Aug 5, 2017
Adult Supervision
It's particularly appalling and altogether galling to know this is where we are now.
It really should be a fairly simple concept:
We have to learn how to live our lives without needing a cop, or mommy, or Jesus looking over our shoulder the whole fucking time.
On the other side is the little red flag that's gone up in the back of my brain clutter that wants me to ask why Mad Dog Mattis feels the need to put this out now. In a system with built-in Checks-n-Balances, why does the boss at the most powerful government agency on the planet think it's necessary to remind people to behave appropriately? - as though the reins were being removed.
It really should be a fairly simple concept:
We have to learn how to live our lives without needing a cop, or mommy, or Jesus looking over our shoulder the whole fucking time.
On the other side is the little red flag that's gone up in the back of my brain clutter that wants me to ask why Mad Dog Mattis feels the need to put this out now. In a system with built-in Checks-n-Balances, why does the boss at the most powerful government agency on the planet think it's necessary to remind people to behave appropriately? - as though the reins were being removed.
Today's Political Fuckery
Straight out of the Daddy State Playbook:
Dallas Morning News, Ruth May:
Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.
If everyone is guilty, then no one can be held to account.
Dallas Morning News, Ruth May:
During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonid "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.
The shit is apparently wider than I thought, and it runs way deeper.
Some probables:
WOULD YOU EVEN CARE IF HE WAS GUILTY?
The stock market is up, unemployment is down and the economy seems to be picking up some steam. The streets are mostly safe, the nation is mostly secure and the world is mostly at peace.
So does it matter to you whether or not the president is a crook? The answer for a lot of Americans may be no.
With the revelation that a grand jury is looking at evidence against members of President Trump’s 2016 campaign team, we move closer still to the possibility that someone could be in very big trouble.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his squad are moving fast, and the likelihood that some charges will be brought can no longer be ignored. It is not hard to imagine a moment in the very near future where some associate of the president is in the dock, charged with misdeeds relating to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
But, again, we ask: Would it matter to you?
The shit is apparently wider than I thought, and it runs way deeper.
Some probables:
- It'll take a good long time to get it sorted out and squared up
- we won't ever know but maybe half of the real story
- the loudest voices will belong to the dirtiest culprits
And don't forget there's a (continuing) concerted effort coming out of the Wingnut Dis-Infotainment Complex to gloss it over.
The stock market is up, unemployment is down and the economy seems to be picking up some steam. The streets are mostly safe, the nation is mostly secure and the world is mostly at peace.
So does it matter to you whether or not the president is a crook? The answer for a lot of Americans may be no.
With the revelation that a grand jury is looking at evidence against members of President Trump’s 2016 campaign team, we move closer still to the possibility that someone could be in very big trouble.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his squad are moving fast, and the likelihood that some charges will be brought can no longer be ignored. It is not hard to imagine a moment in the very near future where some associate of the president is in the dock, charged with misdeeds relating to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
But, again, we ask: Would it matter to you?
Episode 400
Episode 400 - The podcast that's lasted more than 275 times longer than The Mooch's gig at the White House. That's something worth celebrating.
Every week for more than 7 1/2 years. Every week.
Aug 4, 2017
Crime And Punishment
Sturm und Drang abounds over the "Murder-by-Text" trial (and as of yesterday the sentencing) of Michelle Carter.
The Hill, David Shapiro:
With the news in that a Massachusetts judge sentenced homicide-by-text defendant Michelle Carter to fifteen months in prison and six years on probation, many are outraged at the perceived leniency of the sentence.
They may have a point, but only because brutally harsh sentences have become the norm in American criminal justice, and with devastating effects. The past decades have witnessed massive “sentencing inflation” as periods of incarceration have become longer and longer.
In the past 40 years, the incarceration rate in the United States skyrocketed by 500 percent. The United States now locks up more of its people than Russia and China — some 2.2 million of us. According to the Sentencing Project, “Changes in law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase.”
The Hill, David Shapiro:
With the news in that a Massachusetts judge sentenced homicide-by-text defendant Michelle Carter to fifteen months in prison and six years on probation, many are outraged at the perceived leniency of the sentence.
They may have a point, but only because brutally harsh sentences have become the norm in American criminal justice, and with devastating effects. The past decades have witnessed massive “sentencing inflation” as periods of incarceration have become longer and longer.
In the past 40 years, the incarceration rate in the United States skyrocketed by 500 percent. The United States now locks up more of its people than Russia and China — some 2.2 million of us. According to the Sentencing Project, “Changes in law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase.”
If Carter’s sentence seems short, it is because we are weighing it on a broken scale.
Increasing rates of incarceration at best has a minimal effect on crime, and may have no effect at all. In other words, mass incarceration is all about politics, not public safety.
We've been through a long and damaging period of "Law-n-Order" that's done little but make real the grotesque Dickensian villainy of the Prison Entrepreneur, and a Coin-Operated Justice System.
Maybe we're seeing something of a backlash now.
But we still have to contend with certain Daddy Staters, per Charlie Pierce:
Were you wondering if Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was still the prickly authoritarian yahoo that he's always been, now that he has gotten on the bad side of the president*? Wonder no longer, says The Washington Post.
Increasing rates of incarceration at best has a minimal effect on crime, and may have no effect at all. In other words, mass incarceration is all about politics, not public safety.
We've been through a long and damaging period of "Law-n-Order" that's done little but make real the grotesque Dickensian villainy of the Prison Entrepreneur, and a Coin-Operated Justice System.
Maybe we're seeing something of a backlash now.
But we still have to contend with certain Daddy Staters, per Charlie Pierce:
Were you wondering if Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was still the prickly authoritarian yahoo that he's always been, now that he has gotten on the bad side of the president*? Wonder no longer, says The Washington Post.
Dots
It starts to look like the dots are connecting themselves.
Listen to Bob Cesca and Jackie Schechter (sorry, unable to embed)...
The Bob Cesca Show, presented by Bubble Genius - 08-03-17
...and then go sign up for Investigate Russia
Listen to Bob Cesca and Jackie Schechter (sorry, unable to embed)...
The Bob Cesca Show, presented by Bubble Genius - 08-03-17
...and then go sign up for Investigate Russia
BTW - it's time to take the whole "smoke but no fire" thing and put it to bed.
Ask any firefighter what happens to your house if you wait until you see flames before you call 911.
President Capone
While we don't get to see 45*'s tax records right now, we can learn part of what we need to know by looking at the tiny sliver of information they do allow us to see.
It ain't sexy - it won't excite anybody outside a relatively small circle of Numbers Nerds - but this is how these things get done.
WaPo, David Herzig and Bridget Crawford
It’s possible the president filed the right paperwork. But without a full release of his tax returns, the available evidence suggests he hasn’t. According to New York City property records, Trump paid $13,000 in state and local transfer taxes for these two sales. That is the correct amount for a sale between strangers. But if he paid state and local transfer taxes, that means he didn’t treat the transfers as gifts. And on the real estate forms filed in New York, Trump didn’t check any of the boxes indicating that these were sales between relatives or sales of less than the entire property. It would seem, then, that he treated the transactions as if they were sales for fair market value to a stranger.
-snip-
Since Trump did not cast the transactions as gifts for state and local tax purposes, it is almost certain that he did not do so for federal gift tax purposes, either. In our combined 40 years of experience as tax lawyers, we are unaware of a situation in which a taxpayer would report a transaction as a fair market value between strangers on the state level (and thus incur real estate taxes) but treat it as a gift at the federal level (and thus incur an additional tax). It’s fair to infer that Trump didn’t follow the rules.
And just in case you're looking for work in a field that's almost perfect for keeping you busy for decades to come as we try to unravel the shit blanket that's been thrown over our heads, it's worth considering a career in Forensic Accounting (yes - that's a thing). And if we're going to have any real chance to fix a tax system that's totally FUBAR, we'll be in dire need of some very good Numbers Nerds.
Aug 3, 2017
Today's Self-Inflicted Foot Wound
It's never about anything but trying to make himself look good.
Read the transcripts at WaPo
A "highlite":
Pena Nieto: Yes, Mr. President. The proposal that you are making is completely new, vis-à-vis the conversations our two teams have been having. But I have gathered this from the position that you have taken in terms of trade. I think we have the route to continue having balanced trade between both nations. And frankly, to tell you the truth Mr. President, I feel quite surprised about this new proposal that you are making because it is different from the discussion that both of our teams have been holding —
Trump: Enrique, if I can interrupt – this is not a new proposal. This is what I have been saying for a year and a half on the campaign trail. I have been telling this to every group of 50,000 people or 25,000 people – because no one got people in their rallies as big as I did. But I have been saying I wanted to tax people that treated us unfairly at the border, and Mexico is treating us unfairly. Now, this is different from what Luis and Jared have been talking about. But this was not a new proposal – this is the old proposal. This was the proposal I wanted. But they say they can come up with some other idea, and that is fine if they want to try it out. But I got elected on this proposal – this won me the election, along with military and healthcare. So this is not a new proposal this is been here for a year and half.You Don't Get One Without The Other
Zeeshan Aleem at Vox:
Democrats, not Donald Trump, are the real populists on trade in Washington.
Democrats, not Donald Trump, are the real populists on trade in Washington.
That’s the major takeaway from the Democrats’ bold new trade platform that they unveiled on Wednesday morning, the second rollout of their “Better Deal” messaging agenda in the runup to midterm elections in 2018.
It's a collection of proposals aimed at protecting American workers from foreign competition — and it’s designed to edge out Trump's own messaging on how he's going to transform US trade to help bring back jobs to America.
The first 34 items on the 2016 Democratic Party Platform are all about helping everyday American Workin' Folk get a better chance to participate (to a slightly greater degree) in a system that actually fucking depends on their participation.
Don't gimme no shit about how the Dems fucked up by not addressing the problems of middle America.
If people missed it, then they weren't listening, cuz Hillary and Bernie and Tim all hit it plenty hard every time they stepped into the box last fall.
And maybe this had something to do with how we've been missing the point for 30 years:
The idea of evaluating foreign investment to ensure it doesn’t pose a threat to American jobs is bound to be incredibly controversial in Washington.
The first 34 items on the 2016 Democratic Party Platform are all about helping everyday American Workin' Folk get a better chance to participate (to a slightly greater degree) in a system that actually fucking depends on their participation.
Don't gimme no shit about how the Dems fucked up by not addressing the problems of middle America.
If people missed it, then they weren't listening, cuz Hillary and Bernie and Tim all hit it plenty hard every time they stepped into the box last fall.
And maybe this had something to do with how we've been missing the point for 30 years:
The idea of evaluating foreign investment to ensure it doesn’t pose a threat to American jobs is bound to be incredibly controversial in Washington.
-snip-
That kind of scrutiny and interference with foreign investment would be unprecedented for the United States, says Edward Alden, a trade expert and senior fellow at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations. “The US has had a very open stance on foreign investment — it’s only restricted if it’s considered a national security threat,” he told me. (*)
'Scuse me, Mr Alden - the health of our economy kinda depends on Americans having jobs that pay them enough to live on, so it seems pretty important to ask, "When did you decide a fucked up US Economy was somehow disconnected from a threat to US National Security?"
'Scuse me, Mr Alden - the health of our economy kinda depends on Americans having jobs that pay them enough to live on, so it seems pretty important to ask, "When did you decide a fucked up US Economy was somehow disconnected from a threat to US National Security?"
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