Escape plan…

How does Putin get out of Ukraine and still save face, something I’m sure he cares about?  Float some suggestions.

Do you think in light of the reported economic damage that’s being done to Russia and its citizens, that he wants to get out? Discuss.

Short videos on the media and a theory of stupidity

Freeze Peach 🍑 posted these videos over at Snowflake's forum. They are short but informative. The first one is a theory of how the media works. In my opinion, there is a lot of truth in it.

When one couples that with the video below about Bonhoeffer's theory of stupidity (maybe better called an aspect of human social behavior), one can see the connection between the media and the people. Interestingly, Bonhoeffer postulates that propaganda is more a social than an individual phenomenon. That is a belief I've independently come to  believe over the years based on what I've learned about human cognitive biology and social behavior. Both of these videos resonate personally. They feel basically correct.  

Meanwhile, Texas is really effed up

There is no other explanation. Texas must be Satan's proving grounds for cutting edge social engineering. The Texas Tribune reports:

Adelyn — who stands tall at 5 feet, 5 inches and is outspoken in class — had been having panic attacks in school as she approached puberty. After she started seeing the doctors in North Dallas, the attacks stopped.

But last week, the panic attacks started again when [radical right extremist] Republican Gov. Greg Abbott — seven days before the GOP primary election in which he’s being accused of not being conservative enough — ordered state child welfare officials to launch child abuse investigations into reports of transgender kids receiving gender-affirming care.

Adelyn is terrified she will be forcibly separated from her mother. So great is her anxiety that she doesn’t want to sleep in her own bed. The Vigil family agreed to speak with The Texas Tribune but did not feel safe disclosing details about Adelyn’s medical care.

Abbott’s directive followed a nonbinding legal opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton — who is also in the fight of his political life in Tuesday’s primary election — that said gender-affirming care constitutes child abuse.

Paxton’s opinion cited body modification surgeries that medical experts say are rarely, if ever, performed on children. But he also said it would be child abuse to administer gender-affirming care that is widely accepted by leading health care groups, like puberty blockers, which are completely reversible. Under the gender-affirming model of care, experts say, more time is spent allowing kids to socially transition instead of focusing on medical treatment. 

Advocates say that calling gender-affirming therapy child abuse could lead to it being weaponized in divorce cases, create legal issues for physicians and therapists who treat transgender youth and empower people to attack the young people themselves — as well as the family members and others who support them.

“It’s not a far stretch to think that you could be harassed, assaulted, killed,” said W. Carsten Andresen, an associate professor of criminal justice at St. Edward’s University in Austin.

In case people don't know, Ken Paxton is one of the most corrupt high level politicians in America. He is currently being prosecuted for securities fraud in Texas. That he is still in office is a Mount Rushmore-level monument to the failure of the rule of law to deal with white collar criminals. He ranks right up there in criminality with our rotten ex-president. Apparently, Satan finds enough of the people of Texas willing to participate in its experiments.

Paxton denies working for Satan, but still supports Trump

Newspaper headline: 

INDICTED ATTORNEY GENERAL KEN PAXTON EPITOMIZES 

TEXAS’ EXCEPTIONALISM ON CORRUPTION

Regarding Hillary's emails and Trump's stolen classified documents

Two days ago, I posted A short history note regarding official emails and documents. Comments by TopCatDC, someone who has worked with email and records administration for Department of State, were quite interesting. His comments, copied below, cast the matter in a somewhat different light:

If you want a deep dive into what matters and what doesn't regarding Hillary Clinton's emails (primarily) and Trump's classified documents, then read on. If not, feel free to skip. I have in the past worked in email and records administration for Department of State, so I know of what I speak.

Hillary Clinton intentionally broke US Government and State Department policy by not submitting relevant emails from her private unclassified mail server to the DoS archive. Every high-level employee at State knows the requirement to preserve anything that is defined as a "record" (an official document of government business or transaction). All of her staff would be aware of this.

But, I can tell you from first-hand experience, if a Presidential appointee does not wish to comply with the rules, there is little a civil service employee can do to make it happen. Unless you want to make a complaint to the Inspector General - and we saw in the Trump Administration what happened to people who took that route.

What's more, the very use of the private server indicates this was not an oversight, but her intent from the very beginning. She clearly wanted to prevent another Whitewater and not leave documents around available for a future fishing expedition.

It was not until this omission was made public, and Congress demanded copies of emails that she submitted them to the State Department.

And even then, she delivered them as printed copies - the most labor intensive way to store them. She could have done it electronically and they would have been easily added to the archive and searchable. Again, this seems not to be a mistake, but her intention was to make this as difficult as possible. These records then had to be scanned and error-checked before they could go in to the system - a process that was very labor and time intensive - we are talking about many weeks.

That being said, the charge that she mishandled classified information was all smoke and mirrors.

While she deserved rebuke for her handling of her unclassified email - the vast majority of official State Department business is conducted on the classified system, where official messages are still sometimes called "cables". And what seemed to go unreported is that all of her classified messages were sent to the archive and available to Congress from the beginning. So, from the beginning of the Benghazi investigation(s), Congress had all of those messages. And if you want to know what the official communication was during that tragic event, it was all in the classified system.

Finally, the charge that classified information was found on her private server - that is a huge and deliberate mischaracterization. It rests on the difference between classified information and classified documents.

Classified documents (either printed or in the classified email system) are marked with their classification on every page. It is impossible to mistake what they are. What's more, there is no network link between the two systems. You can't "accidentally" copy documents from one system to the other. They are different computers, usually in different rooms. (Classified computers can only be in physically secured rooms.)

Classified information is something different. It is information that an agency has designated as classified and should only be discussed in the classified system.

Here's the problem - different agencies have different opinions on what information is classified and what isn't. And since email discussions go on between high and low ranking individuals in multiple agencies, one really has no way of knowing if someone somewhere in the US government has decided that data is classified.

What became controversial for Hillary is that there were some topics discussed in her unclassified emails that other agencies decided after-the-fact should be restricted to the classified system only. None of these emails were sent by Hillary, by the way, she was just on the receiving end, so they appeared on her server.

But, here's the thing - this is no different than what happens on the State Department Unclassified email system every day. This has nothing to do with having a private server. The data would have been just as out in the open on unclassified State Department email as on Hillary's server.

This was a total red herring publicized to make Clinton a punching bag in public.

Contrast this with President Trump who took physical documents marked "Classified" on every page out of the White House and down to his private home in Florida. Those documents can not ever leave a secured enclave or it breaks the system as a whole.

That is not only inexcusable, it directly damages US security.

And, in addition to that - why aren't those documents in the official archive?

Once again, the public has been disinformed and deceived by partisan political propaganda. Republican Party and politician hypocrisy, lies and slanders here are clear and outrageous as usual. About all that one can say about believing political rhetoric from chronic liars is caveat emptor. 

Russia update

A Washington Post headline nicely sums up an important point: E.U. to ban Russian flights from airspace as Putin puts nuclear forces on high alert. Nuclear forces on high alert means chances increase for a little mistake to have a colossal impact on civilization.

New Hampshire and a couple other states are agitating to ban Russian vodka in their states. Russian vodka constitutes about 1% of the American vodka market.

Germany to send weapons directly to Ukraine. Germany will send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles. Berlin has also dropped some restrictions on German-made weapons being sent to conflict zones so that third countries can send more arms to Ukraine. This is a major policy shift for Germany.

Shockingly, some or maybe most Republican politicians are criticizing Putin and his invasion. Apparently their polling must indicate that at least some of the rank and file isn't happy with Putin's unprovoked invasion so they change their tune from dictator praise to dictator criticism. But, the Republican Party Füherer, our glorious ex-president likes the invasion. Once the dust settles, coward Republican politicians will revert back to attacking democracy and kissing asses of dictators like Putin and Orban.

Putin has ordered a clamp down on news reporting, calling the Ukraine invasion either an invasion or an attack damaging misinformation. He has shut down much of what's left of an independent press in Russia. At the same time, Putin has (i) launched a massive disinformation and smear campaign about Ukraine, e.g., falsely saying that the Ukraine government is committing genocide. 

Meanwhile, social media companies are letting Putin's poison run free and wild. Good old capitalism. As usual for capitalists, profit talks and truth and democracy walk. Apple's CEO Tim Cook exemplified the capitalist response so far, Tweeting that he was "deeply concerned with the situation in Ukraine." Ukraine's digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov had posted on Twitter, "I appeal to you... to stop supplying Apple services and products to the Russian Federation, including blocking access to the Apple Store!"

A short history note regarding official emails and documents

A radical right Republican Party propaganda talking point has been and sometimes still is self-righteous moral outrage over Democrats' sloppy handling of emails and official documents that belong to the US government and are supposed to be archived. Hillary Clinton was vilified and investigated for it while improperly using a personal server. The GOP howled in sanctimonious outrage over Clinton's alleged sloppiness and incompetence on this point. She was a severe national security threat and whatnot. The Republican rank and file was foaming at the mouth over this outrage and demanding justice.

LOCK HER UP!! LOCK HER UP!! LOCK HER UP!! 

And, when the ex-president was recently found to have stolen documents, including some classified papers, his shameless party said nothing. It was just hypocrisy as usual for the Republicans. The ranks and file was just hunky dory with the theft.

But, there was another incident about improper document handling that has been mostly forgotten but should be mentioned for convenient recall. Under president Bush, his email communications were run through Republican Party servers, not government servers. In yet another failure to vindicate the rule of law, the Republican Party erased millions of Bush emails. No criminal prosecution resulted. Newsweek wrote this about it in 2016:

For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton's personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations—all of it still unsolved and unpunished.

Clinton's email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House "lost" 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America's recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons.

Like Clinton, the Bush White House used a private email server—its was owned by the Republican National Committee. And the Bush administration failed to store its emails, as required by law, and then refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking some of those emails. "It's about as amazing a double standard as you can get," says Eric Boehlert, who works with the pro-Clinton group Media Matters. "If you look at the Bush emails, he was a sitting president, and 95 percent of his chief advisers' emails were on a private email system set up by the RNC. Imagine if for the last year and a half we had been talking about Hillary Clinton's emails set up on a private DNC server?" (emphasis added)

And, lest  we forget, one other quick point merits mention. The email issue was a non-trivial factor that lost Clinton the 2016 election. That disaster resulted in election of a mendacious, corrupt, demagogic tyrant-wannabe. So, don't forget about Republican Party hypocrisy and official documents and emails. They are wicked important.

Note the date: Oct. 28, 2016, 

about 1 week before the election

That's been your daily serving of political history. 

Russia's propaganda: Does any of this sound familiar?

The con-artist accuses the US of being a con-artist and, to deflect  

from his own corruption and failings, he has festering historical  

grievances and accusations of a relentless Western plot

The New York Times writes:

PARIS — President Vladimir V. Putin has ordered Russian troops into Ukraine but made clear his true target goes beyond his neighbor to America’s “empire of lies,” and he threatened “consequences you have never faced in your history” for “anyone who tries to interfere with us.”

In another rambling speech full of festering historical grievances and accusations of a relentless Western plot against his country, Mr. Putin reminded the world on Thursday that Russia “remains one of the most powerful nuclear states” with “a certain advantage in several cutting-edge weapons.”

In effect, Mr. Putin’s speech, intended to justify the invasion, seemed to come closer to threatening nuclear war than any statement from a major world leader in recent decades. His immediate purpose was obvious: to head off any possible Western military move by making clear he would not hesitate to escalate.

Given Russia’s nuclear arsenal, he said, “there should be no doubt that any potential aggressor will face defeat and ominous consequences should it directly attack our country.” He added: “All necessary decisions have been taken in this regard.”

Mr. Putin’s move into Ukraine and his thinly veiled nuclear threat have now shattered Europe’s notions of security and the presumption of peace it has lived with for several generations. The postwar European project, which produced so much stability and prosperity, has entered a new, uncertain and confrontational stage.  

Europe has rediscovered its vulnerability. Mr. Macron said on Thursday that Mr. Putin had “decided to bring about the gravest violation of peace and stability in our Europe for decades.” Of Ukrainians, he said, “Their liberty is our liberty.”

But no European country, nor the United States for that matter, will put lives on the line for that freedom. The question, then, is how they can draw a line for Mr. Putin.

After his short war in Georgia in 2008, his annexation of Crimea in 2014, his orchestration in 2014 of the military conflict in eastern Ukraine that created two breakaway regions, and his military intervention in Syria in 2015, Mr. Putin has clearly concluded that Russia’s readiness to use its armed forces to advance its strategic aims will go unanswered by the United States or its European allies.

“Russia wants insecurity in Europe because force is its trump card,” said Michel Duclos, a former French ambassador. “They never wanted a new security order, whatever the European illusions. Putin decided some time ago that confrontation with the West was his best option.”  

“Nearly everywhere, in many regions of the world where the United States brought its law and order, this created bloody, unhealing wounds and the curse of international terrorism and extremism,” Mr. Putin said. America’s conduct across the globe was “con-artist behavior.”

He continued: “Therefore, one can say with good reason and confidence that the whole so-called Western bloc formed by the United States in its own image and likeness is, in its entirety, the very same ‘empire of lies.’”  

He appeared to have forgotten that Ukraine once had a vast nuclear arsenal before it gave it up in 1994 under an agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum. Russia was one of the countries that signed the accord, promising in exchange that it would never use force or threats against Ukraine and would respect its sovereignty and existing borders.

A couple of points merit comment.

Putin threatens nuclear war. That arguably is apocalyptic talk. People have criticized me for raising the issue of the threat of nuclear war in the Ukraine mess. Accidents and/or mistakes sometimes happen because humans sometimes accidentally or mistakenly do stupid. Stupid includes nuclear war. Now, Putin is making explicit nuclear threats. Something stupid could happen, but we all hope the chances of that are very, very low.

Putin, like our tyrant-wannabe ex-president and his morally rotted, autocratic political party, is a chronic liar. When they accuse others of lying, con-artistry and the like, they are projecting onto others what they do themselves in spades and with a shameless vengeance. Once again, it is clear that to demagogues, tyrants, crooks and liars ('bad people'), shameless hypocrisy and double standards are not concerns, morally or otherwise. It is just what bad people do. Those tactics sure do sound familiar. It sounds a lot like the rhetoric and behaviors from America's radical right. 

Putin is probably right that confrontation is his best option, assuming something stupid doesn't happen as an consequence. Due to its crippling corruption and authoritarianism, Russia's GDP is a paltry ~$1.5 trillion, while the US GDP is ~$21 trillion and California's GDP is ~$3.3 trillion. Putin just doesn't have an economy that he can leverage. That is his fault, no matter how hard he blames the EU, NATO and the US. But he does have a powerful military and nuclear arsenal. Since he is rigidly demagogic, kleptocratic and autocratic, he won't cooperate or negotiate with the EU, US or NATO in good faith. All he has left is brute force and the threat of nuclear war.

Free markets vs. the public interest

Private sector profit centers in public markets

As far as I know, all or essentially all neoliberals, laissez-faire capitalists and other free market advocates uniformly argue these days that free markets do better for the public interest or general welfare than government. That is rock solid dogma and not questioned. Dissenters are attacked and smeared as socialist or communist crooks, liars and tyrants or totalitarians. Current evidence indicates that the free market dogma on this point is false. Arguably it has to be false for undeniable structural reasons. 

Specifically, (i) free markets usually demand and get higher returns than governments, making the product or service more expensive right from the get-go, (ii) alleged private sector efficiency and alleged government fraud and waste do not compensate for the difference, and (iii) actual, real-world evidence indicates that free market efficiency usually does not translate to lower prices or better products ands services for the public for government products and services. 

But for some capitalists and ideologues at the top, the wealth and power rewards for believing and living the pro-free market myth are gigantic. The free market mega-incentive demands blind, absolute adherence to the myth of its superiority. Belief in the myth is unshakeable, just like the Republican's 2020 stolen election myth.

Salon writes:

The Privatization of Everything is a book that sneaks up on you. Or at least it snuck up on me. Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian's subtitle should have prepared me: "How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back."

Slowly but surely, it dawned on me that the authors had articulated a sound, sensible and compelling vision about how realize the promise embedded in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution: "to promote the general welfare." That vision holds the promise of a pathway to rebuilding civic trust and a sense of common national purpose. That might seem to be wishful thinking, especially at this historical moment. But public goods are highly popular across the board, with Republicans as well as Democrats and independents, ....

Salon: Let's start with some of the basic, broad principles or perspectives in your book, starting with the idea that what's been privatized is the entire notion of public goods.  You argue that they shouldn't be understood in terms that economists have used, as "non-excludable non-rival goods," but rather should be defined by the public itself. Why is that important?

Cohen: .... health care is a private good. you can exclude people, and we do, and of course there are only so many doctors and nurses and hospital beds. So if it's a private good, the market drives and the market rules. But if it's a public good, then we get to say that everyone should have it. We should be able to do that democratically and not let the neoclassical market definition of public goods define what we can do.

Salon: You repeatedly make the point that privatization is more expensive, even when it appears cheaper upfront. This is glaringly obvious in one way, since private investors routinely expect double-digit returns while public bonds typically return around 4% a year.

 

Cohen: Businesses have legitimate business expenses, as well as pretty high executive compensation packages, in the millions, depending on the corporations. They have returns to investors, profit. They have political expenses, lobbying, and they also have debt, because they're involved in mergers and acquisitions, buying up other businesses. All of those are business expenses, none of which, fundamentally, is being spent on the service.

They say they're efficient, but efficiency is just spending less to get more. There's a finite list of things you can spend less on. You can have fewer workers, which they do. It happens in private prisons, they have higher ratios of prisoners to corrections officers. You could pay them less, lower wages and fewer benefits, which they do. You can use lower-quality equipment or supplies, that happens as well. And ultimately, you can give less service. When they privatized Medicaid in Iowa and Kansas, know what happened? Simple math. You got less care. So it's it's really a fallacy when they say "more efficient." There may be things you can do to make services more efficient, we should always strive to do that. But when they say "more efficient," really what they mean is they're going to spend less, and quite often that's very much counter to our interests.

Salon: My next question is about the basic logic of who's being served with public versus private financing, where interests and incentives aren't well-aligned. That's perhaps clearest in your discussion of public-private partnerships, or P3s.

Cohen: Yes, particularly involving infrastructure. The way you build stuff is design, build, finance, operate and maintain. That's how infrastructure is built. So, design/build is often private. When you bring in private finance capital, which is more expensive than public finance — often a lot more expensive — then the private financiers, usually along with the consortium, want to take control of the asset, do the operations and maintain it for decades.

So several things are true there. One of which is they're paying more for capital. The second thing is, they say they'll do it cheaper and faster, and they often say "with no new taxes," when they're advocating for public-private partnership. But there's a real simple truth: Things cost money and there's only one place to get money. From us. If it's not a tax it's a toll, if it's not a tax it's a rate hike. There's no free lunch. There's no free money out there. So that's the first thing you have to put aside. It's going to cost money. The question is who's going to get it.

I use the example of Chicago parking meters as the example on P3s. [Private investors, led by Morgan Stanley, paid the city of Chicago $1.16 billion for a 75-year operating contract in 2008. That had realized a $500 million profit as of 2019, with 64 years to go.] There are two things wrong with the deal. It was an incredibly stupid way to borrow money on your future revenues. But even if that was the only option, they got taken. They sold $1 billion too cheap.

But here's the real problem with P3s. If the city wants to eliminate parking spots, to get people out of cars with rapid transit or dedicated bus lanes or pedestrian street malls or by changing housing patterns — the responsibilities of a city — they have to buy the parking spots back. That's the core of what the problem is, because when [private entities] get control of the asset, they get control of the decisions that we ought to have. The city of Chicago's elected leaders — the city council, the mayor — their hands are tied if they want to expand transit.

The interview is long and it goes on and on. The quoted portions make the point. Free markets are inherently and, because humans are human, intractably at odds with the public interest or general welfare. 

To be blunt: Free markets are there to maximize profits for the people at the top and un-subverted government markets are there to minimize costs for the public good. Or put another way, the business of business is business, but the business of government is service to the public interest or general welfare, which includes providing the best at lowest cost. 

To flog this dead horse one more time, free markets do just one thing: They look to maximize profit by selling stuff at the highest price with the lowest production, worker, social and environmental protection cost, risk and accountability. By contrast, governments look to meet public needs and wants at the lowest cost for the most people. Those are two fundamentally different things. Both want the lowest cost for different reasons, profit for the private market and maximized public good for government. That generally makes the two intractably at odds. 

The problem with white collar crime

White-collar crime: this kind of crime spans a wide range of frauds committed by business and government professionals. These crimes are characterized by deceit, concealment, or violation of trust and are not dependent on the application or threat of physical force or violence; Wikipedia: refers to financially motivated, nonviolent or non directly violent crime committed by individuals, businesses and government professionals 

The New York Times and other outlets report that two key New York state prosecutors have resigned from a case that is gathering evidence to potentially prosecute the ex-president for his past business practices in New York. In my limited experience, white collar crime is hard to prosecute and get convictions for. My guess is that about 0.05% of all white collar crime is prosecuted. Lack of sufficient evidence to convict is the main reason. Most of the few cases that are brought to trial lead to a conviction because sufficient evidence to convince a jury was found. Plausible deniability is a powerful shield that protects white collar crooks who know how to use it as a defensive weapon against law enforcement.

The main problem is insufficient evidence to convince a jury of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. There are ways to create reasonable doubt in at least 1 juror on a jury. Systemic factors also inherently create room for reasonable doubt, e.g., no one takes any responsibility for anything they can weasel out of. That is just standard business practice. 

So, ‘reasonable doubt’ is all that it takes in the mind of one juror to get a crook off the hook. There may also be a limited resource problem because prosecuting white collar crime take a lot of time to gather evidence. 

With the resignation of the two key prosecutors after their boss expressed doubts about the case, it looks like the ex-president will get off of white collar crimes he committed in New York state. The NYT writes:

The two prosecutors leading the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his business practices abruptly resigned on Wednesday amid a monthlong pause in their presentation of evidence to a grand jury, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted their resignations because the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Mr. Trump, the people said.

Early this month, (Trump’s accountants] Mazars notified the Trump Organization that it would no longer serve as its accountant and that it could no longer stand behind a decade of Mr. Trump’s financial statements.

Mazars said it had not, “as a whole,” found material discrepancies between the information the Trump Organization provided and the true value of Mr. Trump’s assets.

Even with the retraction from Mazars, a criminal case would likely be difficult to prove. The documents, known as statements of financial condition, contain a number of disclaimers, including acknowledgments that Mr. Trump’s accountants had neither audited nor authenticated his claims.

And the prosecutors would have to show that Mr. Trump’s penchant for hyperbole crossed the line into criminality, a tall order when it comes to something as subjective as property values. A case like this might hinge on the testimony of a Trump insider, but the prosecutors have not persuaded Mr. Weisselberg to cooperate with the investigation, depriving them of the type of insider witness whose testimony can be crucial to complicated white-collar criminal trials.

Another challenge is that Mr. Trump’s lenders might not appear to a jury to be sympathetic victims.[1] The lenders, which made millions of dollars in interest from Mr. Trump, conducted their own assessments of his assets.

The advantages a white collar criminal has are huge and obvious. Mazars hides behind disclaimers. Juries will not be sympathetic to big lenders who made lots of money helping the ex-president commits his crimes. Witnesses refuse to cooperate. Maybe it is a miracle that any white collar criminals are ever convicted.

Adding to the deep insult of his probably unpunishable criminality, the ex-president publicly blasts the District Attorney as a politically motivated black racist, even though his predecessor DA was a White guy who started the investigation into Trump’s corrupt business dealings. 

When I complain about the rule of law being under attack and weak, a major part of what I am complaining about is immunity from prosecution for white collar crimes.[1] Street thugs are not white collar criminals. Rich and powerful people are. They have the opportunity, a protective system and an intense motive, more wealth and/or power, that drives them. Why not be a white collar crook? The reward is usually quite high and, when a good opportunity presents itself, the risk of accountability is quite low.

Footnote: 

1. A lawsuit I was very familiar with involved an unsympathetic jury (not a white collar crime). An attorney committed malpractice and that cost his clients about $800,000 in avoidable loss. The jury convicted the attorney for malpractice but awarded his former clients $1 in damage. Why just $1? Two reasons. First, the clients were paying the attorney “only” $187/hour when the going rate was closer to maybe about $250/hour. The attorney, not the clients, suggested that rate because that was his rate for similar work and they accepted it.

Second, was the defense attorney’s closing argument based on a story that he claimed was personal. His story was this: Me and my wife went out to dinner. I was looking forward to a nice steak. But when we ordered, she made me get the chicken. End of story.

I was completely baffled by that story and its relevance to the lawsuit. My confusion aside, apparently the chicken dinner story left a big impression on the jury. Apparently, they thought the attorney’s wife was a cheap skate and he deserved his steak, not the chicken. The jury transposed that reasoning into the lawsuit and decided the two clients were cheap skates and all they deserved was $1 for their cheapness. 

So, the clients paid ~$300,000 to their attorneys and got $1 in return for their loss. They would have been ~$300,000 better off just letting their loss go. 

Lessons: Juries are humans and can be deeply flawed. Humans are often (usually?) not rational beings. The legal system is not close to perfect. To protect the innocent, the law is heavily tilted in favor of the accused, especially accused white collar criminals. That tilt also protects the guilty, especially smart white collar criminals who know how to build and maintain plausible deniability.

Plausible deniability in action

 

Freedom!

 

Question: Can a free country have too many freedoms?

If no, why not?  Explain.

If yes, where do you see that "imposing on a freedom" line drawn?  Please give details.

     Some ideas to think about:

-Whenever a freedom breaks the law

-Whenever a freedom turns violent

-Whenever a freedom creates public panic and/or disruption

-Whenever a freedom harms another (physically rather than emotionally)

-Whenever a freedom harms another (physically and/or emotionally)

-Whenever a freedom exacerbates an already problem situation (e.g., not getting vaccinated or wearing an uncomfortable mask)

-Whenever a freedom of the one outweighs the freedom of the many

-Whenever a freedom to not bake a gay cake or preform a gay wedding is imposed

-Whenever a freedom to keep and bear arms is threatened

-Whenever a fetus is threatened

-Whenever a lie or falsehood is perpetuated

-Whenever a religion is threatened 

-Whenever etc.

Thanks for posting and recommending.

How to punish Putin and Russia:

 All the civilized world needs to come together, especially the EU and NATO, as well including Australian, NZ, Japan, S. Korea, etc:

Pull ALL of your citizens out of Russia, then ban ALL travel to and fro, especially ban all tourism to.

Immediately stop ALL imports of anything from Russia, no more importing vodka.

Immediately shut all of your ports to Russian interests and stop shipping anything to Russia.

Ban ALL Russian banks and financial institutions and immediately seize all Russian assets held in the above mentioned countries.

Close ALL Russian embassies and send them all back to Russia.

Ban Russians from ALL international sporting events and do NOT participate in any held in Russia.

Send to Ukraine, IMMEDIATELY, our most deadly weapons. Make a war too costly for them.

Russia engages in cyber attacks on other countries, imagine if ALL the other countries, especially those listed above, ALL engaged in full non-stop cyber attacks on Russian interests.

Then hire me as special advisor to NATO and the U.S. because quite frankly...… the advisors they have now don't have a clue what to do about Putin or Russia.

Your welcome.

Some poll data: What Republicans think about some things

The Washington Post writes:

Polling from YouGov conducted for the Economist in January provides an apples-to-apples comparison between Putin and various American leaders.

A comment here by homebuilding about the Republican very unfavorable opinion data:

The LIES are winning and Decency is WAY BACK in the field it would seem, most especially if the Dems don't start paying attention and getting all their votes out in Nov.

Think of it......Putin being see in a more favorable light than five other entities that support decency and fairness....

Questions: Is it time or overdue for Dems to sharpen their messaging, or has Dem messaging been just fine, or at least acceptable, so far? Or, does Dem messaging make no difference in swaying public opinion no matter what they say?

Domestic political rot endangers the future of a free humanity

The GOP plan to destroy democracy

and the rule of law

Rick Scott - our next president?

He is concerned

It is irresponsible to talk in irrationally apocalyptic terms without a solid basis in supporting facts and sound reasoning. The question is this: Is it irresponsible to talk of an endangered future for humanity based significantly or mostly on the state of internal US politics at this point in time under current circumstances? Some context might help frame this rationally.

The Ukraine crisis has served to highlight the growing divisions among Republicans on foreign policy that began with Donald Trump’s presidency and continues after his electoral defeat as adherents to his “America First” approach clash with the party’s remaining hawks who for several decades rallied the party around the idea of projecting a muscular U.S. presence abroad.

This divide has been on stark display over the last 24 hours as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ordered incursion into Ukraine creates chaos in Eastern Europe and Republicans rally around the idea that it is Biden’s fault, calling him weak, but failing to provide a coherent party position on what the White House should to counter Moscow’s aggression.

Some want stiffer sanctions and said they should have been put in place ahead of the invasion as a deterrent. Others question why the United States needs to be involved at all. Regardless, in their telling, it’s Biden’s fault.

Trump and some of his supporters and former aides have even offered odd forms of praise for Putin, a ruthless autocrat, as they seek to tear down Biden.

“There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re going to keep peace all right. No, but think of it, here’s a guy who’s very savvy,” Trump said during an interview Tuesday with a conservative news outlet, praising Putin’s moves and suggesting the Russian troops would serve as peacekeepers.

In recent weeks, as the crisis built up, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo offered similar praise for Putin’s strategic thinking. “We shouldn’t treat him as the JV,” Pompeo said in a late January radio interview on Fox News. “He is a credible, capable statesman. And that’s why the mistake of not putting deterrence in place over the last year has led to this moment that we’re suffering from today.”  

One long-shot GOP candidate for a House seat from New York followed Trump’s lead by praising Putin for protecting “the church, tradition and Russian culture” better than Western governments protect these institutions.  

On Tuesday, McCarthy joined with his leadership team and senior Republicans on those committees to issue a blistering statement that faulted Biden for not moving fast enough with military aid and other means to counter Putin.

“Sadly, President Biden consistently chose appeasement and his tough talk on Russia was never followed by strong action. Lethal aid was slow-walked, anti-air and anti-ship capabilities were never directly provided, pre-invasion sanctions proportionate to the aggression Putin had already committed were never imposed,” McCarthy and the other GOP leaders wrote.

There you have it. Most but not all Republican Party elites praise Russia's unprovoked aggression against a weak nation or just blame Democrats. Putin is not remotely close to a credible or capable statesman. He is a capable, ruthless tyrant kleptocrat with a powerful military at his command. Pompeo apparently cannot see this. He did not articulate exactly what deterrence should be put in place because he has no idea of what to do other than blame Biden. Meanwhile, our morally rotted ex-president flat out praises Putin’s anti-democratic aggression and some crackpot Republican candidates see good in Putin’s tyranny. The GOP leadership is just brimming with anti-Democratic and anti-democracy ideas.[1]

Some key points and reasoning are: 

• The Republican Party no longer stands for defense of democracy either at home or abroad, regardless of how hard they deny it and pretend the Democrats, not themselves, are the tyrant-kleptocrat wannabes. 
• American democracy is unlikely to stand in the face of corruption, autocracy and a greedy Christian theocracy when almost half the country favors the Republican Party’s open attacks on democracy, the rule of law, truth and honest, effective secular government.
• The loss of America as the main global defender of liberal, secular democracy leaves the remaining democracies alone in trying to defend against high level corruption and tyranny that Russia, China and some other autocratic countries are now engaged in.
• The corrupt political rot that has consumed the GOP is the main cause of powerful anti-democratic sentiment in the US, which endangers the future of a free humanity.

Questions: Are the facts and/or reasoning sufficient (or not) to reasonably see significant danger to the future of a free humanity from the politically rotted Republican Party? Or, is the GOP not significantly rotted and doing just fine in defending secular democracy at home and abroad?

Who is more apocalyptic, Germaine or the GOP, or are they tied?

Footnote: 

1. More evidence of radical right Republican Party authoritarianism. A Washington Post opinion piece comments that Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), a potential future presidential candidate and chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, released an 11-point blueprint he hopes Republicans will rally around. It is a blatant anti-government, anti-democracy culture war document. It’s preamble includes this fear mongering crackpottery and lies: 

Dear Fellow Americans, the militant left now controls the entire federal government, the news media, academia, Hollywood, and most corporate boardrooms. 

Among the things they plan to change or destroy are: American history, patriotism, border security, the nuclear family, gender, traditional morality, capitalism, fiscal responsibility, opportunity, rugged individualism, Judeo-Christian values, dissent, free speech, color blindness, law enforcement, religious liberty, parental involvement in public schools, and private ownership of firearms. 

Is this the beginning of the end of America? Only if we allow it to be.

Apparently, Scott believes that Fox News and the rest of the anti-democratic radical right propaganda Leviathan are not part of the news media. He is arguably mostly right about that. And, I hereby demand that the Republican Party defend my rugged individualism, whatever the hell that means. What is the the beginning of the end of America is Scott’s deranged 11-point blueprint to tyranny and corruption.

The first point is this: “Our kids will say the pledge of allegiance, salute the Flag, learn that America is a great country, and choose the school that best fits them.” There's your radical right Christian nationalist direct attack on secular public school education. It is first on the Republican culture war list.

Those sneaky, cheating election subverting Democrats 

need to be stopped

Other points include “We will protect, defend, and promote the American Family at all costs,”), “Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies,” and “We will secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump.” And, to attack and further cripple effective governance in accord with the long-standing GOP tactic called “Starve the Beast” Scott proposes (i) requiring “term limits” for government employees, and (ii) cutting IRS funding and staffing by 50 percent. Tax evasion (cheating) will increase from the already shocking ~$1.2 trillion/year to a double shocking higher amount. The former item is a direct attack on democracy by crippling government competence, which is what years of experience can bring to a person. The latter is another Republican Party open declaration of war on the federal government. 

Apocalyptic GOP scare mongering and lies

Reduce federal employees by 25% in 5 years

The GOP hates government, especially competent government

because competence makes the private sector look immoral and greedy 

It's too dangerous to vindicate the rule of law against the rich or powerful?

A Washington Post article, Prosecuting Trump would set a risky precedent. Not prosecuting would be worse, looks at the issue of whether to prosecute the ex-president for crimes committed in office. There is solid evidence that he committed felony obstruction of justice while trying to subvert the Mueller investigation. Almost 700 former prosecutors signed a public letter stating they would prosecute on the basis of evidence the Mueller report disclosed. One legal analysis finds four instances of obstruction. That is four felonies.

Another analysis found five felonies.

The question that WaPo asks whether it is too dangerous to prosecute the ex-president, not whether there is enough evidence to bring charges. There is enough evidence.[1] 

Before he was elected, Biden stated that he did not want to prosecute the ex-president. His rationale was imbecilic nonsense, something about not wanting to divide the country. Therefore, Biden and Attorney General Garland appear to have decided that it is too dangerous to vindicate the rule of law. 

The WaPo analyzes it this way:

In September 1974, however, one month after Nixon left office, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him. Ford later told a congressional subcommittee that the pardon was designed to “shift our attentions from the pursuit of a fallen President to the pursuit of the urgent needs of a rising nation.”

It didn’t — not in the immediate aftermath and, in some ways, not ever. .... Some were livid. One powerful man had essentially condoned the criminality of another. The get-out-of-jail-free card exacerbated public cynicism and deepened the nation’s social fractures.

Nearly five decades later, Joe Biden is president, and a pardon for Donald Trump isn’t happening. But whether Trump will eventually be prosecuted for his conduct in the White House is more of a conundrum: If the country crosses this inviolate threshold, all hell will break loose. If we don’t cross it, all hell will break loose. There will be no “shifting our attentions” by advocates of either course. And whichever path the nation follows will have lasting repercussions. One thing is increasingly clear — fear will play a greater role than facts in determining it.

.... Trump’s words and deeds have demonstrated that his actions tend to be intentional. If an ordinary citizen had pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes to overturn the 2020 election; systematically misrepresented the value of his assets to the IRS and banks; funneled money to silence a paramour; or put government documents down a toilet, this person would almost certainly be facing an array of criminal charges. More than a year after he left office, Trump isn’t facing any such thing yet.

The stakes are enormous. The rule of law, the notion that we are all equal under our criminal justice system, is among the noblest of principles but also the ugliest of myths. The question of putting Trump on trial before a jury of his peers is a test for a principle of democracy that has often proved out of reach for most Americans.

How this unequal system of justice faces a crossroads. Any decision about prosecuting the former president centers on two conflicting fears: Inaction mocks the nation’s professed ideal that no one sits above the law — and Americans might wonder whether our democracy can survive what amounts to the explicit approval of lawlessness. But prosecuting deposed leaders is the stuff of banana republics.

The fear of the banana republic is hardly an idle one — and here Trump is a central figure, too. He has boasted of his willingness to go that route: In 2016, he ran by pledging that he intended to use the power of federal law enforcement to help his friends and pay back his enemies. His rallies routinely erupted with chants of “lock her up,” directed at his opponent, Hillary Clinton. When as president he told then-FBI Director James Comey that he should be “letting Flynn go,” he was doing as he had promised, using the presidency to try to save an ally from criminal investigation. Trump sees the law and law enforcement as a weapon: .... Trump has said that if he gets a second term, he would pardon hundreds of violent insurrectionists charged in the attack on the Capitol. More recently, his remarks about the investigation his administration began under special counsel John Durham suggest that he is still game to go after foes by wildly accusing them of crimes. .... and he issued a statement saying that “in a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.” This was “treason at the highest level,” he said.

Not prosecuting Trump has already signaled to his supporters that accountability is for suckers. “The warning signs of instability that we have identified in other places are the same signs that, over the past decade, I’ve begun to see on our own soil,” political scientist Barbara Walter wrote in “How Civil Wars Start.” The signs include a hollowing out of institutions, “manipulated to serve the interests of some over others.” (emphasis added)

Questions: Is there not enough evidence to prosecute Trump for anything? Should Garland refuse to prosecute in the name of political or social unity? Is American unity currently more illusion than reality? 

Footnote: 

1. The WaPo article describes the ex-president’s legal situation like this:

Prosecutorial threats are multiplying: Bank and tax fraud charges are under consideration in Manhattan. In Fulton County, Ga., a special grand jury is investigating Trump’s interference in the 2020 election. In a Washington courtroom, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta told a convicted Jan. 6 Capitol rioter that he was a pawn in a scheme by more powerful people, .... The National Archives requested that the Justice Department open an investigation into Trump’s mishandling of top-secret documents that the government recently retrieved from his Florida estate. Trump still faces legal jeopardy for obstructing justice during Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election (remember that one?). During the 2016 campaign, Trump allegedly orchestrated hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels (the charges that landed his handler Michael Cohen in prison referred to Trump as Individual #1). This list is hardly exhaustive and omits the dozen-plus civil lawsuits and civil investigations Trump faces. (emphasis added)

What do you think?

 

In a media press conference on Friday, President Biden said he’s ‘convinced’ Russia will invade Ukraine, based on advice from U.S. intelligence agencies.

But so far, so good… no Russian-Ukrainian war yet.  Seems we’re still trying to give peace a chance.

Based on media reports, we are getting a lot of mixed messages such as: Troops being ‘put in place’ and ‘at the ready’; Russian military commanders being given the ‘go-ahead’ by Putin; a summit between Biden and Putin being agreed to ‘in principle’, according to French President Macron; Ukrainian President Zelensky pushing for ‘preemptive sanctions’ to be put in place as a deterrent; etc.  It really is hard to know what’s actually going on.  But such can be expected in the fog of a pre-war.  So, here’s the question:

Do you think Russia will invade Ukraine?  If yes, how soon?  If no, why not?

Republican election subversion: Update 3

The New York Times reports on Rusty Bowers, speaker of the Arizona House. Bowers killed a state bill that would have given the Republican-controlled Legislature the power to unilaterally overturn the results of an election. Arizona Republican radical right autocrats are very unhappy with Bowers and want him out of power. The NYT writes:

The bill’s sponsor, John Fillmore — who boasts of being the most conservative member of the Arizona State Legislature — told us in an interview that Bowers’s tactics amounted to saying: “I am God. I control the rules. You will do what I say.”

Fillmore’s bill would have eliminated early voting altogether and mandated that all ballots be counted by hand.

Bowers did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, but his public comments indicate a deep unease with how Trump and his base of supporters have promoted wild theories about election fraud and have pushed legislation that voting rights groups say amounts to an undemocratic, nationwide power grab.

“We gave the authority to the people,’’ Bowers told Capitol Media Services, an Arizona outlet, earlier this week. “And I’m not going to go back and kick them in the teeth.’’

Bowers’s resistance to the shifting currents of Republican politics has made him a frequent target of the pro-Trump right.

Last year, when he survived an attempt to recall him from the Legislature, he complained about the aggressive tactics of the Trump supporters behind it.

​​“They’ve been coming to my house and intimidating our family and our neighborhood,” Bowers said, describing how mobile trucks drove by his home and called him a pedophile over a loudspeaker.

Fillmore, who insisted he was willing to bargain over any aspects of his bill, said he was “disappointed that members of my caucus do not have the testicular fortitude” to stand up to Bowers.

But he hinted at moves afoot to remove the speaker, whom he accused of sabotaging what he said was a good-faith effort to rein in voting practices that, in his view, have gone too far.

“I’m an old-school person. I do not go calmly. I do not go quietly,” Fillmore warned. “I believe Republican voters are solidly in line with me.” (emphasis added)

This is more evidence of the aggressive authoritarianism and detachment from reality and reason of most Republicans. The autocratic-plutocratic-Christian theocratic GOP is dead serious about subverting elections and installing radical right Republicans in elected offices. 

Republican election subversion: Update 2

This is from the New York Times today:

MADISON, Wis. — First, Wisconsin Republicans ordered an audit of the 2020 election. Then they passed a raft of new restrictions on voting. And in June, they authorized the nation’s only special counsel investigation into 2020.

Now, more than 15 months after former President Donald J. Trump lost the state by 20,682 votes, an increasingly vocal segment of the Republican Party is getting behind a new scheme: decertifying the results of the 2020 presidential election in hopes of reinstalling Mr. Trump in the White House.

Wisconsin is closer to the next federal election than the last, but the Republican effort to overturn the election results here is picking up steam rather than fading away — and spiraling further from reality as it goes. The latest turn, which has been fueled by Mr. Trump, bogus legal theories and a new candidate for governor, is creating chaos in the Republican Party and threatening to undermine its push to win the contests this year for governor and the Senate.

The situation in Wisconsin may be the most striking example of the struggle by Republican leaders to hold together their party when many of its most animated voters simply will not accept the reality of Mr. Trump’s loss.  

“This is a real issue,” said Timothy Ramthun, the Republican state representative who has turned his push to decertify the election into a nascent campaign for governor. Mr. Ramthun has asserted that if the Wisconsin Legislature decertifies the results and rescinds the state’s 10 electoral votes — an action with no basis in state or federal law — it could set off a movement that would oust President Biden from office.

“We don’t wear tinfoil hats,” he said. “We’re not fringe.” 

Wisconsin has the nation’s most active decertification effort. In Arizona, a Republican state legislator running for secretary of state, along with candidates for Congress, has called for recalling the state’s electoral votes. In September, Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Georgia officials asking them to decertify Mr. Biden’s victory there, but no organized effort materialized.

State Representative Timothy Ramthun of Wisconsin, is running for 

governor on a platform of decertifying the 2020 election and 

reinstalling Donald J. Trump as president

Things are shockingly bad when tinfoil hat wearing, reality-detached, freak politicians claim they are not fringe. That is arguably true for most of the Wisconsin Republican Party. It depends on how one defines fringe. 

The NYT reported that Wisconsin’s Democratic incumbent governor, Tony Evers, commented recently, “Republicans now are arguing over whether we want democracy or not.” Evers correctly states the situation with the GOP there. 

Republican politicians who understand that efforts at decertification are tinfoil hat drivel are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. They know their base is enraged, or as one enraged politician correctly put it, “foaming at the mouth” about the solen election. But those GOP politicians who know the election was not stolen nonetheless do not say that in public. This is evidence that for most Republican politicians nationwide, re-election is more important than defending democracy or truth.

The Republican election fraud lie with its intentionally fomented anti-election rage and hate is not going to go away. That is the case for most Republican states and for most rank and file Republicans in all states. This is rock solid evidence of the anti-democratic, autocratic-theocratic mindset that now dominates the morally rotted GOP.[1] 

Footnote: 

1. Opinions will differ, but my definition of political moral rot includes denying inconvenient facts and reality and rejecting sound but inconvenient reasoning. Deceit, lies and crackpot reasoning are immoral, or if malice is in it, evil.