Warnock wins!
To Republicans who have said the strong turnout in the general election and the runoff showed the absence of any voter suppression, Mr. Warnock disagreed. “Just because people endured long lines that wrapped around buildings, some blocks long, just because they endured the rain and the cold and all kinds of tricks in order to vote,” Mr. Warnock said, “doesn’t mean that voter suppression does not exist. It simply means that you, the people, have decided that your voices will not be silenced.”
One can be glad that Warnock pushed back on Republican lies about voter suppression. I want to see the data that shows no voter suppression. The Republican Party worked long and hard to earn distrust. So, now it gets the distrust it worked hard to foment.
Lawsuit goes against Trump Co.
The Trump Organization, the family real estate business that made Donald J. Trump a billionaire and propelled him from reality television to the White House, was convicted on Tuesday of tax fraud and other crimes, forever tarring the former president and the company that bears his name.
The conviction on all 17 counts, after more than a day of jury deliberations in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, stemmed from the company’s practice of doling out off-the-books perks to executives: They received luxury apartments, leased Mercedes-Benzes, extra cash at Christmas, even free cable television. They paid taxes on none of it.
The felonies — tax fraud, scheming to defraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records — are hardly a death sentence for the Trump Organization. A company cannot be imprisoned, and the Trump Organization is not publicly traded, meaning there are no financial regulators to punish it or public shareholders to flee from it. The maximum penalty it faces is $1.62 million, a pittance for Mr. Trump, who typically notched hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue during his presidency.
Although most of the MSM is saying this is a big deal and a major blow to Trump, it does not look that way to me for at least two reasons. First, the company faces a paltry fine of up to $1.6 million. Just $1.6 million?? That is nothing. Second, prosecutors did not charge Trump with any crime. Once again, he gets off free and clear with no personal accountability to anyone for any of his crimes.
This is more evidence that the rule of law in America is at least two-tiered. One tier is is fuzzy and friendly for service to the rich and powerful. The 2nd tier is nastier and designed to whack the rest of us, some harder than others (a 3rd tier?). Maybe one day, some prosecution somewhere will finally nail the SOB and put him behind bars where he belongs. In the meantime, I’m not holding by breath.
Contempt for the rule of law and defiant arrogance is how Trump and his corrupt company sees this. The NYT writes:
In a relatively muted statement, Mr. Trump said he was “disappointed with the verdict” but planned to appeal. He blamed Mr. Weisselberg, saying the case was about his “committing tax fraud on his personal tax returns.”
The Trump Organization lamented in its own statement that it was being made accountable for Mr. Weisselberg’s crimes. “The notion that a company could be held responsible for an employee’s actions, to benefit themselves, on their own personal tax returns is simply preposterous,” the statement said.
This is how privileged and wealthy people see the law. It is a sad, sick joke at our expense.
Bringing some jobs back to the US
Finally after years of politicians and companies just talking about it, there appears to be some tangible progress in returning at least some manufacturing jobs back home. CNBC writes:CEO Tim Cook confirmed that Apple will buy U.S.-made microchips at an event in Arizona on Tuesday, where President Joe Biden also spoke.The plants will be capable of manufacturing the 4-nanometer and 3-nanometer chips that are used for advanced processors such as Apple’s A-series and M-series and Nvidia’s graphics processors.
The factories in Arizona will be partially subsidized by the U.S. government. Earlier this year, Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law, which includes billions of dollars in incentives for companies that build chip manufacturing capabilities on U.S. soil.
TSMC said on Tuesday that it would spend $40 billion on the two Arizona plants. The first plant in Phoenix is expected to produce chips by 2024. The second plant will open in 2026, according to the Biden administration.
Note that the spending that bill Biden and the Dems passed against Republican Party opposition was needed to get this deal put together. One can reasonably believe that Republican politicians will take credit for bringing jobs back, despite opposing spending to actually do it. That’s just standard Republican SH (shameless hypocrisy) tactics.The TSMC plants will produce 600,000 wafers per year when fully operational, which is enough to meet U.S. annual demand, according to the National Economic Council.
Loyalty, Trump-style
A WaPo opinion piece comments on a key, highly loyal group of his supporters:
Republican support for former president Donald Trump is declining. Even his popularity among evangelicals has faded — not because they have discovered his abysmal character or lack of reverence for the Constitution, but because they fear he might not be a winning candidate.
Aw, isn’t that sweet? Evangelicals are just as loyal to Trump as he to them.
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