8/29: How to Buy a National Election -- in Public

8/29/20

Never before, to my knowledge, has a politician tried to buy votes on a national level. That's what we're seeing now, as President Trump grabs the edge of the Senate's power to intrude on payroll taxes, and with it, Social Security. Don't be surprised if, before the election, we get another stimulus payment, the unemployed get augmented benefits, and -- and -- goodness knows what else will be devised by Trump's and his advisers' craven little minds to convince us that Trump's presidency means a rainfall of cash for all.

A theater marquee in Oakland, CA says "Prevent Unwanted
Presidencies with Hand Counted Paper Ballots."

Trump can't touch payroll taxes himself. The Senate gets to do that. What the president wants to do is put off payroll taxes. The money wouldn't be taken from paychecks starting September 1, but they'd be due in April, like federal taxes. Businesses that agree to postpone payroll taxes for their employees will have to withhold more money in payroll taxes starting January 1 (slightly more than doubling the withheld tax) so that the government gets its money anyway.

That's unless the Senate decides to forgive the payroll tax altogether.

The point of Social Security was to enforce personal savings for the future. But in case anyone has forgotten, the payroll tax funds both Social Security and Medicare pretty much in real time, because the government doesn't actually set that money aside for Grandma. If the Senate were to forgive payroll taxes, Grandma might as well start eating cat food that very day. Fact is, the government has been having parties with the money we couldn't enjoy -- more precisely, waging wars with it.

It seems that Trump believes that payroll taxes belong to the government, not to the people whose future is supposed to be ensured by the tax. To Trump, any money that goes to the little people (as Leona Helmsley famously described people who sell their time for money) is money taken away from the government. At this point, it's not altogether clear whether our delusional president thinks of government finances as anything other than part of his own personal fortune.

No politicians have taken actions to defund Social Security or Medicare before, to my knowledge, although one could argue that the annual cost of living adjustment has been less than the actual cost of living. Both programs have broad support among voters, so it'll be a contentious day if Trump defunds the program, but that doesn't mean he won't do it. Trump actually ran his payroll-tax-holiday scheme past the IRS to make sure it was legal. That means he's serious.

We're looking at an abrupt end to a program we've paid into for our entire working lives. It's ours, remember?

It'll be entertaining (or upsetting) to see other giveaways in the weeks before this election is past us. We could call it "pork barrel" politics (an ugly name -- look up its history), but that's just for state legislators who want to get votes in local communities.

This threat by Donald Trump is a whole 'nother level of __________(you fill in the blank).

What, indeed, would you call this payroll tax holiday move by the Trump administration? Do you think he could get away with defunding Social Security if reelected? Is there any chance that his base would turn against him if he did?

"'Unwanted Presidencies' and how to prevent them." by Melinda Young Stuart is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/29/economy/trump-treasury-new-guidance-tax-holiday/index.html?fbclid=IwAR3Wa7lgyikPW_AG2iIdygRXNX_dlDyXV2kPkVEgDbAU30nm0LtTI9f56-0

8/29: Conservatives Go Wild About Kyle; Liberals Puzzled

8/29/20

If ever there were a visible turning point for Americans, it was Kenosha.

Frank's Diner before the violence and (below) after.

Boarded up and graffiti-scarred, Frank's Diner after the riots. 

Kenosha is probably a nice town. It's a shipping port on Lake Michigan, not far south of Milwaukee, and its 101,000 population's median age is 34. Its politics split down the middle, but Trump won by a nose in 2016.

Late afternoon last Sunday, a 911 call led to a policeman shooting Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back. No one knew that evening whether he would live. Nobody knew whether there had been a warrant, a 911 call, a knife on the floorboard of the SUV. There were rumors, not facts. That night, protestors took it as just another example of police violence involving a Black man.

Around 11:00 that night, police started using tear gas and rubber bullets to make protestors gathered downtown disperse. An hour later, "at least three garbage trucks and a trolley car" were set on fire. Then, a truck at a used car dealership was set on fire, damaging "most of the 100 cars on the lot." One protestor, the article said, used fireworks. There was looting as well as largely cosmetic damage to buildings.

The next day, the governor called in the National Guard, and the county set an 8 pm curfew. Daytime protests were uneventful, but by late afternoon, it was clear that the police were welcoming right-wing militia members to help "keep the peace."

That's where Kyle Rittenhouse came in. An apparently troubled child of a single mother who had driven him to Kenosha from Illinois, Kyle had an awkwardly friendly relationship with the police. He had a police record, but he wanted to be a policeman, and he associated himself with a right-wing militia. He was standing with that militia when a police car rolled its windows down, thanked the militia members for their help, and gave them bottled water.

After killing two people and wounding another, "Rittenhouse subsequently walked towards police with his hands up and still armed with a semi-automatic rifle." They let him go home (he had been driven there by his mother) despite shouts that he was the shooter. Kenosha Sheriff David Beth said later, "In situations that are high-stress, you have such incredible tunnel vision." That is, officers just didn't take in that Kyle was the shooter.

After Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested, public opinion was divided between those who thought Rittenhouse was a good guy who did the right thing and those who thought he should be punished severely. Meanwhile, police kept up their heavy-handed approach to protesters, stopping and arresting a group from Seattle who supported protestors by feeding them.

One of the garbage trucks that was burned during the riot.
Some speculate that the violence was provoked, like the 
looting in Minneapolis, by right-wing militia members. 

At Arizona State University, the campus group "College Republicans United" announced that it would donate half of its funds for the semester to Rittenhouse's legal defense. "He does not deserve to have his entire life destroyed because of the actions of violent anarchists during a lawless riot." For those of us who think that Rittenhouse has already destroyed his own and two others' lives, it's hard to believe that anyone could say those words.

The Arizona group also said that "Kenosha has devolved into anarchy because the authorities in charge of the city abandoned it," leading to the presumption that the group either doesn't know how to read or doesn't know how to evaluate what it reads. (And that's why we teach English in school.)

The statement's a near-exact rendering of PR by Rittenhouse's attorneys, who said, “A 17-year old child should not have to take up arms in America to protect life and property. That is the job of state and local governments. However, those governments have failed, and law-abiding citizens have no choice but to protect their own communities as their forefathers did at Lexington and Concord in 1775.”

Gateway Pundit included that quote in an article about Rittenhouse's attorneys calling for Maryland's governor to resign. Why? Because the governor fired a staffer who was using social media in Rittenhouse's defense. The lawyers also claim that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense (a concoction directly contradicted by videos of the scene) and set up a defense fund for their client's defense costs (which, obviously, the lawyers can use to pay themselves).

On Friday, a petition was filed to recall Wisconsin's Democratic governor, also echoing the lawyers: "Governor Evers has had ample time and opportunities to protect the citizens and their property. He has failed and refused federal help. He has encouraged these riots and the "defunding" of our police. Enough is enough."

I'd say that anyone who believes that it's okay for a boy of 17 to take an assault rifle and flaunt it in the open before shooting three people has something seriously wrong in their perspective. That's where I stand. Where do you?

What makes anyone believe that Rittenhouse is not a vigilante or a murderer, but a defender of freedom? Do you know of active militias in your area? How can you see Trump using these militias, whom he has called "very good people," to support his own agenda for reelection? Does all of this scare you?

Note: The summary above draws in part from an article in Wikipedia called "Kenosha riots." It is unsigned, and it seems to me to be biased toward the police, but its specifics suggest access to police information; and it's heavily sourced.

Photos: "Frank's Diner, Kenosha, Wisconsin" by *hajee is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kenosha-wisconsin-jacob-blake-protests-militia-arrest_n_5f4acb5fc5b64f17e13e8b0e?fbclid=IwAR2oIsy7tZgkCeIMGOovPetdNKqmbFsL8YOd2L1gsDNfa8LGDy0fEopKcfs

8/28: After 105 years, Hurricane Laura Fells the South's Defender

8/28/2020 

The figure on top is an open-
faced farm boy who has no
idea what he's in for. 

The South's Defender monument was a holdover from the olden days, when (white) men were men and Blacks were seen by racists as nothing more than cheap labor.

The statue, on top of a marble obelisk that looks to be 50 feet tall, is of a young man with a flag, a floppy hat, and work clothes. His expression says he has no clue what he's in for.

The statue was erected in 1915, the 50th anniversary of the South's surrender. They could've just named the guy Jim Crow.

Two months ago, on June 29, Michael Jones, who writes a southern heritage blog, defended the Defender statue thus: "There are some things that should be off-limits to politics, like historic monuments honoring local war dead....[the memorial] is being caught up in a nationwide rampage of destruction by radical left-wing mobs...This is the third time spiteful people and groups have tried to get it removed and destroyed."

Well, bless his heart. The Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, which is the name of the local authorities, concurred with Jones and voted 10 to 4 in August 2020 to leave the monument where it stood, like a beacon of white, by the local courthouse.

But guess what happened next? After 105 years of heat, rain, storms, hurricanes, and pigeons, Hurricane Laura finally felled the Defender on Thursday. He's at the base of the obelisk in several pieces.

It was the same day that we blue types were wishing that Mr. Donald J. Trump would blow himself off his own pedestal with his own hot air.

For now, we'll take one small blessing over no blessings at all.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/confederate-statue-hurricane-laura_n_5f482f01c5b6cf66b2b51d00?fbclid=IwAR0wTD9PAemJA5fUNi32kjFQAnUsX4LxvopOab2AuZetAuBcbhv2TyczafE 

8/30: Police Are Politicians in Portsmouth, Virginia -- Again -- and Again -- and Again

8/30/20 

After 127 years, those resolute Confederates fell.

There is, in Portsmouth, VA, a 127-year-old Confederate monument that looms over downtown on a spot once used for whipping enslaved people in public. The monument has four figures facing outward around an obelisk, a potent symbol of that era's unyielding Jim-Crow culture. For three years, the city council has been talking about taking it down.

On June 10th, a peaceful protest was underway when Virginia Senator Louise Lucas, who is Black, got a call telling her that two protestors had been arrested for trespassing. She went to the site, and, Huffpo says, told the gathering that they had a right to be on public land and that it was illegal to permanently damage the memorial.

Some protestors took that as an okay to paint the monument. That night, they vandalized it with spray paint, decapitated two bronzes, and knocked over a third, which landed on a protestor and injured him badly. The police did little or nothing.

The next day, Lucas called for the resignation of police chief Angela Green, saying she hadn't done her job to protect the statues and the protesters.

Within a few weeks, a white police sergeant wrote to town officials to say he thought Lucas' criticisms were "absolutely disgusting and offensive." Weeks later, on the day that the Virginia Senate was slated to debate police reform, that same police sergeant filed felony charges against 14 people, including Lucas, for conspiracy to cause injury to a monument.

Because of Virginia's quirky magistrate system, the sergeant was able to bypass the local prosecutor, a reformist. The charges named the prosecutor as a witness in a probable effort to keep her sidelined.

Portsmouth's vice-mayor, who is Lucas' daughter, had backed up her mother's statement. She also said Lucas didn't have authority over the police chief, because the chief's orders come from the city manager.

A white citizen responded by suing Lucas's daughter under an arcane state law. He'd gotten the idea from a Facebook page.

But here's the real problem: This story is a serial. The Virginian-Pilot, a regional newspaper based in Norfolk, identified a “clear pattern” in which the police repeatedly "hounded" Portsmouth’s Black elected officials out of power.

According to a summary by the New Republic magazine, the Virginian-Pilot cited former Police Chief Tonya Chapman, the first Black woman to lead a city police department in Virginia, over "concerns with leadership." Councilman Mark Whitaker fell to a federal forgery investigation "spurred by then-Sheriff Bill Watson," who didn't like Whitaker's politics. Former Mayor Kenny Wright was subject to "a low-speed car chase over an expired inspection sticker."

With so much political "success" behind their series of takedowns, Portsmouth police have little incentive to stop.

Since the June protest, the Portsmouth City Council have voted to remove the memorial and are figuring out exactly how to do it.

The city manager has said the police have no business investigating the protest because there is a conflict of interest. So on it goes.

Portsmouth's police have pushed elected and appointed officials out of office -- repeatedly. They're at it again, and they expect success. In Trump's America, who will stop them?

How could the police be chastened after a long history of undercutting Black politicians? Since these are civil rights matters, they presumably are federal cases, so they're subject to the vicissitudes of AG William Barr, and Virginia has had, and still has, racist laws on the books since the days of Thomas Jefferson. Where is the cavalry in the age of Donald Trump?

"Portsmouth, Virginia" by Dougtone is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/portsmouth_n_5f43dec4c5b6c00d03b20ca2

8/26: Lindsey Graham Takes a Stand Against QAnon

8/26/20

Graham talks happy talk

As Americans watched the hailstorm of blatant lies and the vertiginous spin of the Republican National Convention this week, there was one small moment of candor from Republican Lindsey Graham.

On Thursday, Graham tossed aside the QAnon movement, which all but worships Donald Trump, by saying that "QAnon is bat sh*t crazy." This was during an interview with a Snapchat journalist.

“[QAnon is] Crazy stuff," he said. "Inspiring people to violence. I think it is a platform that plays off people’s fears, that compels them to do things they normally wouldn’t do. And it’s very much a threat.”

Graham, however, is known for speaking his mind and making a backward somersault later. Republicans are using one such flipflop in an ad supporting Graham in his own North Carolina. There, a lot of Republicans have come to dislike Trump and are thinking of voting for Biden.

The new ad takes footage from an ad that Graham made to back Joe Biden waaaay back in 2015. In the ad, Graham said Biden was “as good a man as God ever created” and called President Donald Trump a “xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot.” The ads are supposed to prove that Graham doesn't back Donald Trump. I'm not sure why Republicans think it will work.

In any case, Graham doesn't like QAnon right now. He suggested repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which prevents social media from being sued for user content if the platform makes good-faith efforts to moderate it. For instance, the owners of Comet Pizza, the site of Pizzagate, would be able to sue a social media site that let QAnon run rampant on its pages. Said Graham, "The only way I know to make people more responsible who run these websites is to allow lawsuits when they go too far.”

If a national disaster takes place in the form of Trump's reelection, we'll see if Graham changes his mind on QAnon, too.


"Lindsey Graham" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/513932-lindsey-graham-qanon-is-bats-t-crazy?fbclid=IwAR3cZ5s3_OkdylS_K-VEPql9DCZJDwFAwr9UUqU0dDYrFbiPj9AwZGF0Mco

8/26: Now We Know: Border Officials Wanted to Zap Immigrants with a Microwave Ray

8/26/20

Kinda like this, but with an invisible microwave beam. 

A few weeks before the election in 2018, when the migrant caravan traveling north from Central America had all but reached the American border, Donald Trump told the head of the Department of Homeland Security and the White House staff that the time had come for "extreme measures" to keep the migrants out of the U.S.

That very day, in a meeting between top DHS honchos and the Department of Customs and Border Security (CBP) honchos, the CBP floated the idea of deterring immigration by using a "heat ray," a military device that uses a microwave to make people's skin feel as if it's burning.

Thankfully, others at the meeting were appalled at the idea of using a device on other human beings that many Americans wouldn't use against a cockroach. The Homeland Security Secretary, then Kirstjen Nielsen, stomped on the idea hard, asking that it not be brought up in meetings again.

You have to wonder about these people. Maybe the CBP were showing off whose equipment was biggest. Maybe they'd been roused to craziness via Steve Miller, the White House Gollum that everybody loves to hate, and who allegedly came up with the idea of separating families at the U.S. border.

Wherever the CBP got the heat-ray idea, though, it apparently already exists: the U.S. military developed it as a weapon. But for what use? Crowd control?

Just think about that.

"LEGO Flamethrower" by lingonils is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/513809-trump-border-officials-suggested-using-microwave-heat-ray-on-migrants?fbclid=IwAR1LLVYC8oc9JGM4JDvBruD7C0B6Ts3mnwmLkeEuKeUC5EkUHf2D2TX4mEo

8/25: Yes, the Republican Party Has a Platform

8/25/2020 

We were all perturbed a few days ago when the RNC wrote that "The Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda," and announced it would have no platform.

Republican [on a Subway] Platform 
Art underground in New York City 

The same day, the Trump campaign released a bulleted "priority" list of actions fairly dripping with magical misleader sauce. "Hold China Fully Accountable for Allowing the Virus to Spread around the World" was one. "Provide School Choice to Every Child in America" was another.

An eminent political writer by the name of David Frum, however, has detailed a hidden set of goals that amount to a de facto Republican platform. He wrote about them in The Atlantic recently.

There are 13 points, Frum writes, that are widely agreed upon in the Republican world, but they can't be made explicit because Trump would lose votes from -- well, everybody who hasn't drunk the Trump Kool-Aid.

I really recommend the article. It's terrific, and the link follows this discussion. I've summarized Frum's points below.

1. Lowering taxes on the wealthy leads to prosperity for all.
2. COVID-19 isn't that big a deal. Reopen and shrug off the casualties.
3. Climate change is overhyped, so we won't let it slow the economy.
4. When China wins, we lose, and vice versa.
5. Writes Frum, "The European Union should be treated as a rival, the United Kingdom and Japan should be treated as subordinates, and Canada, Australia, and Mexico should be treated as dependencies." Where we go, they'll follow. And forget those fusty old WWII-era alliances. They're out of date.
6. If people can't afford health insurance, they can go with Medicaid, charity, or nothing.
7. States should regulate voting to minimize fraud, which is rife among Blacks and immigrants. The feds need to prevent Democrats from committing voter fraud via the USPS.
8. Racism against Blacks is no longer a big deal. If anyone needs protection, it's whites, Christians, and Asian applicants to universities.
9. We should aim to eliminate women's "right to privacy" as decided in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965.
10. We should ease up on government officials' conflict-of-interest requirements and welcome secret, limitless campaign donations.
11. Business owners should not have to police undocumented immigrants, and the government should delay granting citizenship by stretching out the process as long as possible.
12. BLM has caused a Black crime wave. The police should be strengthened.
13. President Donald Trump is so victimized by the media and the “deep state” that his reactions on Twitter and elsewhere should be excused.
    
    
    

Do you think the Trump campaign would indeed lose votes if such a platform were to be made public? Do you see any way a list like this could be useful to the Biden campaign?

"NYC - Chelsea: 14th Street–Eighth Avenue Subway - Life Underground" by wallyg is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/new-gop-platform-authoritarianism/615640/?surface=meter_limit_reached&article_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fideas%2Farchive%2F2020%2F08%2Fnew-gop-platform-authoritarianism%2F615640%2F&fbclid=IwAR3Cpa27kW_A9aWLWJDl24ZjdlWRV9qo5iou8QeDN3IUZ0pZ92wRutQB7b4

8/24: No DeJoy in DeDetails

8/24/20 

Louis DeJoy, Postmaster Generale 

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy flunked his orals today. 

Katie Porter, freshman congressman (D-CA) and law professor, was DeJoy's toughest questioner yet at the ongoing House hearings about the draconian changes at the USPS.

Turns out that Postmaster General DeJoy knows the price of a first class stamp, but not -- within 10 million -- how many people voted by mail in the last election; nor does he know who actually gave or carried out the orders for the changes that have taken place at the Post Office.

Porter is a standout, particularly in the absence of Kamala Harris, who is campaigning for VP.

What do you think of DeJoy's expertise after seeing this CNN video?

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/08/24/katie-porter-usps-dejoy-questioning-sot-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/

"Louis DeJoy - Caricature" by DonkeyHotey is licensed under CC BY 2.0