Keystone XL One Last Time

 

                     XL One Last Time

                                                               

           I have previously written at some length about the reality of the Keystone XL pipeline vs the Fox News version. I have simply had it with those who, desperate to criticize the Biden re-cancellation of Keystone XL, blame it for current high gas prices. The project, which most Americans seem to think would initiate the piping of Alberta (Canada) tar sand oil across the United States, would, in fact, only be an addition to an already existing Keystone pipeline system which has been in operation across parts of the Midwest for years. The pipeline is owned by a Canadian company, TC Energy, and the Provincial Government of Alberta, Canada, yet, in its early construction stages several states allowed this Canadian entity to exert Eminent domain claims over US citizens to acquire right of way!

        The existing pipeline, three phases of it, runs east from Hardisty, Alberta, across Saskatchewan, across half of Manitoba, then drops almost straight down to Houston, Tx with a branch pipeline from Steele City Nebraska to southern Illinois. This system has been in operation since 2012, with the Neb.-Ill. branch coming online in 2016. It carries Tar sand oil (also known as bitumen), the dirtiest, costliest to refine,  crude petroleum product existing. The green line is the proposed XL, all the rest is in operation.

           

Unlike conventional crude oil, which occurs as a “pumpable” liquid within spaces in solid rock, oil sands are a mixture of semi-solid oil, sand, clay, and water. The viscous crude, called bitumen, can’t be pumped as it exists. Extraction methods use more energy and more water and are much more costly than conventional oil drilling. For deposits near the surface, the sand and oil mixture, also called “tar sands” must be   strip-mined, then processed with hot water and solvents to release the bitumen. For deeper deposits, steam is injected underground to allow the bitumen to flow into extraction wells. National Geographic has called exploiting oil sands the “world’s most destructive oil operation.”

The mining of bitumen laden tar sands strips away forest cover and topsoil, leaving acres of barren, black ground. The post-processing waste (“tailings”) are piped into large ponds, which then contain an acutely toxic mixture of water, sand, hydrocarbons, ammonia, acids, and heavy metals. Numerous scientific studies have detected toxins in the aquatic environment downstream from oil sands production, and a 2017 analysis estimated that cleanup costs will eventually exceed the value of oil sands royalties collected by the province of Alberta.

 The proposed XL would be larger and would greatly reduce the amount of pipeline in Canada (and the risk of spillage) by following the existing route south to the point where it currently turns due east, instead dropping south by southwest across Montana, South Dakota, and mid-Nebraska where it would join the current route. The real reason? Tar sand oil is heavy and sinks into the ground, can pollute the aquifer and is almost impossible to completely clean up. The existing Keystone lines already have the capacity to deliver 590,000 barrels per day to the Midwest refineries and 700,000 to the Texas coast. But the oil is expensive to extract and process, and it has a lower market value compared to U.S. crude oil. As of December of 2021, 300,000 of those barrels were simply “passing through” to be transferred daily to tankers at the port of Houston for export.

So why the XL? Simple, really. Canada would rather ship this dangerous pollutant through the US than through their own pristine middle provinces. In Canada, Keystone XL would barely graze southwestern Saskatchewan before dropping down into Montana, cutting off any new pipeline in either Manitoba or Saskatchewan.

So, what could go wrong? Well… TransCanada arbitrarily and improperly adjusted estimated spill factors to produce an estimate of one major spill on the 1,673 mi of pipeline about every five years, but federal data on the actual incidence of spills on comparable pipelines indicate a more likely average of almost two major spills per year. (The existing Keystone I pipeline had one major spill and eleven smaller spills in just its first year of operation.)" There were major concerns that a pipeline spill could threaten the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world's largest freshwater reserves; the Ogallala Aquifer spans eight states, provides drinking water for two million people, and supports $20 billion in agriculture.

A University of Nebraska professor, John Stansbury, conducted an independent analysis which provides more detail on the potential risks for the Ogallala Aquifer. His conclusions? Stansbury concludes that the original safety assessments provided by TransCanada were intentionally misleading. His opinion?  "We can expect no fewer than two major spills per state during the 50-year projected lifetime of the pipeline. These spills could release as much as 180,000 barrels of oil each." Trans Canada also failed to factor in the fact that Portions of the XL pipeline would also cross an active seismic zone that had a 4.3-magnitude earthquake as recently as 2002. Oops!

So, what has actually happened so far on the existing Keystone system?

In 2016, about four hundred barrels (18,000 gallons) were released from the original Keystone pipe network via leaks, due to what was referred to as a "weld anomaly". Since all such welds should be radiographed, this casts TransCanada’s quality assurance processes in doubt. 

On November 17, 2017, the pipeline leaked around 9,600 barrels onto farmland near Amherst, South Dakota. The oil leak is the largest seen from the Keystone pipeline in the state. Investigators found that a metal tracked vehicle had run over the area, damaging the pipeline. An additional federal investigation found that 408,000 US gallons of crude had spilled at the site, which was about twice what TransCanada had reported. It was the seventh-largest onshore oil spill since 2002.

In April 2018, Reuters reviewed documents that showed that Keystone had "leaked substantially more oil, and more often, in the United States than the company indicated to regulators in risk assessments before operations began in 2010."

On October 31, 2019, a rupture occurred near Edinburg, North Dakota, spilling an estimated 9,120 barrels. Where the 45,000 US gallons that were not recovered from the 0.5-acre containment had spread, five acres were rendered essentially useless. This leak occurred while the South Dakota Water Management Board was in the middle of hearings on whether or not to allow TC Energy to use millions of gallons of water to build camps to house temporary construction workers for Keystone XL construction. Bad timing, huh?

On December 7, 2022, 4 days ago as I write this, TC Energy initiated a shutdown of the Keystone Pipeline System in response to an alarm signaling a loss in pressure. TC Energy later confirmed that there had been a release of oil into a creek located in Washington County, Kansas, twenty miles to the south of Steele City, Nebraska. About 588,000 gallons of tar sands crude was released. This leak was the largest in the United States in nearly a decade. Cleanup is ongoing but, being heavy, unrefined tar sand oil, it will likely never really be restored to former conditions.

                 Cleanup efforts in Kansas

So why not just continue the existing pipeline east to the Canadian east coast or build a new one across Canadian soil to the west coast, avoiding dealing with the US at all? TransCanada’s Energy East project had proposed to do exactly that, promising to carry 1.1 million barrels per day from Alberta to Canada’s east coast. But the plan was scrapped in 2017 amid strong opposition from indigenous communities, environmental advocates, and communities through which the pipeline would have passed (in other words, Canadians who didn’t want the possible environmental damage.) Going west, the Northern Gateway pipeline, proposed in 2008, would have taken the westward route, ending up in Kitimat, British Columbia. It would have cut almost 1400 miles off the current Keystone route. It was also killed for the same reason. “Why take a chance of polluting here when we can ship it south across the USA?”

So why not refine tar sand oil in Canada? Canada hasn’t built a new refinery in over 40 years, even though the Canadian   Communications, Energy and Paperworker’s Union estimates that 18,000 Canadian jobs are lost for every 400,000 barrels of bitumen that are exported. Why? It is expensive to build a refinery and only a specialized refinery can process bitumen and turn it into refined products such as fuels. Few refineries in Canada can do it. None of the refineries in eastern Canada can refine large quantities of bitumen. Not only does refining of tar sands significantly increase air pollution, but it also produces an especially dirty, carbon-intensive byproduct known as petroleum coke. Extracting bitumen from tar sands—and the refining of it into gasoline—is significantly costlier and more difficult than extracting and refining liquid oil. The Canadian position would seem to be, “Let someone else take the environmental risk, do the dirty work, and make the investment!”

The conclusion? As a risk/reward exercise Keystone XL is a loser for the US. Canada has more oil (175 billion barrels estimated) than anyone but the Saudis, but it is far dirtier. They currently produce more refined oil in their eastern refineries from what they import than they use, making them a net energy exporter. It is simply easier and cheaper for them to ship high risk, high sulfur, hard to refine, tar sand oil elsewhere, since the refining process is costly and a serious polluter.

 XL would have been a good deal for Canada and a bad one for the US, regardless of the misinformation to the contrary promulgated by those on the Far Right, whose primary objective is to attempt to discredit any decision which is even remotely environmentally based and Democratic in origin. The worst of these canards, as I said earlier, is the allegation that there is a gasoline shortage related to the cancellation of the Keystone XL. Its output, had it been built (and it would still be years from completion), would largely be sold overseas, profiting Canada, since we, the US, are still exporting oil, even now and US Energy company profits are at all-time highs.

Amen!

Hot Topics

 

                                    Hot Topics

Today’s op-ed by Democrat turned Republican, turned idiot, Betsy McCaughey, leads with a headline which, as so many from the Right seem to do, implies that the Biden administration is specifically targeting and endangering employee 401K plans.

The headline, specifically written to strike fear into the hearts of anybody with any investments, says “President Joe Biden is going after 401K retirement accounts, risking millions of workers comfortable retirement funds; if you put money in a 401K, beware.” Reading just that, one might well believe that something disastrous and devious is happening in Washington when, in fact, the reverse is true. The Trump administration, catering to the anti-environment tenor of the Republican Party, enacted regulations which not only were aimed at discouraging 401K providers from including entities which invested in environmentally aimed products but actually stipulated that they could not unless they could guarantee that there would be a profit involved. In fact, no fund manager, no matter how brilliant, can guarantee that any investment will always make a profit. Market pressures don't care what fund managers think. No financial adviser can truthfully guarantee profit.

Employers have a legal duty to thoroughly assess funds’ risk and return when picking 401(k) plan investments; for example, they can’t subordinate the fiscal interests of workers in favor of a cause like climate change. The new rules don’t change these duties. What the Biden administration has done is to recommend removal of that Trump era restriction at the request of many financial product providers, employers, employees and at the recommendation of the Secretary of Labor. In essence, every 401K allows employees to choose how their contributions are invested in options provided. Under the Trump restriction some options were simply not available because they were environmentally and sustainability oriented and employees had no option to invest in that sector.

The way Ms. McCaughey puts it implies that The Biden administration is directing that fund providers must invest in companies that “follow left wing policies.” That verbiage, alone, tells you what her real agenda is. She then says, “It is legalized theft; the future return on your investment nest egg is being sacrificed to advance a woke agenda.” First off, the use of the word “woke” here is entirely inappropriate since the dictionary definition of woke mentions racial equality and has nothing to do with environmental activism. Giving Ms. McCaughey her due; she does understand “trigger words.”

Simply put, the Biden removal of the Trump directive is the very opposite of the veritable flood of Trump reversals of Obama policy for no reason other than personal spite. It mandates nothing, but simply allows more leeway for employees and employers to put their money in places the Trump gang didn’t like because it failed to fit their “ignore environmental issues” attitude.

Where, one wonders, was all this heartfelt Republican concern for American workers' financial security  in 2004 to 2008 when investment bankers were bundling incredibly high-risk mortgages and selling them to 401K providers and retirement fund managers as investment grade instruments? That massive failure of appropriate financial market regulation and the recession it precipitated is an indictment of everyone involved. What the Biden administration is seeking to do is simply to increase the options that employers and employees have for where they put their money. Period.

On an even more ridiculous note:

In case you missed it like I did, in late October, the national poster child for dumbass of the year, AKA Fox’s Tucker Carlson, proclaimed that, “The United States is "about to run out of diesel fuel ... by the Monday of Thanksgiving week." "Thanks to the Biden administration’s religious war (religious war??) in Ukraine, this country is about to run out of diesel fuel”, he said, continuing, "There will be no deliveries because there’ll be no trucks, there’ll be no diesel generators and then, invariably, our economy will crash because everything runs on diesel fuel, not on solar panels, not on wind farms — on diesel fuel."

Where to start with this lunatic? First off, not “everything” runs on diesel fuel. Electric power generation stations don't run on diesel fuel. Many trucks don't run on diesel fuel and even fewer cars run on diesel fuel. Having said that, it still would be a serious matter if we were going to run out of diesel fuel. The problem is that Carlson, like most of his Fox News cohort, makes a statement that he knows will scare the hell out of his gullible viewers, omitting the part that proves the statement is simply false. Carlson made his statement based on the amount of diesel fuel that was currently available which, if there wasn't any more diesel fuel made would only get us to about Thanksgiving Day. What he omitted is the fact that there were, at the same time, American refineries continuing to produce more diesel fuel and we continued importing fuel, ergo there was no shortage of diesel fuel, there was not going to be a shortage of diesel fuel and Tucker Carlson is simply a liar. Why would he say that? It was an obvious attempt to influence voters to vote “red.” Didn’t work all that well, huh?

And: 

I'm sure Star Parker means well. I'm sure she's a nice enough young woman. I'm also sure that she doesn't recognize that using religious grounds to define marriage means that she is guilty of the same the theocratically blind approach to government that she maligns in Afghanistan and other places in the world because their religion is different than hers. This is not the first time she has railed about the topic but the almost certain signing of a new federal law certifying that a marriage legally entered into anywhere, regardless of gender of the participants, is legal everywhere, seems to really offend her.

 Ms. Parker rejects the Respect for Marriage Act simply because it doesn't fit her religiously driven idea about what marriage is. Accordingly, she is absolutely free to marry as she sees fit. And now in America everybody else will be accorded the same privilege. When I look at the many ways in which dogmatic religious fervor has damaged humanity over the years it reaffirms the Jeffersonian belief that any established religion is a mistake in a national sense.

 I’m quite sure that MS Parker, a woman of color, is aware that only since 1924, and the USSC decision in Loving v Virginia, can she marry across racial lines, should she so choose. I am not so sure that she is aware that the hundreds of years of prohibition of such a union was largely derived from Christian religious dogma as well. Ms. Parker, as far too many do, seems to suffer from a common ailment, 1) the belief that freedom of religion is a good thing only if it is her religion and 2) Choosing who one loves is only allowed if she agrees with the choice.     

A knowledge of history, while it does tend to show marriage has traditionally been between men and women, also shows that the purpose of a formal marriage is, and has been, even in intensely religious societies such as the Puritans in Massachusetts, a legal procedure to ensure inheritance and property. Our founding fathers in Massachusetts had a civil ceremony which cemented those legal procedures and if they desired, as most of them did, they had a religious ceremony as well. Ms. Parker, in essence says, “What I believe is right and only what I believe can be right. How arrogant and short sighted that is.

And:

I subscribe to the online version of the Washington Post. Contrary to what those of the Right tend to feel, the Post carries op-ed commentary from both sides of the aisle. However, even when I differ with the writer, the columns are generally rancor free and use data to support arguments.

 Today, however there is an exception. The op-ed is headlined: “It’s time the Pentagon ended its Covid vaccine mandate for the military.”  I reflected a bit and couldn’t come up with a single idea that justified this position, so I read the column. The writer, a physician, takes the position that, since the Omicron variant is less affected by the current vaccines, there is no reason to give the shot. She then however acknowledges the development of a more potent one. She then also states that current Covid vaccines, especially the newer ones, both greatly reduce the severity if infected (as in greatly reduce the possibility of hospitalization) and also decrease transmissibility. In a military setting such as, oh I don’t know, maybe a submarine(?), any thing that reduces the likelihood of a crew becoming disabled and requiring hospitalization is a good thing, since hospitals are in short supply underwater, where I spent five years of my life, 90 days at a time.

Some facts: While civilians have the right to refuse vaccination and demonstrate their total lack of good judgement (and die if that is the result) military personnel don’t. Period. How odd is it that some, anti-vaxxers and Trumpists alike have chosen to be critics of mandatory vaccination even though the current Covid vaccines have been shown to be as safe or actually safer than most common vaccines? Could it be political? Of course it is, playing to the “You can’t tell me what to do” mindset of the Red Hat brigades. Well, Jethro, we can tell you what to do. We can make you have a driver’s license or walk. We can require you to have auto insurance. As of now, most civilians are not mandated to be vaccinated, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea.

Choosing to single out the military is far more nonsensical. Every new recruit already gets a slew of shots in basic training. These include measles, mumps, diphtheria, flubicillin, rubella and smallpox. It isn’t voluntary; it is a condition of employment, and the enlistee has signed a contract. If deployed, even in the Submarine Force where we were unlikely to ever contact most diseases, we also got periodic Pertussis, tetanus, Smallpox. (Every 10 years), Typhoid, Yellow fever, and Plague immunizations. They weren’t optional. We got these even if our likelihood of infection was exceptionally low, since any communicable disease can rapidly render a unit ineffective (think USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2020 - 1257 Covid cases, one death). Unfortunately, we still live in a world affected by a global pandemic. Covid is communicable and it is everywhere. Congressmen bitching about mandatory shots for the military are ones who have never served, or they’d know better. For a doctor to do so is even harder to grasp.

And finally, on a lighter note: Why do soccer players scream, writhe, and roll in agony on the ground when they fall, yet are able to hop back up and resume play when the ref fails to call a foul? An NFL wide receiver takes a bone shattering hit, gets up, looks at the guy who hit him and says, “That’s all you got?” I’m just sayin.’   

On Nuclear Power

 

                                        On Nuclear Power

        This is, in essence, a repost from several years ago following the continuing lunacy of too many world wide, such as Germany, decommissioning their safe, economical nuclear power plants and now facing the Russian gas shortage. Their Nuclear industry was by far the safest and most eco-friendly mode of electric power production, other than hydro, available, but "Green" politics got in the way. This is not a rant against environmental conscientiousness but rather a truthful look at a much maligned (due to ignorance) energy source. Generating electrical power with nuclear power plants is the second most economical (after hydro, which is location limited) means of energy in the world, much cheaper and more reliable than solar and wind. The original post begins below.    

        I am sick unto nausea of seeing a Pam Bondi lookalike exhorting me to vote "for energy," followed by a multi-ethnic panel of paid actors who parrot the same party line. What is saddening is that this is presented as if it was just a common sense, non-partisan, effort sponsored from the largesse of the energy industry. Make no mistake - we are held captive by these people to a degree. The fossil fuel purveyors are the money behind these ads. Dig deep enough into the background of this commercial (for that's what it is, in truth), and the Koch Brothers, frackers too numerous to mention, and the coal industry are lurking there.

        Sadly, we, as a nation of sheep, were frightened away from nuclear power by an accident which has had zero measurable effects on the general population or the environment over the subsequent 37 years other than the higher cost of electricity as the utility recouped their self-inflicted monetary loss over the following years. The site was called Three Mile Island, for those with short memories or too few years to remember. Within the same week, a film (The China Syndrome) scared the beJesus out of many who understood little of all that was wrong with it, conceptually.

      I worked in a nuclear industry, the  Submarine Navy, for 26 years as an educator and operator/supervisor. Our hundreds of thousands (more likely millions, by now) of nuclear accident-free operating hours under conditions far more challenging than stationary power generation, are testimony to the safety of the types of reactors used in US nuclear facilities. The Chernobyl tragedy was largely due to the type of reactor involved, and the lack of both judgement and training of those who initiated the event, not the nature of the use of nuclear power. Even the more recent Fukushima catastrophe in Japan was caused by inadequate backup provision for power, and a site location and design which would not have been licensed in the US, nor would a US plant have been at risk of a once in a lifetime tsunami. What passed unnoticed, is that no one died because of nuclear issues of any sort, but several were killed by the initial event (earthquake/tsunami) itself.

        Since its inception in 1948, the U.S. Navy nuclear program has developed twenty-seven different plant designs, installed them in 210 nuclear-powered ships, taken five hundred reactor cores into operation, and accumulated over 5,400 reactor years of operation and 128,000,000 miles safely steamed. For some perspective that's over 550 trips to the moon! Additionally, ninety-eight nuclear submarines and six nuclear cruisers have been recycled, with fuel reprocessed and reclaimed, minimizing waste.

        The U.S. Navy has never experienced a reactor accident. By comparison, there have been more than one hundred fatalities in the US involving Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) one of the "safe" fossil fuels hyped by the Energy Lobby. Between petroleum, LNG and Coal industry accidents, thousands have died, including the flattening of one square mile of Cleveland and 132 dead by an LNG explosion in 1944, and 362 in just one West Virginia coal mine explosion. This of course ignores the continuing litany of cancers caused by carbon fuel off gassing, especially earlier coal fired plants.

        Both solar and wind powers are attractive, no fuel, no carbon, options, but at great carbon and financial price for the initial installation, and for wind power, as the Danes are finding out, a lifetime intense maintenance commitment, in the current state of wind technology. Solar ...well, it only works when the sun is up, and current technology options for energy storage for later use are in their infancy. It will also almost assuredly be shown that while initial solar installations are less costly than wind energy, storage will be far more so. Hydro is of course fuel free, but requires significant altering of the natural course of rivers and the accompanying loss of various habitats, while having the obvious downside of needing high volume flows to maintain output. Hydro is also subject to the effects of changing weather patterns on the amount of water available. The record low levels in Lake Mead are exemplary. In the meantime, safe nuclear energy offers a far better alternative than coal (no carcinogens) and fracking (fewer drill induced earthquakes).

        "Be an energy voter" is partisan to the max while pretending not to be. Don't be suckered.

Trump's Greatest Hits

 

                           Trump’s Greatest Hits                              

    A compendium in his own words demonstrating why Donald Trump was the worst President ever and should be exiled to Bithlo. (For the uninitiated, Bithlo is a  rural Florida hamlet east of Orlando where  the mayor is a possum and hopes and dreams go to die.) 

 Trump is a bigot:

“I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks,” (really? Read on!)

“Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” (!!!)

“Who the f knows? I mean, really, who knows how much the Japs will pay for Manhattan property these days?” (He responded to a real estate question using a racial slur for the Japanese.)

This is court record: He argued in 2016 that Judge Gonzalo Curiel — who was overseeing the Trump University lawsuit — should recuse himself from the case because of his Mexican heritage and membership in a Latino lawyers’ association. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had initially endorsed Trump, later called such comments “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle: “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor. It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.” (And he "loves" black persons?)

Trump is a sexist pig:

Trump on how to handle the fairer sex. “You have to treat ’em like shit,” (Trump quoted by former friend Philip Johnson)

“Rosie’s a person that’s very lucky to have her girlfriend. And she better be careful, or I’ll send one of my friends over to pick up her girlfriend,” Trump continued. “Why would she stay with Rosie if she had another choice?” (Mind numbingly sexist and stupid)

“I’m going to be able to do things for women that no other candidate would be able to do, and it’s very important to me.” (But he didn’t, unless we count packing the USSC with justices who would overturn Roe v Wade, which was done to women, not for them.) 

“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” (Poor Megyn Kelly, apparently bleeding out right on camera.)

“When a man leaves a woman, especially when it was perceived that he has left for a piece of ass—a good one, there are 50 percent of the population who will love the woman who was left.” (What a swine!)

“'I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” (Yuck!)

“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.”

“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything....grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” (Including have an affair with one while your wife is pregnant?)

“I am the greatest” (with apologies to the late Muhammad Ali who actually was)

“'I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” (News flash: Mexico hasn’t paid a cent for the wall)

'My IQ is one of the highest — and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure; it's not your fault.' (This explains why he threatened Warton with a lawsuit if they ever released his actual grades, Additionally the graduating program from Warton lists him as “graduating” with no honors whatsoever)

“I went to the Wharton School of Business…I’m, like, a really smart person. (Really smart individuals don’t have to tell you they are. For another take on this: Wharton professor William T. Kelley had another view. After Kelley’s death, a close friend of Kelley revealed that the professor felt the president was a fool. “Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades, and I remember his emphasis and inflection — it went like this — ‘Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had’)

“Apologizing is a great thing, but you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize sometime hopefully in the distant future if I’m ever wrong.” (Start now, you have a long list!)

'I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down' (How odd it is, that not one person saw him)

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart…I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star, to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius…and a very stable genius at that!”

Writes and speaks like a Fourth grader:

'[The New York Times] don't write good. They have people over there, like Maggie Haberman and others, they don't - they don't write good. They don't know how to write good.  (Turns out he don't talk good either.)

“I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.” (This may be be the most revealing and insulting comment yet, on his sheer willingness to say anything, no matter how inane and insulting which pops into his great orange head. He dodged the draft, citing a non-existent bone spur  with an excuse from a doctor who rented from his (Trump’s) father, and then says he wishes he had a medal awarded only to those who are wounded in military service.)   

“I think I am actually humble. I think I'm much more humble than you would understand.” (Yep, he’s the “humblest” ever, no one knows more about humility then him!)

“Eventually we're going to get something done and it's going to be really, really good.” (He was talking about “his” healthcare bill here, which never in four years saw the light of day, let alone actual Congressional debate)

"I think I could have stopped it because I have very tough illegal immigration policies, and people aren't coming into this country unless they're vetted and vetted properly." (Referring to the events of 911 which were perpetrated by persons legally in the country.)

Trump on sharing his financial success

"I look very much forward to showing my financials, because they are huge." (Yet he is still suing to keep from being forced to do so, and no US Bank will lend to him!)

Trump on Covid-19

“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” (Of course, it will!)

“Within a couple of days,” Trump announced, “[infections are] going to be down to close to zero. One day, it’s like a miracle. It will disappear.” (Still waiting)

Regarding killing coronavirus with ‘light inside the body’: “Suppose that we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” Trump said at a White House coronavirus briefing, before continuing: “Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way.” (Meanwhile Dr Fauci turns his head and vomits. What’s really the joke here is that tanning salons use Ultraviolent lamps, and the sun emits UV rays. By Trump’s lunatic logic, anyone who tans should be COVID free!)

He said, “it’s an amazing thing” that the coronavirus “affects virtually nobody,” (This statement was made literally only a few hours before the United States officially surpassed two hundred thousand deaths from the pandemic. Ignorant and an almost pathological liar – a bad set of faults in President)

"Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? It sounds interesting to me, so we'll see. “But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That's pretty powerful." (Call Alex Jones, maybe he has an answer!)

And, because it shows him at his stumbling , mumbling, semi-literate best: Speaking of his own ‘positive negative’ test result, Trump actually stated that he “tested very positively” during his now-daily Covid-19 test. “In another sense, I tested positively toward negative, right? So no. I tested perfectly this morning, meaning I tested negative. But that's a way of saying it. Positively toward the negative.” (Another “way of saying it” would be “I’m a f***ing moron”)  

“Everybody (Everybody? Really?) says I’ve done a tremendous job with COVID. My leadership has been extraordinary, best in history. My quick actions have all but wiped out the virus, saving millions of lives, and I’ve got the economy ready to roar back to better than ever before. I think a little gratitude would be nice. Maybe a big ‘thank you Mr. President’ is called for. (No, the economy hasn’t “roared back” and the virus is nowhere near “wiped out.” Vaccines have saved millions of lives, aided by social distancing and masks. Anyone believing Trump showed real leadership during the pandemic is obviously suffering from the dumbshit variant.)  

“The closest thing is in 1917, they say, the great pandemic. It certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 to 100 million people. Probably ended the Second World War. All the soldiers were sick.” (First and foremost, the Flu epidemic didn’t end WWI; massive German battlefield losses did, since it was only eight months since the outbreak. However, Trump says it “probably ended WWII” which began twenty-one years later. It should be deeply disconcerting to any sentient person when a college graduate of Trump’s age and office doesn’t know when the two World Wars were fought. This is coincident with Trump asking, according to an aide who was there, while at Normandy, who the combatants were, and referring to them as “losers” for dying in battle after seeing the cemetery.)

Various other ludicrous or dangerous statements:

“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the second amendment [the right to have a gun].” He continued “if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. (The referral to “Second Amendment people” sounded a lot like an encouragement for one to “take out” Ms. Clinton)

"I'm an environmentalist. A lot of people don’t understand that. I think I know more about the environment than most people." - Despite his public stance against the existence of global warming. (Again, claiming to “know more about” something just because he’s a “stable genius.” This is similar to his “I know more about” comments on nuclear power because he has an uncle who actually does. In truth, The Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental rules.  Over four years, the Trump administration dismantled major climate policies and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals. If Trump is an environmentalist, Pee Wee Herman is an NFL linebacker.

Speaking about China's President, who repealed the country's term limit laws. "He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday." (Just like Putin, too, huh? Heaven forbid!)

“We cut taxes more than, you know, the biggest tax cut in history. My Administration and I built the greatest economy in history, of any country, turned it off, saved millions of lives, and now am building an even greater economy than it was before. Jobs are flowing, NASDAQ is already at a record high, the rest to follow. Sit back and watch! (Trump is serially lying here. His was not the biggest tax cut in history, and it has increased the federal deficit by $1 trillion every year since it went into law. As to the “Strongest economy: During the last two years of the Obama administration, annual median household income increased $4,800. This is three times more than the $1,400 increase during the first two years of the Trump administration. Additionally, economic growth through the last eleven Obama quarters was virtually identical to Trump’s first eleven. Unemployment was near historical lows under Trump, and yet growth in gross domestic product was well below what several previous presidents achieved, and other metrics such as wages and business investment ranged from average to simply mediocre.)

“You must go forth into the world, with passion, courage in your conviction, and most importantly be true to yourself. I did it!”

(Trump said this during a Commencement speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Sound familiar? It might, since Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods said it first, in Legally Blonde, during her graduation speech. And no, Trump didn’t attribute the words to her)

Campaigning against Joe Biden: “He is going to do things that nobody ever, would ever think even possible because he’s following the radical left agenda. Take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment. No religion, no anything. Hurt the Bible. Hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns.” (Just the litany of nonsensical and absurd claims about Joe Biden, who is an avowed Catholic, as opposed to Trump who, as an adult has been to church only when he married one of his serial brides.)

“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” (Remember, he still wants to build a hotel in Moscow! Trump signed a letter of intent to develop the building, provisionally named Trump World Tower Moscow, in October 2015.)

When asked what, as President, he would do to help Ukraine  during Russia's invasion Trump spouted this rambling litany of word salad:  “Well what I would do, is I would, we would, we have tremendous military capability and what we can do without planes, to be honest with you, without 44-year-old jets, what we can do is enormous, and we should be doing it and we should be helping them to survive and they're doing an amazing job." (This may be the world record for a non-answer answer.)

“I listen to [Vladimir Putin] constantly using the n word. That’s the n word, and he’s constantly using it: the nuclear word. And we never talk of, we say, ‘Oh, he’s a nuclear power.’ But we’re a greater nuclear power. We have the greatest submarines in the world, most powerful machines ever built. Most powerful, and they got built under me. Most powerful machines ever built, and nobody knows where they are. And you should say, ‘Look, if you mention that word one more time, we’re going to send them over, and we’ll be coasting back and forth up and down your coast.’” And finally, several things leap out here: We (the US military and especially Pentagon planners) never, ever discuss submarine deployment strategies publicly, and neither should an ex- president. Second, Trump’s claim that “They got built under me is diametrically false. No submarine whose construction was authorized under Trump has been commissioned. None, Period. This is a categorical lie and vintage Trump.  Additionally, Russia has only a sometimes ice-bound Arctic coast and a Pacific coast, neither within less than 2000 miles of Ukraine. Without going into more specific details (and I could!) suffice it to say that Trump’s comments on “coastal” patrols are irrelevant from a nuclear standpoint, and just demonstrate the huge scope of his ignorance.

I have assembled this small sampling of Trump’s blithering drivel just to show how, in his own words, he almost screams “I am not even fit to pick up dog turds off the White House lawn.” And he wants to run again in 2024!

Thank you and have a nice day. 

In the Aftermath

 

                                    In the Aftermath

 

        So, what's going on this week other than that election "thingy" on Tuesday.” First (and worst) of all, we still have many Far-Right members of the GOP scurrying to convince the deplorables that the attack on Paul Pelosi was the act of a “lone wolf” and not in any way engendered by their rhetoric. Texas’s Ted Cruz shared a tweet calling the attacker "a hippie nudist from Berkeley" and dismissed the idea that the attack was motivated by right-wing ideology as "absurd." Others have actually claimed the FBI orchestrated the attack as a “false flag” to discredit the GOP’s radical wing. The attacker was a known Far Right loony who might well have killed Speaker Pelosi had she been home. We now have many of the GOP, including multiple members of Congress, treating this incident as Alex Jones did the Sandy Hook school shootings.

This particular flavor of bullshit goes all the way back to well before Donald Trump's pre-election statements of 2016 and has continued right on through to the present. When we got stuck with Donald Trump, we saw a complete departure from presidential restraint and consensus building. What once were the natterings of isolated groups of malcontent morons, became mainstream poison. I've been politically aware since the Eisenhower administration and have never heard an American chief executive be as confrontational, derogatory, or vengeful as Donald Trump.

 Sadly, many of those Americans who have lurked in these shadows harboring feelings of racism, anti-Semitism, and dissatisfaction with the misery of their own lives, have come to feel empowered by this new openness of hate speech. To be frank, in the modern era Trump did not invent this concept of publicly digging into the hidden frustrations and bigotry of some Americans. Dissatisfied Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) went there in 1948, when Harry Truman urged the inclusion a civil rights plank in the Democratic platform. They left the party and ran vile racist, Strom Thurman as an alternate candidate. It should be no surprise that they then became Republicans by 1952, in time to become a thorn in the side of Dwight Eisenhower. Later, Newt Gingrich refined this to a great extent, largely through his own rhetoric and even more so because of his support for people like Rush Limbaugh who became, in essence, “Alex Jones lite.”

When, in 1987, Ronald Reagan essentially quashed the FCC’s “fairness doctrine” which required media outlets to allow the presentation of both sides of controversial issues, he opened the door to the current plethora of unaccountable broadcast liars such as the Hannitys, Carlsons and Ingrahams.

The fairness doctrine consisted of two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been cited by many social observers as a prime contributing factor in the escalation of party polarization in the United States.

By the time this op-ed sees publication, we will know the outcome of Tuesday’s vote. Some recent political candidate ads were markedly more aggressive than the pre-Trump era. The tragic aspect of this is that many of the candidates who were running the most aggressive and confrontational ads are people who still see any indication of not supporting Trump as a negative among voters of their party, ergo they will say things they may not even believe in campaign ads because they don't want to anger the great orange Wizard of Oz. One current example would be Nevada Senate GOP candidate Adam Laxalt who like a disappointing number of other Republicans continues to use the words “open border” or something similar to imply that the current administration has “dismantled border security” (Laxalt’s words). In fact: funding for Customs and Border security in the Biden administration is precisely comparable to that of the Trump administration. Border Patrol staffing under the Biden administration is consistent with the Trump administration. And finally, the laws and policies to prevent immigrants from remaining in the US illegally continue under the Biden administration to remain exactly the same as they were. In point of fact, for fiscal year 2022 Congress appointed over a billion dollars more for border security than any of the four Trump budgets.

On a local note, we saw similar claims from Marco Rubio. We have seen him claim that Val Demings, his opponent, “votes with Pelosi 100% of the time.” (Just like he voted with his party?) He has falsely implied that Congresswoman Demings would support defunding the police when, in fact, she was one of the few Democrats who voted against a bill to open the doors to that happening. We were also exposed to Governor Ron DeSantis claiming that he's keeping Florida “free” while restricting the ability of public-school teachers to do their jobs. We also saw DeSantis decrying the economy under former governor Charlie Crist, which ignores the fact that Crist’s governorship coincided with the major economic national recession caused by eight years of inadequate supervision of financial markets and the housing bubble collapse. In other words, like Barack Obama would be in 2008, Charlie Crist was also the recipient of a bad economy that affected the entire world, not just the state of Florida.

As of my writing this, I am hopeful, but by no means optimistic, regarding the results of the election. We surely deserve better than we have in Rubio’s (and Scott’s, but he didn’t run this cycle) Senate seats and in the Governor’s mansion. I loved teaching my 20 years at Boone High school, but I don’t think I’d make it a full year teaching real history under current restrictions. Stay strong and please remain politically active.

Ramblings and Musings

 

                  Various Ramblings and Musings

         There’s no real theme this week, so let’s see what develops.

I was recently talking to a gentleman who was playing with the orchestra that accompanied my wife’s choral group and, in the course of conversation, it came up that he was a retired pastor, and he was from Texas. Somehow the conversation turned to the price of gasoline, and he said, “Well it's because they've banned all drilling.” It became obvious, by other opinions of his, who “they” were. This categorically proves the educated can still be ignorant.

Let's get this straight right off the top: there are over 6000 US drilling permits currently active and the Biden administration has not banned any drilling for oil. So why is the price of gasoline so high? And the answer is (drumroll) because the petroleum companies like it that way. Reality is, that until very recently, American refineries were not operating at capacity and, as Adam Smith said in his epic 1776 economic work, On the Wealth of Nations, scarcity causes price to increase. Now the economic reality of the oil business is this: drilling for oil is an awfully expensive process which requires a significant investment up front with no guarantee of profit on the other end. If you don't find oil you've not only lost your time and effort, but you've lost investor’s money. For some smaller concerns, this may even mean that money borrowed to finance drilling is a loss. On the other hand, getting a higher price for what you do produce with absolutely no extra outlay of funds or effort is free money. Free money enhances your bottom line and the stockholders in your energy corporation love that because it means more return on their investment.

     And yet, you may say, “But if they produce more gasoline, they'll sell more and make more money.” The downside to that is that what they're already producing will also decrease in price and so, if they do nothing, they can continue to exact a high price for it which, by the way, is only high compared to what we're used to and is low compared to what the rest of the world pays. It costs them no extra money to exact this high price. 

    Oil, like any other commodity is a market product, and in this case, it is a world market product. If a president, any president, could simply push a button or issue an edict and reduce the price of gasoline, they would do that. Alas, there is no magic wand and there is no magic solution when greed at the top of the energy corporation chain says otherwise.

Reflect, if you are old enough, on the 1970s Arab oil embargo. At that time, the US was dependent on Arab Oil to the point that the shortage of crude oil to refine actually did create a situation where there was less gasoline available than there was demand. Those who were drivers at that time may recall long lines of cars at gas stations and gas stations actually running out of gas. Now reflect on the current situation. Have you seen lines at gas stations? Have you seen gas stations without gasoline to sell now? You have not; it's just been more expensive. The people that run ExxonMobil and other petroleum companies are not unhappy with this situation regardless of what they may imply.

Shifting gears: While I am over the moon about what happened to Alex Jones and sincerely hope the man is impoverished and remains so the rest of his life, it is worth noting that he's not the only lunatic out there spouting the most outrageous and vile drivel simply because it fits a very Far Right view of the world. There is a man by the name of Stew Peters who has produced a film entitled Watch the Water. “Watch the water” is a favorite refrain of the QAnon lunatic fringe who believe that, in some alternate universe, the government is treating the water with various things to our detriment. In Alex Jones’ case it was some sort of substance to either spray on or add to water and turn people gay. As bizarre as that is, the subject of Mr. Peters film is even more outré.

This anti-vaccine documentary makes the ludicrous assertion that the coronavirus is not a virus, but a synthetic version of snake venom that evil forces are spreading through remdesivir, the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and drinking water to "make you a hybrid of Satan." The general format of said video is an interview between Peters, who has a history of using inflammatory rhetoric and spreading multiple COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and Bryan Ardis, a former chiropractor who built a brand around falsely claiming that the drug remdesivir is killing people.

It shows Ardis, who now hucksters acne products and is also using the film to sell what he calls "anti-v" supplement kits online, invoking the Garden of Eden story to “legitimize/justify” his insane claims. He proposes, in part, that: "I think the plan all along was to get the serpent's, the evil one's DNA into your God-created DNA," Ardis said. "They're using mRNA, which is mRNA extracted from, I believe, the king cobra venom, the king cobra venom. And I think they want to get that venom inside of you and make you a hybrid of Satan."  As usual, “they” are not identified. (For the record, humans manufacture mRNA in their own cells, and vaccine mRNA is manufactured in a lab setting, no cobras involved.)  Of course, the preceding babbling lunacy also assumes the existence of a “Satan,” as well as the assumption that this fictional fallen angel turned into a snake so God could use him/it to mess with humanity.

And finally: We in The Villages were spared the worst of Hurricane Ian, primarily because we are west of Orlando as well as north. Additionally, the storm was uncharacteristically weaker on the north side than most we have seen. While O-town was drenched, we had just three inches or so of rain. So, we were lucky. Not so fortunate, however, were those on the southwest coast who died, either by drowning (90% of fatalities) or wind driven damage which proved fatal. While we all mourn these deaths, there are several points of discussion which are relevant.

First, watching the video of roofs and walls of houses collapsing due to wind and water also showed that most of these were older homes almost certainly built before the 2001 Florida construction codes were enacted. Prior to that, Florida was a construction free for all. If you could build it and make it pretty, you could sell it. This was made abundantly clear when the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew was surveyed. Many pricier homes were damaged or totaled, but none of them were homes built by Habitat for Humanity. Those homes definitely weren’t more expensive, but they were just built to a higher construction standard.

More troubling are the deaths of those who simply decided to “ride it out.”  There was no lack of warning or descriptions of how severe this storm could be. Similarly, there was no shortage of evacuation warnings by civil authorities. The prevalent characteristic of storm victims seems to be complacency. For newer residents, this is exacerbated when a storm fails to materialize as severely as the predictions would lead one to believe, which can lead to the belief among those who know no better that it will always be thus. Around ninety drowning victims of Ian proved that it isn’t so.          

"The Death of Free Speech?"

 

"The Death of Free Speech?"

So, let’s try for a little perspective: Donald Trump is suing CNN for almost precisely the amount of money he owes, but doesn’t have, to pay his numerous creditors. Of course, he doesn’t have the money to pay his lawyers either, but his easily duped MAGA drones are contributing, about $7 million to date, and most contributions are being used to pay the law firm du-jour which sees in Trump a money machine which can be billed regardless of outcome.

 Trump’s suit revolves around his claims that CNN has slandered him over the years by commenting on his proven false statements and, more to the point, by analyzing his actions and allegations in the context of his proven racism, sexism, and disregard for the law as it applies to him and his finances. Most of these have been corroborated by other non-CNN sources such as Trump family members, former staffers, and other media sources.

The most likely outcome for these and similar Trump suits will be dismissal. The New York State tax fraud cases against Trump and his older spawn must, at least, be proven with hard data. Slander and libel on the other hand are far more difficult to prove, especially when the alleged “victim” (hard to even use that term where Trump is involved) is a public figure. Engaging in a public forum, by its very, nature raises the slander/libel bar far higher.

It has historically been more difficult to prove slander/libel when the accuser is a celebrity because public figures have more factors to prove. The courts tend to distinguish between two types of plaintiffs in defamation actions: “private individuals” and “public figures.” The difference in the way they are treated depends on the defendant's knowledge in publishing the defamatory content. Private individuals need only establish that the publisher acted with "negligence." However, where public figures are concerned, the courts have generally held that there is a lessened interest in protecting the defamed subject's reputation. Therefore, public-figure plaintiffs must allege a higher level of knowledge.

In the generally cited case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) The Supreme Court established that a public figure plaintiff must establish what is known as “actual malice.” To show actual malice, the person who published the statement either had to have known that the statement was false or published it with reckless disregard despite awareness of the probable falsity (think Tucker Carlson). The existence of actual malice must be proven by clear and convincing evidence.

In plain speak, an example might be that a public figure individual makes a public statement which is proven to be false, and a media outlet analyzes said statement for what it may imply about the individual. In a blatant example, candidate Trump repeatedly said he’d be “too busy to play golf” while in office, yet when elected he actually played more, and much more expensively, than any previous President. Analysis of that statement as it relates to Trump’s proclivity for lying as shown by his actions, might make Trump angry, but it certainly isn’t libel or slander.

Compared to the almost daily spate of outright lies and distortions of several Fox News talking heads, CNN is pure as the driven snow. Trump’s public behavior has done more to demonstrate Trump’s lack of character than CNN could ever do.

So why all this explanation? Simply because, in the light of recent events re: the even more despicable (if that’s even possible) Alex Jones, the same Trump MAGA sycophants are screaming about the “death of free speech.” He was, justifiably, again found guilty for his continued slanderous attacks on private individuals in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shootings. In a too-rare victory for the good guys, he was also ordered to pay punitive damages of almost $1 billion!

 Such “experts” as Marjorie Taylor Greene grossly over-simplified it thus: "No matter what you think of Alex Jones, all he did was speak words. He was not the one who pulled the trigger." At this juncture I might point out that her words would, in her warped state of reality, also largely excuse Hitler for the Holocaust, since, like Jones, he didn’t actually personally kill anyone, but his words led to it. The above reductio ad absurdum (using exaggeration to the ridiculous level to demonstrate a point) was made to illustrate the Far Right “But whaddabout?” mentality. It’s true that Alex Jones did not “kill anybody” but whaddabout (insert latest conspiracy theory here).

Jones, by implication, did accuse the government of complicity when, in December of 2012, Adam Lanza shot and killed twenty students and six teachers in Newtown, Connecticut. Not only that, but he intruded into the private lives of grieving parents by alleging that the children weren’t dead, and that “crisis actors” were faking it all. By direct implication he accused fifteen sets of parents of complicity. Jones has admitted calling bereaved Sandy Hook parents "crisis actors" on his show and saying the shooting was "phony as a three-dollar bill". His shows continued to portray the Sandy Hook shooting as staged as part of gun control efforts. He also said: "You've got parents laughing - "hahaha" - and then they walk over to the camera and go "boo hoo hoo," and not just one but a bunch of parents doing this and then photos of kids that are still alive they said died? The reverse has long since been proven.        

Over the following years, and largely in response to Jones’ continuing allegations, Strangers showed up at some of the bereaved parents’ homes to record them. People hurled abusive comments on social media. Erica Lafferty, the daughter of the slain Sandy Hook principal, testified that people mailed rape threats to her house. Mark Barden recounted how conspiracy theorists had urinated on the grave of his seven-year-old son, Daniel, and threatened to dig up the coffin.

   Without Jones, it is unlikely any of this would have happened. Understand, these parents and those in Uvalde, Texas, were private individuals, and Alex Jones, by his hate speech, turned them into public figures and then further injured them with false allegations that, in the case of Sandy Hook, incited even worse direct actions of others. This is a textbook example of Slander and, probably, hate speech!

On the off chance that the name Alex Jones doesn’t resonate with you he has also over the years claimed that:

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were an “inside job” perpetrated by the U.S. government.

“Of course, there’s weather weapon stuff going on “We had floods in Texas like fifteen years ago, killed thirty-something people in one night. Turned out it was the Air Force.”

The government is using chemicals in order to turn people gay, using a mysterious “gay bomb” devised by the Pentagon.

The Oklahoma City bombing was a “false flag” government operation perpetrated by government forces to frame and stigmatize the militia movement

“The reason there’s so many gay people now is because it’s a chemical warfare operation. They’re (the “gummint?)  going to encourage homosexuality with chemicals so that people don’t have children.”

There are many more, but you get the picture.

Now to finish: Many of those who are supporting, and even funding, Trump’s frivolous suit against CNN are the same ones watching Fox News and screaming “The death of free speech” in the wake of the Jones verdict.”  Apparently, they believe they can have it both ways. What a sorry and pathetic batch of deplorables.

 

Things You May Not Know 

    (And most Republicans don't want you to know)               

 

In the current environment of inflation, higher interest rates, and the hardships they can cause for American families, it should not be totally unexpected that many people blame the president of the United States for that problem. In fact, however, because of the way the national financial structure is organized, the president can do little or nothing to affect that. To understand why requires an understanding of how and why the American federal financial system has changed over time.

        The American War for Independence left the new country essentially bankrupt and the economy in widespread disruption because many of its citizens were heavily in debt and Continental Congress paper money that had been issued during the war was essentially useless. I can still remember my grandmother using the phrase that something was “Not worth a continental.” While her direct ancestors were not even in the country at the time of the revolution, the phrase had endured that long.

          At the same time there was no national consensus on whether the United States should be primarily agricultural, as it had been pre-war, or whether the government needed to encourage business and industrialization. By far, the strongest proponent of the latter point of view was Alexander Hamilton and he had some ideas that many considered radical. After considering what other nations had done to deal with the issue of massive national debt, Hamilton settled on the British model of a National Bank (as in the Bank of England). Like the Bank of England his proposed Bank of the United States was also to be stockholder owned.

In 1790, Hamilton submitted a report to Congress in which he called for the establishment of the first Bank of the United States. The function of such a bank would be to issue paper money, also called banknotes or currency, provide a safe place to keep public funds, offer banking facilities for commercial transactions and also act as the government's fiscal agent collecting government tax revenues. To assure a modicum of safety, he proposed that said bank would also be required to maintain a minimum ratio of loans to precious metals, which requirement did not exist in the Bank of England. He also stipulated the government should own 20% of the bank whereas the Bank of England was wholly privately owned. After some strenuous debate, President George Washington signed the bill to create the Bank over the strenuous objections of many of his Virginia colleagues including Jefferson and Madison.

Without going into greater detail, public sale of shares in the bank created a bubble and a subsequent financial collapse as speculators borrowed from the bank to buy shares in the bank, hoping the value of the shares would go up. Through its history there were other valid criticisms of the first Bank of the United States. From a modern perspective there were many flaws, one of the principal ones being that the bank actually did not set national monetary policy and, secondly, it did not regulate other banks. Its substantial holdings in gold reserves did, however, establish what passed for a stable national currency and, by managing its lending policies and the flow of funds through its accounts, the bank could — and did — alter the supply of money and credit in the economy and hence the level of interest rates charged to borrowers. If this last sentence sounds familiar it should, because to greater degree this is, somewhat analogous to, what the current Federal Reserve Board does.

When the First Bank’s request for a charter extension was rejected and the bank ceased to exist in 1811, conditions rapidly reverted to the post-revolutionary morass of state banks and other private banks issuing bank notes without the required amount of security. War debt following the war of 1812 was huge, inflation followed, and a panic thereafter. In 1816 President James Madison, who had adamantly opposed the creation of the First Bank of the United States, signed a bill creating the Second Bank of the United States with a twenty-year charter.

Many state banks envied the Second Bank because it received all of the government’s deposits and therefore could make more loans. This meant that private or state banks were in direct competition with the Bank of the US. Andrew Jackson hated banks in general, having lost money due to defaulted bank notes years before and determined to kill the Second US Bank by pulling federal deposits from it and placing them in “Favorite” State banks (known in the press at the time as his “pet banks.” In 1836, the Second Bank’s charter expired as Jackson refused to sign a renewal.

Over the next decades, in the absence of a national bank, there were five nationwide economic panics, inflation, and profiteering from wealthy bankers and investors. This culminated in a huge nation-wide panic in 1907. One of the lessons to be learned here is that most of these panics were the result of greatly underregulated banks being allowed to speculate in stocks and wealthy financiers having interests in both banks and corporations which conflicted. Banks failed, ordinary depositors lost their savings, it wasn’t pretty. (Numerous examples, too little space, just trust me on this one.)

The 1907 crisis was moderated, and banks rescued only when three specific events occurred. First, the US treasury intervened and pumped twenty-five million in government funds to shore up deposits in New York City banks. Second, John D. Rockefeller gave $10 million of his own fortune to the same service and, finally, J.P. Morgan extended $25 million in emergency funds. In the aftermath of this debacle there were widespread calls for major currency and banking reform.

Finally, after an intervening war (WWI) and, again primarily due to under-regulation of banking, financial, and commodities markets, the US economy once again soiled its linen. The Great Depression led to the eventual signing, by President Roosevelt, of the National Banking Act of 1935. Earlier, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 had effectively separated commercial banking from investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

In vastly simplified language, the National Banking Act created the Federal Reserve System (“Fed” from here on) and banks. The Act created the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and stipulates that five representatives of the Federal Reserve Banks will be members of the Committee, which must conduct open-market operations according to specific regulations adopted by the Committee. The goal of open-market operations is to accommodate commerce and business with an eye to U.S. credit conditions.

The Fed’s mandate is to use their authority to control the money supply as needed by buying or selling federal securities and combat inflation, to the degree that they can, by adjusting the interest rate (known as the “discount rate”) charged by the Fed to private banks when, and if, they borrow from the Fed to meet the amount of funds they are required to have on hand. This is known as the reserve requirement. The discount rate is that interest rate we read about the Fed changing to fight inflation. That rate affects what lenders and other creditors charge.

All this detail and history may bore some of you, but the plethora of complainers publicly blaming anyone and everyone for the current economic situation clearly demonstrates a gross lack of understanding about economics on the part of a sizeable percentage of the population. Sadly, much of the partisan carping is aimed at the President.

Now to the crux of the matter: The Fed does not report to, nor are they accountable to, the President of the United States. The Chairman is nominated by the President and serves a four year term. Each member of the Board of Governors is appointed for a 14-year term; the terms are staggered so that one term expires on January 31 of each even-numbered year. After serving a full 14-year term, a Board member may not be reappointed. Jerome Powell, current Fed chair was nominated in 2018 by Donald Trump and reconfirmed by a Republican controlled Senate.    

The Fed is responsible to the Congress. Period. Understand, I am not being critical of Chairman Powell. I am simply pointing out that blaming President Biden is lunacy on the same level as blaming him for high gas prices. If this were simple math, two plus two would always equal four and boom, push a button and inflation would vanish. It simply doesn’t work that way. Never has, never will. This is a global problem, exacerbated, in part, by a Russian madman.

 

         

Things to Remember

 

                                 Things to Remember

Before you make a decision on how to cast your vote for Governor of Florida, consider this:

One of the very first legislative votes cast by the current Florida governor, who is more than willing to accept any and all federal aid in the wake of Hurricane Ian, was in his second day as a US Congressman. He voted against a bill to appropriate adequate funding for Hurricane Sandy relief. This shows the character, or lack thereof, of this little man. Also, The Federal money he spent to grandstand on the immigration issue would be nice to have now in SW Florida to augment the FEMA funds that President Biden ordered in his disaster declaration. Ask yourself how this might have played out if the roles were reversed, based on DeSantis’ record.

Additionally, when Ron DeSantis self-congratulates about giving first responders $1000 bonus checks, remember this: These are not stimulus payments to aid families who aren’t working, but a bonus to folks who, while they may well deserve them, are working and earning. More importantly, these aren’t state funds, but are part of President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, so don’t thank DeSantis, thank Biden.

This of course is in addition to the DeSantis attacks on public education, and on voting rights which make me so mad just can’t stand it.

And, on Republican financial policies in general:

In the 1930’s when the social security program was originally adopted, FDR said, “I guess you’re right on the economics. We put those pay roll contributions there (meaning Social Security as payroll, deduction) so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”  Social Security benefits weren’t taxed at first, but in fact, this was the result of a series of administrative rulings by the Treasury Department and not part of the act which established Social Security. In 1983, The Reagan administration pushed for, and got, a bi-partisan bill to tax Social Security benefits for the first time.

Unfortunately, Reagan and his Republican controlled Congress also reduced top marginal income tax rates from 70% to 28%. It is difficult to find any single better example of the Republican ethos which, if written as a mission statement, might read: “Reduce financial liability and responsibility of the rich, while increasing that of the lower income population.”

Today there are those of the Republican persuasion who favor allowing people to opt out of Social Security in favor of privately managing their retirement. These are, by and large, people who will, in truth never need the monthly SS stipend to any real extent. They attempt to sell privatization as a positive issue, when in truth, more than 20% of the households in America depend on SS for at least 80% of their income, and half of American households relied on SS for at least half of their income as of 2018. These are usually not folks who, while working, have the disposable income to invest unless it is deducted before they get paid. That is factual like it or not. In the absence of SS, many of these folks would be impoverished wards of the state.

George W. Bush also tried pushing privatization of SS during his first term. Privatization may sound good, like chocolate, but…. There are three key reasons that it is far more complex.

First, Social Security is an insurance program; it offers features that just can’t be measured by a rate-of-return analysis. Second, the claimed higher returns in the private market come from ignoring the cost of increased risk, such as markets tanking as in 2009. When that cost is taken into account, the supposed “free lunch” from stock-market investments disappears. Finally, to secure the supposedly higher returns of private accounts, one must also incur relatively large transition costs. Once the transition costs are considered, as they must be for a valid, comparison, the “higher returns” in private accounts are seen to be illusory. Even more fallacious is the “privatizer’s” refusal to acknowledge that SS is:

1) Based, and fixed on, work history and Cost of Living Adjusted (COLA), which an IRA isn’t.

 2) Guaranteed for life at the same level, plus COLA. In other words, you can’t “run out” of SS. Very few investments which the average worker could afford offer that degree of security. In simple terms, SS isn’t subject to market whims.

3) Since the inception of Medicare, which is in essence a sort of Siamese twin of SS, an individual who privatized his SS would either continue payroll deduction contributions to Medicare or be forced to pay for far more expensive healthcare coverage in retirement.

And…. Lindsey Graham, who is assiduously attempting to draw up legislation which would strip American women of their reproductive rights, has no children, no significant other (whom he acknowledges, anyway) and no family, but believes he is entitled to tell the rest of us how and when we should have ours.

And…   The Fairness Doctrine, enforced by the Federal Communications Council, was a result of the US media environment in 1949. There was increasing concern that the three main US networks, NBC, ABC and CBS, had what amounted to monopoly audience control, and could misuse their broadcast licenses to set a biased public agenda. More to the point it was the age of Red Scare and the beginning ascendency of Joe McCarthy, hardly a mainstream media darling. Adopted in 1949 as a guiding principle, the Fairness Doctrine mandated that broadcast networks devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance. Congress backed that policy in 1954, and by the 1970s the FCC called the doctrine the “single most important requirement of operation in the public interest – the standard of behavior for the granting or renewal of broadcast licensure.

The Supreme Court upheld said doctrine. In 1969’s Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, a journalist sued a Pennsylvania Christian Crusade (!!) radio program after their host attacked him on air. In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the individual’s right to an on-air response under the Fairness Doctrine, arguing that nothing in the First Amendment gives a broadcast license holder the exclusive right to the airwaves they operate on.

The doctrine remained in effect and enforced until the Reagan Administration. In 1985, Reagan’s former campaign staffer, now FCC Chairman, Mark Fowler, issued a report stating that the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. This was coincident with increased media criticism of Reagan’s policies and the rise of radio voices such as Rush Limbaugh. In Reagan’s second term the doctrine was so eroded that the FCC voted 4-0 to void it altogether. In June 1987, Congress, angered by this reversal of their intent, attempted to preempt that FCC decision via the (bipartisan) Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987. Reagan vetoed the bill.

While you may wonder why the hell, I even bring this up, you must understand that this Reagan policy change is why we have Fox News and other one sided, no-rebuttal, accountability or facts required, outlets who seem to work for the GOP in 90 percent of cases. This flouting of reality is what makes pols like Trump and DeSantis even more dangerous.

 When you vote this December, do it early, if possible, insure you do everything correctly, and choose as if your quality of life depends on it, because it does.