosevelt Room and….he heard Trump say, ‘Have you ever seen the nation so divided?’ My colleagues and others said, ‘No, we haven’t.’ Trump said, ‘I love it that way.’’

He thinks this how he’ll be re-elected!

Last Sunday, Walter Schaub, former director of the US Office of Government Ethics had a remarkable tweet thread on this, saying: (emphasis and brackets by Wrongo)

“…we’re in a dangerous new phase of Trump’s war on democracy. What do we do now?

….the greatest threat we face is despondency. The enemies of democracy…want you drowning in hopelessness. A hopeless populace is a helpless one. To that end, a hostile foreign power set up an infrastructure to weaponize social media against you.

Compounding the assault on your senses, he [Trump] also wields a corrupted government, which follows his lead in disseminating lies to sow confusion…

In the face of this psychological warfare, our most urgent mission—our civic duty—is to reject despondency. Everyone has a bad day, so we may need to take turns leading the charge. But our job as citizens is to resist the temptation to spread defeatism on social media.”

You said it, Walter!

We gotta keep hope alive.

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