Cognitive ability, economic power, politics and policy

Some research indicates that American politics and policy are more heavily influenced by special interests and people with high income than public opinion. In short, wealth appears to be more important than either public opinion, or social or environmental needs.

A 2023 research paper looks to see if there is a link between cognitive ability and high income based on data from a military test of men in Sweden: 

The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners

Are the best-paying jobs with the highest prestige done by individuals of great intelligence? Past studies find job success to increase with cognitive ability, but do not examine how, conversely, ability varies with job success. Stratification theories suggest that social background and cumulative advantage dominate cognitive ability as determinants of high occupational success. This leads us to hypothesize that among the relatively successful, average ability is concave in income and prestige. We draw on Swedish register data containing measures of cognitive ability and labor-market success for 59,000 men who took a compulsory military conscription test. Strikingly, we find that the relationship between ability and wage is strong overall, yet above €60,000 per year ability plateaus at a modest level of +1 standard deviation [individuals in the top 16% of cognitive ability*]. The top 1 per cent even score slightly worse on cognitive ability than those in the income strata right below them. We observe a similar but less pronounced plateauing of ability at high occupational prestige. 

* The intervals within one standard deviation above and below the mean account for 34.1% of the population. Therefore, approximately 68% of the population is located within one standard deviation above or below the mean.

Do the highest earners and those with the most prestigious jobs indeed have the greatest minds? Elite jobs are of special interest, for two reasons. First, income distributions have strong right skew. In all Western countries, top income shares have been steadily rising since the 1980s, with the 1 per cent highest earners receiving 9 per cent of national income in Sweden and even 20 per cent in the United States— excluding capital gains (Piketty, 2014; Alvaredo et al., 2017; Statistics Sweden, 2020). This extremity of top incomes as well as their public salience render it crucial that they be earned by very capable individuals. Second, those with the most prestigious jobs wield the greatest economic and political power, and the intelligence of their decisions is consequential.

The present paper departs from prior work by swapping the axes, focusing on the relative intelligence of those with better jobs. .... In other words, we hypothesize that there are starker ability differences between adjacent ranks at moderate levels of income and prestige than at the highest levels. Our argument draws on the role of two key non-meritorious determinants of occupational success: Family resources and luck. The class- and network-advantages of those with elite family backgrounds are assumed instrumental for gaining access to the most privileged and best-paying jobs (Bourdieu, 1984; Lamont, 1994; Rivera, 2015; Friedman and Laurison, 2020). Second, rich-get-richer processes are assumed to allow inequalities in job success to grow between those who got a lucky break early in the career and those who did not (Merton, 1968; DiPrete and Eirich, 2006; Salganik, Dodds and Watts, 2006; Bol, de Vaan and van de Rijt, 2018). Our argument relies on these two determinants of occupational success, family resources and luck, having distributions in which extremely high values are common (Denrell and Liu, 2011; Frank, 2016). Because extreme ability is rare, extreme occupational success is more likely driven by family resources or luck than by ability. Hence, at higher levels of occupational success additional degrees of success will be less and less associated with greater ability.

While ‘cognitive ability’ lacks a generally agreed upon definition, it is broadly used to indicate the capacity of the brain to perform a variety of cognitive tasks, including verbal understanding, technical comprehension, spatial ability, and logic (Borghans et al., 2016). Such skills are thought to be partly learned, partly genetically determined, and partly acquired through interaction between genes and social environments.

Achievement tests such as the Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT) have been found to correlate more strongly with wages than tests of general intelligence (IQ) as the former capture closely related personality characteristics also relevant for job-market success (Fischer et al., 1996; Borghans et al., 2016).

To the best of our knowledge, there are no empirical studies that systematically probe cognitive ability at different levels of occupational success. Several studies have looked at traits of highly successful people. Wai (2013) uses elite US college attendance as a proxy for extraordinary intelligence based on the logic of very high SAT score requirements for elite college entry. He finds that roughly 40 per cent of Fortune 500 CEOs, federal judges, billionaires, and Senators have elite college degrees. However, high school grades and achievement tests have been found to be significantly impacted by other factors besides cognitive ability such as family background and personality traits (e.g. Borghans et al., 2016). Several studies find that top jobs in the private sector are not characterized by excessive cognitive ability.

That data and analysis suggests that cognitive ability does correlate with high income and prestigious jobs, but also that luck and family status are often important. A recent USA Today article comments about the role of being born rich:

You don’t have to be born rich to be rich but it sure helps.

For the first time since 2009, none of Forbes World’s Youngest Billionaires under 30 are self-made this year. The billionaires under 30 all inherited their wealth, which Forbes reported is due to the self-made ones aging into their 30s and the start of the “great wealth transfer.”

The annual list named a few people who built their own wealth, but they top the age of 30. They include Snap co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel (33), Gymshark co-founder and CEO Ben Francis (31) and Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey (31).

 Clearly, luck sometimes plays a role in economic success and accumulation of wealth. That seems to be unrelated to cognitive ability. But in America’s pay-to-play political system, it is the money that counts, but the cognitive ability of the person who buys politicians and policies. Those policies are usually favorable to the person (or interests) who pays for them. That usually happens with little or no concern for adverse impacts on the public interest (including the environment) or even democracy and the rule of law. Money alone is truly a powerful political force with limited to nil moral concerns, regardless of the cognitive ability of the people and interests buying what they want.

A key goal of Christian nationalism: Tax dollars; DJT threatens violent insurrection

A WaPo article comments about another incremental advance in two of the most important goals for America’s Christian nationalist theocratic wealth and power movement, (1) complete elimination of secular public education, and (2) taxpayer funding for all Christian religious activity in the US:

Billions in taxpayer dollars now go to religious schools via vouchers

 

The rapid expansion of state voucher programs follows court decisions that have eroded the separation between church and state

Billions in taxpayer dollars are being used to pay tuition at religious schools throughout the country, as state voucher programs expand dramatically and the line separating public education and religion fades.

School vouchers can be used at almost any private school, but the vast majority of the money is being directed to religious schools, according to a Washington Post examination of the nation’s largest voucher programs.

Vouchers, government money that covers education costs for families outside the public schools, vary by state but offer up to $16,000 per student per year, and in many cases fully cover the cost of tuition at private schools. In some schools, a large share of the student body is benefiting from a voucher, meaning a significant portion of the school’s funding is coming directly from the government.

In just five states with expansive programs, more than 700,000 students benefited from vouchers this school year. (Those same states had a total of about 935,000 private school students in 2021, the most recent year for which data are available.) An additional 200,000 were subsidized in the rest of the country, according to tracking by EdChoice, a voucher advocacy group. That suggests a substantial share of about 4.7 million students attending private school nationwide are benefiting from vouchers — a number that is expected to grow.

The programs, popular with conservatives, are rapidly growing in GOP-run states, with a total of 28 states plus D.C. operating some sort of voucher system. Eight states created or expanded voucher programs last year, and this year, Alabama, Georgia and Missouri have approved or expanded voucher-type programs. Some recently enacted plans are just starting to take effect or will be phased in over the next few years.

The growth follows a string of recent victories in [America’s Christian theocratic] Supreme Court and state legislatures by religious conservatives who have campaigned to tear down what once were constitutional prohibitions against spending tax money directly on religious education. It also marks a win for the school choice movement, which has spent decades campaigning to let parents use tax money for any school they see fit.

Voucher programs, which vary in their details, have grown particularly large in a half-dozen states. In each of these, participating families have overwhelmingly chosen religious schools, sometimes using the subsidy for schools their children were already attending before the programs began.

Like it or not, American taxpayer dollars are increasingly supporting and empowering radical, anti-democratic Christian nationalist (CN) theocracy in America. The Christian nationalist elites deny their authoritarian goals and corrupt tactics, but they are morally rotted liars with no credibility. Most of the CN rank and file are mostly clueless, most of whom have either never heard of CN labeled as a wealth and power political movement, or they are not aware of its bigoted, intolerant authoritarian Christian fundamentalist theocratic goals.  

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The first ~1:30 of this video shows the convicted felon DJT threatening a violent insurrection if he is sentenced to house arrest or jail. He makes a clear, public plea for violence. He falsely claims that the American people would not stand for his confinement. This is disgusting. He insults the American people. But as we all know by now, Trump’s shamelessness, mendacity and moral rot have no bounds. 

The usual question pops right up again: What about the rank & file who still support this lying, domestic terrorist and dictator-kleptocrat? Are they mere innocents, or something worse? Does ignorance justify their false beliefs if they think he is an innocent patriot who has been smeared and martyred?

Cognitive ability and voting: Is there causation, or even correlation?

The matter of cognitive ability or IQ for Trump supporters comes up occasionally. My understanding was that cognitive ability is not strongly causally or correlatively related to any particular political or economic ideology, mindset or candidate. But is that belief supported or contradicted by modern research? 

Remember, correlation is not necessarily causation. One needs to be very careful about that concern when it comes to politics, IQ and a lot of (most?) other psychological, cognitive and social science research.

A 2022 paper:

Do Smarter People Have More Conservative Economic Attitudes? 

Assessing the Relationship Between Cognitive Ability and Economic Ideology

Evidence on the association of cognitive ability with economic attitudes is mixed. We conducted a meta-analysis (k = 20, N = 46,426) to examine the relationship between objective measures of cognitive ability and economic ideology and analyzed survey data (N = 3,375) to test theoretical explanations for the association. The meta-analysis provided evidence for a small positive association with a weighted mean effect size of r = .07 (95% CI = [0.02, 0.12]), suggesting that higher cognitive ability is associated with conservative views on economic issues, but effect sizes were extremely heterogeneous. Tests using representative survey data provided support for both a positive association of cognitive ability with economic conservatism that is mediated through income as well as for a negative association that is mediated through a higher need for certainty. Hence, multiple causal mechanisms with countervailing effects might explain the low overall association of cognitive ability with economic political attitudes. 

In the political arena, actors often describe their opponents as incompetent or stupid. Indeed, empirical evidence supports the view that a link between cognitive abilities and political attitudes exists. More specifically, most studies indicate that lower cognitive abilities are linked to the endorsement of conservative political views. However, a closer inspection of the evidence on the ideology-ability link reveals that the association between lower scores in cognitive ability tests and conservative political preferences holds in particular for sociocultural attitudes while the evidence with respect to economic attitudes is much more inconsistent. In fact, some studies indicate that the correlation between cognitive abilities and economic conservatism tends to be positive rather than negative. 

Currently, a large body of work indicates a negative association between measures of cognitive ability and the endorsement of conservative sociocultural attitudes. For example, higher scores in right-wing authoritarianism have been shown to be associated with lower scores in cognitive tasks. In a large-scale, nationally representative UK sample, lower general intelligence in childhood has been found to predict the endorsement of conservative ideology at an adult age when controlling for education and socioeconomic status. With respect to voting behavior, lower cognitive abilities were associated with more intentions to vote for Donald Trump and less intentions to vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential elections through effects on right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. (citations omitted)

That seems to indicate that there probably is a correlation between lower cognitive ability and endorsement of conservative sociocultural attitudes in politics, but maybe no correlation for conservative economic beliefs. 

A 2023 book chapter:

Politics and Intelligence: Running Against the Cognitive Elite

The 2016 election split the country in large part across educational lines. According to the statistician Nate Silver’s analysis, Clinton won handily in the fifty most well-educated counties in the nation, while Trump similarly prevailed in the fifty least. In Berkeley, home of the nation’s most prestigious public university, Clinton received ninety percent of the vote, while Trump, with three percent, finished third, behind the Green Party candidate. White men without college degrees voted for the Republican candidate at the highest rate since exit polls began; when Trump famously proclaimed his love for “the poorly educated,” it was not without ample justification. .... In a geographical reflection of this educational divide, Trump carried those areas well outside the city center that still relied substantially on manufacturing—the blue-collar workers who had constituted the Democratic base half a century earlier—while the Democrats were now what a Stanford political scientist called “the party of urban, postindustrial America.”

In classic populist fashion, Trump exploited this educational division to create a narrative of conflict between a privileged, parasitic elite, undeserving of its position, and the common folk—between a highly educated but aloof class of people who exercised power to their own advantage as multicultural, global citizens, and the real Americans, a silent majority who sensed instinctively what was right for the country without having to rely on “expert”—i.e., elite—advice. As Trump himself expressed it in the Wall Street Journal six months before his election, “The only antidote to ruinous rule by a small handful of elites is a bold infusion of popular will. On every major issue affecting this country, the people are right and the governing elite are wrong.” People in general in this rhetoric were not meant to be synonymous with “the people,” only some of the former qualifying for inclusion in the latter.

Thus, rather than campaigning on any substantive agenda, Trump ran as a representative of an aggrieved minority resentful of the worldview espoused by The Bell Curve, in which differences in intelligence are offered as justification not only for income inequality but for differences in social status. Neither the book nor its remaining author was mentioned during the campaign, and Trump’s frequent reference to the “elite” was never preceded by the word “cognitive”; indeed, given his limited range of information, it is possible that the future president was not even aware of the academic controversy. But it was clear that this notion of an elite—a “natural aristocracy,” as Herrnstein and Murray had put it—entitled by intellect and education to its prerogatives, provided Trump with a foil against which he posed as avatar of the rage of those average people who sensed their exclusion from this favored group; Trump’s policies might not help them, but he hated the same people they did. Instead of recognizing the “hoi aristoi,” as The Bell Curve had predicted, the “common people” apparently resented them, and the fact that Trump’s opponent, clearly considering herself a member of the elite, characterized so many of his supporters as “deplorables” only served to confirm these feelings of resentment on their part.

From what I can tell, as a group America's rich and/or powerful elite are privileged. In my firm, evidence-based opinion, they have rigged society and our system of government and commerce to further increase their already massive wealth and power. But does that group as a whole, however it is defined, have high cognitive ability compared to the average or the median score? Low education does not necessarily mean low cognitive ability.

A 2024 paper:

Intelligence is correlated with a range of left-wing and liberal political beliefs. This may suggest intelligence directly alters our political views. Alternatively, the association may be confounded or mediated by socioeconomic and environmental factors. We studied the effect of intelligence within a sample of over 300 biological and adoptive families, using both measured IQ and polygenic scores for cognitive performance and educational attainment. We found both IQ and polygenic scores significantly predicted all six of our political scales. Polygenic scores predicted social liberalism and lower authoritarianism, within-families. Intelligence was able to significantly predict social liberalism and lower authoritarianism, within families, even after controlling for socioeconomic variables. Our findings may provide the strongest causal inference to date of intelligence directly affecting political beliefs.

Two meta-analyses of this literature have been performed. Onraet et al. (2015) meta-analysis found intelligence to be negatively correlated with right-wing ideological attitudes (r = .20). However, the correlation depended on the type of right-wing attitude measured, with higher correlations with authoritarianism (r = .30) and ethnocentrism (r = .28) compared to conservatism (r = .13). Jedinger and Burger (2022) found a very small but significant correlation between intelligence and fiscally conservative beliefs (r = .07). Overall, intelligence has been found to be associated with beliefs that can be described as socially liberal and possibly also fiscally conservative. 

Although IQ is known to be associated with political belief, it is not known why this is the case. The relationship between intelligence and political belief could be confounded or mediated by socioeconomic factors and environmental factors more broadly. In this study, we employ polygenic scores, within-family designs and controls to causally identify the direct effect of cognitive ability on political beliefs. We might believe intelligence directly changes political beliefs. Political beliefs likely reflect our ethical values and our empirical beliefs, both of which might be altered by intelligence. Intelligence is related to greater general knowledge (Furnham & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2006), knowledge of economics (Caplan & Miller, 2010) and financial literacy (Lin & Bates, 2022). Moreover, intelligence may be related to subjective values, as it shows correlations with patience (Shamosh & Gray, 2008), openness (Anglim et al., 2022), “emotional intelligence” (MacCann, Joseph, Newman, & Roberts, 2014) and moral judgement in the Defining Issues Test (Derryberry, Jones, Grieve, & Barger, 2007). Onraet et al. (2015) suggested that the use of stereotypes and socially conservative beliefs function as heuristics, utilizing fewer cognitive resources than thinking about social issues on a case-by-case base. This could cause lower cognitive ability to be associated with right-wing views.

Genotypic IQ had a significant effect on all our measures of political beliefs: political orientation, authoritarianism, egalitarianism, social liberalism, fiscal conservatism and a composite of these scales. Across all these traits, genotypic IQ was associated with left-wing beliefs. After we controlled for the average parental polygenic score, we found genotypic IQ still significantly predicted social liberalism, the political composite, and lower levels of authoritarianism. Consistent with Onraet et al. (2015) meta-analysis, we find the largest effect sizes for authoritarianism rather than other measures of ideology.

The authors here argue that higher cognitive ability causes belief in social liberalism and especially lower authoritarianism. That seems to be the general belief that social science research is coming to adopt. Conservative and radical right authoritarian groups and think tanks might push back against this, but maybe that would be expected.

I'll do a separate post about cognitive ability among high income earners. That is important because top earners and wealth generally has more a lot influence on politics and policy than public opinion or social or environmental needs.

Some history of American sentencing in criminal law; Thoughts on sentencing DJT

The US has come a long way in evolution of its society, democracy, civil liberties and law. Now that the US is on the verge of de-evolving under the pressure of kleptocratic radical right authoritarianism and returning to the dark ages, a bit of history might be of some interest to see some of what we might lose. Writing for the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology in 2010, law scholar and retired federal judge Nancy Gertner commentated:

A Short History of American Sentencing: 

Too Little Law, Too Much Law, or Just Right

I. COLONIAL JURIES AND SENTENCING

In colonial times, and particularly in the period before American independence, juries were de facto sentencers with substantial power. Many crimes were capital offenses. The result was binary—guilty and death, or not guilty and freedom.  There were few scalable punishments, or punishments involving a term of years. This is so because penitentiaries were not common until the end of the eighteenth century. Jurors plainly understood the impact of a guilty verdict on the defendant because of the relative simplicity of the criminal law and its penalty structure, and often because of the process by which they were selected. They were picked from the rolls of white men with property. Indeed, steps were sometimes taken to secure better qualified people to serve on juries. Juries were hardly representative in the sense that we understand today. The substantive criminal law was the province of the states, and was, for the most part, state common law, often deriving from cases with which the jurors were familiar. 

Like the modern jury, colonial jurors were authorized to give a general verdict without explanation, but unlike the modern jury, the colonial jury was explicitly permitted to find both the facts and the law. If capital punishment were inappropriate, they would simply decline to find guilt, or find the defendant guilty of a lesser crime in order to avoid the penalty of death. No one disparaged this as “jury nullification.”  Ignoring the law to effect a more lenient outcome was well within the jury’s role. In fact, several colonies explicitly provided for jury sentencing.

Thus, in the colonial division of labor, juries had a preeminent role. There was no need for a priori punishment standards or rules, because there was, for the most part, a single punishment. Penal philosophy, at least as a formal matter, was retributive. There was little national federal law, even after independence. Most criminal law derived from the common law and in time, statutes from state legislatures—law with which jurors were familiar.

II. THE ERA OF INDETERMINATE SENTENCING

The turn of the nineteenth century brought scalable punishments— penitentiaries and, in time, reformatories—and thus, a more complex set of sentencing outcomes. The jury could no longer link conviction to a particular sentence even if it had the power to sentence or decide questions of law—and it did not. Now, they were explicitly instructed to find only the facts; judges determined the applicable law. Federal substantive criminal law began to evolve, although most criminal prosecutions were still state-based. And the jury changed: it was more diverse as barriers to serving as jurors were lifted for minorities and women, as were property restrictions. With more and more access to education, a professional class of judges and lawyers evolved, and with it, the power of the jury declined, including the power to affect the sentence.

Unlike other common law countries, appellate review of sentences was extremely limited in American courts. In the federal system, the “doctrine of non-reviewability” prevailed until 1987, when the Federal Sentencing Guidelines became effective. Likewise, only a few states had appellate review of sentencing, and even then it was used “sparingly.” A trial judge’s authority to sentence was virtually unquestioned.

To sum up, judges and parole authorities had the most power relative to the other sentencing players. They were the acknowledged sentencing experts. There were few a priori rules or standards. Each case was resolved on its own merits; to the extent there were standards, they evolved from the day-to-day experience of sentencing individuals. There was little or no appellate review of sentencing.

III. GUIDELINE MOVEMENT 

In response to widespread calls to reform the indeterminate system, a number of states implemented sentencing guidelines. The sentencing guideline approach introduced a new institutional player, an administrative agency—the sentencing commission—charged with generating sentencing standards.36 The role of the commission, its powers vis-à-vis the other sentencing players, and its animating penal philosophy varied from state to state. 

In 1984, the federal government entered into the act with a version of sentencing reform that by the end of the decade would be widely criticized. Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (SRA), creating the United States Sentencing Commission and abolishing parole. The Commission was supposed to do what Congress had been wholly unable to do, namely, to rationalize sentencing free of political influence, separate from the ever popular “crime du jour.” At the same time, the dominant penal philosophy changed. The public, and certain members of the academy, gave up on rehabilitation as a central purpose of sentencing, instead championing a philosophy known as “limited” retribution. With that change, the locus of sentencing expertise moved from the judges and parole authorities to the Commission, Congress, and, to a degree, the public. Retribution made sentencing more accessible to the public and, ironically, to Congress. What the crime and the criminal deserved could be the subject of debate with the late night talk show host, or in time, the blogosphere.

A. POPULIST PUNITIVENESS 

Crime became the fodder of political campaigns; “lenient” judges were parodied on the evening news and the bourgeoning 24/7 cable outlets. But the popular rage went beyond judges who were supposedly “soft on crime.” Efforts to restrict or even eliminate judicial discretion in sentencing paralleled efforts to strip judges of authority in a number of other areas. In 1981 and 1982 alone, more than two dozen bills stripping or altering federal courts’ jurisdiction were introduced in the Ninety-Seventh Congress. And the anti-judge, significantly anti-federal judge language was vituperative. 

B. MANDATORY MINIMUMS 

Congress, propelled by this atmosphere, passed a succession of mandatory minimum statutes, statutes that were wholly inconsistent with the SRA’s approach and surely with deference to the new “expert” Commission. Indeed, over time Congress directly intervened in Guideline determinations, ordering the Commission to increase this or that guideline. Congress’s role grew as the criminal law became more and more federalized, now accounting for the prosecution of more and more local gun and drug offenses, the kind of street crime that had traditionally been the state’s bailiwick.

Things are not what they used to be. If DJT and the Republicans succeed in overthrowing American democracy and the rule of law, one might expect that over time, the role and power of the jury will shrink and judges will have a lot more leeway to make partisan decisions for partisan purposes. In essence, judges will do what authoritarian politicians tell them to do.

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Writing an opinion for the NYT (not paywalled), Gertner argues for not jailing DJT in the wake of his 34 felony convictions:

While the statute under which he was convicted permits imprisonment, I would not send him to prison. .... My conclusions are based on the public record, my years of experience as a federal judge and a criminal defense lawyer and my decades teaching courses on sentencing at Yale and Harvard Law Schools.

Because falsification of business records in the first degree is a Class E felony under New York law, the possible sentence for each count ranges from probation to up to four years in state prison, a fine or a period of supervised probation that ends with the charges being dismissed as long as Mr. Trump has fully complied with the terms of the probation. New York judges have discretion to pick a punishment within the statutory limits.

One starting point in considering the sentence is looking at treatment other defendants have received who were convicted of the same or similar offenses. While defendants convicted of this offense can be sentenced to some prison time, most are not, especially first offenders, as Mr. Trump is. To be sure, this case is unique. It involved more than falsification; it was about efforts to interfere with an election.

Some have pointed to the fact that Mr. Trump showed no remorse after the verdict. Anyone who has a pending appeal — as he will have after he is sentenced — cannot admit to the charges. His admissions would make it impossible for him to defend himself in a second trial, were this conviction overturned.

But not expressing remorse for the crime is one thing. Attacking the jury is another. Prosecutors, like Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, are elected officials who exercise discretion in bringing charges. They are fair targets for a defendant. Still, his decision was tested by a jury, 12 neutral citizens who spent six weeks of their lives listening to the evidence, against a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, in an adversary system in which Mr. Trump had virtually unlimited resources to hire lawyers. There is no question that his attacks reflect a fundamental lack of respect for the rule of law, which points to imprisonment.

I would also consider Justice Merchan’s contempt findings. Mr. Trump willfully ignored the court’s rules — behavior that strongly suggests that he will not follow other laws.

But the bottom line is this: The factors pointing to imprisonment are outweighed by Mr. Trump’s unique position. Justice Merchan pulled his punches in imposing fines, not detention, for Mr. Trump’s repeated violations of his court orders. Anyone else would have been jailed. Mr. Trump no doubt will be treated differently — that is, less harshly — than other criminal defendants in our extraordinarily punitive criminal legal system. But we shouldn’t equalize the treatment of defendants by ramping up everyone’s punishment. Our criminal legal system is far too retributive and leans too heavily on imprisonment, no matter what the crime. Besides, Mr. Trump is different, because he was president and could become president again.

The other opinion in the article is by Norman Eisen, who argues that DJT should be jailed. Eisen was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the first DJT impeachment and trial.

I had mixed feelings about putting DJT in the slammer. Home confinement and supervised probation seemed like a possibly better choice. But after reading Gertner’s argument for not jailing him, jailing him now seems to be the more appropriate punishment. 

In Gertner’s moral reasoning, DJT should not be jailed because of his unique position. In my moral thinking, he should be jailed for the same reason. Yes, DJT was unique. He is openly contemptuous of the rule of law and democracy itself. He was a sitting US president who knowingly broke laws to hide his sex scandal to help his deceit-based election. The dates of the records that DJT falsified range from February 14 through December 5, 2017. 

Q1: Should DJT not be jailed because of his unique, elite situation, or should he be treated like anyone else?

Q2: Does America have a two-tiered system of justice, one generally more lenient toward wealthy and/or powerful elites, and the other for everyone else? Put another way, when politicians sanctimoniously tell us that no one is above the law, is that mostly false or a flat out lie?

Defending democracy worldwide; The poisoning of the federal judiciary; Thinking of an American Taliban

That says it all nicely. Good job nice lady with the naughty words!

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Constant attacks on the courts and our legal system by DJT and his morally rotted, authoritarian Republican Party is intended to poison the rule of law in the minds of as many Americans as possible. What America’s radical right authoritarianism wealth and power movement wants to do is to convince Americans that authoritarian elites alone can fix what is allegedly broken in our legal system. That is yet another gigantic authoritarian lie. 

Bloomberg reports about a new step toward poisoning the federal judiciary that authoritarian senate Republicans are taking:

Republicans Vow to Block Future Biden Judicial Nominees

A coalition of Republican senators has vowed not to support any of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, effectively blocking the appointment of new district judges in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states six months before Election Day.

The 10 Republicans also from Utah, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas said in an open letter on Friday that they won’t vote to confirm the administration’s political and judicial appointees.

“As a Senate Republican conference, we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart,” according to the letter that encourages other lawmakers to join in blocking more appointments.

“Joe Biden and his army of partisan hack judges have weaponized our judicial system against his political opponent,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said in a tweet Friday. “Words are not enough. Call on your Senator to join our fight— We will block every single Biden judicial nomination until America votes on November 5th.”

The GOP stance means that Biden’s potential nominees to more than a dozen district vacancies won’t be able to move forward in the chamber.

Senate tradition requires US trial court nominees earn home-state senator support in order to advance to a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

The White House condemned the letter as “radical and hyperpartisan” that prioritizes lawmaker interests above the welfare of their constituents.

The “threats” by Republican lawmakers “would harm the American people in the name of politics and proven lies—whether it’s by blocking the appointment of U.S. Attorneys who prosecute criminals, district judges who sentence them, and U.S. Marshals who protect courthouses and track down fugitives,” presidential spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.

As is usual these days, authoritarian radical right (ARR) Republicans cynically and shamelessly blame Biden and the Democrats with being divisive and partisan hacks. The divisive partisan hack force at work here is DJT and ARR Republican politicians and elites who have publicly states that they want to weaponize the rule of law for partisan purposes. All of their rhetoric and partisan hack behavior is just another gigantic ARR lie designed to further damage our democracy, civil liberties, rule of law, respect for truth and tolerant secular society.

One thing that seems to be broken with our rule of law system is that it is too lenient with elite white collar criminals, traitors, corrupt politicians and the like. Look at how hard it was just to get DJT convicted as the felon we all knew he was. And that scumbag still walks free spreading his divisive lies, slanders and crackpot conspiracy theories in his public drive to kill democracy and establish himself as King for life of a kleptocratic dictatorship, heavily infused with kleptocratic plutocracy and bigoted, intolerant, kleptocratic Christian theocracy run by a bigoted, wealthy White Christian male Taliban.  

Well, at least Biden had the guts to criticize the ARR law-poisoning move and correctly say it is based on damaging hyper-partisan politics and proven lies. By golly, there is still a spark of life in Joe.

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A few thoughts about an intolerant, bigoted, kleptocratic American Christian Taliban: 

One still gets to vote, the other doesn’t?

At the 1/6 coup attempt or was it patriots engaging in

innocent, legitimate political discourse?

Teeth ridiculous?

For the lolcat non-cognoscenti:
A lolcat (pronounced /ˈlɒlkæt/ LOL-kat), or LOLcat, is an image macro of one or more cats. Lolcat images’ idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text is known as lolspeak

Q1: Is there such a thing as an American Christian Taliban, or is it too early to call it out, or is it non-existent?

Q2: If there is such a thing as intentionally grammatically incorrect lolspeak, is there such a thing as an intentionally socially incorrect lolburp? 

Vermont law: Oil companies liable for climate change; The plan to kill democracy

The AP reports:

Vermont becomes 1st state to enact law requiring oil companies 

to pay for damage from climate change

Vermont has become the first state to enact a law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the damage caused by climate change after the state suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather.

Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature late Thursday, saying he is very concerned about the costs and outcome of the small state taking on “Big Oil” alone in what will likely be a grueling legal fight. But he acknowledged that he understands something has to be done to address the toll of climate change.

“I understand the desire to seek funding to mitigate the effects of climate change that has hurt our state in so many ways,” Scott, a moderate Republican in the largely blue state of Vermont, wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

“For too long, giant fossil fuel companies have knowingly lit the match of climate disruption without being required to do a thing to put out the fire,” Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said in a statement. “Finally, maybe for the first time anywhere, Vermont is going to hold the companies most responsible for climate-driven floods, fires and heat waves financially accountable for a fair share of the damages they’ve caused.”

Maryland, Massachusetts and New York are considering similar measures.

The American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, has said it’s extremely concerned the legislation “retroactively imposes costs and liability on prior activities that were legal, violates equal protection and due process rights by holding companies responsible for the actions of society at large; and is preempted by federal law.” 

It is about time someone started getting serious about who is going to pay for the human and environmental costs of oil companies taking profits for decades without any social conscience or accountability. No doubt the oil cos. will immediately haul this law into court and attack it until it is either dead and gone, or it is vindicated. Dead and gone is probably the most likely outcome. But, hope still springs eternal.

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John Yoo -- he wants to unleash the dogs of

legal war against Democrats

(Yay! Bring on the lawyers!!)

NY Mag writes about the GOP's plan for any criminal lawsuit against DJT: 

Republicans have long been predicting that criminal charges against Donald Trump would lead to Republicans ginning up charges against Democrats out of pure revenge. The prediction, of course, was designed to legitimate it. And now, inevitably, members of the Republican legal Establishment have moved from predicting this turn of events to advocating for it.

John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer (who himself escaped prosecution for his role in constructing legal justifications to torture detainees, many of whom turned out to be held wrongfully in the first place), has an essay in National Review arguing for revenge prosecutions. The imprimatur of Yoo, a Berkeley law professor and fellow at two of the conservative movement’s least-insane think tanks (the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution), underscores the progression of “lock her up” from wild seriously-not-literally Trump-campaign demagoguery in 2016 to party doctrine in 2024.

“Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you,” urges Yoo. “In order to prevent the case against Trump from assuming a permanent place in the American political system, Republicans will have to bring charges against Democratic officers, even presidents.”   

The deepest conceptual flaw in Yoo’s demands for legal revenge is his belief that Trump is an innocent victim. “Democrats have crossed a constitutional Rubicon,” he argues. Before now, he claims, opportunities to prosecute presidents abounded but were never taken, out of principle:

Gerald Ford, in a great act of statesmanship, pardoned Richard Nixon even though it doomed his chances in the close 1976 election. Bush did not prosecute Bill Clinton for lying to the Whitewater special counsel, even though Clinton’s Justice Department had conceded that he would become legally liable once he left office. Obama did not attempt to relitigate the difficult policy decisions made during the War on Terror by prosecuting Bush and his aides (of which I was one). Trump did not order the investigation of Hillary Clinton, even though her intentional, illegal diversion of thousands of classified emails to her home computer network was a central theme during his campaign. Nor had local or state prosecutors dared to interfere with the workings of the presidency before.

It is pretty clear where this unwarranted partisan malice is going. Just like Hitler could not be appeased, it is clear that DJT and the authoritarian GOP cannot be appeased. Sometimes history rhymes. It is rhyming right now. 

A silver lining?

But maybe there is a silver lining here. If both main political parties shift to focus on finding lawbreaking in each other, maybe the rule of law will benefit. Maybe it would be a little like legalizing same-sex marriage -- legalization strengthened the institution of marriage. It seems to me that the law is too often not vindicated, especially against elite white collar criminals like DJT. Why not make more use of existing laws?

For example, a gun law that Hunter Biden broke is being (or has been) used to prosecute him, but prosecutions of that gun law are rare. If memory serves, less than ~0.2% (about 1 in 500) of violations of that gun law are prosecuted. Although Hunter's gun law infraction was minor, lasting for just 11 days, Republicans had to find some way to prosecute him for something. That is what they could find, apparently also along with some tax cheating. NBC News reported last year about the gun and tax laws that Hunter broke:

The federal gun charge, which makes it unlawful for a drug addict to possess a weapon, is a rarely used statute that is facing legal challenges and has recently been used as a catch-all charge against white supremacists.

Like the gun charge, the tax charges are rarely brought against first-time offenders and even more rarely result in jail time, Andrew Weissmann, a former FBI general counsel and NBC News contributor, tweeted Tuesday. “This is if anything harsh, not lenient,” he wrote.  

Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor and an NBC News legal analyst, said on MSNBC on Tuesday that the deal Hunter Biden reached was a decent outcome for the president's son, but not the “sweetheart deal” that Trump and his allies have made it out to be.

If a person is serious about vindicating the rule of law, prosecution for violation of unenforced gun and tax laws should be the norm, not a rare exception. What some pro-Trump commentators and political blowhards, e.g., the liar-hypocrite Mitch McConnell, are saying about the felony convictions of DJT in NY state court is that the misdemeanor book-keeping errors that DJT knowingly committed were minor and should never have been prosecuted in the first place. 

Just because a crime is minor, does that morally justify not prosecuting it? In my moral mindset, two wrongs = two wrongs, not a right. Committing the crime is one wrong, not prosecuting it is another. 

As far as I am concerned, I hope that the elite Dems and Repubs bring a tidal wave of prosecutions against each other, including prosecutions by one side for all unfounded prosecutions by the opposing side. It is fair, rational and pro-democracy to actually seriously believe in the rule of law, especially for rich and/or powerful elites. They are the ones who can afford to endlessly game the system to escape justice, just like DJT had successfully done for decades and is still doing in the remaining three criminal lawsuits against him.

Qs: Why are the tax and gun charges are rarely brought against first-time offenders and even more rarely result in jail time? What is the point of having laws if they are rarely enforced, e.g., do they give prosecutors leverage against defendants? Or is Germaine, once again, off his rocker, out to lunch, over the top or otherwise an over-agitated, handsome, young nincompoop?