American kleptocracy update

I wanted to start the new year with a bang! 

Two posts today for the price of one!!

Corruption in congress is bipartisan and increasingly aggressive. Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute reports a new change being enacted by the House "Ethics" Committee that he says amounts to a "New Year's Eve ethics massacre." Schuman writes:

The New Years' Eve Ethics Massacre

The House Ethics Committee's decisions let congressmen put campaign cash in their pockets and make other allegations of misusing their offices disappear

For context, congress's independent ethics watchdog, the Office of Congress Ethics (OCE), raised the alarm on four members of Congress. They issued six reports on suspected improper activities of Rep. Alex Mooney, in reports dated July 23, 2021 and December 22, 2021, Rep. Sanford Bishop, in a report dated February 10, 2020, Rep. Ronny Jackson, in reports dated December 22, 2021 and March 25, 2024, and Rep. Wesley Hunt, in a report dated March 25, 2024.

The OCE is not empowered to make final determinations or punish members of Congress, but they do conduct investigations and make recommendations to the House Ethics Committee regarding their findings. OCE sent the Ethics Committee six reports on member misconduct that sat unaddressed for as long as 1,785 days.

The Ethics Committee is composed equally of Democrats and Republicans. Members are appointed by the Speaker or the Minority Leader. The purpose of the Ethics Committee is to police member misconduct, its apparent purpose is to insulate members of Congress from accountability for ethical misconduct, except when leadership withdraws their protection from a particular member.

The Committee is not a court of law. It cannot put anyone in jail. It was created by the House of Representatives to establish and enforce official standards of conduct. Those official standards of conduct are significantly broader than criminal law and are intended to protect the integrity and reputation of the House of Representatives. As a result, the Committee should be quicker to act than a court of law and should act on a wider range of issues.

As a historical matter, the Ethics Committee failed so publicly at its mission after the turn of the millennium that the pretense it is focused on ethics could no longer be credibly maintained. In response to the public outcry, the House established the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) in March 2008 to clean up the culture of corruption in Congress.

That corruption festered when Ethics Committee Democrats and Republicans essentially agreed to avoid investigating anyone for misconduct. 

On December 30th, 2024, the House Ethics Committee "resolved" the OCE's allegations of misconduct against the four members by issuing new guidance on the personal use of campaign funds and wiping away those allegations and others. The Ethics Committee made three important decisions.

First, the Ethics Committee decided that the Congressional prohibition on using campaign donations for personal use is limited to instances that violate federal law. The House of Representatives' rules are broader than the language codified in statute, so they narrowed its application.

Second, the Ethics Committee made it virtually impossible to prove that a member of Congress violated the rules. The Ethics Committee declared guidance from the Federal Election Committee with respect to conversion of funds are "ambiguous" and provide for "significant gray areas." Accordingly, the Ethics Committee decided it would not punish Members who converted those funds unless there was evidence "that any Member intentionally misused campaign funds for their personal benefit." They required specific proof that a Member intended to misuse campaign funds in knowing violation of the rules. And then they looked the other way.

Third, the Ethics Committee made OCE allegations regarding other violations of the House rules disappear without a trace.

Well there it is. Legalized and normalized corruption is right out in the open. Worse, it is bipartisan. I thought that DJT and MAGA were the key forces behind the rising tide of kleptocracy in American politics. Kleptocratic impulses in the Democratic Party apparently are about as bad as those of MAGA. I became aware of serious Democratic Party pro-corruption sympathy when Nancy Pelosi condoned insider trading by members of congress in 2021. It's not clear if there is a significant difference between the Dems and Repubs when it comes to kleptocracy and corruption in government.

It's not corruption, it's just participating 

in a free economy 🤪

(based on insider knowledge)

Last Oct., I posted about a NYT opinion by Sarah Chayes. That was about corruption in the Dem Party. Chayes is a long-time critic of corruption in government. She questioned Dem commitment to ethics and honest government:

The way corruption is prosecuted and reported on — as one-off scandals committed by these individuals at a specific point in time — camouflages what may be modern corruption’s greatest evil: It is at its heart a system of exclusion, designed to reserve ongoing access to political and monetary gain to a close-knit group of insiders.

Around the world, and increasingly in the United States, networks of public officials, financiers, business executives, philanthropists and even out-and-out criminals have used corrupt practices to monopolize public power. These networks repurpose the levers of government to serve their private interests at the expense of the public and to ensure their own impunity.

We are in terrible trouble. Dem Party elites have fallen to the corrupting power of money, as have the Repub elites. The US supreme court recently legalized bribes as "gratuities" or "rewards" for people in government. As of now, it is mostly accurate to call the US a kleptocracy. We are so screwed.

Regarding mandatory voting

Salon writes:

If democracy dies in this country, it can be blamed on people who did not bother to vote last November.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump fought tooth and nail over almost everything. But, in the run-up to the November election, both urged Americans to vote like never before, saying over and over again that “This will be the most important election in the history of our country.”

Yet, despite the stakes of the 2024 election, millions of Americans sat out the election and did not vote. There were about 90 million of them, a number that dwarfs the 77 million people who voted for Donald Trump.

The United States can respond to looming threats to democracy by tackling the non-voting problem directly. That means making voting mandatory. Only by doing so do we have any chance to make the political system more democratic and more representative, and thus more resilient. 

Those who did not vote in 2024 were younger than those who voted. The Pew Research Center observes that they also were “more racially and ethnically diverse,…less affluent and less educated ” than those who voted.

Pew notes many reasons eligible voters did not vote in 2024. 35% believed that “their vote would not make a difference.” 31% said they did not vote because they generally do not like politics. Another 17% said they did not vote because they “did not care about the outcome.”

The rest of the non-voters didn’t turn out because they were not registered or voting was inconvenient. 8% said “they forgot to vote.”

Australia has had compulsory voting for almost one hundred years. As former Connecticut Secretary of State Miles Rapaport and historian Alex Keyssar explain, “In Australia, all registered citizens must vote, and almost everyone is registered; the enforcement mechanism is a fine of about $15, and people can cast blank or “none of the above” ballots to express their indifference to the offered slate of candidates. The result has been turnout of about 90 percent in every Australian election since 1924.”

Mandatory voting does not mean you have to vote for anyone or anything on the ballot. It just means you have to get a ballot and return it, even if you leave the whole thing blank. I'm a huge fan of mandatory voting because it tends to be pro-democracy, anti-extremism and anti-authoritarian.

Q: In general, what have been the effects of mandatory voting in Australia?

A: Compulsory voting ensures a more socially even turnout, reducing disparities in voter participation based on socioeconomic status, age, and ethnicity. This contrasts with countries like the UK, where turnout can vary significantly by demographic.

The system encourages political parties to appeal to the center rather than the extremes, as they must win over the entire electorate, not just their base. This has been credited with keeping Australia's political center more stable compared to other democracies.

Compulsory voting is believed to improve the caliber of individuals who run for office and the quality of decisions they make, as candidates must appeal to a broader electorate. Parties must consider the full spectrum of voter values, leading to policies that address a wider range of issues.

Etc.

But as we all know, the Republican Party opposes mandatory voting for the obvious reasons, i.e., wealth and power. Heck, the modern GOP leadership opposes real elections, period. Sham are probably OK for window dressing.

Global warming update

New analyses indicate that the underwater current that shuttles heat around the Atlantic Ocean is possibly closer to irreversible shutdown by 2050 if we keep doing what we have been doing for decades. It is possible that we have already passed a non-return point but are unaware of it.

Experts have long known that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — the system of ocean currents that transports heat and salt between the Southern and Northern Hemispheres — can suddenly and irreversibly shut down as a result of rising temperatures. A growing number of computer simulations, including two preliminary analyses published this summer, have suggested a collapse could occur as soon as 2050.

The world as we now know it is a product of this vast overturning. The AMOC moves carbon deep into the ocean and transfers heat at a rate of one quadrillion watts per second — 50 times the rate of energy use by humankind. It shapes the band of clouds that encircles the Earth at the equator, delivering rain to Africa and the Amazon, and brings balmy temperatures to Northern Europe, explaining why Scotland is much milder than Alaska and Newfoundland despite sharing the same latitude.

Differences in temperature and salinity are the engine of the AMOC. As long as North Atlantic water is salty enough — and therefore heavy enough — to sink as it cools, the system is self-reinforcing.

Yet over the past century, humans have warmed the planet by more than a degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and caused the Greenland Ice Sheet to melt at a pace now exceeding 270 billion tons of ice per year. That influx of freshwater interrupts the salty northbound current, slowing its descent toward the seafloor.

If meltwater continues to flood the North Atlantic, many experts fear the AMOC may cross a tipping point at which it can no longer sustain itself, abruptly and irreversibly shutting down.

A study published this February in the journal Science Advances used the amount of freshwater moving around the South Atlantic to suggest the AMOC had gotten much weaker. Some of the same researchers suggested in preliminary analyses this summer that the system is likely to collapse around the middle of the century if the world remains on its current warming trajectory, and that it could tip even if humanity manages to limit warming to just over 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

In October, dozens of top climate scientists issued an open letter calling on Nordic leaders to “take seriously” the risk of an AMOC collapse in the coming decades. Even a partial shutdown could lead to dangerously harsh winters in Northern Europe, as well as sea level rise on the east coast of the United States and dramatic shifts in rainfall around the equator.

When it comes to climate change, humans are playing Russian Roulette. Sooner or later we are going to face some real catastrophes. 

Q: How seriously does the Republican Party and MAGA generally take climate change?

A: The Republican Party and MAGA supporters exhibit a range of attitudes towards climate change, with a general trend towards skepticism, denial, or downplaying the issue. Many prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have historically called climate change a "hoax" or downplayed the link between human activity and a warming planet. According to Pew Research Center surveys, only 12% of Republicans and Republican leaners consider dealing with climate change a top priority for the president and Congress.

In unrelated news, some reporting indicates that Joe Biden now regrets hiring Merrick Garland. That is a not case of better late than never. It's a case of late is never. Also Biden regrets dropping out of the election, still believing that he would have beaten DJT in the 2024 election. Sigh. 

Thank you for your 'service' Joe

/s

A New Years thought from your local SNOWFLAKE

BINGO!

One of my US correspondents put a very interesting idea to me overnight.

The Democrats might be feeling pretty despondent right now and with good reason. They got a great deal wrong in this election campaign, starting partly with the moment that Biden refused to give way to a younger, more able candidate and partly with the fact that, at present, they do not even seem to know how to spell change, let alone offer it.

But, as my correspondent pointed out, Trump has offered change to everyone, and whilst superficially, each of those to whom he has made a promise might like what he has offered, the reality of the change that he might put on the table is going to be massively uncomfortable for most in the USA.

Tariffs will mean inflation.

Trade wars will create economic disruption.

Deporting the millions of undocumented people in the US will deny workforces to large numbers of American companies and leave parts of the US, like Florida, that are essentially engaged in care services, devoid of the staff that they need to function. It will also be immensely costly and intensely socially disruptive.

There is a serious risk of a battle between the Fed and the federal government over interest rates in the making. That will not be good for American households.

The massive cut to Medicaid, education and other Federal programmes that so excite Trump and Musk will massively harm the well-being of millions of Americans.

And, importantly, if there are no signs of progress on any of these issues, as there were none post-2016 on things like ‘the Wall', the buyers regret that will very rapidly emerge (as it has in the UK for Labour) will result in a massive backlash against the Republicans.

Large numbers of seats in the House and one-third of the seats in the Senate will be up for election at the midterms in just two years' time. The Democrats might be in a total meltdown right now, and I have little sympathy with them because much of what they had to offer the American people was dull, at best, and profoundly unappealing at worst, but in a political system as desperately two-party orientated as that in the UK is, the backlash against the Republicans for failing to deliver on any, some or most of the promises that they have made, which failure seems very likely with Trump in charge, will swing those elections very heavily in the Democrat's favour.

I see quite a lot of logic in this, even though a Democrat revival without an acceptance of error within that Party feels fairly unappealing.

If, however, this logic is right, expect the mayhem that Trump says he might unleash to begin as soon as possible after the inauguration.

2025 might prove to be a very bad year for the USA.

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/11/08/2025-might-prove-to-be-a-very-bad-year-for-the-usa/

AND if we ever had any doubt about how bad it may get, we have our fearless leader Germaine to remind us. Keep up the good fight G. I might tease you occasionally about the gloom and doom in your messaging, but someone has to do the dirty work and we need fresh reminders, especially as this SNOWFLAKE keeps posting more lighthearted stuff. 

So, with that thought in mind, I got to thinking if the disaster about to unfold will actually lead us to a brighter day later on. Pie in the sky thinking?

OH well, whatever happens, Cheers to everyone for the New Year. 

Some year-end reflection…

 Over millennia, I think it is fair to say that humanity has become a “tangled weave” disaster.  So many situations can be traced back to some prior situations, that can then be traced back to even more prior situations, and on and on and on… the breadcrumbs journey of “It’s complicated.”  And it is.

But at the root of it all is what’s known as “the human condition.”  Yes, we, individually as well as collectively, are “patient zero” in all of humanity’s (greater scheme-of-things) problems. 

WHY ARE WE ALL PATIENT ZERO? 

Oh so many reasons: It starts with our birth hard-wiring; continues on with our upbringing (soft-wiring circumstances); gets further build on/destroyed with the benefit or lack of good/bad role modeling; enter the peer pressure years, when long-term adult personalities are beginning to gel; hormonal disruptions add more confusion; the bullying or empathy gene is “awakened”; lack of equality and equal opportunities is aggravating and frustrating; attraction to shallow values may become a siren’s (fuck it all) call; loss of control over negative emotions (there’s a whole hornet’s nest of those buggers [anger, fear, revenge, resentment, self-preservation, greed, disappointments, feelings of desperation, etc., etc., etc.]).  So yeah, like I said, the human condition has become quite complicated alright, and for (understandably) human reasons/explanations.

SO WHAT’S THE FIX?

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  And what we’re doing now is still not getting humanity any different results.  To the contrary, our ongoing behaviors are validating and perpetuating the “next generation” of expected (I think undesirable) results (see above); the perpetual and accelerating cycle of discord all of humanity is seemingly caught up in and can’t escape.

SO WHAT FIXES THOSE UNDESIRABLE RESULTS?

Oh so many things can help fix undesirable results: let’s just call them the antithesis of those negative human condition attributes I’ve mentioned above.  But other than on an individual basis, are such mass fixes even possible?

Q: Is humanity broken?

• If yes, why?  

• And is it “fixable?”

• If no, why not?  

• And by what standards would that conclusion be judged?

Make your case(s).

(by PrimalSoup)

Some thoughts on the human condition

People don't want to BE informed. 

They want to FEEL informed. -- Roger Ailes

There is great truth in that simple but astute observation. When reality is inconvenient, as it often is, the human mind seeks ways to reduce or eliminate the discomfort somehow. For better or worse, the human mind is very adept and fast at rationalizing uncomfortable or self-disaffirming information. The mind unconsciously converts bad reality into something less bad, non-existent (denial) or even good (illusion creation). Ailes really understands people, i.e., he understands this aspect of human cognitive biology. 

He also came up with the Orchestra Pit Theory, among some other observations. According to Ailes, if there are two politicians on stage, one announcing a significant policy like a solution to the Middle East problem, and the other falling into the orchestra pit, the media would focus on the latter event due to its sensational nature. This underscores Ailes' belief that the media's preference for covering gaffes, scandals, and dramatic events over policy substance shapes public discourse and political campaigns. 

Ailes transformed cable news by giving it a hard, radicalizing partisan edge. He used television news as an ideological weapon to appeal to conservative audiences and build rock solid belief in false realities, lies and slanders. He provided confirmation (self-affirmation) to his audience rather than information, understanding that much of the American public wanted to feel informed rather than be informed. Hence Faux News is a great source of pleasant faux news.

In the social sciences, a lot of research is going on about what to do with this aspect of human nature. Nobody has a perfect answer to the disinformation/dark free speech problem so far. The problem has been known and discussed for millennia. In the US, it will probably stay mostly unsolved for a very long time because there is no simple answer. And there is lots of resentment of efforts to combat demagoguery and partisan deceit by America's radical right authoritarians, i.e., MAGA. 

Only hard, slow social engineering solutions that take generations to build and implement seem to have a detectable positive effect. Finland, Estonia and some other countries near Russia have put the social engineering in place to train their populations to resist disinformation. Those are the best examples of the possibility of training societies to at least partly resist the alluring comforts of dark free speech.

Dark blue - fairly disinformation-resistant

Dark red - not very resistant

Q: How resistant is the US public to demagoguery and disinformation compared to countries like Finland, Denmark and Estonia?

A: The United States exhibits a lower level of resilience to demagoguery and disinformation compared to countries like Finland, Denmark, and Estonia. 

The U.S. faces significant political polarization, which has been exacerbated by the use of social media by demagogues. This polarization contributes to the spread of disinformation, as individuals are more likely to share information that aligns with their beliefs, regardless of its accuracy.

Trust in traditional media sources in the U.S. is notably low, with only 7% of respondents fully trusting these sources to report information accurately and fairly in 2022. This lack of trust makes the public more susceptible to disinformation.

Media literacy in the U.S. is not as systematically integrated into the national curriculum as it is in Finland or Estonia. It is often taught as a special seminar or class for older students, rather than being part of the core curriculum from an early age.

Finland and Estonia have integrated media literacy into their education systems from an early age, fostering critical thinking and fact-checking skills. The U.S. lags in this aspect, with media literacy often being an elective or special course.

One can see the problem for the US. Authoritarian MAGA demagogue's efforts to combat disinformation are demagogued and vilified as things like liberal authoritarian censorship or a major burden on free speech. MAGA wants unfettered freedom to demagogue, lie, slander and disinform to its black little heart's content.

Personal opinion: Two kinds of minds 

Speaking of freedom, there are two basic kinds of minds in terms of demagoguery and dark free speech, in my opinion. Type 1 minds are relatively demagoguery and irrationality resistant, while type 2 are more demagoguery and irrationality trapped. The odd, frustrating thing about those two mindsets is that the type 1 minds are a lot more limited or unfree because they tend to be a lot more tethered to facts, true truths and sound reasoning. By contrast, the type 2 folks are generally not so limited. The type 2s have more or less full access to the power of their unconscious mind's capacity to soften or deny reality and reasoning that is inconvenient or self-disaffirming. 

Sadly, those poor type 1s have to more acutely feel the unpleasant feelings that inconvenient or self-disaffirming reality and reasoning can generate. It's no wonder that demagoguery and dark free speech generally tend to be more attractive and persuasive than the stinky reality and reason-tethered world.

The simple joy of being low-information