Category Archives: current events

The Curse of Fairness

Justice Louis Brandeis, among others, pointed out that when we consider what is just we are thinking about what is fair.   Justice is fairness.   Fair enough.    You want someone you are arguing with to admit it when something you say is fair.   “That’s a fair point,” is a concrete step toward agreement.    Children, at a certain age, are obsessed with fairness.   They are right to be, fairness is manifestly better than unfairness.  Sadly, it’s a childish idea that is soon slapped out of young heads by the observable world around them.   The world, by and large, doesn’t really give a rat’s armpit about fairness.   By that I mean that the powerful, who have the option to enforce extremely unfair arrangements, are almost never shy about doing so.

So we have American billionaires, citing their liberty, who cry that raising their tax rate (radically cut by recent Republican presidents) by 2% is as inhuman as placing them in Auschwitz.  OK, in fairness, it was one American billionaire, probably having a very bad day, who publicly carried on that way.   The rest of America’s billionaires  shook their heads, it made them all look bad, even if it was hard for many of them to disagree with the sentiment.  

The American discussion of fairness has been shaped by the beneficiaries of an increasingly unfair arrangement.    In the name of freedom and liberty for all, some compromises must occasionally be made.  The CEO of Amazon, for example, acceded to the until recently unthinkably radical idea that American workers should be paid a minimum of $15 an hour.   Fair is fair.  Nobody who works for the richest corporation in the world should work for less than $600 a week, or almost $30,000 a year, before taxes.   So although he does not allow unionized workers, collective bargaining or other basic mechanisms of what a kid might think of as fairness,  he stepped up and paid Amazon workers the $15/hr.   He continues to make almost $9,000,000,000/hr but, then again, he is an amazing American genius, so, why are we talking about childish things like “fairness”?

Many intractable problems could be solved by investing billions to fix them, poverty being one of them.  It would require a real commitment, and the best ideas of how to do it–  a large scale multifaceted government program, job training, low cost public colleges, affordable housing and so on, but we could eradicate poverty in the wealthiest country in the world, if we were dedicated to doing it.  The same goes for slowing the catastrophic climate disruption we are already seeing.   It will take a commitment, and a lot of money, but it can be done.

America has always had unlimited funds for war (whether justifiable or not) but peace is harder to justify spending money on. A hundred million for the president (whoever he or she happens to be) to launch a massive missile attack against an airbase somewhere?   No problem at all, the blank check is already in your pocket, Mr. President, ma’am.   A hundred million to continue funding a program to make sure the elderly can afford heat in the winter?   Well… why can’t the old fucks just put on an extra sweater, a scarf and a hat?  If they weren’t morally weak or  criminally stupid they would be rich enough not to need the subsidy, right?

(You can fact check me here and  here and see how full of shit my numbers are.)

The discussion is always arranged to make certain ideas– like the vaunted Free Market– sound just and reasonable, while others– like renewable energy and a sustainable rather than extractive economic model— are the mad ideas of crazy radicals (as a $15/hr minimum wage was two or three years back).   The Free Market subsidizes many vastly wealthy corporations and industries to the tune of many billions annually.  How exactly is it free?   No matter, renewal, sustainable— just crazy talk you crazy commie bitches!

I heard this bit from Rupert Mudorch’s FOX mocked the other day by one  of our most successful late night comics.   In a discussion of raising revenues by increasing taxes on the ultra-wealthy, something apparently supported by most Americans, a Fox host fought back the idea in  a laughable but honest way.  The reason 70% of those polled by Fox favor raising taxes on the very rich is that there is a creeping ideology of “fairness” that is about to become an electoral force when these little bastards reach voting age.  

Schools have apparently been teaching children fairness for years, and it has distorted a whole generation’s values!   You can read most of the weak ass “discussion” below. [1]

The idea expressed by Louis Brandeis and others, that justice and fairness are the same thing, is deeply, intuitively true.   Eisenhower appointee Earl Warren apparently believed the same thing, and acted on it as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1953 to 1969.   He steered the court to numerous decisions based on common decency and fairness.  He was not shy about what his project was– increasing fairness and justice at law, sometimes relying on the court’s equitable powers– the power to go beyond the law to fashion relief that’s fair.   He got landmark decisions on the Civil Rights of all Americans, took stands to protect workers’ rights, the rights of the poor, the weakest among us.   Warren’s court was one of the most liberal in American history.   This, naturally infuriated many. 

In an excellent, very readable Law Review article called  Justice-as-Fairness as Judicial Guiding Principle,  author Michael Anthony Lawrence writes:

At the same time, many Warren Court decisions were hugely controversial, upsetting the settled expectations of those who benefited from long-entrenched governmental biases and practices. The ubiquitous “Impeach Earl Warren” [2] billboards seen throughout the countryside during the late 1950s and the 1960s reflected the underlying efforts of laissez-faire conservatives to overturn aspects of the New Deal, which began a quarter century earlier. The intensity of the political opposition to the Court’s newfound commitment to fairness and equality was matched only by the infamous pre-Civil War Dred Scott case a full century earlier. To this day and through the decades, conservative jurists, academics, and others have bemoaned the Warren Court’s “lawlessness” and lack of principle.

Laissez-faire conservatives are generally wealthy and content with the status quo, as long as it zealously protects their particular privileges and immunities, their inalienable liberties in the pursuit of happiness.  Laissez-faire [3]  is a French term that translates to “go fuck yourself”.  “Leave it alone” is the mantra of these liberty loving conservatives, unless, of course, the thing you are leaving alone is an honest societal commitment to basic fairness.   Too much fairness is unfair to the most privileged beneficiaries of a system that favors unfettered liberty above all else.   Unfair tyranny over the few by the many!  Stinking majoritarian hoards!

 

[1]  SANDRA SMITH (CO-HOST): There is — what seems to be, a movement against capitalism in this country. This is a piece in Politico, just published: “Soak the rich? Americans say go for it.” In this piece — it talks about how recent polling is showing that the American public is increasingly on board with raising taxes on the rich. As evidence, we pulled up this latest Fox News poll on the issue, whether Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy, on incomes over $10 million. Those that are in favor of that, 70 percent, Charles. Over a million dollars in income, 65 percent are in favor of raising taxes.

CHARLES PAYNE (FOX HOST): The idea of fairness has been promoted in our schools for a long time. And we’re starting to see kids who grew up in this notion that fairness above all and now they are becoming voting age and they are bringing this ideology with them. In the real world, though, you have places, very progressive states like in New York where you have the governor saying, hey, 46 percent of — the 1 percent pay 46 percent of the taxes. Last year in California, the governor, you know, [former Gov. Jerry] Brown said the 1 percent pay 48 percent of the taxes. Let’s not go back to that well anymore. So there’s a practical, realistic idea about this and there’s the ideological, hey I’m going to — it’s the right thing to do. It doesn’t work. But I will say capitalism has to do a better job defending itself….

source

[2]  My footnote:

“Impeach Earl Warren” was embraced by Fred Koch, charter member of the John Birch Society (once the lunatic fringe of the far right) and father of the accursed octogenarian brothers Charles and David Koch, men whose life’s work has been to make the lunatic fringe of the extreme right mainstream.    How proud ruthless Fred would be of these two highly successful motherfuckers!

 

[3]  Google translates the French term laissez-faire into English as laissez-faire.  Nice work, boys.  (without the dash it is rendered as “let do”)

here’s a generic definition of the English term:

lais·sez-faire/ˌ    lesāˈfer/   noun
  1. a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering.
    • ECONOMICS
      abstention by governments from interfering in the workings of the free market.
      “laissez-faire capitalism”
    • synonyms:  free enterprise, private enterprise, individualism, nonintervention, free-market capitalism, private ownership, market forces, deregulation

 

Dear Jeremy (second try)

 I’ve been following your journalism since Dirty Wars, was happy when The Intercept launched and  I look forward to your excellent podcast every week.   A major theme of your work is providing historical context, something deliberately erased here in the Land of the Free and the home of purposeful amnesia.   Your five minute recap of American involvement in Iran, prior to an episode about current US-Iranian relations, for example, was immensely helpful in setting the stage for that reporting.  

I have an idea for The Intercept– a well-vetted, searchable historical context archive that can be linked to in any pertinent discussion on the site.  For example, a hyperlink to a concise biography of Elliott Abrams to be dropped into any discussion touching on the administration’s appointment of that Death Squad architect as Special Envoy for Regime Change in Venezuela.  This would include the exact substance of the specific crimes the current AG wrote Bush’s pardon of Abrams for.   That link, in turn, would take an interested reader to a short history of US involvement in Central America.   I think this context archive would be a valuable resource for readers.

Not to say, of course, that the project of history writing is uncontroversial.   The Daughters of the Confederacy, or whatever they were called, spurred the rewriting of the history of the Civil War early in the twentieth century and the Dunning School’s racist views were the dominant narrative for decades.   No longer a story about a war to preserve the federal union, or to end the “Peculiar Institution”, the war and the end of Reconstruction (“bayonet rule”) were gloriously recast with the chivalrous Klan as saviors of the persecuted south.  This narrative was laid out  in Woodrow Wilson’s favorite film The Birth of  A Nation, you know, “history written in lightning”.   Tendentious history is as familiar as “Making America Great Again” or any of the other hollow slogans that sway masses of credulous consumers to one form of civic self-harm or another.

On the other hand, of course, history is based on events, things that actually happened/happen.  I share your belief that a contextualized telling of events based in hard fact and multiple witness testimony is crucial.  The telling may be highly distorted to advance a particular agenda or closer to what actually took place.  It’s an uphill fight here in America, to make the often painful past plain, but as you frequently remind readers and listeners, it’s impossible to understand the present without an awareness of these events and the consequences that flow from them.  

There are a number of great books, and great reporting, whose authors are often viciously attacked by the forces exposed in those accounts.  At the same time their findings are never seriously impugned and threatened lawsuits do not come to pass because the accounts are well-researched and truthful.   Truth is still a complete defense to libel and slander in America, though I recall President Fuckface (all respect) promised to do something about that when he was on the first leg of his now perpetual campaign.

We occasionally read excellent, troubling books, even best-sellers, like Dirty Wars, Dark Money, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, deservedly well-decorated books like Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, that lay out, in great and hideous detail,  things done in our names.   A million people buy them, they are well-reviewed, briefly discussed, later randomly found by interested readers here and there.   A digest of the findings of important books like these would be an excellent resource, and part of the archive I’m proposing for The Intercept.   A category for History (or Context), alongside Politics, Justice, Technology, National Security, Environment, World.

In a nation where facts are increasingly laughed off as bullshit, and are seen as less and less central to seeking or retaining political power (particularly when set against snappy branding and relentless marketing), millions of us still cling to the idea that facts are important, that history is vital to know.    The horrifying story of what was done to Maher Arar in our names should not be a footnote, a bit of arcana known only to a few interested parties on the left.  His “rendition” and torture (and the US dismissal of his case against our government)  should be a widely known object lesson about the destructiveness of extremism, the danger of government opacity.  The details of this kind of story are available all over the internet, if one even knows to look for them.   I’m suggesting a one stop shop where this kind of information, placed in context, can be found easily.  I believe it would be a great service to democracy.

We can hear detailed, learned, expert discussions of something like the Fourteenth Amendment, as I heard recently on a podcast from the National Constitution Center, where a key fact, like the judicially imposed 90 year coma of the amendment, for civil rights purposes, is barely mentioned.   I only knew the details of this almost century-long coma because of a year of research I did while a law student.  The deliberate suspension of the amendment as a personal right of action was barely touched in the Con Law casebook we all yawned our way through.    I listened to the podcast thinking “what the fuck?”  It went on to my list of WTF notes to write, along with dozens to the impeccable Grey Lady and her ilk.   Corporate personhood, it turns out, was the main, almost sole, beneficiary of  Fourteenth amendment jurisprudence during the almost century of its judicially induced deep sleep.  

The Intercept would be a great place to be able to find a link to this, in any story about reparations, or police shootings, or lynching, or voting rights.   The framers of the amendment were alive, and their “original intent” well known when the Supreme Court put the amendment, and the federal laws made to enforce it, into an unappealable juridical coma, less than a decade after the end of the Civil War.  Talk about “what the fuck?” 

I’ve long had a question for you.    Reading Dirty Wars when it came out I was struck by the detailed story of Anwar al-Awlaki you laid out.  It made the US citizen’s unappealable extrajudicial death sentence even more horrifying to me.   In the American press, and literally everywhere you search today, you will see him described as a top al-Qaeda propagandist, sometimes number two man of the terrorist outfit.  You need to search for a while to confirm that the American military and justice sector have no comment on whether he was actually charged with any crime before his extrajudicial execution (a neat way of admitting he wasn’t).    Reading your book I came away with the feeling that his increasing radicalism had been driven by a long campaign of US sponsored persecution here and in Yemen and that no connection had ever been shown between him and any terrorist group.   He appears to have been killed for his forceful exercise of our First Amendment rights.  Have you learned anything since writing the book that makes you believe otherwise? 

Anyway, Jeremy, apologies for this long letter.  If you are interested in this idea, I’d be happy to discuss it with you any time.   You can reach me (here).  Strength to your arm, keep up your important work.   Meanwhile, if you can enlighten me on the Anwar al-Awlaki query, I’d be grateful.

Canary in the Coal mine and Felix Sater

Kurt Vonnegut compared creative types to the canaries British coal miners used to carry into the mines to detect odorless poison gases like carbon monoxide.    When the tiny-lunged bird keeled over in his cage the miners knew it was time to get out of there.   (This practice was apparently stopped in 1986 when electronic sniffers replaced the wee birds).  Vonnegut meant by this comparison that those who fret and worry about communicating to others are often more prone than the rest to succumbing to the invisible deadly gases that are looming to kill everyone.

In an age when the kind of straightforward information in the paragraph above can be found by anyone with internet access and a few seconds to spare, why do we have so much plainly bogus news?   How can lies be fed to us so consistently, so brazenly, with no consequence for the liars?   We are busy living lives of quiet, increasingly hectic desperation in a dangerous world on the brink of massive catastrophe.   WE DO NOT HAVE TIME TO WASTE!  Time is MONEY! Wasting money is a sin.   (As our over 500 billionaires know so well).

It is quaint, I know, to find history fascinating, as I do.   It all flashes by so fast, after all, it’s hard to take note of it.   Did you know, for example, that there is a twenty year-old Supreme Court case, Clinton v. Jones, holding that there is no bar to suing a sitting president in federal court for acts done before he was president?    You could look it up, as Casey Stengel used to say.   [1]

I knew that Clinton’s lies under oath in that case (about sexual relations with a former intern called as a witness by Paula Jones’ attorneys, though she didn’t meet Clinton until years after the president exposed himself to Jones) were the basis for his impeachment.  I remembered (and heard again recently on a Showtime documentary) that the case was dismissed, suggesting then Arkansas governor Clinton did not show his dick to Ms. Jones.   I don’t ever recall hearing that Bill Clinton paid former employee Paula Jones more than $850,000 to end the sexual harassment lawsuit, suggesting strongly that he did something very wrong.  [2]

I don’t know why the intricacies of this world are so intriguing to me, but they are.   I had a friend who attends services and Bible study at the Chabad of Port Washington.   In 2010 and 2014 Port Washington Chabad’s Man of the Year was a wealthy Jew named Felix Sater.   Sater lost his broker’s license after slashing a guy’s face and breaking his jaw in a bar.   He spent a relatively short time in a minimum security prison for the felony assault.   A few years later he pleaded guilty to fraud in a couple of massive financial scams, and gave evidence against his co-conspirators to stay out of prison (and keep his fortune).  

Since he was barred from finance he got into another lucrative line of work, real estate development, and was partners with our current president in at least two massive development deals.  He was the money man for Trump SoHo and the liaison with Russian officials for the planned Trump Tower Moscow.  I’ve been wondering about this nefarious little fucker for about two years, since I first heard of him.  Congress is going to talk to him next week.  He will be under oath, too.

It is so easy to get the outline of the facts these days, but SO MANY FACTS!  [3]

The president is a liar, he can’t help himself.  He’s apparently always been this way.   Everybody knows it.  His defenders say that he never promised not to lie, so there’s that.  Plus, his lies are always in the service of making the country great again.  Plus, he frankly calls “bullshit” on people who call him a liar.  Plus, there’s no law against lying, unless you lie under oath.  If the president ever lied under oath, like the disgraced Bill Clinton, we don’t have the proof of that, and, anyway, if he got away with it doesn’t it just show how smart he is?  He’s not like other people.   He is the president of the United States and the richest, most successful man in the world!

If he paid off a couple of women he had extra-marital sex with to dummy up about it in the final days of his presidential campaign, whose business is that?  Many Americans wouldn’t have voted for him if those stories came out, if he didn’t pay off these women.   He basically had to pay them to shut up or he would have lost the presidential election, because Americans are so judgmental about this kind of thing.   Felony, shmelony!   USA!   USA!!!!

Have we ever had a compulsive liar as president? That would take some digging to know for sure, but I don’t think we ever did.  There have been several total shitbird presidents, without a doubt, but our current guy seems to be setting a prodigious record for lying.  And, most impressively, he’s doing it in an era of almost instant fact checking that can show the lies in real time.   His defenders will point out that he has never been convicted for lying, so shut up, nothing to see here.

It’s morning in America, boys and girls, and history is being written in the blood of those who hate our freedom, their innocent neighbors and a million fucking canaries.    The stories we read about it, so many of them, cunning and deadly as that gas that so often fills my own beak.

 

[1] Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case establishing that a sitting President of the United States has no immunity from civil lawlitigation, in federal court, against him or her, for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office.[1] In particular, there is no temporary immunity, so it is not required to delay all federal cases until the President leaves office.[1]

[2]   Wikipedia:

As a consequence of his conduct in the Jones v. Clinton civil suit and before the federal grand jury, President Clinton incurred significant administrative sanctions. The Independent Counsel considered seven non-criminal alternative sanctions that were imposed in making his decision to decline prosecution: (1) President Clinton’s admission of providing false testimony that was knowingly misleading, evasive, and prejudicial to the administration of justice before the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas; (2) his acknowledgement that his conduct violated the Rules of Professional Conduct of the Arkansas Supreme Court; (3) the five-year suspension of his license to practice law and $25,000 fine imposed on him by the Circuit Court of Pulaski County, Arkansas; (4) the civil contempt penalty of more than $90,000 imposed on President Clinton by the federal court for violating its orders; (5) the payment of more than $850,000 in settlement to Paula Jones; (6) the express finding by the federal court that President Clinton had engaged in contemptuous conduct; and (7) the substantial public condemnation of President Clinton arising from his impeachment.   source

[3]    Wikipedia:

Felix Henry Sater (born Felix Mikhailovich Sheferovsky; Russian:Фе́ликс Миха́йлович Шеферовский; March 2, 1966) is a Russian-American former mobster, convicted felon, [6] real estate developer and former managing director of Bayrock Group LLC,[7] a real estate conglomerate based out of New York City.  Sater has been an advisor to many corporations, including The Trump Organization,[8] Rixos Hotels and Resorts, Sembol Construction,Potok (formerly the Mirax Group), and TxOil.

In 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to his involvement in a $40 million stock fraud scheme orchestrated by the Russian Mafia,[9][10] and became an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and federal prosecutors, assisting with organized crime investigations. In 2017, Sater agreed to cooperate with investigators into international money laundering schemes.[11]

During the 2015-16 American presidential campaign, Sater worked with Michael Cohen, former attorney for The Trump Organization, to broker a deal to build aTrump Tower Moscow, asserting to Cohen that he could boost Trump’s election prospects through his Russian contacts. He is scheduled to testify publicly before the House Intelligence Committee on March 14, 2019.[12]

(and a few details:)  

Felix Sater has been described as a career criminal due to his links to organized crime.[30][31][32][33][34] In 1991, Sater got into an argument with a commodities broker at the El Rio Grande restaurant and bar in Midtown Manhattan. He stabbed the man’s cheek and neck with the stem of a cocktail glass, breaking his jaw, lacerating his face, and severing nerves, creating a wound that would require 110 stitches to treat. Sater was convicted of first degree assault, and spent 15 months in minimum security Edgecombe Correctional Facility in New York City before being paroled.[35][4][23] 

In 1998, Sater was convicted of fraud in connection to a $40 million penny stock pump and dump scheme conducted by the Russian Mafia[9][10]involving his company White Rock Partners. In return for a guilty plea, Sater agreed to assist the FBI and federal prosecutors as an informant in organized crime.

In 2009, he was sentenced to pay a $25,000 fine and served no prison time. As a result of his assistance, Sater’s court records were sealed for 10 years by Loretta Lynch, then the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Lynch’s decision to seal his records was discussed at her 2015 Congressional confirmation hearings to become attorney general; she stated that Sater provided “information crucial to national security and the conviction of over 20 individuals, including those responsible for committing massive financial fraud and members of La Cosa Nostra.”[36][37][38][39]

The Financial Times, citing five sources with knowledge of the matter, reported that Sater had agreed to cooperate with investigators looking into an international money laundering scheme involving Viktor Khrapunov, a former government minister in Kazakhstan. Khrapunov, who now lives in Switzerland, has been accused by the Kazakhstani government of embezzling millions of dollars and is wanted by Interpol.[11]

Sater received multiple subpoenas to produce documents and be deposed in the case against Mukhtar Ablyazov who is alleged to have defrauded BTA Bank of up to $5 billion as chairman.[40] Ablyazov’s alleged fraud is one of the biggest cases of financial fraud in history.[41]

Involvement with Trump Organization during presidential campaign   [edit]

The Trump Organization pursued a luxury hotel and condominium project in Moscow—dubbed the Trump Tower Moscow—during the Trump presidential campaign. This project was facilitated by Michael Cohen, then an attorney for the Trump Organization, and from January 2017 to May 2018 Trump’s personal attorney. Trump signed a nonbinding “letter of intent” dated October 13, 2015, to proceed with the project.[42] The letter, also signed by Russian investor Andrei Rozov, was forwarded to Cohen by Sater. He boasted to Cohen about his connections to Vladimir Putin, saying in an email to Cohen on November 13, 2015, “Buddy our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins [sic] team to buy in on this. I will manage this process.” He also asserted that he had secured financing for the project through the Russian state-owned VTB Bank, which was under sanctions by the United States government.[43]BuzzFeed News reported on March 12, 2018, that Mueller’s investigators had questioned Sater,[44] and on April 13, 2018, reported that a former Russian spy had helped secure financing for the project.[45] In 2010, Sater was provided business cards describing himself as “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump” with an email address at TrumpOrg.com.[46] In a 2013 sworn affidavit, Trump said “If [Sater] were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like,”[47] and in 2015 he stated “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it. I’m not that familiar with him.”[48] Sater is scheduled to testify publicly before the House Intelligence Committee on March 14, 2019.[49]

Personal life[edit]

Sater resides in Port Washington, New York. He has three daughters.[50][51] Felix Sater was a member of the Chabad of Port Washington and was named their Man of the Year in 2010 and 2014.[52][53] In November 2017, Sater put his home inSands Point, New York on the market for $2.5 million.[54] The home sold in February 2019 for $2.03 million.[55]

 source  

Just the Facts, Ma’am

The 1950s detective in the fedora ponders the hesitation of the woman on whose doorstep he and his partner stand.   After an appropriate pause, he nods stoically and proceeds.   “Perhaps this world is a hallucination, ma’am, but, that noted, we need the facts, ma’am, just the facts.”

“Officer, I appear to be hallucinating,” says the woman floridly.

“No matter, ma’am, just give us the facts as you see them,” 

“Well, officer, we are all born sinners, as the Holy Bible teaches.   There is Original Sin, the one we all have as a birthright from the first woman and the first man God ever created, who disobeyed Him (in favor of a cunning snake and a seductive woman, respectively) and there are the sins people commit on their own after they are born.    It is hard to tell, officer, which category of sin applies when.   Also, when to roast the unrepentant sinner at the stake and when to hate the sin and love the sinner, that is, when to forgive, even the most terrible sins.”

“Whatever one thinks of any of this, ma’am, the Christian leaders who most righteously frown on sin can also be very forgiving when the sinner is a friend of their cause with a huge public platform.  ‘Who among us?’, you know the drill, ma’am.”    

The woman intently studies something just over the officers’ shoulders.   Neither detective turns to look at her hallucination.

“The Bible also notes, ma’am, that all is vanity, and this striving after the wind benefitteth not anyone who seeks not to lose their soul in a futile quest for that which cannot be found,” says the detective.  

After a suitable pause, the detective continues “all that said, ma’am, what we are really after are the facts.”

“OK, he lied, which makes him a liar, I know that.  I voted for him, knowing that he was a liar, but then he lied publicly more than 8,000 times, so far, as documented by the pundits and their researchers.   We also call them pundents, officer, though I have no idea why so many people have adopted Sarah Palin’s mispronunciation of the word.”

“Perhaps they are being mischeevious, ma’am,” says the deadpan detective mischievously.

“I knew he was not a very ethical man when I voted for him.   I didn’t imagine he would behave this unethically once we made him the most powerful man in the world, literally did not see it coming.   We voted for him to put an end to corruption, to drain the swamp, as he promised to do.   We live in desperate times, officer,  I just did what millions of other desperate people also did.   But you’re not here about any of that, are you?”  

“No, ma’am,” says the detective.  

“So you’re not here about my reaction to his long speech in front of the Conservative Political Action Conference?”

“No, ma’am,” says the detective.  

“I didn’t like to see him hugging the American flag again, or using the word ‘bullshit’, I don’t think that’s a good thing for the president to do, with children watching it on the internet and so on.  On the other hand, I admit, I was impressed that he didn’t hump the flag while he was hugging it.  The temptation to drive his hips into it a few times must have been strong.”  

“Yes, ma’am,” says the detective, with no discernible emotion.  

An awkward interlude follows during which the woman watches a vivid and troubling scene unfolding behind the impassive detectives.

“Well, ma’am,” says the detective finally, producing a business card he hands to the woman, along with a photograph of a dog  “if you see this pooch, please contact me at this number.”  

“We certainly will, officer, always glad to be of service,” says the woman, who then begins keening uncontrollably. 

 

So Easy to Blame Billionaires!

For every ten generous, philanthropic, humanistic billionaires, we find one like the former president of Purdue Pharma, creators of the highly lucrative, highly addictive, falsely marketed opioid Oxycontin.   The Sackler family made $4,000,000,000 in profits from this “safe” alternative to traditional opioid painkillers.    Back in 2001 Richard Sackler apparently mapped out part of the family’s strategy for keeping its hands clean.   Here you go, from one of his confidential emails that came out recently in the Massachusetts lawsuit against the billionaire philanthropist drug marketers:

Screen shot 2019-02-27 at 4.15.56 PM.png

There are, of course, reckless criminals and supremely careful ones.   It’s the cunning criminals we really have to worry about.

 

Thank God Level Heads Prevail

The president was having dinner in Vietnam with North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un as his former “fixer” Michael Cohen began testifying in the House of Representatives.   POTUS appeared relaxed, sitting next to Kim, and he smiled for the cameras and the single print reporter he allowed into the room.   Mr. T heaped praise on his young colleague, an absolute ruler who may have done a few questionable things, like feeding an uncle of his to a pack of savage, starved dogs.   In the case of the savage dogs, demonstrably fake news, FAKE NEWS! — Kim had his uncle killed by a machine gun firing squad, like any respectable dictator would have done. [1]  One has to maintain perspective, as Mr. T did in predicting a wonderful future for Kim.  Perspective is crucial, particularly as India and Pakistan (both nuclear powers) are killing each other again over Kashmir and America is determined to effectuate regime change in Venezuela.

In ordinary times, the American president would reach out to both sides, urge calm, initiate diplomatic talks.   A person can only do so many things, though, even the most stable genius ever to lead a major country has his limits.   So as he and his Secretary of State schmooze with the North Korean dictator it is up to others to carry out some of these things, like smearing the president’s former personal fixer as a self-promoting liar so corrupt he won’t swear not to profit on his notoriety by signing a book or movie deal.  

Everyone loves calling inconsistent people hypocrites.  Such a harsh word!   True, Trump did say, in 2011, that law professor Barack Obama had been a bad student and called on him to release his high school and college transcripts.   True, Trump did have his personal attorney write to the schools Trump went to, and the organization that gives the SAT exam, and threaten them with legal action if they released Trump’s perfect scores and tiptop grades.   I’d say that’s a wash, really.   Hypocrite!  Such an easy word to hurl, but the facts also matter, no?

Michael Cohen was an unprincipled, lying scumbag, seems to still be one.   He worked for an unprincipled, lying scumbag.   What are you going to do?   Nothing illegal about being an unprincipled scumbag, unless you are convicted of a crime, as only one of them has been.   The other one?   Totally, totally innocent, until indicted, tried and found guilty by a so-called judge.

Meanwhile, as Pakistan and India square off, as the US and Venezuela prepare to forcefully argue the meaning of freedom and/or democracy, thank God we have level headed leaders looking out for us all in these troubled times.   And God bless these United Shayyssh.

 

[1] Snopes debunks the story, which originated in a piece of Chinese satire, here.

 

Some Math and NYC’s recent rejection of the Bezos/Amazon deal

The richest man on the planet, Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, took detailed bids from American cities looking for two perfect locations to host his new Amazon centers.   The cities offered Amazon all sorts of inducements, and each divulged a ton of valuable data, to entice Mr. Bezos to locate a new plant in their city.   New York City offered $3,000, 000,000 (three billion) in tax gifts to Amazon.  Bezos, the richest man in the world, was set to make NYC one of Amazon’s new hubs, designated HQ2.    Recently, due to massive opposition on the ground, from local residents, unions, and a number of NYC politicians, Amazon backed out of the deal with NYC.

Those in favor of the deal pointed out that NYC will be losing 25,000 new jobs by letting the deal with Amazon’s fall through.   Others pointed out that giving Amazon a massive tax break to locate HQ2 in Queens was not worth the few good jobs for locals that would be created.  I had the picture of $15/hr jobs for Amazon serfs taking the bulk of these jobs.   It appears these jobs at the planned HQ2 were high paying Amazon jobs.   From the Bezos-owned Washington Post:

Opponents, including freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), protested that the influx of Amazon employees, to be paid an average salary of at least $150,000 a year [1], would cause housing costs to skyrocket, drive out low-income residents and worsen congestion on the subway and streets.   source

Most Amazon jobs are not the kind of meaningful jobs that make any kind of positive difference in anyone’s lives, except for the fast food worker income they provide.   They are what economists call “bullshit jobs”, unskilled, repetitive factory jobs that will soon be done by robots.  Virtually all of Amazon jobs are non-union jobs (Amazon is a big opponent of unions) at $15 an hour.   Warehouse jobs, fetching and carrying, hustling to make ambitious hourly quotas.   Working conditions at Amazon fulfillment centers are famously hellish.

I immediately reached for my calculator since I already knew that it would take one of these workers 591,412 hours, or 68 years, working twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, without taking an hour off, to make what the boss, Mr. Bezos, Jeff, makes in an hour.   How about these 25,000 new workers, I wondered.   How long would this whole group of typical Amazon workers have to work to earn what Jeff makes every hour whether he shows up or not?

With so many sharing the load, turns out it would only take those 25,000 new workers a shade under 24 hours to make, together, what their boss makes every hour, whether he is sick, flying in the air or sailing on a yacht.  Individually, of course, it still would take each of those 25,000 new workers sixty-eight years, working twenty-four hours a day seven days a week without a break to make what Bezos earns every hour.   

What about a hundred new workers, how long would they all have to work, to earn what their boss gets in one hour?   Only 5,974 working hours each.   That’s only 149 forty hour weeks each  for these hundred assuming they took no breaks.  Barely three years, if they worked without vacations.

Jeff makes $191,000 a minute.   It would take one Amazon worker several years to make that, what her boss makes in sixty seconds.   A year’s salary for that typical Amazon worker?  A few seconds of her boss’s time.  Those working the now gone high paying HQ2 jobs would earn Jeff’s one minute income in about a year.  Fair is fair.   We owe everything to our visionary billionaires, after all.

 

[1]  This average salary is an interesting question.   If you average Jeff’s $8,961,187 hourly wage and an average line worker’s $15 an hour, the two workers average $4,480,601 hourly compensation, nice money if you can get it.  

Those 25,000 jobs that average over $150,000 can be any combination.   Pay ten upper echelon Amazon executives $5,000,000,000 a piece, pay 2,990 lesser executives $1,000,000 each, and the remaining 22,000 drones $30,000 each ($15/hr times 40 hours times 50 weeks) and you get an average income of $148,000.   Add in one $50,000,000 CEO-type salary and you have an average of $150,000 for those 25,000 jobs.   Make that CEO’s pay $50,025,000 and the average income for each of the 25,000 workers, million dollar and thirty thousand dollar ones alike, is over $150,000.  We have no idea what the breakdown actually is.

 

Trump’s Troll missed obvious counterpunch in contentious FOX interview

Asked by a surprisingly dogged interviewer on FOX if there was any precedent for a president asking Congress for money, being refused and then declaring a national emergency to take the money anyway, Stephen Miller missed an obvious line of attack.    Not a great line, admittedly, but, given the circumstances, maybe the best defense of this impulsive, repulsive president that he had.

The pugnacious little shit stain could have smirked and said:  Yes, idiot.   It was called Iran-Contra.  Congress passed a law that forbade US taxpayer money from going to the fund Freedom Fighters in Nicaragua.   A covert group of the president’s men contravened an arms embargo and sold weapons to Iran, a hardline theocratic state who had recently taken American hostages.   Profits, part of the “mark-up” from those sales, were sent to Central America to fund the pro-democratic operations of the anti-Sandinista fighters who, it has long been alleged by a worldwide cabal communist sympathizers and freedom haters, also, sometimes, raped (it was only a handful of nuns, by most accounts) and tortured, as well as killing.

Sure the interviewer would have pointed out that the arms sale and death squad funding deal were both clearly illegal, and not the same as the president invoking a manufactured, non-urgent state of emergency.  Worth a shot though, I think, since nobody was ever punished for the Iran-Contra affair.   Like a drunk who found a rich man’s wallet, treating the bar to drinks, the George HW Bush administration was generous with the pardons, before and after trials.  Why let the former Secretary of Defense undergo a criminal trial that could end up a mess for everybody?  The pardons made the sickening scandal evaporate into the fond mist of the glorious Republican Revolution.  

Reagan, after all, was the Great Communicator who promised to make America Great Again and said it was morning in America.  President George HW Bush, the former CIA director long considered by Ann Coulter the biggest wimp president of our lifetimes, has since been replaced on this dubious pedestal by the whining schemer we have there now.

And look, honestly, the televised hearings into the Iran-Contra scandal made a patriotic hero of current NRA president Oliver North.  The NRA presidency is a lushly compensated position [1].   North has been lavishly praised by NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre as “a legendary warrior for American freedom, a gifted communicator and skilled leader.”  Ollie wasn’t going to let the law stop him from waging war for freedom.

Being indicted as a result of the investigation also didn’t harm the hawkish Elliott Abrams, who is currently overseeing efforts to free Venezuela from a modern-day Hitler, as he did decades ago in explaining that the reign of terror illegally funded US-backed fighters in Central America unleashed on their countrymen was only the glorious prelude to democracy and the liberation of oppressed people.  He may have lied to Congress, but, as they say, extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.

 

[1]   More recently, the NRA has paid LaPierre an annual salary of roughly $1 million. But in some years, LaPierre has earned far more. In 2015, for example, LaPierre took home $5.1 million, the Washington Post reported.   Feb 28, 2018

money.com/money/5178193/wayne-lapierre-net-worth-nra-money-salary/

Witch hunt! Notes and details

I have written harshly about  the president from time to time.   It is partly in reaction to his frequent, reckless spouting of “alternative facts” and partly the hard-line partisans he appoints and the damaging policies he promotes.   Still, like all Americans, he deserves a fair trial, so let me point out that nothing has ever been proved about this man or his character that disqualifies him as commander-in-chief.

You can say paying $25,000,000 to defrauded customers of his now-defunct Trump University is an admission that one of his self-named companies committed fraud on a large scale.   The jury’s out (of the picture), the settlement terms are not public, or if so, are very boring, outside of the amount he paid (“pennies on the dollar”) and that he admitted no wrongdoing in settling the class actions [1].

You can attack his now shuttered Trump Foundation the same way.   You are free to draw any conclusions you want, but they are not legal conclusions, nobody is going to jail.

This is even more true for the assumptions flowing from the criminal convictions of several of his confidants, including his longtime personal lawyer and his former campaign manager.  

His “fixer” Michael Cohen  was convicted of tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions and lying to Congress.   How any of this has anything to do with his boss, Mr. Trump, has yet to be shown.  It is a huge leap, to say that the CEO of a closely held family business, even one famous for its CEO making every decision, was involved in any of the illegality his unprincipled personal lawyer is going to prison for.

The same goes for his one-time campaign manager, Paul Manafort.  He’s been convicted of tax fraud and bank fraud and made his situation worse by lying to federal investigators, violating his deal with them by sharing details of the ongoing Mueller probe with the president and his lawyers.   Sure Manafort pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to defraud the United States” and witness tampering, but how does this make Mr. Trump guilty of anything?   Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager for only two months, for godsake!

It may look suspicious, sure, that Manafort had many dealings, continuing through the short time he was managing the Trump presidential campaign (for free), with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, the man known as Mr. Putin’s favorite oligarch.   Is it illegal now to be friends with a Russian billionaire?

It may be illegal to commit bank fraud, to commit tax fraud, to tamper with witnesses, to lie to federal investigators.  It might be stupid to violate the terms of a deal with the Special Counsel, but, again, what does any of this have to do, specifically, with Donald J. Trump?  Just because some of these illegal acts appear to have been done to benefit Mr. Trump, why is that his fault?

Also, it’s not as though Trump is such an outlier as president, every president does things some people think are bad.  

Ronald Reagan’s two terms were clouded by the illegal sale of arms to Iran that illegally funded the Contra death squads (“freedom fighters”) in Central America, though he was personally untouched by it (due, in part, to his affability and the increasing perception that he was senile).   Reagan retained his popularity and his successor were generous with presidential pardons that pretty much neutralized the scandalous conspiracy, undertaken in the name of freedom by a small group of patriots like the current head of the NRA, Oliver North.  

One of George HW Bush’s last acts as president was pardoning Iran-Contra principal, former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, on the eve of a trial that would have likely implicated Bush in the illegality.  

Bill Clinton signed off on the end of Glass-Steagall, resulting in the financial disaster a few years later.  He signed bills that tightened already strict Welfare qualifications and vastly increased the incarcerated population of the United States.  He also, famously, lied under oath about a series of blow jobs he received while president.   Thanks to Ken Starr’s diligent, unredacted report, posted on-line, children in America also learned that their perjury-committing president also inserted an unlit cigar in the young woman’s vagina, and then lewdly put it in his mouth.

George W. Bush brought back torture and turned worldwide sympathy for the US after the 9/11 attack to worldwide fear of the US, after he unleashed the perpetual, borderless War on Terror, starting with the invasions and long-term occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.   He was the first American president to maintain an active kill list and execute suspects extrajudicially, by drone.   His administration engaged in widespread illegal surveillance of millions of Americans and covered this up.   He cut taxes to the rich, unsuccessfully lobbied to end Social Security and left office with a record low approval rating.

Barak Obama used the 1917 Espionage Act, more than all past presidents combined, to threaten and intimidate the press.   He also gave wonderful speeches about the importance of government transparency and accountability.  He expanded George W. Bush’s international secret drone war, killing suspects and civilians in many countries.   Obama was the first to cooly execute American citizens without trial, or even charges.  He gave speeches that warmed the hearts of millions while always serving his corporate and financial constituency.   He gave a good speech as he lied to the people of Flynt, Michigan about their toxic drinking water being perfectly safe to drink (and pretending to drink it, to the horror of his Flynt audience and later during his press conference).   Obama used executive orders more than most presidents (and, in fairness to him, he had rigid, amoral Mitch McConnell and a hard-line “tea party” Congress to impede him every step of the way), even once invoking emergency powers.

So, just because Trump has been closely associated with a large number of people indicted for felonies, and a few convicted for serious crimes, doesn’t automatically make him a bad person or a guilty one.  It’s easy for someone like me to hate the rich, and revile their unaccountable privilege.   The president deserves a fair trial, and hopefully a long prison sentence. 

The question of whether he can pardon himself, preemptively (as in HW Bush’s pre-trial pardon of Caspar Weinberger, who could implicated him in the criminal conspiracy), is an interesting one that Boof Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch (Trump’s replacements for the less doctrinaire Merrick Garland) will consider fairly, as will Attorney General William Barr, the impartial legal mind who helped George HW Bush with the pardons of Elliott Abrams, Caspar Weinberger and other defenders of freedom (whatever Congress may have said about the illegality of their specific acts)  back in the winter of 1992.

As always, we are a nation of laws, not lynch mobs, except as needed.

 

[1]  USA Today:   

Trump claimed as a candidate that he “never” settled lawsuits, and would not do so in the case of Trump University. “That’s why I won’t settle,” Trump told MSNBC in 2016. “Because it’s an easy case to win in court … How do you settle a case like that?”

But Trump entered settlement talks days after the 2016 election, agreeing to pay the millions under terms that let him admit no wrongdoing.

 

Fair is Fair

This bears repeating.

America’s greatest genius, the man who figured out that America loves to shop and loves convenience, and designed and built the vast empire that makes this American dream come true, makes almost $9,000,000,000 AN HOUR.

Per hour, Jeff Bezos makes $8,961,187  — roughly 315 times Amazon’s $28,466 median annual worker pay.  An Amazon worker earning the $15 minimum wage would need to work about 597,412 hours, or 24 hours a day for about 68 years, just to earn what Bezos makes in one hour.  

(source)

Working more than half a million hours to make what your boss makes in one HOUR?   Fair is fair, we live in the land of unlimited freedom, but… something about the grotesqueness of  this disparity seems… I don’t know…

Accumulating a billion non-hereditary dollars means the person is a very successful genius, smarter and harder working than the average bear.  Here we call such persons philanthropists, when they choose to give some of their money back in the form of charity.   We often call the billionaires in other countries by less flattering names, like oligarch and kleptocrat.   In America there is no connection between any sinister motive, or simple greed, and the accumulation of a few billion dollars.   That’s why we are the land of the free, baby.

But 597,412 hours to make what your visionary boss makes in ONE HOUR?   I don’t know, something seems rotten about that arrangement.  Doesn’t smell fair, somehow, though I can’t quite put my finger on it.