Pardons for Sale: Trump’s Vision of Justice for the Right Kind of Criminals

Trump has turned his presidential pardon power into a sleazy, cash‑drenched patronage machine. This shows cynical indifference to law and harm done to ordinary people. His pardon of nursing‑home magnate Joseph Schwartz, who defrauded the government of nearly $39 million in payroll taxes and helped collapse a multistate nursing‑home chain, wiped out prison time, fines, and $5 million in restitution after Schwartz had served only a few months. This contempt for victims and for the sentencing judge, who had rejected leniency because of the scale of the fraud, signals a president who treats justice as an opportunity to harvest cash by selling access to his presidential pardon power. Link 1, link 2

Trump has built a lucrative “pardon industry” that now sells access and influence to rich felons. To buy a pardon, each criminal launders about $1 million to Trump through operatives and lobbyists with personal connections to the president and his inner circle. The official clemency list is a roll call of tax cheats, securities fraudsters, murderers, corrupt politicians, foreign influence peddlers, and January 6 and 2020‑election traitors. Trump rewards loyalty, ideological alignment, or personal usefulness in his calculation of who gets pardoned. He operates a pay‑to‑play get out of fines and jail (not for free) for criminals. Trump's moral rot openly mocks the rule‑of‑law ideal that justice cannot be bought. Link 3, link 4

Estimates are that Trump’s pardons and clemency grants have eliminated almost $2 billion in court‑ordered financial penalties, including restitution, fines, and forfeitures. Of that, more than $1.3 billion was owed directly to crime victims in restitution. In other words, Trump shafted the victims of pardoned criminals' crimes in return for payment from the criminals themselves. So far, his pardons have taken about $1.3 billion from innocent crime victims. Link 5, link 6

Criminals buying pardons for cash is MAGA law and order in action, right? /s

Q: Is Trump's pardons for cash evidence that he really is on the little guy's side, as he always claims, or is it evidence he is on the big guy's side and, more or less, could not care less about shafting little regular people who have been harmed by criminals?

Link to the DoJ's list of Trump pardons since Jan. 2025: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-grants-president-donald-j-trump-2025-present

Montana Wyoming Colorado Nebraska South Dakota North Dakota Iowa Minnesota

 If you live in or near those states you better have your fall-out shelters updated and well stocked.

The most dangerous US states if WW3 breaks out

Looking at Scientific American’s fallout maps of nuclear attacks on missile silos in the US to identify which states would be the most affected, the publication found that these eight locations would be the most affected by radiation exposure risk:

• Montana
• Wyoming
• Colorado
• Nebraska
• South Dakota
• North Dakota
• Iowa
• Minnesota

https://www.tyla.com/news/ww3-most-dangerous-us-states-nuclear-attack-002539-20260302

DAMN, way too close to Canada, time for me to move to Nunavut. 

An interesting commentary about retirement

Comments by a retired woman are quoted in a NYT opinion (not paywalled). The retired woman says it all for millions of average Americans.

“I’m 65 years old. I’m legally blind. I’m on disability. I went to my doc, and I lost 28 pounds in the last year. I did not need to lose 28 pounds. I did not try to lose 28 pounds. I lost the 28 pounds because I cannot afford to eat anymore.”

She can afford no more than $65/month for food.

Millions of Americans her age and younger are facing the similar dismal retirements and retirement prospects. Too many younger people can afford to save much or anything for their retirement. Millions of retired people are in bad situations. 

Elite MAGA's response: Get a job, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and stop whining.

Another MAGA policy goal is to offload risk onto individuals and let them sink or swim on their own.  MAGA elites have no empathy. But they're in power and calling the shots. If they get their way, they will stay in power and keep calling the shots, whether its legal or lethal or not.

The increasing CO2 level affects human blood

The science

An interesting recent research paper (February 26, 2026), Carbon dioxide overload, detected in human blood, suggests a potentially toxic atmosphere within 50 years, documents the change in acidity (pH) of human blood from 1999 to 2020. That is not surprising in view of the increase in CO2 levels from ~380 ppm in 1999 to ~414 ppm in 2020.

The researchers found that average levels of serum bicarbonate, a chemical marker closely linked to carbon dioxide in the body, have risen by about 7% since 1999. Over the same period, average calcium and phosphorus levels in human blood has declined. There is a gradual shift in blood chemistry that mirrors the rise in atmospheric CO2.

The physicists at phys.org published a lay audience commentary on this paper, including some comments by the two authors. One commented that the data suggest to him that our our bodies are not adapting well and we may be close to limits that our blood chemistry can handle for CO2.

Currently, adverse health impacts are speculative and hard to quantify. This research adds to evidence of an emerging dimension of climate risk that extends beyond heat waves, extreme weather, sea-level rise, and crackpot climate science denial.

Context & commentary

Humans existed mostly in times when CO2 levels were mostly fairly close to about 300 ppm or less, so what we are now in is uncharted territory. Humans came on the scene about 150,000 years ago. Obviously, we have no choice but to inhale more CO2 as its level in air continues to rise. That is expected to increasingly affect blood bicarbonate, calcium and phosphorous levels. Under the current trend, the air we breathe will become increasingly powerful, eventually becoming toxic decades from now. We do not know what non-trivial effects, if any, on human health this altered state of blood chemistry is having right now. A lot more research needs to be done.

The researchers say that going forward, all the data now clearly indicates that biomarkers like blood bicarbonate levels in humans and other species need to be tracked along with traditional global warming indicators.

Q1: Which global warming threat do you feel is greatest, heat waves, extreme weather, sea-level rise, or crackpot climate science denial?

Q2: Are you unconcerned about this change in your own blood chemistry or in your family’s blood chemistry?

Q3: Is this research just more lies from allegedly corrupt or socialist scientists, is it lies from or Chinese agents trying to destroy the American economy with their alleged cynical lies and crackpot science?

Reputable climate change info resources

If you are faced with crackpot climate science denial and are unsure of how to respond, just direct them to one or more of these three sites. It reduces your cognitive load a lot. And, if you’re interested, you can learn about actual climate science in language you can understand.

Skeptical Science: systematically catalogs common climate denial myths and provides clear, referenced rebuttals at multiple technical levels, including non-science level.

NASA Climate: describes evidence and offers concise, visual, rigorously sourced explanations that directly undercut major climate science denial arguments about warming trends, causes, and projections.

US EPA Climate Change: provides plain-language explanations, data, and FAQs that debunk most standard climate science denial talking points by walking through the observational evidence and attribution science.