Politics – Page 6 – The Wrongologist

What America’s Nazi Period Tells Us Today

The Daily Escape:

Lenticular clouds over Mt. Washington, with Mt. Washington Hotel in foreground, Bretton Woods, NH – January 2024 photo by Terri Stinn

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.“– George Santayana

“We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.” – Gore Vidal

Wrongo and Ms. Right watched an American Experience offering on PBS called “Nazi Town USA”. The video tells the story of the German American Bund, (Bund) a pro-fascist, pro-Nazi organization that at its peak in the late 1930s, had some 100,000 US members.

The Bund (bund is German for “organization”), was founded by German immigrant Fritz Kuhn in Buffalo in 1936. His vision was to create a pro-Nazi ideology within the US. Kuhn and his people used patriotic images of George Washington and the American flag to attract Americans of German descent as members. But the organization’s goals were wider: To create a “socially just, white gentile-ruled United States” and a “gentile-controlled labor union free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination.”

He sounds nice. The US in the 1930s was a hotbed of the fascist-curious. Coming out of WWI and heading into an international economic depression, America was as polarized as it had been since the Civil War. There were racist, antisemitic, anti-Catholic, anti-immigration and anti-democratic viewpoints that weren’t quietly whispered but were yelled. America’s greatest threat, many feared, were the Communists. Millions, (including members of Congress), belonged to the KKK. Father Coughlin was on the radio. Henry Ford had financed the publication of “The International Jew,” an antisemitic tract. And in New York, the Bund was fomenting a coup, and filling Madison Square Garden with followers. In Yaphank, a town on Long Island, tract homes for Bund members were going up on Adolf Hitler Street.

According to historian Bradley W. Hart, who gives commentary in the documentary:

“This was a period of incredible turmoil in the US. You have the Great Depression, you have people who have lost everything….At this moment…you have…people like Hitler and Mussolini, who are preaching hate and preaching that they have a solution to the real pain that people are feeling, it’s inevitable, unfortunately, that some will be attracted to that message.”

The Bund was just one of hundreds of right-wing and fascist-friendly groups in the US in the 1930s. The video linked above includes a chilling clip (@12:39 minutes) of Italy’s then-Prime Minister Mussolini, reaching out to his fascist friends in America: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“I am very glad to be able to express my friendly feelings towards the American nation, my fellow citizens who are working to make America great…”

For Wrongo, that revealed a shocking throughline to 2016, and then on to America today.

The Bund had chapters all across the country. Their high point was holding a Swastika-bedecked rally attended by 20,000 at Madison Square Garden in 1939. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, despite instructions from FDR, had little interest in investigating the Bund’s head, Fritz Kuhn. Hoover was far more concerned with Communism. Back then, “Jewish Communism” was a catchphrase used by Kuhn.

The documentary uses scenes from the Academy Award-nominated short documentary “A Night at the Garden,” of the 1939 “Pro-American Rally” at Madison Square Garden held by the Bund. When Kuhn takes the stage at the rally, an announcer says:

“We love him for the enemies he has made…”

Doesn’t that sound disturbingly familiar? And you then learn that Kuhn supporters beat up a demonstrator who ran on stage, are you surprised that we see the same at Trump rallies today? Subsequently, Charles Lindbergh emerged as head of a supposedly non-partisan group, “America First” that urged the US not to oppose Hitler’s war in Europe.

Trump embraced the “America First” rubric starting right after his inauguration.

After Nazism and Fascism were defeated in Europe in WWII, there wasn’t much of a reckoning inside the US with those who were Fascists or Nazis. There was a wish to simply forget about the fractious politics of the 1930s. Kuhn was deported to Germany, and the Bund collapsed.

But the Bund members and fellow travelers didn’t disappear. They simply blended back into the social fabric of America’s towns. And the ideas certainly didn’t disappear, they’re still with us today. We’re seeing them re-emerge not just in the US but also throughout Europe. There will always be citizens who when they see a threat, prefer having a strongman around to uproot it.

Tom Nichols, a Never Trump conservative who writes for the Atlantic, offers this:

”Early last month, he echoed the…language of Adolf Hitler by describing immigrants as disease-ridden terrorists and psychiatric patients who are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Nichols quotes from Trump’s talk in Claremont, NH:

“We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country….On Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible…legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”

As the New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat said in the WaPo about the same speech, Trump is populating this list of imaginary villains (which she sees as a form of projection) in order “to set himself up as the deliverer of freedom. Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship.”

It’s possible that Trump doesn’t really understand what he’s saying. But when he uses terms like “vermin” and expressions like “poisoning the blood of our country”, we’re not required to spend a lot of time trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And you can be certain that the people around Trump completely understand what he’s saying.

Time to face up to the truth. Trump is a fascist, even if he’s too ignorant to label what he is. He’s naturally gifted at propaganda and he’s demonstrated amazing political power with his Big Lie. Others on the extreme Right have noticed and see the potential of using him for fascistic purposes.

Fascism is back in America, whether we call it by its name or not.

Dems Need To Change Their Immigration Policy

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Roan Mountain, TN – January 2024 photo by Arpana Goyal

It’s time to talk about immigration. Immigration is a huge political football not only in the US, but throughout Europe. In all cases, the hard political Right is anti-immigration while the political center and left continue to try to duck the issue wherever possible.

Immigration is an extremely complicated issue that will figure prominently in our 2024 election. So far, the debate has been largely one-sided, with Republicans on the attack, and Democrats in a defensive crouch. In essence, the arguments break down to this: Democrats want more money to process the historic immigrant backlog while Republicans want to stop people from coming here in the first place. The politics of this for Dems are fraught.

But before we get to the 2024 election, the subject of immigration and the US southern border is already at center stage in the continuing effort to fund the government beyond the current Continuing Resolution that could end with another possible government shutdown in early March.

The complicating issue for avoiding a government shutdown is Biden’s request for funding for Ukraine. The MAGA House Republicans, including Speaker Johnson (R-LA), oppose the money for Ukraine and say that they won’t approve Biden’s request without dealing with the crisis at the border. From Dan Pfeiffer: (brackets by Wrongo)

“To summarize, Johnson demands a border bill in exchange for passing Ukraine aid; the White House and Senate [are] work[ing] on a border bill; Johnson opposes the bill without even seeing it, despite repeatedly declaring that the “crisis at the border” is the House GOP’s top priority.”

When Ukraine aid became a Democratic policy priority, it pushed Republicans who were once advocates of the Ukraine war effort to abandon their support.

The Republicans see the border crisis as a huge political vulnerability for Biden and want to keep the issue in limbo until after the election. Polling bears this out. A January CBS News /YouGov poll shows that the number of Americans who say the situation at the border is a “crisis” has gone up 7 points since May of last year:

There’s no question the Right has used their propaganda apparatus to put the situation at the border on the radar screen for voters. The chart below shows that in the NYT/Siena college poll, Biden is lagging Trump on who is trustable on immigration:

The biggest reason for the shift seems to be the surge of illegal immigration during Biden’s term. Many would-be migrants correctly believe that as long as they can reach US soil, they will be able to stay for years.

Let’s look at some numbers for October 2022 – September 2023 (the US fiscal year):

There were 3.1 million attempted crossings at the US Southern border in 2023. Of that total, an estimated 600,000 entered undetected. That leaves 2.5 million migrants that were “encountered” by the US border patrol, over two and a half times the number just four years ago. 83 percent of the encounters occurred between US ports of entry, often in remote locations like the Sonoran Desert. Over half a million were expelled under Title 42, a policy enacted under Trump that allowed border officials to expel migrants without a deportation hearing. The Biden administration lifted that policy in May 2023.
Of that 2.5 million, 1.9 million were “processed” under Title 8 of the immigration Law, covering asylum, visas, refugees and deportations.
Of that 1.9 million, 1.5 million became new immigration court cases in 2023.

This has caused a huge jump in the backlog of immigration court cases. Today, it takes an average of 3 years to complete an immigration case in the US, largely due to the fact that the backlog per judge now stands at 4,500 cases, up from around 1,000 cases in 2020.

Science tells us that you can’t put two pounds of shit in a one pound bag, so despite the wringing of hands on the part of the US political Left, immigration must be addressed. For the past few months, the White House has been trying to find a compromise with Republicans in hopes of reaching a deal on border security. But so far, the talks between the designated negotiators in the Senate (Chris Murphy D-CT, James Lankford, R-OK, and Kyrsten Sinema, I-AZ), haven’t found an agreed path forward.

Presuming the details of any Senate deal are within the range of what would be acceptable, getting a border deal and passing aid for Ukraine and Israel would be the best outcome for Biden and the Democrats. Dems might be forced to play the cards as they’re dealt. Biden should take the deal and declare a victory for bipartisan politics.

The biggest shift is that the Democrats are reluctantly realizing that they are holding to a losing position. Many asylum claims are bogus and are simply people looking for a better economic life. We need to make policy about how many immigrants the US should be looking to bring into the country every year. That policy should balance the number of immigrants with our ability to help them get started on a fruitful life.

That still would be a pretty large number. It just can’t be infinite.

Time to wake up Democrats! We’re headed for the first presidential election rematch since 1956. Both candidates are unpopular and both are also extremely well-known to voters. That means for the first time in forever, a clear understanding of the policy stakes of an election will be important. That makes our immigration policy important.

To help you wake up, listen to “Why Do We Build The Wall?” from the 2019 Broadway play “Hadestown”. The song was written by Anaïs Mitchell, and this is from her 2010 album “Hadestown”. Note that this song was written in 2010, long before Trump or any politician had any interest in building a wall:

Sample Lyric:

Who do we call the enemy?
The enemy is poverty,
And the wall keeps out the enemy,
And we build the wall to keep us free.
That’s why we build the wall;
We build the wall to keep us free.

Cartoons Of The Week

There’s an abundance of good cartoons this week. But before we get to them, let’s spend a few moments on the multi-year disaster in the US Department of Education (DOE). From NPR:

“…the US Department of Education is going to review the loan histories of most federal student loan borrowers….And the reason, in the department’s own words, is to, quote, “remedy years of administrative failures that effectively denied the promise of loan forgiveness to certain borrowers.” This review is expected to trigger loan forgiveness for tens of thousands of people and bring millions more closer to having their loans erased.”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“For years, income-driven repayment was badly mismanaged by Ed and its loan servicers, making it really hard for borrowers to access. And so hardly anyone has qualified for that forgiveness.”

Finally: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Our investigation in April showed some [loan] servicers weren’t keeping track of how close borrowers were to loan forgiveness. Also, some borrowers weren’t getting credit for all their payments, or they were even losing months of credit when they were transferred from one servicer to another. After our reporting came out, members of Congress called for an investigation. And later that month in April, the department announced this big retroactive overhaul that’s now getting started.”

This amounts to $5 billion in forgiveness for 74,000 borrowers. When people talk about how the government is terrible, they should be talking about the decades of mismanagement at US DOE. On to cartoons.

The destruction of Gaza won’t win the US any friends in the Middle East:

Biden declares the Houthis terrorists:

GOP intransigence on funding for Ukraine continues:

Iowa win means Republicans fall in behind Trump:

The GOP still singing the same old tune:

S&P hits record high, but Biden’s still too old:

Baby it’s cold outside:

Another Reason Why People Think The Economy Sucks

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Camden Harbor, Camden, ME – January 2024 photo by Daniel F. Dishner Photography

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has crunched the latest Social Security Administration (SSA) wage data. It shows the average American workers haven’t made much money since the 1970s:

“The latest SSA data demonstrates how vastly unequal earnings growth has been between 1979 and 2022. Over that period, inflation-adjusted annual earnings for the top 1% and top 0.1% skyrocketed by 171.7% and 344.4%, respectively, while earnings for the bottom 90% grew just 32.9%.”

That’s 33% over 43 years, less than 1% per year. The largest share of total earnings in the US economy have accumulated at the top of the wage ladder. The EPI is describing “labor market earnings”, the pay (including benefits) of the 80% of workers who are not managers or supervisors at work. For decades before 1980, these workers’ hourly pay largely tracked economy-wide productivity growth.

When productivity growth slowed significantly, hourly pay growth collapsed even faster, leading to a growing gap between these typical workers’ pay and overall growth. That difference in missing pay for typical workers went to workers at the top or to business owners.

The EPI study shows that if you’re in the bottom 90% of wage earners, you’ve seen annual wage growth of less than 1% per year over the past 43 years. If you’re in the “upper middle class” things were very different. Here’s a chart from EPI:

Average wages in the 95th to 99th percentile have almost doubled, from $120K to $234K (all figures are in 2022 dollars). But this leaves out the real winners, the top 1%. Average wages for them went from $289K in 1979 to $786K in 2022. But even this huge growth is eclipsed by the wages of the top .1%, which increased an astounding 344%, going from $634K to $2.82 million.

Note that the data are for average annual wages which for the bottom 90% were $40,845 in 2022. Data on average wages are all that’s available, but it’s misleading. The MEDIAN wage for all workers is around $34k. That means half the bottom 90% are making LESS than 34k. Also, median household income is around $76k; which is two people working in the same household.

The media and the rest of us really have no idea how little the average person is earning.

And this is just income from wages. People at or near the top of the pyramid own the vast majority of the equity capital in the US — the top 10% of households own 85% of the total corporate stock owned by households.

The economic debate in America since the 1880s has been between those in favor of lightly regulated heavily financialized consumer capitalism, with some very modest income redistribution, sufficient — barely — to keep the losers in that economy from starving or freezing to death.

The other side are the Republicans who think England in the Industrial Revolution, is a model for what America ought to look like today. And Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon says we should listen to Republicans more. He’s specifically talking about NATO and immigration.

And this has been the GOP’s pitch forever:

Democrats need to address the negative impacts of US wage distribution as part of their 2024 pitch to keep the presidency, and return to controlling the House and Senate in November.

The Fields of Wrong are covered in snow, mostly due to temperatures being below freezing for the past several days. We had a tree fall into the road during the big windstorm last Sunday. Now it sits, snow-covered, on our property waiting for our next chain sawing event.

It’s Saturday, and professional football will be all over the television for the rest of the weekend. Good luck to those of you who follow one of the remaining eight teams. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to forget about the Red Sea, the New Hampshire primaries and funding the government, and instead try to calm ourselves for a few moments. Hopefully we’ll be in better shape to launch into the roller coaster ride of next week’s horrors.

Take a few minutes and grab a chair by a window. Now, watch and listen as John Williams is persuaded to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra in a performance of his “Imperial March” from Star Wars during a gala to celebrate his 90th Birthday.

There are many seriously talented people on the stage, including track star Florence Joyner, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Steven Spielberg, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Star Wars actor, Daisy Ridley. Williams is 91, still going strong, and an example to those who think young Biden is too old to run again. Bravo, Maestro:

Iowa’s Results

The Daily Escape:

Old Stone Church, West Boylston, MA – January 2024 photo by Demi Pita

As Wrongo said in his last post, there was an 80^th birthday celebration for him over the MLK weekend. It was a very gratifying experience spending time with friends and family from many parts of the country. Here are a few quick comments on the Iowa Caucuses and what’s coming.

First, turnout was low. From Dan Pfeiffer:

“In 2016, Republicans set a turnout record with 186,000 caucus participants — up from 119,000 in 2008. Last night, the Iowa Republican Party estimated about 100,000 Iowans — a big drop from just four years ago.”

Many will attribute this shortfall to the frigid weather. But weather alone doesn’t explain why turnout was cut by 46% since 2016.

Second, Nikki Haley finished third with about 20% of the vote, but a significant percentage of her voters said that they wouldn’t vote for Trump in the general election. From Simon Rosenberg:

“In the NBC News/Des Moines Register poll released this past weekend more Haley voters – 20% of Iowa’s GOP vote – said they would support Biden in the general election than Trump.”

Here’s MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki with the details:

Cartoons Of The Week

Plenty of false equivalency cartoons this week. Here are the best

Pick your plagiarism:

Can’t you see it? The evidence is right in front of you:

Supreme cleaning service will keep Trump on the ballot:

Changing minds will be difficult:

What could happen in November:

The Elephant has a bad dream:

Americans Dread The Future

The Daily Escape:

Manhattan Beach Pier, CA – December 31, 2023 photo by Michael Franich

Welcome to Wrongo’s first column of 2024. Let’s dispense with the reviews of last year and the forecasts of this year. Let’s try to describe what we’re all feeling as we say so long to the presidential campaign of 2023, and welcome in the presidential campaign of 2024.

What’s the overwhelming feeling that comes to mind for Americans when thinking about the upcoming presidential election? Dread, according to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll:

“The survey of 1,636 US adults…offered respondents seven emotions — three positive, three negative, one neutral — and asked them to select any and all that reflect their attitude toward the 2024 campaign.

Dread, the most negative option, topped the list (41%), followed by exhaustion (34%), optimism (25%), depression (21%), indifference (17%), excitement (15%) and delight (5%).”

Here’s the relevant chart:

“In total, a majority of Americans (56%) chose at least one of the three negative feelings (dread, exhaustion or depression), while less than a third (32%) picked at least one of the three positive feelings (optimism, excitement or delight).”

Wrongo test marketed the idea that “dread” was the watchword for 2024 at a New Year’s breakfast with people who span the political spectrum. They universally hated it, but after a short discussion felt it was arguably, the dominant feeling that they had about what will/might happen in 2024.

From the issue:

“We are feeling an acute sense of loss….But what do you call the feeling of watching your society being taken over by fanatics, monsters, and lunatics? How about the feeling of watching democracy crash and burn—remember, it’s declining by the stunning rate of about 10% a decade, putting its extinction within our lifetimes.”

Psychology Today gives us a frame to think about dread in their 2023 article, “How to Overcome the Sinking Feeling of Dread”: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“A sense of dread may be due to an abstractly internalized experience of external volatility called “disembedding”….This phenomenon refers to our ability to interact with one another without having to make face-to-face contact. The result is an overabundance of information that comes our way. It becomes abstracted and metaphorically slips through the fingers of our minds in trying to grasp what it is. With a few clicks through an Instagram feed, scrolling through Twitter, or even just opening your web browser to search for something, your brain becomes a dartboard for world news.”

“When one experiences this, there are often repeated attempts to secure a firm base. People will reassert their values as moral absolutes, declare other groups as lacking in value, draw distinct lines of virtue and vice, be rigid rather than flexible in their judgements, and punitive and excluding rather than permeable and assimilative….Another consequence of disembedding is the possibility of scapegoating: the underclass, racial minorities, new-age travelers, addicts, people with unusual behaviors, and other vulnerable social groups risk being singled out and demonized as the source of society’s problems.”

Dread makes us less tolerant of differences, and as a result, we punish them. This is the emotional backdrop for 2024, and the road ahead looks murky as hell. And facts increasingly don’t matter, since whichever side posits a fact, the other has a prepared rebuttal that says the source (even if its official statistics) are misleading if not outright lies.

The NYT’s Krugman notes that overall, the country’s in pretty good shape. The challenge is that people so far continue to blame Biden for the chaos and ugliness that Trump and his cult are creating: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The big question…was whether America would ever fully recover from that shock. In 2023 we got the answer: yes. Our economy and society have, in fact, healed remarkably well. The big remaining question is when, if ever, the public will be ready to accept the good news….America’s resilience in the face of the pandemic shock has been remarkable, [but] so has the pessimism of the public.”

The big question going forward is whether the grim narratives will prevail over our relatively sunny reality when we get to the 2024 election. Unfortunately, we are bathing in the hideous cultural nastiness caused by the Republican Right and it’s spread despair throughout the country.

Overcoming that mood (and the dread people feel) isn’t going to be easy, but disaster is certain if you give up. Individually, we each can do more than we think we can to keep America in good hands.

Start by no longer buying into the bullshit spewed by the mainstream media, in particular, the NYT. Their both sides coverage of Trump’s crooked behavior demonstrates their inability to let us know how real his threat is to the public.

The rest of the corporate media’s coverage is the same, with a few exceptions. Don’t overlook outlets abroad which had good reputations for thorough and unbiased reporting. In the age of the internet with translation capability at your fingertips, it’s not absurd to look outside of the US news rut for different perspectives.

As long as the GOP can paint the Democrats as the bigger enemy, Independent and anti-Trump Republican voters have an out; they can justify staying on the sidelines. The mainstream media’s complicit role in broadcasting the GOP strategy can’t be overstated. And the Democratic Party leadership’s long-term paralysis in the face of this simple equation is one reason why we’re in the situation we are in now.

Stop ascribing superpowers to the GOP. The Republican Party is a hot mess.

No matter what you read, act! Make a plan and act. It can be surprisingly easy to become a thought leader on the local level. Inside both Parties, the leaders are the people who show up and do the work. That’s it, that’s all it takes to begin making change happen. Show up, do the work.

We’re heading into what will be the toughest part of an existential fight for this democracy. It’s going to be an ugly, messy show, one that is certain to add to those feelings of dread. Plan on it and then show up to do the work it will take to beat back the fascists.

Think about the toll Americans will endure in 2024. How many women will die of complications from a pregnancy they couldn’t end? How many trans persons will give up because they can’t live as human beings with autonomy over their bodies? How many persons will die from Covid this coming year because of right-wing propaganda supported by elected GOP officials? How many futures will be shortened because children may not get the food, health care, or education they need?

How many families will be split up because they couldn’t find shelter?

Our message when we’re doing the work has to be about unity. It’s clear right now that Democrats are splintering in all directions. Some don’t want Biden because he’s pro-Israel. Young people find Biden to be too old. Some feel he’s too middle-of-the-road. We all need to remember American novelist Rebecca Solnit’s mantra:

“Voting is a chess move, not a valentine.”

The Colorado Case

The Daily Escape:

Squam Lake, NH – December 2023 photo by Robert John Kozlow

”If you aren’t paying attention to the courts, you aren’t paying attention to democracy”. – Mark E. Elias

The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump is disqualified from appearing on the state’s presidential primary ballot because he engaged in insurrection was a bombshell. The plaintiffs included four Republican voters and officials, and two Independents. The organization bringing and managing the lawsuit was CREW and its chief attorney, Marc Elias, quoted above.

Some people are saying that it doesn’t seem right to toss him off of the ballot without a conviction. At issue is whether Trump is such a danger to the country that he’s ineligible to be a candidate at all, and the Colorado Court’s reasoning for this seems very tight. It’s not an interpretation about his rhetoric or an evaluation of his political extremism. It’s solely a determination of whether he took an oath to protect the Constitution, and then fomented an insurrection against the government. And although the verdict was 4-3, all seven judges agreed that Trump had fomented insurrection.

The Court found that he’s ineligible. Regarding the “he must be convicted to be ineligible” argument: The criminal cases against Trump that are wending their way through the courts are varied in their accusations. None of them were brought solely or even primarily to prevent Trump from being elected president, although the Colorado case was. The others charge real crimes. The importance of those cases transcends the individual who committed them. A failure to bring them would set a precedent that we as a country think these behaviors permissible by a future president.

As for letting the people decide about Trump, we did that already. Biden got seven million more votes than Trump. Yet Trump’s still spouting the Big Lie that the election was stolen. Even after 60 court cases, Trump couldn’t prove there was any election fraud. Conservative Judge Luttig says that the 14th Amendment isn’t about removing someone from qualifying for office. Rather it’s about meeting a baseline qualification in order to be considered a QUALIFIED candidate.

There’s also an argument on the Right that Trump shouldn’t be in court at all. But we have a Justice system and in the Colorado case, the legal process was followed. The Court didn’t take any shortcuts; no extraordinary maneuvers were made.

Jon V Last asks why Republicans were on one side of the law in 2020 and on a different side today: (brackets by Wrongo)

“So ask yourself this: All throughout December 2020, everyone insisted that, no matter how foolish or baseless President Trump’s claims might seem, he was entitled to pursue the legal process vigorously to its end.

Why is that not true in this case? Why is it that Trump…[in 2020 was] entitled to have his day in court, but the forces [today] looking to apply different laws to a different end are not?”

Last reminds us that many of the same people who insisted that Trump could pursue all available legal remedies in 2020 wanted a result that would keep him in power. Now, they’re outraged that the people in state of Colorado also pursued legal remedies and won a result that might keep him from returning to power. There’s more from Jon Last. Those who are complaining about the result in Colorado are complaining not about the legal process, but the legal result:

“Have you ever noticed how, whenever Trump does something terrible, there is always an argument that holding him accountable can only help him?

You can’t impeach him in 2020, because it’ll just make him stronger.

You can’t impeach him in 2021, because you’ll turn him into a martyr.

You can’t raid Mar-a-Lago to take back classified documents because you’ll rile up his base.

/snip/

There is a…..helplessness to that thinking: A wicked man does immoral and illegal things—and society’s reaction is to say that we must indulge his depredations, because if we tried to hold him accountable then he would become even worse.

Is there any other aspect of life in which Americans take that view?

That’s not how parents deal with children.

It’s not how regulatory agencies deal with corporations.

And it’s not how the justice system deals with criminals.”

From Robert Hubbell: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Every hesitation, reservation, and exhortation to ‘make an exception’ because of potential violence or political chaos is an invitation to abandon the Constitution. We do so at our grave peril and possibly for the first, last, and only time—because if we set our great charter aside once, there is no logical stopping point for setting it aside again when it serves the pleasure of a president who views the Constitution as an obstacle rather than a safeguard.”

The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to ban Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot for engaging in insurrection is probably on its way to the US Supreme Court. Wrongo isn’t a lawyer, so you should look elsewhere for a discussion of the finer points of the law in this case, and he has no confidence that the Supremes will decide against Trump.

But Wrongo wants to address one item, the question of whether a candidate should be tried while running for office. Just the Mar-a-Lago charges of mishandling highly classified information and then obstructing their return makes it clear that he should be tried regardless of his candidacy. The government needed to secure the secret documents Trump had stashed all over his club. Trump thwarted those efforts. And the case was developed before Trump declared himself as a candidate for 2024.

A thought experiment: Let’s imagine that Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis had run for US president in 1868. Either of them could probably win a solid South and be competitive in several border states. Making sure that they didn’t win at the ballot box what they couldn’t on the battlefield is why Clause 3 was included in the 14^th Amendment in July, 1868.

Would supporters of Lee or Davis have complained that they were ineligible for public office? Certainly! But, too bad. Insurrection and rebellion (still) have consequences. And nobody said that they had to be convicted before being ineligible.

When a president of the US loses an election and attempts to stay in power through violence, there really is no way to deal with it that doesn’t have a political component. But that means nothing to the merits of the case. Should we prosecute it only to the point that the ex-president decides to run again, and then drop it?

The whole Republican “let the voters decide” talking point was trotted out after the Colorado decision. It’s hilarious. We did that. We did let the voters decide. Biden won. And Trump refused to accept the results and sent a violent mob to overturn it. That’s the whole point of this case. We must apply the Constitution and the rule of law to Trump in the same way it would be applied to any other citizen.

Whatever lies ahead, let’s not underestimate the significance of the Colorado Court findings. They will figure prominently in the outcome in 2024. Our job is to fight for the soul of democracy and for a free and responsible government by popular consent.

Let’s close with a Christmas tune that is new to Wrongo: The Tractors perform their 2009 hit “The Santa Claus Boogie”, from their second album, “Have Yourself a Tractors Christmas”. The band no longer exists, as several of the members have died:

Saturday’s Kinda Soothing Links

The Daily Escape:

Surf, Shore Acres SP, OR – December 2023 photo by Alan Nyri Photography

Next week is the last before the Christmas and New Year’s festivities. The extended holiday time will reduce Wrongo’s output and most likely limit his posts to season-appropriate musical selections. But that’s next week. With what remains of this week, here are some snippets from longer articles.

First, from Kyle Tharp, “Inside the first-ever White House holiday party for internet celebs”:

“It’s the influencer party,” I overheard one Secret Service officer mumble to another….We were in line for one of the annual White House Holiday Receptions…where allies of the President, dignitaries, and the press are invited to gather for spiked eggnog and hors d’oeuvres while touring the newly unveiled holiday decorations. Unlike past parties, however, the guest list for the reception…was unprecedented: this event was organized by the White House’s Office of Digital Strategy….That meant the median age of attendees was probably decades younger than most holiday shindigs in DC, and the cumulative social media audience of those in attendance approached 100 million followers.”

Jill Biden gave a short toast:

“Welcome to the White House….You’re here because you all represent the changing way people receive news and information.”

Next, Politico reports that Bidenomics is a big hit outside the US:

“Bidenomics” is falling flat with American voters. But the rest of the world can’t get enough of it.

The Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) mix of support for clean energy technologies and efforts to box out foreign competitors is also promoting a kind of green patriotism — and even some politicians on the right outside the US say that’s a climate message they can sell:

“It’s probably the most impressive piece of legislation in my lifetime,” ex-diplomat Marc-André Blanchard, an executive at Canada’s biggest pension fund, told POLITICO at the…COP28 UN climate talks…”

Biden’s climate law has shown leaders around the world that winner-picking is back, something that has been out of fashion for the past 40 years. The IRA is having a real-world impact as investors shift their money to the US from abroad, hungry to take advantage of US tax breaks:

“In July, for example, Swiss solar manufacturer Meyer Burger canned plans to build a factory in Germany, choosing Arizona instead.”

Third, The Hill reports that buried in the just-passed defense bill was an anti-Trump nugget:

“Congress has approved legislation that would prevent any president from withdrawing the United States from NATO without approval from the Senate or an Act of Congress.”

The measure, spearheaded by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), was included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and is expected to be signed by Biden.

You have to give credit to Lil’ Marco, a shameless Trump supporter who publicly slams Biden, but who clearly understands that Trump back in office is a massive threat. It’s interesting that both Houses passed this, meaning that some House Republicans are acknowledging that Trump will abandon the US commitment to NATO if he gets the choice.

Finally, Drones. They are rapidly changing how soldiers fight, and as both sides in the Ukraine War grow more dependent on them, it’s becoming clear that the US doesn’t have the countermeasures that can defeat drone attacks. From Foreign Policy magazine:

“The advent of pervasive surveillance…has created a newly transparent battlefield. Ubiquitous drones and other technologies make it possible to track, in real time, any troop movements by either side, making it all but impossible to hide massing forces and concentrations of armored vehicles from the enemy.”

“That same surveillance…makes sure that forces, once detected, are immediately hit by barrages of artillery rounds, missiles, and suicide drones.”

As drones take an increasingly prominent role in modern warfare, it’s clear that the need to disable or kill them is critical. Back in the stone age, when Wrongo was an air defense officer, it was the domain of specialist units with very expensive equipment. Now, the proliferation of small, cheap drones is spreading the anti-drone role down to the infantry squad level. From the WSJ:

“Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante said…that the US needed a surge in production of counterdrone technology, and that a lack of such equipment was hampering operations in both Ukraine and Israel.”

While Ukraine has successfully used drones throughout the war, Russia has recently improved its capabilities. That’s causing Ukraine to lose 10,000 drones a month. Both sides are also expanding their capacity to make drones. More from the WSJ: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Russia has been very effective at bringing Ukrainian drones down by sending out more powerful signals to control the drone than [can] its actual operator….This ability to jam drone signals means that Ukrainian operators have to move closer to the front line to maintain a signal with their [drones]…”

State-of-the-art drone Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) are severely lagging in the West, reducing our ability to help Ukraine, and potentially endangering us here at home. Warfare has changed and America’s playing catch-up. You better believe China is going to school on drone warfare in Ukraine.

Enough of the scary stuff. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we decide to unplug from all news all the time and spend a few moments gathering ourselves before the rush of news and holiday shopping that will fill next week.

Start by arranging yourself in a comfy chair by a south-facing window. Now, watch and listen to Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 “Morning Mood”. It is performed here by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1983:

Practically every human being has heard this at least once in their life.

The Mess That Is Congress

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Henry Driggers Park, Brunswick, GA – December 2023 photo by Kyle Morgan

“Dress me up for battle when all I want is peace
Those of us who pay the price come home with the least”

(from 1976’s “Harvest for the World”, by the Isley Brothers)

There are only 11 days left until Christmas, and there are only three more days this year when the Senate is in session, and just two days left for the House. That schedule could be amended and lengthened if both Houses can reach agreement on anything before they break this Friday.

Prime among the legislation that should/must pass is aid for Ukraine. And Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy’s in Washington to try to help turn a few politicians to help. From the WaPo:

“The visit — less than three months after Zelenskyy’s last trip to Washington — comes at a critical time for the supplemental appropriations bill….Republicans have demanded that the package include border policy changes, and some Democrats criticized the White House on Monday for being willing to give up too much in those negotiations after Biden said he was willing to agree to “significantly more” to strike a deal.”

Biden says he’s willing to deal, but Congress seems very likely to leave for the holidays without passing any new Ukraine package. From David Frum in The Atlantic:

“The ostensible reason is that they want more radical action on the border than the Biden administration has offered. The whole aid package is now stalled, with potentially catastrophic consequences for Ukraine. Ukrainian units are literally running out of ammunition.”

“How is any of this happening? On past evidence, a clear majority of Senate Republicans sincerely want to help Ukraine. Probably about half of House Republicans do too. In a pair of procedural test votes in September, measures to cut or block aid to Ukraine drew, respectively, 104 and 117 Republican votes of the 221 (Republicans then) in the caucus.”

Biden’s offer to negotiate with Republicans about the border is meaningful. The fundamental reason for today’s border crisis is that would-be immigrants game the asylum system. The system is overwhelmed by the numbers claiming asylum. Most of those claims will ultimately be rejected, but the processing of each takes years. In the meantime, most asylum seekers will be released into the US.

Biden’s proposal is $14 billion of additional funding that would pay for 1,600 new staff in the asylum system. New hires can speed up the process, reducing the incentive for asylum claimants who get de facto US residency while their claim is pending.

But are Republicans willing to negotiate? It doesn’t seem like they are. The Republicans in the Senate’s position is stated by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) who said:

“There’s a misunderstanding on the part of Senator Schumer….This is not a traditional negotiation, where we expect to come up with a bipartisan compromise on the border. This is a price that has to be paid in order to get the supplemental.”

This is 2023: For some Republicans, what matters isn’t what they get, but how they get it.

That’s also true in the House where Speaker Johnson (R-Bible) told Zelenskyy that the US southern border should come first in negotiations with Democrats over aid for Ukraine.

Clearly the Republican House members are in it to strike poses and television hits. They do not want to make deals. They each want to position themselves as the one true conservative too pure for dealmaking. The only things they’re willing to admit they want are the things they know to be impossible.

It’s a complicated situation, because House Republicans have one set of immigration demands while Republicans in the Senate refuse to say what their demands are.

This means Biden has to make a deal that Senate Democrats won’t want. Otherwise we’re headed to a “no” that will doom Ukraine and disgrace the US in the eyes of the world while doing nothing to remedy the crisis at the border.

If Congressional leadership was ever needed, it’s needed today.

Jon V. Last in the Bulwark lists the two real-world reasons for Biden to give in. First, that Ukraine is more important than our domestic immigration policy:

“The war is a finite event, the results of which will influence global economics and security for years and decades to come. Depending on the outcome, NATO will either congeal or fracture. Peace and security in Europe will either stabilize or destabilize. China will either be deterred or encouraged in its quest to subjugate Taiwan.”

Second, immigration is a perennial challenge for America. Even if we “solved” current immigration problems today, next year, we’d have more immigration problems to re-solve:

“Immigration does need reform. Huge sections of the system are broken, the humanitarian crisis at the border is real, and there are some areas where Democrats and Republicans have similar views of which reforms are needed.”

Jon Last also points out that there are good political reasons for Biden to make a deal. First, a deal makes Republicans co-owners of the border problem. For Republicans, immigration is like abortion: It’s not an issue they want to solve; it’s a political club they want to wield.

Second, Biden can paint Republicans as anti-Ukraine even after making an immigration deal. He can say that Republicans didn’t want to fund Ukraine (which polls well with voters) so he had to take action to make sure they didn’t hand Putin a victory.

Third, an immigration deal shores up Biden’s position with Hispanic and swing voters. Immigration is a very important issue to voters and large majorities of them disapprove of Biden’s immigration policies.

Fourth, Biden can then reinforce his 2024 narrative that the election is a choice between governing, or chaos. He’s going to try to disqualify Trump and make 2024 a contest between a workhorse who gets bipartisan compromises done and a chaos agent who burns everything down.

JV Last says:

“Cutting a deal on immigration in order to get aid to Ukraine lets Biden say (a) “I’m the guy who gets business done by doing bipartisan compromise,” but also (b) “If you don’t like this deal, Democratic voters, then we have to win back the House.”

Good thinking from Last.

Wrongo has generally steered clear of debates over immigration and the Wall because they have a high noise to signal ratio, and neither side is always great on the facts.

It’s curious: You would assume that all Republicans should be pounding on their Congressional representatives to increase the number of immigration judges immediately! But they aren’t since that would conflict with their idea of shrinking the administrative state. They shouldn’t be able to have it both ways.

One way to cut illegal immigration down would be to crack down on foreign remittances. Most immigrants are sending money back home to help the rest of their families survive. If remittances required an ID card that only citizens or those with a valid visa could obtain, remittances would fall.

All we can do now is hope for cooler heads to make a deal before year end.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Politics

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The Mess That Is Congress