Trust of Government – The Wrongologist

Trump’s Threat To The Constitution

The Daily Escape:

From Steve Inskeep, speaking about the legal plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who Trump says he can’t get back from El Salvador:

“If I understand this correctly, the US president has launched a trade war against the world, believes he can force the EU and China to meet his terms, is determined to annex Canada and Greenland, but is powerless before the sovereign might of El Salvador. Is that it?”

There is a lot of stuff happening. Trump has tested all sorts of limits, including defying a 9-0 Supreme Court order in the case of Abrego Garcia’s extradition to El Salvador mentioned in Steve Inskeep comment above. He has turned the US economy into a giant guessing game by toggling tariffs on and off.

From Dan Pfeiffer:

“….everyone is focused on Trump’s tariff policy. How could you not be? The stock market has been crashing, the bond market is freaking out, and worries about inflation and recession are mounting. When watching your retirement account drop like a rock, it’s hard to focus on anything else.

But we are also amid an emerging Constitutional crisis that could fundamentally reshape democracy.”

Last month, Trump deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador where he is being held in a notorious prison known for torturing and starving inmates. Abrego Garcia is from El Salvador and was in this country illegally. But a judge had ruled that he could not be sent home because the gangs there posed a threat to his life.

After Abrego Garcia’s illegal deportation, the case went to the US Supreme Court where the Trump Administration admitted that Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador in error, but they have refused to do anything to bring him back to the US. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declared:

“The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

In a bit of a coincidence, Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, was in Washington Monday for a previously scheduled meeting with Trump, where Bukele said he refused to return Abrego Garcia to the US.

Moreover, in the single most disturbing display since he was reelected, Trump asked Bukele to build several more Terrorism Confinement Centers to house US citizens. Trump also told reporters that he was open to deporting US citizens if they had committed violent, criminal acts. Trump said:

“If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem….We’re studying the laws right now. Pam [Bondi, the attorney general] is studying. If we can do that, that’s good.”

But, US citizens cannot legally be deported.

The only exception is if a US citizen is credibly accused of committing a crime in another country and the government decides to honor an extradition request.

The administration’s position is that they can remove people in error or in defiance of court orders, and once deported, they cannot be compelled to engage in any specific act of diplomacy or foreign policy since those are the exclusive powers of the Executive Branch.

What this all means is that Trump will most likely escalate to deporting US citizens. The courts can try to stop this by, for example, holding executive branch officials including the president in contempt. That is highly unlikely since the Supreme Court ruled last year that the office of the presidency cannot commit a crime if it is done in the pursuit of normal job responsibilities, which would include foreign affairs.

It seems that Trump may not be held legally accountable even for deporting US citizens.

There is nothing to stop him unless the Republicans in Congress decide to stop him. He could be impeached and removed from office, of course, But the Republicans have taken a pass twice already on that option, despite airtight cases against him.

Republican politicians are behaving with deference to power and a fear of standing out. From Kyla Scanlon:

“As Umberto Eco warned in Ur-Fascism , authoritarian systems don’t return with parades and uniforms. They return in a culture where obedience masquerades as patriotism – or as economic strategy.

When disagreement becomes disloyalty, when nuance is dismissed as weakness, when conformity becomes civic virtue, we’re no longer living in a democracy. We’re participating in the performance of one.”

Congress could stop him. They have the authority, but they do nothing. This paralysis is what Umberto Eco described as a “fear of difference” where dissent is dangerous, alternative views are threatening, and deviation is punished.

What we get is a legislative body that performs democracy, but no longer willingly exercises its Constitutional powers.

Standing up to Trump would mean risking access to donors, media cycles, committee power, and the favor of a political ecosystem that now functions more like a loyalty marketplace than a deliberative body. So they completely ignore the Constitution at great costs to their constituents.

At this point, the Democrats can no longer treat Trump with any deference. The entire House Democratic Caucus should draw up articles of impeachment and seek to introduce them. The Senate Democrats should put a hold on everything until hearings are granted. Everything must stop until this is resolved.

From Dan Pfeiffer:

“This is the moment. We are at a crossroads. It’s time to speak up. Corporations have bent the knee; law firms are submitting to Trump; Congress is ceding its authority, and corporate media is making excuses. The courts are trying to stop Trump’s worst offenses, but he ignores their dictates.”

This is the most serious threat to our democracy since the Civil War.

The Chaos Musk Go

Cartoon of the week:

Since the GOP won control of the House 2 years ago they have not passed a single appropriations package into law. That’s the primary job of the House of Representatives. Government has operated at funding levels set by Democrats two years ago via passing Continuing Resolutions every few months. This is not normal.

And it continued last week, just in a weirder way. From CNN:

“The House has voted to pass a stopgap funding bill just hours before a midnight deadline to avert a federal government shutdown. The Senate must next take up the bill. The vote was 366 to 34. Thirty-four Republicans voted against the bill, and one Democrat voted present. The bill would extend government funding into March and includes disaster relief and farming provisions, but does not include a suspension of the debt limit, which President-elect Donald Trump has been demanding Republicans address.”

The Senate passed the measure as expected just after midnight. And Biden signed it.

But, just two days ago, Trump and Musk threatened to ensure a primary challenge for any House Republican who voted for a bill that didn’t include a debt limit increase. On Friday, 170 of them took him up on just that.

Musk is now claiming that he’s really fine with all this. But back up two days to this from Robert Hubbell:

“Musk ordered Republicans not to pass “any bill” until Trump is sworn in on January 20, 2025. If Republicans follow Musk’s command, there will be no government funding for a month (at least)–from Friday, December 20, 2024, through Monday, January 20, 2025. If that happens, chaos will ensue.”

And it got worse. Co-President Trump remained on the sidelines of the budget debate until after Musk tweeted “This bill should not pass.” Trump then posted a curveball:

“Unless the Democrats terminate or substantially extend the Debt Ceiling now, I will fight ’till the end.”

The end happened way before the end, though. Increasing the debt ceiling is something that didn’t need to be done until June of 2025. But Trump didn’t want a debt ceiling increase to happen on his watch. The reason that Trump wanted to force a debt limit increase under Biden is that Trump needs that increase to pay for the proposed extensions of his 2017 tax cuts for millionaires and corporations. From The Hill, Lawmakers caught off guard by Trump debt ceiling demand: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) accused Trump of wanting Democrats ‘to agree to raise the debt ceiling so he can pass his massive corporate and billionaire tax cut without a problem.’….‘Shorter version: tax cut for billionaires or the government shuts down for Christmas,’ he added.”

The chaos caused by Musk foreshadows a second Trump administration with unelected, unaccountable billionaires mucking about in our politics. What could go wrong? With this kabuki, Hubbell thought this:

Trump looked like he is subordinate to Musk.
Musk has—for now—seized momentum from Trump as the dominant political force in the second Trump administration.
It is difficult to see how Mike Johnson survives as Speaker….Johnson has been humiliated and back-stabbed by Trump and Musk. Mike Johnson’s credibility with his own caucus and Democratic counterparts is non-existent. And some of that showed in the bill that was passed on Friday.

If you’re looking for a way to combat this, Democrats should publicly embarrass Trump about Musk. Call Musk the President-elect. Or the richer & smarter co-President; the one people really want to talk to. Trump will HATE it and might eventually ‘fire’ Musk. Remember, you can’t spell FELON without ELON.

We’re more than a decade now into the GOP’s performative politics of destruction. It gains power by touting its aim to break stuff and then runs into a brick wall when it’s forced to make the hard choices that come with holding power. Any GOP effort to govern at least temporarily is susceptible to being undermined by its many bomb throwers, now including Musk, who can exert leverage by striking a purer “blow it all up” posture than the rest of the GOP.

The events of the last week should give us hope that there are limits to the delusional, performative, grandiose claims and threats being peddled by Musk and Trump. They were losers in their first attempt of a smack-down with Congress. The lesson that the deficit hawks in the GOP should take from the tussle is that Trump and Musk are not as tough as they think.

In fact, it may signal the start of Trump’s “lame duck” presidency.

Ron Filipkowski of MeidasNews accurately summed up the chaos we now find ourselves in. The question is whether non-elected officials should control funding the US government:

“The owner of a car company is controlling the House of Representatives from a social media app.”

What does it say about America that Elon Musk had to pay $44 billion to buy control of Twitter, but only $250 million in campaign contributions to Trump to buy control of the U.S. government?

This country is falling apart. Kind of like a Cybertruck.

Musk has to go.

The Crypto Bro Vote

The Daily Escape:

When Trump pivoted to being pro-crypto, everyone thought it was just another scam to make a few extra shekels in advance of election. From The Atlantic:

“…more than 1 million people tuned in for the launch of World Liberty Financial, a new crypto project promoted by Trump and his family. The former president has been posting about it on social media for several weeks.”

“Trump wasn’t always this pro-crypto. He once referred to bitcoin as a scam….This summer, he appeared at a bitcoin conference and declared that the United States ‘will be the crypto capital of the planet’”

But his embrace may be more calculated than that. You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that crypto companies are bankrolling Republican campaigns this election. The New Yorker has a detailed story about how Silicon Valley’s crypto boys went all in on Sen. Adam Schiff in part by crushing Rep. Katie Porter’s attempt to become the Democratic nominee for the California Senate race:

“…Katie Porter was…futzing around on her computer when she learned that she was the target of a vast techno-political conspiracy….Now she was in a highly competitive race to replace the California senator Dianne Feinstein, who had died a few months earlier. The primary was in three weeks.

A text from a campaign staffer popped up on Porter’s screen. The staffer had just learned that a group named Fairshake was buying airtime in order to mount a last-minute blitz to oppose her candidacy. Indeed, the group was planning to spend roughly ten million dollars.”

“Porter…had raised thirty million dollars to bankroll her entire campaign, and that had taken years. The idea that some unknown group would swoop in and spend a fortune attacking her…seemed ludicrous: “I was, like, ‘What the heck is Fairshake?’ ”

Fairshake is a super PAC funded primarily by three tech firms involved in the cryptocurrency industry. The pro-crypto PAC has raised more than $200 million for 2024’s election cycles, per OpenSecrets, with tens of millions of dollars flooding in from crypto giants Coinbase and Ripple, as well as the Menlo Park CA venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Fairshake’s thinking was: If Porter lost and other politicians saw how much money the industry had available to spend on elections, they’d be more likely to become pro-crypto. The stakes, for the big donors, are existential — regulatory acceptance would boost the value of their companies’ assets and the use of their services.

The PAC dumped about $10 million into the race, a third of the $30 million Porter had for her campaign. She hadn’t ever heard of the group, but its attack ads called her “a fake,” a “liar” and a “bully.” Fairshake selected Porter from a list of high-profile options, hoping to make an example. She lost and will be out of Congress when it convenes in January.

An unnamed political operative told the New Yorker:

“Porter was a perfect choice because she let crypto declare, ‘If you are even slightly critical of us, we won’t just kill you…we’ll end your career.’ From a political perspective, it was a masterpiece.”

Fairshake’s scare campaign appears to have worked. The House of Representatives passed a pro-crypto bill, with bipartisan support, in May. Candidates with Fairshake’s support won their primaries in 85% of the cases.

This has made its way into the presidential campaign: Trump backs crypto and Harris has signaled her support for it as well.

Trump may be on to something, since this could be a bigger factor in the election than we realize. The New Yorker quotes Coinbase as saying that fifty-two million Americans own cryptocurrencies. Those polls indicated that 60% of crypto owners were millennials or Gen Z-ers, and 41% were people of color, key demographics for each Party.

Coinbase also launched an advocacy organization, Stand with Crypto, which is advertised to Coinbase’s millions of US customers every time they log in, and which urges cryptocurrency owners to contact their lawmakers.

Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is running for reelection, where Fairshake has directed forty million dollars to ads in support of his opponent.

In total, Fairshake and affiliated PACs have already spent more than a hundred million dollars on political races in 2024, including $43 million on Senate races in Ohio and West Virginia, and $7 million on four congressional races in North Carolina, Colorado, Alaska, and Iowa.

The big question is whether the bro vote is overhyped? Will these crypto bros turn out to vote?

Trump’s best chance at success in November requires minimizing his losses among women and suburbanites while building a coalition that includes a historic number of male and working-class voters in his corner. As a result, we’re seeing both campaigns and their allies attempt to reach men in unprecedented and unconventional ways online. (A reminder: Young men historically vote at lower rates than young women.)

For Trump, it seems this targeted outreach to the tech bros segment of the electorate is essential. If he can’t win record numbers of men, it’s unlikely he can win the White House.

For the Harris campaign, the male-focused outreach efforts are happening in addition to major campaigns and organizing programs designed to reach more dependable parts of their coalition who turn out more dependably.

In a way, this is proof that American governance and legislation have become so perverted by money that it is nearly impossible for people other than billionaires to further their agendas. It’s particularly dangerous given that the US economy has bestowed lavish riches on a tiny group of disaffected, unaccountable technologists.

Today’s startup founders and venture capitalists are, like the nouveaux riches of previous eras, using their wealth for selfish aims. In doing so, they have revealed themselves to be as ruthless as the robber barons and industrial tyrants of a century ago—not coincidentally, the last time that income inequality was as extreme as it is today.

Political Advertising: How Effective Is It?

The Daily Escape:

Wrongo’s calendar says there’s just 29 days to go until Election Day. The campaigns are in high gear, but what are they saying? And is what they’re saying getting through to both their base voters as well as to those who are “persuadable” enough for them to get out to the polls and vote? Time is running out.

Timing is a point raised in this NBC story, which describes that, after having taken the last 76 days to introduce the Vice President to voters, the campaign now plans to ratchet up negative advertising about how unfit Trump is to be President (emphasis by Wrongo).

“Leaning more heavily into negative campaigning is a strategic shift for Harris. While she has routinely been critical of Trump since becoming a candidate in July….Harris campaign officials said they intend to continue laying out her policy positions, background and plans…But emphasizing what Harris campaign officials view as Trump’s major vulnerabilities is seen as possibly one of the only ways to finally win over some voters who haven’t made up their mind in a static race that Democrats want to push in their direction.”

A recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs suggests that Harris’ attacks on Trump’s brand of hyper-masculinity appear to be working. As the Daily Beast summarized the findings, respondents:

“…chose Harris 59% over Trump’s 57% when it came to which candidate they felt was tough enough to be president…and favored Harris 55 to 46 % on “which candidate would change the country for the better,” and by 54 to 43% on who “was more likely to fight for them.”

Harris also is micro targeting the message of Trump’s weakness. From the WaPo:

“For the millions of football fans who tuned in from home for Saturday night’s much anticipated matchup between the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama, she also ran a new ad nationally on ABC that hammers home her point.”

The ad says:

“’Winners never back down from a challenge. Champions know it’s anytime, anyplace. But losers, they whine and waffle and take their ball home,’ the narrator says at the start of the spot, over images of a football game and washed-out footage of Trump missing a golf putt. The 30-second ad ends with footage of Harris challenging him to another debate, with the words “When we fight, we win” hanging on a sign in the background.”

The money quote:

“Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face,…

Harris also posted the ad on Trump’s Truth Social media platform.

Marcy Wheeler quotes CNN’s David Wright who tracks political spending by the candidates about where the money is headed in this final month as the ad wars intensify:

“You can see how each side is placing bets on their best path to 270 electoral votes. In the first week of October, the Harris campaign is spending the most in the critical trio of “Blue Wall” states – they’ve got more than $5 million booked in Pennsylvania, about $4 million booked in Michigan, plus about $2.7 million booked in Wisconsin. And that makes sense – if Harris wins all three of those states, plus Nebraska’s up-for-grabs electoral vote in the swingy second congressional district (where the campaign also has more than $300,000 in ad time this week), she’s the next president.”

Turning to Trump:

“…he’ s looking to the Sun Belt. This week, Trump’s campaign is spending the most on ads in Pennsylvania, $3.8 million – it’s really the linchpin to both sides’ strategies. But in addition to that, the campaign is also spending $3.4 million in North Carolina and nearly $3 million in Georgia, its other top targets, and if he wins those two states plus Pennsylvania, he’s heading back to the White House.”

The Electoral College will come down to which of the two campaigns potential voters consider more trustable, probably mostly on their personal economic situation and where that’s heading with each potential president. From the WaPo:

“Americans are finally starting to feel better about the economy, invigorating Vice President Kamala Harris’s pitch for the presidency as she narrows her Republican opponent’s longtime lead on an issue that is foremost on voters’ minds.”

“Although voters still favor former president Trump over Harris on handling the economy, his advantage has dropped dramatically in recent weeks. Trump now averages a six-percentage-point edge on the economy…”

But Trump’s only answers for the economy are lower taxes on the rich and more tariffs. Yet, like everything else, Trump has no idea what tariffs actually do.

However, a new survey by Data For Progress’s top line finds Harris leading Trump by 3 points among likely voters nationwide. Nearly half of voters (49%), including a plurality of Independents (46%), choose Harris, while 46% choose Trump.

On the all-important economy, Harris has a trust advantage on most of the economic measures tested, including: supporting small businesses (+10 points), taxes on middle class Americans (+9), increasing wages (+5), lowering housing costs (+5), handling labor union policy (5%), improving our infrastructure (+3), lowering grocery costs (+2), creating jobs (+1), and protecting domestic manufacturing jobs (+1).

That says her campaign messaging is getting through.

Also the survey finds Trump with just a +1-point trust advantage over Harris on “reducing inflation,” an issue that voters have consistently ranked as their most important when deciding whom to vote for. Here’s their chart:

They also surveyed candidate favorability, which now tilts towards Harris. Harris’ rating is +2, while Trump’s is -12:

Is this poll on the money? Difficult to tell. A shorter election season makes it harder for campaigns to assess where to place their bets. And which of their cohorts in the electorate demand the most attention. We’ve focused on Gen Z and younger voters as being primarily swayed by economics. Messaging to women is another important element. Harris can run ads attacking Trump’s hyper-masculinity, (which will help with women).

From The Economist: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“And Harris needs to focus there. In the Obama years the gap between young men and women identifying as liberals was just five percentage points, during the Trump-Biden years this has tripled to 15 points, according to Gallup. This change has been caused almost entirely by young women moving to the left, rather than young men tacking to the right. The fact that this generation’s formative years were during the #MeToo movement, the Trump years and the decision to overturn Roe v Wade helps explain it.”

In 2020 a majority of white women voted for Trump. He will be in the minority in 2024. Leading among women is a real advantage. Since the 1980s a greater share of women than men has turned out to vote. In 2020 women made up 54% of the electorate. A final indicator that Democrats might be winning this battle of the sexes: in battleground states, according to Target Smart, a data firm, between July and September, twice as many young Democratic women registered to vote than young Republican men.

Trump’s bet is that Harris is the one with the turnout problem. They think their base is more committed to their candidate than is Harris’s. But Marcy Wheeler points to Harris’s investment in the Dem ground game:

“The Harris campaign claimed in late September to have 330 offices and more than 2,400 staff. They completed 25,000 weekend volunteer shifts on the final weekend of last month, contacting over 1 million voters over three days and completed the 100,000th event of the campaign.”

BTW: Ms. Oh So Right got a postcard from Harris to vote early this week.

Cartoons Of The Week – May 19, 2024

(There will not be a Monday Wake Up Call this week)

This week most cartoons were either about Justice Alito’s inverted flag, Congresspeople leaving their jobs in DC to go to NYC to help Trump violate his gag order, or the presidential debate which may or may not happen.

But there wasn’t one cartoon about Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s pardon of Daniel Perry, who was convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester in 2020. You may recall that he shot Garrett Foster, an Air Force veteran who was attending a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. Foster was carrying an AR-15, which is legal to do in Texas. Daniel Perry drove his car into the protesters and Foster (who was white) confronted him without raising his gun, largely to protect Whitney Mitchell, who was Foster’s fiancé. She was in a wheel-chair because she’s a quadruple amputee. Foster’s rifle was in a safe position: safety on, no round in the chamber, and pointed at the ground. Perry shot him five times. From JVL:

“The case had everything Republicans love: A peaceful protest with people exercising their First Amendment rights. A veteran lawfully exercising his Second Amendment right. And before the murder the killer had been searching the internet for young girls and sending sexually explicit texts to a minor. The only problem was the protest itself: It was a Black Lives Matter protest. And so Daniel Perry—a groomer who was convicted of murder by a jury of his peers—became a conservative cause celebré.”

Originally sentenced to 25 years in prison, Abbott pardoned him. He’s a sick, criminal piece of work who killed a man in cold blood. Abbott gave him a full pardon. Abbott’s death cult MAGA constituents are thrilled. On to cartoons.

We’re gonna have to shut down the whole Supreme Court until we figure out what’s going on:

Alito waves his flag for Armed Forces Day. It honors the Armed Forces, while Memorial Day honors members of the Armed Forces who died in war. But nothing about Alito is honorable:

What to expect from the next presidential debates:

The next GOP VP nominee will fit in the slot:

Dems are afraid of the political polls:

The Supreme Court Is Officially Corrupt

The Daily Escape:

Moonrise, Boston, MA – April 2024 photo by Kristen Wilkinson. The Jenga-style building is Boston University’s Data Science Center.

Wrongo spent part of Thursday morning listening live to the oral arguments at the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) over Trump v. United States, which concerns former president Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from criminal charges for “official acts”: In this case, whether Trump can claim immunity as a defense in the Jan. 6 case brought by Jack Smith, the DOJ’s special prosecutor.

While the decision in this case is unclear at this point, the questions the Conservative justices asked of both sides were very disheartening.

A short walk through the history of this case: The Conservative majority granted Trump a victory before the hearing began by refusing Jack Smith’s request to skip the intermediate step of an appeal to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Then the Court improved on that by refusing to hear the matter on an expedited schedule. Finally it appears that the Court probably won’t issue what pundits think will be a fractured opinion until the last possible day (June 30). It’s possible that the Court will order the DC trial court to engage in pre-trial fact-finding about the difference between “private” and “official” acts. Meaning further delays, possibly until after the November presidential election.

And if Trump were to win, the Jan. 6 case will be quashed by the incoming DOJ.

So even if the Supremes don’t grant Trump a total victory, they have already granted Trump what he most wanted: a lengthy delay. Their lackadaisical approach to resolving the question of immunity smells of the current politicization of the Court. From Jamele Bouie:

“Rather than grapple with the situation at hand — a defeated president worked with his allies to try to overturn the results of an election he lost, eventually summoning a mob to try to subvert the peaceful transfer of power — the Republican-appointed majority worried about hypothetical prosecutions against hypothetical presidents who might try to stay in office against the will of the people if they aren’t placed above the law.

It was a farce befitting the absurdity of the situation. Trump has asked the Supreme Court if he is, in effect, a king. And at least four members of the court, among them the so-called originalists, have said, in essence, that they’ll have to think about it. “

Chris Hayes reminded us when Republicans aggressively took the other side of the immunity argument:

Taking a wide view, Alito is 74. Thomas is 75. Roberts and Sotomayor are 69. The next president could be in a position to nominate four replacements for these justices if Trump wins, or if Biden wins a second term. If it’s Trump, say goodbye to the SCOTUS for at least 30 years, and say goodbye to your Constitutional rights. That would also mean that Trump can commit crimes with impunity, including a complete dissolution of the Voting Rights Act, implementing legalized voter suppression, and much more.

Is it totally lost on the American people that the very same Supreme Court who ruled that 172 million women should no longer have the freedom to decide their own pregnancy choices, is now, suddenly, struggling with the idea whether ONLY ONE MAN in America should have the freedom to commit crimes without punishment?

Watergate and Nixon doesn’t come close to the stench surrounding today’s Supreme Court and its propping up of Trump. Josh Marshall had this to say:

“The Roberts Court is a corrupt institution which operates in concert with and on behalf of the Republican Party . . . That’s the challenge in front of us. . . . But things become more clear-cut once we take the plunge and accept that fact.”

But, there’s really nothing you can do about it individually. So relax and cruise into our Saturday Soother, where we turn off all political news for a few minutes and try to find the will to rejoin the fight next week.

Here on the Fields of Wrong, we had a hard frost on Friday morning, and expect 80° on Monday. It’s weather like this that keeps us from planting the vegetable garden until early May. To help you get into a proper frame of mind, grab a seat by a south-facing window. Now watch and listen to “Suite Opus 34 for flute, harp, violin, viola and cello” by Marcel Tournier. Tournier is among the relatively few important composers who were also virtuoso harpists. He composed several dozen solos for harp, and a few chamber works that feature the harp. Tournier wrote this Suite in 1928. He died in 1951.

Here is his “Opus 34” performed by the Cracow Harp Quintet:

Wrongo and Ms. Right first learned about Tournier and saw this live last summer as part of a local concert series by the Washington Friends of Music.

Florida Lets Measles Run Free

The Daily Escape:

Highland Lighthouse, North Truro, Cape Cod, MA – February 2024 photo by Barbra A. Bentley

Let’s take a break this Saturday from a) Russia’s infiltration of the Republican Party and b) the growing realization that unless House Speaker Mike Johnson Johnsonless whips his members into shape before March 1^st, we’ll have a government shutdown. Instead let’s focus today on Measles.

You are a witness the continued collapse in US public health standards since Florida’s Surgeon General has said its ok for unvaccinated kids to attend public school even though there are measles outbreaks. From KFF News:

“With a brief memo, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has subverted a public health standard that’s long kept measles outbreaks under control. On Feb. 20, as measles spread through Manatee Bay Elementary in South Florida, Ladapo sent parents a letter granting them permission to send unvaccinated children to school amid the outbreak.”

“The Department of Health ‘is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance,’ wrote Ladapo, who was appointed to head the agency by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose name is listed above Ladapo’s in the letterhead.”

With his brief memo, Ladapo has subverted a public health standard that’s long kept measles outbreaks under control. This is where you wind up after decades of indoctrination of libertarianism and neoliberalism, where “freedom” becomes anarchy, a rejection of the ability of the state to impose restrictions, even in the name of public safety.

Everyone in America knows that measles is highly contagious, that it kills, and can do lasting damage. More from KFF:

“Most people who aren’t protected by a vaccine will get measles if they’re exposed to the virus. This vulnerable group includes children whose parents don’t get them vaccinated, infants too young for the vaccine, those who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons…”

The CDC advises that unvaccinated students stay home from school for three weeks after exposure. About 1 in 5 people with measles end up hospitalized, 1 in 10 develop ear infections that can lead to permanent hearing loss, and about 1 in 1,000 die from respiratory and neurological complications. They reported that in 2023, childhood immunization rates had hit a 10-year low.

Worse, only about a quarter of Florida’s counties had reached the 95% threshold at which communities are considered protected against measles outbreaks, according to data posted by the Florida Department of Health in 2022.

Rebekah Jones, a data scientist who was removed from her post at Florida’s health department in 2020, over a rift regarding Coronavirus data, said:

“I think this is the predictable outcome of turning fringe, anti-vaccine rhetoric into a defining trait of the Florida government,”

A strategy of letting measles spread (which can wipe out your body’s immunity memory) while Covid is still pin-balling its way around the country? Sounds legit.

The way that things are going with public health in the US, it’s only a matter of time until the health departments of other western countries start issuing travel health notices for their citizens wanting to visit the US, advising them of the diseases that are being left to run free, particularly in Florida.

From The Nation:

“In 2022, Georgetown University political scientist Donald Moynihan wrote a piece on how to undermine the administrative state….No country becomes a world power without a capable public service.”

Perhaps the corollary, as stated by The Nation’s Gregg Gonsalves is this:

“No country becomes healthy without a capable public health system.”

That describes America today. More from The Nation:

“We did terribly on Covid…part of the reason was that our fundamentals were weak, but our politics are also set up to undermine public health….This has implications well beyond…the pandemic. It’s about how we expect to survive and thrive in America….This is a disaster in slow motion, and we’re watching it unfold as bystanders.”

There you have it: another thing to lose sleep over, and the election is still 7+ months away. Will there be enough infant deaths to generate sufficient outrage to roll this decision back?

Highly doubtful.

Wrongo is leaving you with that thought and is segueing into our Saturday Soother, where we take a break from doom scrolling and spend a few stolen moments alone with our thoughts. Here on the Fields of Wrong, there is still snow on the ground. So while we hope that spring is just around the corner, there’s little evidence to support it.

To help you relax, grab a seat by a south-facing window and watch and listen to Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”, played here by the Vienna Philharmonic, and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. Dudamel is scheduled to become music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026. This performance was a part of the annual free Vienna Summer Night Concert in 2019.

This is the fourth time Wrongo has featured this composition, although you are seeing this particular version for the first time.

Barber finished the Adagio in 1936. In January 1938, Barber sent an orchestrated version of the Adagio for Strings to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, which annoyed Barber. Toscanini later sent word that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it!

It was performed for the first time by Toscanini in November, 1938. Here, it is conducted by Gustavo Dudamel in 2019, like Toscanini did, without a score:

Kevin Shows His Little Spine

The Daily Escape:

Lone Cypress, 17 Mile Drive, Monterey, CA – September 2023 photo by Leila Shehab Photography

“Until we know we are wrong, being wrong feels exactly like being right.” — David McRaney

Wrongo’s Wake Up Call came on Saturday evening when Kevin McCarthy asked House Democrats to bail him out again:

“Congress passed a bill today to fund the federal agencies at FY2023 levels until Nov. 17. The legislation reauthorizes the FAA and the national flood insurance program through the end of this year. There’s $16 billion for disaster relief accounts, too.”

From Politico:

“McCarthy’s move marked an abrupt shift after spending most of the year trying to placate all corners of his party — including a dozen-plus hardliners who have made it next to impossible for him to maneuver anything onto the floor. After the vote, McCarthy all but taunted his critics to come after his gavel if they wanted to.”

Wrongo said here that:

“You’re unlikely to win if you decide to place a bet on McCarthy getting a dose of moral courage and standing up to his Party.“

Well, Wrongo was um, wrong. The 45-day bridge funding passed with more Democratic than GOP votes. That’s a repeat of the debt vote last spring that also angered McCarthy’s opponents.

Four Indictments, 91 Counts

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise at Laite Beach, Camden, ME – August 2023 photo by Daniel F. Dishner

There’s plenty of good reporting and bad punditry out of Georgia. So Wrongo, as in the past, will limit what is said about it here. From the NYT’s Peter Baker: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…most Americans made up their minds about Mr. Trump long before prosecutors like Fani T. Willis or Jack Smith weighed in, polls have shown. He is, depending on the perspective, a serial lawbreaker finally being brought to justice or a victim of persecution by partisans intent on keeping him out of office.”

Republicans will continue to rationalize Trump’s criminal behavior. Their main talking point today is that the Democratic Party is part of a giant deep state cabal working to take down Trump. It is the Dems, not the Donald who are guilty of election interference. And what about the Biden Family Crime Syndicate?

The courts are finally treating Trump as the career criminal he’s always been. And many pundits are shaking their heads, saying that the shock to the American political system is going to be extreme because Republicans are angry.

What the pundits and the wingnuts don’t understand is that the rest of us are angry too. We’re livid that this cancer of a person has evaded justice after what he did post-the 2020 election. We’re enraged that his goons desecrated the Capitol. Finally, we nearly stroked out once we realized that after trying to overthrow our duly elected government, Trump and cronies seemed to get away with it.

And we plan to vote in historic numbers.

Republicans think they are the only side that feels passionately about Jan 6, but that is a huge mistake. Many Americans are angry that justice hasn’t been done. One foundational tenet of the MAGA movement is its southern anti-DC attitude. But Trump has in essence been saying to Georgians that they screwed up. That Georgians held a fraudulent election. It seems highly unlikely that framing will play well with a Fulton County jury. (Although it will only take one MAGA jury member to create a mistrial.)

A few other thoughts: The sooner journalists stop pretending that Republicans care about holding other Republicans accountable, the quicker we can move on to saving our democracy. Most mainstream journalists miss the moment because of their inbred need to show both sides of an argument. It was Jonathan Foster formerly of Sheffield University who said:

“If one person says it’s raining and another says it’s not, a journalist’s job isn’t to report that disagreement, but rather to look out the window.”

America’s journalists should heed Foster’s advice.

Finally, the importance of the Georgia case is that Trump can never pardon himself if he’s found guilty in Georgia. In fact, Georgia’s governor doesn’t have that authority. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Unlike the federal cases, which could be dismissed by a future Republican president, Georgia’s pardon process is in the hands of an independent board, not the governor. Under the state’s rules, a person needs to wait five years after they serve any prison sentences before they can be considered for a pardon.”

What kind of person holds on to a lie and builds a scaffold of dishonesty around it? At any point in Trump’s Big Lie, from voter fraud to conspiracy, Trump could have said, “I lost fair and square, and I’ll get him next time”. Many in his Party in Georgia did just that. But Trump pushed on. The Senate could have convicted him at a time when the Capitol was in a damaged hulk. That also could have spared the country where we are today. But most Senate Republicans couldn’t find the courage.

Another tragedy is the enduring distrust of and lost faith in those America’s institutions that still function, if tenuously, today. Whether Trump wins or loses these cases, or whether he wins the White House again, this damage will take decades to undo.

We have zero control over what happens next in the various courtrooms. We have no influence over the juries who will weigh the evidence. Whatever the result, it will be divisive. But we won’t heal unless we lance the boil. Yes that means Wrongo is saying that Trump is a festering abscess poisoning our nation.

We need open, transparent trials, with public records of all witnesses and evidence. No one should argue for pardoning Trump because they’re afraid of his insurrectionist allies.

Trump and America deserve REAL trials, with REAL sentences. And we can move forward from there.

We were wrong to pardon Nixon. We let other Republicans (like Reagan and Bush Sr.) slide based on a wrong-headed sense of respect for the office, setting a bad precedent. It encouraged later Republican presidents to think they could rely on magnanimity when none was deserved.

Nail the crooks, starting with Trump.

America’s Playing Default Chicken

The Daily Escape:

Ice and clouds, Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone NP, WY – May 2023 photo by Joethehiker

Wrongo doesn’t know about you, but he’s starting to think that the “bi-partisan” Debt Ceiling negotiations aren’t going to stave off a default on the US’ debt obligations.

Every talking head is still saying that at the last minute, Biden and McCarthy will agree to…something. Something that prevents a government shutdown, and a default on payments for the country’s outstanding debt.

But is that real or hopium? In any negotiation, the idea is to find a point (or multiple points) of leverage that bends the other side toward your viewpoint. That helps the two sides to meet at some place in the middle.

So who’s got the leverage in the current Debt Ceiling negotiation? No one. Biden surely has no leverage over the House Republicans. Republican Speaker McCarthy has some leverage over Biden but has little leverage with his own House members. The Senate leaders, Majority Leader Schumer and Minority Leader McConnell, who normally have leverage to help resolve Debt Ceiling standoffs, are bystanders in this game of Default Chicken.

We’re in a high stakes game of chicken because nobody can deliver their side to the table. Politico reports:

“White House aides privately estimate they may need to deliver as many as 100 Democratic votes to ensure an eventual debt limit deal can pass the narrowly divided House…”

But few Democrats will support the deep cuts to social programs that Biden might be forced to agree to. McCarthy knows that a portion of his GOP House members will vote against ANY compromise bill. House Republicans have already called the legislation they passed last month (lifting the Debt Ceiling in exchange for deep spending cuts) the floor, not the ceiling to the negotiation. Dan Pfeiffer quoted Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL):

“I think my conservative colleagues for the most part…don’t feel like we should negotiate with our hostage.”

So Gaetz thinks that Biden and the Democrats are his hostages. If they are, how do they negotiate with the terrorists on the other side?

The positions are clear. The White House is open to budget negotiations but opposed to debt ceiling brinkmanship. Republicans threaten default if their budget demands aren’t met. They’re planning to pull the pin on this grenade and then blame Democrats for making them do it.

Recent polling from ABC and The WaPo gives Democrats a narrow advantage: An equal number of voters from each party—78%—would blame the opposite party for default. While 37% of independents say they would blame Republicans and 29% would blame Biden, with 24% blaming both parties equally.

The Democrats’ negotiating position appears to put them in the worst of both worlds: If the Debt Ceiling is breached, the polls show that they will share the political fallout with Republicans. Otherwise, they may have to agree to significant cuts to crucial programs like welfare and food stamps, which will badly hurt them with their base.

Either way, the Dems will complain about the financial wreckage caused by Republican extremism, and hope voters agree with them. The simplest way out is to agree to a temporary debt ceiling increase as we have many times in the past, to allow both sides to continue negotiating.

Sadly, McCarthy and the House Republicans seem to prefer default to compromise. They’re using passing a new Debt Ceiling as leverage to cut spending for Social Security and Medicare while increasing the defense budget. That’s their idea of “fiscal responsibility”. Sure, our military budget is 10 times Russia’s and three times China’s, but Republicans want grandma to tighten her belt.

At the end of the day, we’re stuck playing Default Chicken: The US must pay the bills it has already incurred as they mature. McCarthy can’t be seen by House Republicans to be giving concessions to Biden. After all, they think their job is to save the country from excess spending, not from the consequences of default. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said on Wednesday that no one in the House Republican conference is concerned about the potential of a US debt default:

“Regular Americans … don’t worry about the government shutting down.”

Negotiating with terrorists is very difficult. The pressure on Democrats to cave to Republican demands for massive spending cuts will become harder to resist. If somehow they do resist, chances are we’ll see America default on its debts.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Trust of Government

Trump’s Threat To The Constitution

Cartoons Of The Week – May 19, 2024

Kevin Shows His Little Spine

Four Indictments, 91 Counts

America’s Playing Default Chicken