Financial Shenanigans in the Age of Trump

       In the “They snuck it in while we weren’t watching” category, the big winner is….US Commercial banks. The one paragraph item is relegated to the last page of the world and national news section of the local rag, right beside the notice that Chuck E, Cheese has declared bankruptcy. Of course, Mr. Cheese has been bankrupt in numerous other ways, primarily having to do with good taste, for decades.

       The issue at hand is what has been called the “Volker rule.”  For those not intimately familiar with commercial banking regulations (which included the kid) the news rang no bells …that is until I reflected upon recent history, like, say, the great recession of 2009-13 and the words “commercial banks” rang a bell. First, the sobriquet “Volker rule”, named for former “Fed Head” Paul Volker refers to section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which sets forth rules for implementing section 13 of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956.

      The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (commonly referred to as Dodd–Frank) is a United States federal law that was enacted on July 21, 2010, primarily as an attempt to stave off, by legislative fiat,  further financial sector bleeding from risky use of clients’ money by large commercial banks. The law’s intent was to overhaul and increase financial regulation in the aftermath of the Great Recession. You remember, TARP, bailouts, mortgage foreclosures, unemployment, all that “stuff?”  It made changes affecting all federal financial regulatory agencies and darned near every part of the nation's financial services industry. Much of the act was consumer protection oriented.

       This act was a direct result of proposals by President Obama aimed at helping to prevent another epic economic tanking based on malfeasance at high levels of the US banking industry. Responding to widespread calls for changes to the financial regulatory system, in June 2009, Obama introduced a proposal for a "sweeping overhaul of the United States financial regulatory system, a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression". That pretty much sums up Dodd-Frank. The bill, based on his proposal, was introduced in the US House by Congressman Barney Frank, and in the Senate by Senator Chris Dodd. As one might expect, Most Congressional support for Dodd-Frank came from members of the Democratic Party, but three Senate Republicans voted for the bill, allowing it to overcome the Senate filibuster.

        One provision, the afore mentioned Volker rule, restricts banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments. The act also repealed the exemption from regulation for security-based swaps, requiring credit-default swaps and other transactions to be cleared through either exchanges or clearinghouses. The Trump administration is eliminating  most of the Volker Rule’s regulatory prohibitions and provisions

        For the uninformed, market manipulation, intentional or not, resulted from the sheer size of funds involved in questionable securities, chief among them being high risk mortgages, bundled as viable and sound instruments. Proffered by agents for the big commercial banking houses which bundled and sold these dogs, there were easy customers aplenty such as union pension funds or state employee pension funds, or simply large fund managers, seeking safe (hopefully) and profitable (primarily) places to put their money.

         Added to the mix were credit default swaps. This is bordering on a Grad school economics course, so I’ll just describe credit default swaps (CDS) as “I’m buying insurance to pay me if your investment tanks.” Think of it like this: Tom buys a racehorse with money borrowed from Bob. He plans to pay for the horse with its winnings. I don’t know either Tom or Bob, who lent him the money. Bob, the original lender, might buy insurance (a CDS) that pays off the loan if Tom defaults. Bob can then, since he feels sure the horse is a winner, sell me that CDS.  If the horse wins the triple crown and Tom pays off the loan as promised, the lender, and I, or whoever bought the swap, is out the premium we paid the underwriter as well as I’m out the money I paid the Bob, the original lender, to buy the swap.

        However, should the horse break a leg and never run, the owner of the credit default swap (me) will (usually) collect the full value of the loan. Bob, however, gets the asset (the horse), now worth only its glue value.  This little gem of an idea (one of many concepts to use money to make money which have no real product or service whatsoever in the mix (derivatives). What it did do, was to entice such insurance giants as AIG to insure these bets against the system with large premiums involved, and investors to buy them.

       When the bundled mortgage housing bubble imploded, and the “tranches” or groups of unsound mortgages were just paper, and worth nowhere close to the literally trillions of dollars pinned on the illusion of their value, everyone lost. 

        Insurers lost, because the amount of massive defaulted credit they had insured via CDS would have bankrupted several of them, so, the buyers of the CDS also lost because the Insurer couldn’t pay (and they had paid the CDS sellers for the swaps) and the sellers of CDS were left with almost worthless bundles of impending foreclosures.  By the end of 2007, the outstanding CDS amount was $62.2 trillion.  For a bit of perspective, that figure was over ten times the national debt!

        Commercial banks, like Bear, Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch were in trouble.  Lehman Bros, with $600 billion in bonds outstanding went bankrupt. AIG, having insured individuals world-wide against such defaults via by CDS was saddled with far more claims than the dollars to pay them.   As we know, the recovery was long and painful, and many have pointed fingers each at another, but one salient fact remains uncontested:  CDSs are not traded on an exchange and there is no required reporting of these transactions to a government agency. 

       This has been called a “shadow banking system” by economists. This situation is a result of unregulated market capitalism. The 2010 financial crisis demonstrated the lack of transparency in this large market which became a concern to regulators as it could pose a systemic risk to the US economy if allowed to function unchecked. This and other issues were prime concerns of the framers of Dodd-Frank.

        Oddly enough, as a candidate, Donald Trump was the most anti–Wall Street presidential candidate since FDR in the 1930s. He attacked Wall Street relentlessly, directly, and explicitly throughout the 2016 campaign and attacked his opponent, Hillary Clinton, nonstop as being “In the pocket of Wall Street.” He even put the then-CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, in his last campaign ad as “one of the biggest threats to the people of the United States!” So, the Donald must be a fan of Dodd-Frank, huh? Not so much. C’mon, we all know he’s a lying sack of shit, why should this be different.

       Predictably, critics of financial reform have claimed that the law and rules would kill banks' revenue and profits, which would prevent them from lending and would in turn kill economic growth and jobs. They did the same thing when FDR signed the Glass-Steagall banking act 1933. Glass-Steagall was different in that its principal regulatory function was to separate investment banking from retail banking. Repealed in 1999 by another banking act, the Gramm‐​Leach‐​Bliley Act, much of Glass-Steagall survives (separation of commercial and investment banking, FDIC, etc.). Neither would have stopped greedy lenders like Wells-Fargo, Washington Mutual or Indy Mac from making bad loans to persons willing to borrow today without regard to the inevitable adjustable rate increase next year.

         Republicans tend to push the blame to Federal initiatives urging the cessation of red-lining and other discriminatory (and racially motivated in many cases), lending practices. Likewise, private mortgage brokers in (too) many cases simply threw rational thought and responsibility to the winds, realizing that, the more mortgages sold, the more commission and that the vast bulk of them would be resold to banks before the ARM kicked in triggering, in a lot of such instances, default.   

        So, did Dodd-Frank and the Volker rule damage or stifle the vitality of the commercial banking industry as some have predicted? Hardly.  In fact, in virtually every quarter since 2009, including throughout 2018 and the first quarter of 2019, the biggest banks recorded or eclipsed record revenues, profits, and bonuses while at the same time increasing lending. Even so, at least 115 Dodd-Frank rules remained to be completed when the Obama administration ended, including executive compensation rules, securities-based swap rules, credit rating agency reform, and commodity speculation rules.

        Despite his constant excoriation of Wall as a candidate, and since taking office, the Trump administration has set about dismantling the core pillars of financial reform by a number of regulatory reductions some of them are:  

Lowering capital requirements (easier, riskier commercial loans, important to Trump, himself heavily leveraged)  

Enabling more unregulated derivatives dealing (you know, like the CDS that triggered the bubble damage)

Rolling back consumer and investor protections reducing prudential regulation of systemically significant banks (this is critical because it takes Federal eyes off those banks not considered critical, which now is every major “non-bank” as these commercial entities are sometimes called.

        Both GE capital and AIG are examples of “too big to fails” which are now off the list.  AIG,  not only failed spectacularly and engaged in egregiously irresponsible conduct, but also required an unlimited bailout, which ultimately amounted to $182 billion. The other was General Electric (GE), which, although with fewer headlines and less egregiousness, would have gone bankrupt without being bailed out as well. removing all of the “non-banks” from scrutiny is insane and even bankers outside that unique arena have said so' 

        And finally, neutering the regulation of systemically significant nonbanks and the shadow banking system, stopping enforcing the laws, if not actually siding with the predators.   Goodbye Volker rule.

       From 1929 through 2010 the US has experienced a number or recessions, some have been cyclic adjustments with no singular or specific cause, several were adjustments from wartime to peacetime employment. Three, however,  (and two of these are 21^st century phenomena) were the result of a specific sector of the nation indulging in irresponsible market operations based on that most base of motives greed, leading to runaway speculation. All three, the great Depression, the Dot-com crash and the great recession are the result of individuals who rarely,if ever get their hands dirty,playing fast and loose with other people’s money or betting other’s money on “what ifs.”

       Trump favors loosening responsible observation and regulation of these entities. His sycophants echo that claim. History says he and they are wrong. History is powerful proof that regulation and financial stability don’t stifle growth and prosperity, but that broad-based deregulation is. That is why Dodd-Frank re-regulated the financial industry and why the Trump administration's deregulation is so reckless and dangerous. The Volker rule is simply the latest insult.

For more, and more entertaining, discussion watch or read “The Big Short”

Reinventing Aunt Jemima

                Reinventing Aunt Jemima

  

        A recent entry in the seemingly endless Republican “making up shit” campaign is this, from a short speech at the recent Tulsa farce, from an earnest Young Republican blonde “college student.” I put that in quotes because other than Liberty or Oral Roberts, it’s hard to picture her as actual college material. 

        In summary she, for a reason which escapes me and most sane individuals, is lamenting the decision by Quaker Oats to cease using the stereotypical “Mammy” image of Aunt Jemima on several products. Why she felt compelled to do this can probably be determined by the fact that she blames “the leftist mob.”  Here is her lament: “She (Nancy Green) was a freed slave who went on to be the face of the pancake syrup that we love, and we have in our pantries today. She fought for equality, and now the leftist mob is trying to erase her legacy. And might I mention how privileged we are as a nation if our biggest concern is a bottle of pancake syrup,” she said.  This last assertion is stultifyingly moronic, meaningless, and Trump worthy. 

        It's a goddamned good thing Nancy Green wasn’t the Thigh Master spokesperson, or this young naïf, who truly had nothing to say and said even that poorly, would have been in tears.

        Just as bad are the recent Facebook claims of a female Black Republican (yeah, really, there is at least one): The claim is also made in an image shared in a June 17 Facebook post from Peggy Hubbard, a Black Republican and former U.S. Senate candidate. Shared more than 186,000 times, the post,  rife with error,  came just hours after the maker of the Aunt Jemima brand of syrup and pancake mix announced it is removing the name and image because "Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype." (uh… yeah, they are, and I have always wondered why it continued this long.) Then Ms. Hubbard goes completely bat shit nuts ranting:

       "We as black people don't know our history! Here is something that Black History Month doesn't tell you! They feed us b.s. (sic) and, hide the TRUTH from us. Nancy Green aka Aunt Jemima was the FIRST black millionaire! she sold her pancake mix to General Mills Corp. The jokes on US black people."   

       Note: Apparently, regardless of race, the first refuge of the ignorant is to capitalize inappropriately. This is like a red warning sign, “caution, bullshit ensues.” Which it certainly does in this snippet of drivel.

First: Nancy Green was a corporate symbol. No corporate advertising image in that day and age ever became a millionaire. As a Black woman, she was almost surely undercompensated for the use of her image. And her public appearances.

Second: Nancy Green did not, as some have claimed, sell any recipe, pancake, syrup, or anything else other than her image to General Mills, Quaker Oats, Amazon, Bill Gates or George Soros.

         Chris Rutt, who created the pancake flour in 1889, was inspired by the song “Old Aunt Jemima” after hearing it during a minstrel performance and decided to give the name to his pancake flour. Rutt then sold his company to a larger milling company, R.T. Davis Milling Co., after failing to sell the flour. The milling company brought its mix to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and hired Nancy Green, a former slave, then working as a cook for a judge, to act as Aunt Jemima and sell the pancake flour.

Third: Nancy Green was a domestic worker (housekeeper) until her death by automobile in 1923. She was active in her own community and church but claims by the young Republican twit in Tulsa that she “fought for equality” are unsubstantiated. 

       It is inconceivable that significant overt public activism would not have resulted in her employers terminating her employment. Her public appearances as Aunt Jemima were, as the corporate lords wished, always in character. Tragically, but in truth, between 1893 and 1923, black activists were more likely to be lynched than lauded.    

Fourth: The claim that Ms. Green died as America’s “first Black millionaire”, does little justice to the real “first female self-made millionaire”, of any race in America, Madame C.J. Walker. There are some who claim that Madame Walker’s mentor, Annie Malone, also Black, actually was also a millionaire, and even earlier than Madame Walker. Both extraordinary women were true entrepreneurs, seeing the market for beauty care products among American women of color and servicing it.  And those are the facts, sprinkled with educated opinion.     

"Don't criticize what you can't understand"

Unjustified critique of an American Master

Bob Dylan premiering new album, "Rough and Rowdy Ways "

Today's paper carried a review of the new Bob Dylan album, his 39^th studio effort, entitled “Rough and Rowdy Ways.” It is, overall,  a  positive review, but the reviewer makes a statement toward the end which almost made me spit coffee all over the counter. Here’s the quote:

“He has long been regarded as a master of verse. Unlike ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and any number of rhyme-less classic works in the Dylan canon ….(praising the album’s rhyme schemes).”

Like a Rolling Stone “Rhyme-less?” Has this guy ever really listened?

"Once upon a time you dressed so fine

  threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't    you?

People call say 'beware doll, you're bound to fall'

You thought they were all kidding you

You used to laugh about

Everybody that was hanging out

Now you don't talk so loud

Now you don't seem so proud

About having to be scrounging your next meal

How does it feel, how does it feel?

To be without a home

Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.

Ahh you've gone to the finest schools, alright Miss Lonely

But you know you only used to get juiced in it

Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street

And now you're gonna have to get used to it

You say you never compromise

With the mystery tramp, but now you realize

He's not selling any alibis

As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes…”

        No, it isn’t “Eeny meeny miney moe…. It’s far better than that. Yes, the rhyme scheme varies from verse to verse but is there throughout. It varies from stanza to stanza, so what? There is poetry and rhyme in the meter as well as in the words. Citing this song in any other sense than acknowledging its anthem status is borderline blasphemy

        One of Dylan’s singular qualities in the era of the 2 minute, 30 second am radio “air play” recording was to produce songs which compelled the listener, regardless of length, to pay attention. No, it wasn’t Paul Simon’s tidy and engaging lyrics. Dylan’s work has always been grittier. Simon is an acknowledged tune-

smith and composer, one of a handful of masters who also made popular music mean more than “June, Moon, Croon.” 

       Dylan also repeatedly jabbed the social conscience and core memories of several generations. “The Times they are a Changing,” released in 1964 seems (sadly) even more relevant today. At a time when his contemporaries were timing their songs for air play, Dylan gave us songs like “Tangled Up In Blue,” seven verses,  running 4 ½ minutes. 

       Covered by hundreds of artists from Duke Ellington to Trisha Yearwood to Adele, Jimi Hendrix and Pearl Jam, Dylan is, and always has been, one of the great poets ever to write popular music.

       If a reviewer can’t appreciate sophisticated rhyme schemes, they should limit themselves to prose.

Not So Silent

        Last night, before a half empty arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Donald Trump continued his apparent attempts at the resurrection of the ghost of Richard Nixon.

        Nixon, was under ever increasing pressure over Viet Nam and increasing awareness that, except for, possibly, Sammy Davis Junior, most Black Americans ( and a fair number if White ones) didn’t really care for him and that he needed to find some sort of unifying catch phrase on which to build support for the second election campaign. He, or more likely an unidentified speechwriter, coined a phrase which Donald Trump reiterated last night.

  

      In October 1969, less than year into Nixon’s first term, there were more massive anti-war demonstrations. With his post inaugural grace period (or “honeymoon” as politicos sometimes call the first six months of a Presidential term) over,  anti-war sentiment was rising and, like LBJ before him, Richard Nixon remained committed to what many Americans, by then including a steadily increasing stream of vocal former draftee veteran survivors, were calling the wrong war, fought for the wrong reason (defense of J.F. Dulles “domino theory”), in the wrong place.

        Within just a few months after being sworn in, Nixon had authorized a series of clandestine bombings over the non-combatant states of Laos and Cambodia. When the news of these broke in the US, they were justified/rationalized as being targeted at Viet Cong “havens” inside these nations. To many it seemed analogous to Canadians bombing New Hampshire because Canadian criminals were hiding there. While evaluations vary widely on the final impact of carpet bombing areas which included thousands of Cambodian civilians, most historians are in accord that the destabilization of the Cambodian government and the rise of a brutal regime under the Khmer Rouge Communist insurgents  ultimately resulted in the death of roughly 1 million Cambodians. (see “The Killing Fields”)

        While Nixon was concerned about domestic order, he was also concerned that it seemed many Americans were becoming strongly disaffected with him over the “Menu” bombings with racial issues a close second. He had often iterated as a campaign promise that he had a “secret” plan to end the war, and it wasn’t happening.  He also recalled the Presidential campaign of George Wallace of Alabama as a third-party candidate in 1968, and had, with the help of willing party hacks, crafted what would become known as the “southern strategy.”

          This was what was refined, later, by Republican strategist Lee Atwater, master of “dirty tricks,” into a series of campaign tactics which were basic to getting votes for Regan and both Bushes. Atwater’s “finest hour” was the infamous and racist Willie Horton ad used in the 1988 campaign to destroy Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, Even though Atwater died in 1991, his tradition of half-truths and smears survives well into the 21^st century in the personages of Roger Ailes, Roger Stone, Sean Hannity, Rudy Giuliani, and, especially, Donald Trump who, needing no Lee Atwater, makes up his own lies, usually ad lib.   

        For Nixon, the Southern Strategy was a sort of reaching out to Southern Whites with language which said, “I’m saying “this” (“Law and Order” for example) but you know what I really mean (“For white people”)”  It’s called “dog whistle” politics, and one of the key coded messages was delivered in a speech of November, 1969, following the first of what would be an escalating series of anti-war demonstrations leading up to, in May of 1970, 4 deaths at Kent State University.     

        Nixon said, in part, "And so tonight, to you, the great silent majority, my fellow Americans, I ask for your support." (Several years later, sham Pastor and televangelist Jerry Falwell would morph the term into “moral majority.”)  Exactly what Nixon meant, only Nixon knew, but to his supporters it connoted being part of a group who shared similar values. They, especially, he hoped Southern Whites, would “get” that Nixon intended racial superiority to be one of those concepts, law and order (again along racial lines) another. Along the way, he hoped this group spirit would also continue supporting the War in Vietnam until he could hammer out a “peace with honor” (his words).

        Yeah, I know, “So what, Mike?”  Well, last night an embattled and embittered narcissist resurrected the same phrase in a rally (read that as “partially taxpayer funded campaign event”) in Tulsa.  Like Nixon, facing dwindling support with an election on the horizon, Trump appealed to the “silent majority.”  

        Anyone literate and even marginally politically aware must grasp that, like Nixon, Trump is desperately appealing to the  electorate's baser instincts of greed and selfishness" as well as the racial divisiveness which Trump has displayed throughout -  I was going to say “his term” here, but it’s a lifelong trait with Trump.

        To say “majority” and link that with “good” is to assert the existence of a “minority” (and everyone knows who minorities are) and suggest that they are somehow children of a lesser God. They are people in America who are not white, is the message. If the majority is moral, then surely the minority must be less so.

        With Nixon, a large portion of emotional makeup of the man was his lifelong inferiority complex. Oddly the somewhat similar actions of Donald Trump are driven by the diametric opposite. He has a narcissistic personality, cultivated by being a child of privilege, the chosen one, reared and given just under half a billion by a racist father who was himself a tax cheat. It seems an almost undistinguishable difference since the actions are similar, but one can almost feel somewhat sorry for Nixon - poor farm kid, second fiddle to an older brother in hid father’s eyes, loved his mother (every public mention of her involved the line “My mother was a saint”) military veteran, struggling most of his life to get up the hill and, moreover, to be loved.

       Trump, on the other hand, was born on the hilltop, prep school reared, draft dodger, rarely mentions parental memories, demands, not hopes, to be adored, and is desperate not to be dragged off the hill, trying to stay there by pandering to those at the bottom with whom, unlike Nixon, he can never even identify and who, in fact, he loathes, except when they vote.

Either way, it is America who pays the price.

         

The Real Reasons

       This is another of those “started out small and just kept growing” posts. After several paragraphs on Facebook, I decided to word process and blog it. It was triggered by the incredibly naïve meme below and the responses to it.  

       First, and from his own mouth, he said he was going to "fix" (immigration, trade, deficit, racism, etc.) so either he lied to get elected or he's incompetent  or, my best guess, both are correct(most likely ).

       We tend to forget that these people only serve as long as they are reelected. Their job is to represent the voters who put them there, Obviously, these folks have done that for their state or district. If you (other voters in other states) don't like them, you differ with their constituency. That's your problem, those who scream "term limits" apparently have no idea that they're only there because a majority of the voters in their state sent them there, 

       There are specific term limits: 6 years in the Senate and 2 in the House. It seems that the real issue is that someone doesn't like another who serves a long time.... , that is, if they're of another party or have ideas one doesn't like. All the folks in the picture except Trump are Democrats. This meme would imply that they are responsible for those “problems not solved for decades." 

       It would be nice to hear from someone on the right just exactly what they think these “problems” are, but they are as a rule unable to put their discontent into words; so I’ll try, based on what I hear and see from them

       Start with  the fact that none of those folks on the left are bigots or racists, while the guy on the right has been, ever since he and his dad refused to rent to Blacks in their apartment buildings. Some current problems of race, such as voter suppression are all Republican in origin. If you think there’s a race problem, I suggest you look in the mirror, or at Donald Trump, who even when he’s trying to suck up to minorities, is offensive. It was Congressional Republicans who attempted to terminate the Voting Rights Act. There’s only one conceivable explanation for that; ask Mitch McConnell.

        Likewise with all the screaming Trump is doing over mail-in ballots, remember (it’s painful, but try anyway) that shortly after his inauguration, Trump appointed a hand-picked commission to investigate what he had claimed was “rampant voter fraud.” When the commission, whose mission was to prove his point, returned and said, “We couldn’t find any” He terminated them and suppressed the results. Remember, if it doesn’t fit Trump’s preferred narrative, it's “fake news” or “You’re fired.”

       So how about trade? Obama negotiated and signed the Trans- Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was sort of like NAFTA (signed into law by Bush 41) for Asia. Trump immediately withdrew us from it. Why? Like everything else Obama, it had to go. 

       Along the way, and against the advice of basically every credentialed Economist in the country, he launched a tariff war with China, which continues, three years later. The sole effect so far has been to cause a slew of soybean farmers to trash their crops, because China simply found another market (Brazil) without punitive tariffs.  America’s soybean farmers may never recover. So far Trump’s trade war has cost the US about $35 billion (9 zeros!) solely in unbudgeted emergency farm subsidies. The best estimate is that the tariffs have also loaded about $875 annually, per household, (an aggregate $123 billion) in additional retail costs, not to mention far greater negatives for a number of large American manufacturers such as 3M, Ford, and others.  Meanwhile Trump renegotiated a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico which was lifted, conceptually, almost chapter and verse from the hated Obama TPP agreement. But it has Trump’s name on it now!

        But what about illegal immigration? Surely no one did anything about that until Trump, right? Actually, there are two separate methods by which a person who has entered or is arrested for illegal entry is returned to the state of origin. The Bush (43) administration moved toward removing people from the country with a court order. While it is commonly thought of as deportation, it’s technically referred to now by the government as a "removal." (sounds "nicer" huh?) A “return” occurs if people attempt to enter the country, and are turned away, often without a hearing before an immigration judge. That procedure used to be known as a "voluntary departure" but is now called a "return" by the government. While Trump has slandered several previous administrations, claiming they did too little, the numbers tell a starkly different story.

       The last year for which a comparison can be made is 2018. The numbers, regardless of what Trump has said repeatedly, contradict him. Here are the real figures:

Clinton: removals per year average for 8 years: 108,706

Bush: removals per year average for 8 years: 251,567

Obama: removals per year average for 8 years: 383,307 (no kids in cages)

Trump: removals per year average to date: 275,725 (too many kids in cages)

Note: 383,307 is a larger number than 275,725

My point? Regardless of how you feel on the subject, Obama actually did more and far more humanely, than Trump has done, but you’d never know it listening to the Red Hat hate squad.

        Next, consider Trump’s ludicrous campaign statement, “I’ll be too busy to play golf,” stated in various versions while slandering Obama. As it turns out, by the way, Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Dwight Eisenhower both played far more golf than Obama, Wilson just under 4 times as many rounds, even while WWI was underway!

Obama averaged a round of golf every 8.8 days, the majority of it near DC, (military bases, 74% of the time) where a car ride got him to the course. Trump has averaged a round of golf every 4.2 days. Yeah, that’s right, the man who dissed Barack Obama for playing golf plays twice as often as Obama did, and uses Air Force One to do it most of the time at a total taxpayer cost of, so far, over $140 million. He is, by any standard, the liar in chief, at least where golf is concerned.  

       The mantra of “tax and spend” Democrats implies that the Democrats are wasting our tax dollars by spending on such issues as clean water, health care and environmental issues. It is, or should, be painful for Republicans, if they have a shred of integrity and acknowledge facts when presented, to face the reality which is: The last President to balance a budget was a Democrat, Bill Clinton. He left office with actual deficit reduction in sight. Enter Bush 43. His unnecessary war ballooned the deficit even more than Reagan’s tax cut, recession and Star Wars military spending.

        Obama had the disadvantage of shitty timing, taking office at the pit of the Great Recession with record mortgage defaults and a huge deficit the day he was sworn in due to TARP obligations undertaken by Bush 43. I’m not saying it (TARP) was unnecessary, but Obama was blamed by many, who knew no better, for Bush’s law. 

       That didn’t stop Republican criticisms of bailouts for “those kind of people” Yes, they bitched publicly about extending unemployment and whined about the fictional “Obama Phones” (a law passed by Bush 43!) they whined about welfare and food stamps, even though Obama signed no legislation increasing either, but were oddly mum when it came to bailouts for the huge commercial banks who started the whole housing bubble collapse. Obama had record deficits during the worst of the recession, but we were well into strong recovery by late 2013.  The U.S. economy typically added more than 250,000 jobs each month in 2014 and 227,000 a month in 2015.

        The economy under Trump’s first two years simply continued growth on almost precisely the same slope. Oddly enough, by 2014, the deficit was down to pre-Obama figures, but by Trump’s first year and for three straight, it has grown larger. In 2020, even without COvid, which has had a huge impact, Trump’s deficit was on a schedule to exceed Obama’s worst mid- recession figure, all while Trump bragged about the economy. 

       

       The reason? Primarily decreased federal income due to an unnecessary tax cut for those who never needed it. Per Trump’s bait and switch tax plan, the break for middle and low-income families expires in a couple of years but continues for the wealthy. Again tragically, many Red Hats will tell you they remember the “good old Eisenhower years”, conveniently forgetting (if they ever knew) that the highest marginal tax rates then were as high as 90%. These are the same morons who now scream “Socialist” when an AOC or Liz Warren proposes raising highest marginal rates to 75%. But as Ron White says, “you can’t fix stupid!”

       Ok, what else. Oh, Oh, I know! How about socialized medicine? Many Red Hats scream their lungs out about it then gladly accept …. wait for it….Medicare, which is almost the textbook definition of socialized medicine. American families spend a higher percentage of their total income on medical related items than any other comparable nation, with lower consumer satisfaction (by actual surveys conducted by US companies.  

       So, what’s left? There must be something that has been all the Democrat’s fault for decades. I mean the meme can’t just be full of shit, …can it?  OK last chance, “Leadership?”  Nope, a quick look at the horrible Trump response to Covid 19 says otherwise. I’ve written this elsewhere but it bears repeating: The Obama administration, contrary to Mitch McConnell’s claim, did leave the Trump staff a “Play Book” for a pandemic, which was based on a “super flu” model. It specified recommended steps, organizations to involve, etc. Moreover, using a new “change of command” procedure written by the Obama administration, and using this play-book, Obama’s staff actually did a run through of what to do, how to do it, and who to involve. Trump couldn’t be bothered to personally be involved, but he sent two Cabinet level folks to be there. One was Rick Perry, former Texas governor, candidate, imbecile,  and Energy Secretary who, unfortunately by the time Covid 19 appeared, had also been one of participants in the Trump revolving door of resignations. So, no Perry to tell about the book and the plan. 

       Here’s where it gets good and the real Mitch McConnell comes to light: The other cabinet level participant in the pandemic dry run was Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao. So, what, you ask? So, Elaine Chao is Mrs. Mitch McConnell. Now, she might not tell him everything, but his claim of “no pandemic playbook” which is the standard Trump “blame it on Obama” ploy, is simply horse shit. His wife knew.  

       So, looking back, and trying my best to identify the “problems they haven’t solved for decades”, there are two final observations. First: let’s just pick a number of decades, say 4. That’s 1980 to 2020. Twenty four of those years have been under Republican Presidents. More than half of those 40 years, the US Senate has also had a Republican majority. For exactly half of those 40 years each party has held the majority in the House.

        Here’s a quick lesson in how things work. The Senate Majority leader can simply, at will, refuse to consider a bill. McConnell has done this to hundreds of bills during the current administration simply because the Republicans lost the majority in the House. Then his King, Donald the Vain, bitches about “do nothing Democrats.”

        The Democratically controlled House has passed, and sent to the Senate, about 400 bills, many with wide bi-partisan support, as of November 2019. 80% or so have died there!  McConnell calls himself the “grim reaper” of Democratic legislation he derides as socialist, but many of the bills that never see the Senate floor are bipartisan issues, like a universal background check bill which 75% of NRA members favor, net neutrality, and reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

       Ok, that’s enough for you MAGA people to consider at one sitting, so tell me again why the folks on the left are responsible for not solving these “problems.”  And finally, consider that all I have written here is factual, documented and in no way “Fake News” and ask yourself, “Why is Donald Trump actually making these same things worse?” Because he is.

A Far Better Idea

Reposted in its entirety from today’s Washington Post. There is a brief comment from me somewhere near the middle. I do this only because one cannot read the article without subscribing. And this is worth reading. This not a “defund the police” article, and I don’t support that extremist mantra.  (This is in my blog format to conserve space on the FB page)

As Camden’s police chief, I scrapped the force and started over. It worked. The city needed guardians, not warriors.

By J. Scott Thomson

J. Scott Thomson, the police chief in Camden, N.J., from 2008-2019, is executive director of global security for Holtec International.

June 18, 2020 at 10:30 a.m. EDT

        “I was the chief of police in Camden, N.J., when we concluded the most violent year in our history. In 2012, we tallied 67 homicides, 172 shooting victims and 175 open-air drug markets. Children couldn’t walk safely to school. Cops left crime scenes unattended to respond to the next shooting; it was nonstop. Camden was ranked the most dangerous city in the country, with a murder rate more than 18 times the national average. More people were killed in our town of 77,000 than were killed that year in Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Hampshire and Wyoming combined.

        “And police were not always helping. The city needed guardians, but officers often saw themselves as warriors seeking to dominate criminals through toughness. Citizens didn’t trust us, and efforts to arrest our way to law and order clearly weren’t working. As chief, I was handcuffed by legacy work rules and binding arbitrator decisions that made it difficult to hold officers accountable for misconduct or poor performance (ed: italics are mine), I couldn’t even reassign officers on desk duty to the street to suppress spiking gun violence.

        “So, we started from scratch. We let every city police officer go and created a new department with new rules in 2013. By agreement with Camden County, the city ceased to fund its department and instead paid the county to police the city of Camden. We required all officers to apply as new hires (most officers from the old force got jobs, but not all) and committed to a new relationship between Camden’s police and its citizens, around 95 percent of whom are minorities.

        “It worked. At the end of 2019, homicides in Camden were down 63 percent, and total crime is the lowest it has been in decades. Fewer mothers are burying children, and flagrant drug crime is radically reduced. Here’s how we did it.

       “Camden residents and their police officers had long eyed one another warily. Police violence and the failure to hold officers accountable sparked devastating riots in the ’60s and ’70s, and bad feelings lingered for decades. Then, a budget shortfall forced the city to lay off 46 percent of the city police department in 2011 — 168 officers — and demote the majority of the department’s command staff.

        “Over the next two years, in response to a combined fiscal and public safety crisis, the state, county and city agreed to disband the existing force and start a new one. They asked me to run it. Any officer who wanted to be considered for the new force, including me, had to fill out a 50-page application, take psychological and physical tests and pass an interview process that was specifically created from community focus-group surveys about what community residents wanted in their police officers.”

(ed:  I have blogged at length on this subject, specifically, my belief that the wrong persons, in some, if not most, cases for the wrong reasons, seek law enforcement employment, not to help, but to satisfy a far more base impulse. In too many cases we have given guns and the assumed “implied immunity” shield to persons who should never, ever, have been hired. Some departments have tolerated repeated bad behavior with simply written warnings. Where unions are to blame for this shield, they too, must be held accountable) 

        “Base compensation remained comparable, but initially, salary enhancements like shift-differential and specialized unit pay were restructured and certain benefits were reduced. Although the police officer’s union has since returned, initially the new officers came on without a union contract.

       “Cops prevent violence. But they aren’t the only ones who can do it. As chief, I was no longer bound by the old work rules. As a new department, our political support was unprecedented. When the union reappeared, I enjoyed a partnership with leaders there who cared about the community as much as the welfare of their member officers. We were building culture as opposed to changing it. Although it took us more than a year to return to our pre-2011 staffing levels, the initial increase of about 50 additional officers enabled us to instantly boost our presence in the community. I could now accomplish in a few days policy and operational changes — things like codifying the requirement that officers de-escalate encounters before using force — that would have taken years in the old department.

       “We knew that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results was insanity, so we tried new approaches: Commanders were forbidden from using the phrase “we’ve always done it this way,” because we now operated under the assumption that the old way was wrong. We deployed ice cream trucks and held block parties to build trust between officers and the residents of the neighborhoods they patrolled. The ideology that underpinned these strategies was to create safe environments by getting people to flood the streets they once abandoned. Residents became much more willing to share information that made us smarter in reducing crime. We enlisted former drug dealers returning home from prison to share with kids how to avoid some of the mistakes that they had made.

        “Instead of a patrol division solely focused on responding to calls, every cop became a community officer: It was understood that their job responsibilities also included building relationships. New officers were required to knock on doors and introduce themselves to residents. How could we address people’s concerns if we didn’t first know what they were? An officer who spent three to four hours at headquarters processing a meaningless offense wasn’t advancing safety or trust. But an officer who is visible and approachable — one who eschews polarizing tactics — significantly alters the chemistry of that environment for the better and creates the peace dividend police desperately need today.

       “Of course, we used the latest technology to ensure our officers were working efficiently and well — real-time data that I could remotely monitor 24/7 to track officers’ activity and location. We decided that deterring crime was more important than making arrests, and that is how we eliminated about 150 open-air drug markets: You can’t sell drugs with a uniformed cop standing on the same corner.

        “As we got to know our neighbors better, we shifted from enforcing the law upon them to upholding the law with them. Part of this was about eliminating counterproductive policing routines: I directed internal affairs to investigate the department’s top five ticket-writing cops each month, because handing a hefty traffic fine to someone who’s scraping by can be life-altering, and not in a way that protects the community. Our preference was to issue warnings. The state American Civil Liberties Union chapter and community residents explained that some of our low-level-offense enforcements were making things worse. We listened. Residents responded with even more communication and assisted us to increase gun seizures by 185 percent within the first few months. As citizens trusted us more, they shared more intelligence with us to make their streets safer. This helped us lift our murder-solve rate from a dismal 16 percent to 61 percent.

        “We developed de-escalation training based upon the Police Executive Research Forum’s ICAT principles for Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics. Sanctity of human life and the Hippocratic ethos of “first, do no harm” were guiding principles. We taught officers how to use restraint in incidents in which deadly force may have been legally justified but wasn’t generally necessary if they were smart. And when that last resort was essential, we rendered medical aid immediately after an officer-involved shooting and transported the wounded suspects to the trauma center to save their lives.

        “There’s a raging debate right now about “defunding” the police, but it’s missing the point. Communities need police. What they don’t need is a cop with a warrior’s psyche and an occupier’s mentality. Camden’s transformation wasn’t about getting rid of police or reducing their authority. It was about increasing our legitimacy by convincing citizens that we understood our role. We didn’t reinvent policing so much as reset it to what it always should have been.

       “Policing works in a democratic society only when it has the consent of the people. The old Camden city police department had forgotten that. Many departments in this country have long assumed that their legitimacy is automatic and that the problem is with the public, not us. But citizens’ disdain can change only if we change first.”

News and Views 06/17/20

        Typically, I make breakfast for Emily and me, then feed the whining, sniveling cats who are, according to them, starving because no one has fed them for a month or two. I then do the Sudoku, Jumble and crossword (in that order) before reading the day’s news.  Sometimes I find something amusing to scribble about, more often recently, not. Sometimes I putter around, musing the news, and then get around to it. Today is one of those.

        First, a word or several re: one (of too many) of our fair state’s political embarrassments, Matt Gaetz. This member of Congress, who allegedly represents Florida’s 1st Congressional district, only has no criminal record because his several DUIs were quashed because daddy was president of the Florida Senate. Recognized as a blustering bully while in the Florida legislature, he has continued in that role in the US House, although with his olfactory appendage firmly ensconced in the Trumpian sphincter, it’s difficult to imaging him having time for anyone or anything else.

         This isn’t new. In 2018 during a gun control hearing, Gaetz, a darling of the NRA, got into a shouting match with two fathers whose kids were among the 17 victims killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. During the public hearing, Gaetz was rightfully jeered by the crowd after suggesting that a southern border wall will somehow protect us from school shootings, for which he was called out by Parkland parents Manuel Oliver and Fred Guttenberg. Gaetz bullied the parents and attempted to have Oliver ejected from the public hearing.

        This is made even more ludicrous in light of the fact that Gaetz has, on one occasion, staged a photo op with a high school student who was bullied, proclaiming that bullying actions (such as his own deportment on numerous occasions!) are wrong.

        Not content with his role as Trump Toady of the House, He apparently has chosen to pick a fight with Ron Perlman. Like many Americans, myself included, Mr. Perelman, an actor of some renown, has been vocal in his support of the need for police reform and against racism. Gaetz’s reaction to this free expression was to twitter negatively about Perlman’s role as a white supremacist in the TV series Sons of Anarchy. Implying that a role played by an actor is indicative of the nature of the person is insanity even, for Matt Gaetz. At this point apparently feeling sorry for Gaetz, a fresh moron entered the fray – Senator Ted Cruz, who also suggested that Perlman should wrestle Congressman Jim Jordan (14 years Perlman’s junior) because Jordan and Perlman had some discussion related to standing before soccer games and the US soccer team. It’s enough to make you shake your head. A Senator and Congressman gang bullying an actor who, at 70 can still kick both their asses.

         And as an afterthought, if the individual is truly characterized by a role, Tom Cruise drinks blood, Robert Downey Jr is Black, and Hugh Jackman is (pick one) Jean Valjean or P.T. Barnum and probably has retractable adamantium claws.

       In case you missed it, here is Cruz’s tweet, uninvited and out of the blue:

“Listen Hellboy. You talk good game when you’ve got Hollywood makeup & stuntmen. But I’ll bet $10k—to the nonpolitical charity of your choice—that you couldn’t last 5 min in the wrestling ring w/ @Jim_Jordan w/o getting pinned. You up for it?  Or does your publicist say too risky?”

(It should be pointed out that Jim Jordan was an intercollegiate wrestler and coach.)

 Cruz at 49, and 21 years younger than Perlman, got this response:

“I tell you what teddy boy, since mentioning jim jordan and wrestling is... problematic, why don’t we say fuck him and just make it you & me. I’ll give 50k to Black Lives Matter and you can keep all the tax-payer money you were thinking of spending.”

My bet is on the guy on the left, not the pimp on the right

Cruz wisely had no response which involved him putting his money or his body where his mouth had taken him. Apparently bullying is contagious, huh?

        On another issue, and one  with far less humor involved, Boris Johnson, The UK Prime Minister and walking bad hair day, broke completely with Trump and said he considered that any efforts by Israel to annex any more currently Palestinian territory was a violation of international law. Period.

        This of course runs counter to the “peace” plan delineated by Trump’s poster boy for undeserved or unmerited nepotism, Jared Kushner.

       Kushner’s plan, for which Trump would love to get a Nobel Peace Prize (gag) was derived after Kushner sought and diametrically disregarded advice from every learned expert in the field.  It involves an “almost exclusively beneficial for Israel, Palestinians, not so much”, theme, which is unsurprising since Kushner is Jewish and his father in law has, for decades curried favor in that community. Kushner and a small circle of Trump officials rejected the traditional process path of brokering talks between the two parties that could lead to a joint proposal, choosing instead to hand one down from Washington. The plan would discard the longtime goal of granting the Palestinians a full-fledged state. Trump called it “a win-win” for both sides; Palestinian leaders immediately rejected it. Some have voiced the opinion that the real purpose was to buck up election possibilities for Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is already facing corruption charges at home.

        Kushner’s plan would guarantee that Israel would control a unified Jerusalem as its capital and not require it to uproot any of the settlements in the West Bank that have provoked Palestinian outrage and alienated much of the world. It also fragments what is now considered a single boundary and specifies Israeli “enclaves” within this now significantly “gerrymandered” and oddly shaped “Palestinian state.

        It’s very much as if Massachusetts was redrawn into a somewhat smaller and misshapenly odd partially deflated basketball shape and was told that Connecticut would control 12 sovereign cities within that new border. Jordan disapproves, but of course Trump’s Saudi “friends” are sort of OK with it.

       One hopes fervently that the Nobel Committee has the courage to do the right thing or, more specifically, eschew the wrong thing.

        Speaking of Benjamin Netanyahu, the ostensibly corrupt Israeli has petitioned to be allowed to accept a $2 million “gift” from a Detroit financier to help defray the cost of his criminal corruption trial in Israel.

And that, dear reader, is about all I can stomach for today.