Massive...Believe Me

One of the selling points of the new tax reform law that just passed was that the standard deduction would be doubled, which would eliminate the need for many people to itemize, supposedly making filing your taxes simpler. There's a few problems with this.

One problem is that it hasn't quite doubled. $6350 to $12,000 for singles and $12,700 to $24,000 for marrieds filing jointly. Perhaps this is nit-picking. For a married couple filing jointly this is still a reduction of $11,300 in taxable income. But one of the ways that this was paid for was by eliminating the personal exemption, which was $4050 per person for marrieds, for a total of $8100 lost. So now that $11,300 is only a taxable income reduction of $3,200. If this hypothetical family has one child, then the taxable income actually increases by $850. Two children, it increases by $4,900. To be fair, the child tax credit increased by $1000 per child, so with one child the decrease in taxable income is $150 while the increase for two children is "only" $3,900.

What about the people who will still itemize? For a married couple filing jointly they would have been itemizing over $24,000 in deductions to make it worth their while to pass up the standard deduction. These people are not getting double the deductions, but are still losing their personal exemptions. And if they're over 65 they're losing the over-65 exemptions as well. So add another $4050 increase in taxable income for each person over 65.

The actual tax paid will vary depending on income level. The first $19,050 of taxable income is still taxed at 10%; 19,050 - 77,400 decreases from 15% - 12%; the next bracket drops from 25% to 22% and expands from a ceiling of 156,150 to 165,000. Do the math yourself, but for anyone with a household income of $59,000, the median US household income, people with no children will see a modest reduction in taxes, while people with two or more children will see increases.

But on the bright side, you can deduct the cost of your private plane

The Tax Bill..."Massive" Tax Cuts

The House of Representatives passed the once-in-a-lifetime tax reform bill today and it looks like the Senate will by tomorrow. The numbers are finalized, so I was able to apply the new brackets and rates to my own situation. We're at about 80% of US Median Income, so we're not outliers high or low. After plugging in the new rates to our 2016 income figures I calculate that I will see a lower tax bill and a "raise", i.e. more after tax income. My tax bill would have been $652 less, increasing my after tax income by 1.4%. Don't get me wrong, I can certainly use an extra $652, but viewed another way, it's less than $13 a week. Hardly the "massive" cut, or the $4000/year "raise" that Sarah Sanders suggested that I might see.

Social Security Trust Fund

The other day Senator Lindsey Graham made a remark about the possibility of social security benefits coming out of the general fund (he was against it). His following remarks and the Twitter storm that followed betrayed an ignorance of how Social Security operates, in particular, what precisely the Social Security Trust Fund is and how it works, as well as whose money it is after you "pay into it".

Two of the more common remarks that one hears when complaining about Social Security is "I paid into it, it's my money",  and "Social Security is in trouble because Congress (or Obama, or Bush, take your pick) borrowed (or stole) from it...when are they going to pay it back?".

Before I get into dispelling, or at least addressing, the myths and misinformation that give rise to those questions, let's address the term "entitlement". Occasionally there appears a Facebook meme that expresses outrage that Social Security benefits are called (or going to be called) an entitlement, assuming that an entitlement is welfare and welfare is bad. According the the Glossary of Political Terms published by Auburn University, an entitlement is a financial benefit that an indefinite number of people have a legal right to, provided that they meet the eligibility requirements set by law. In the case of Social Security the broad requirements are that you have made payments into the system (typically by way of payroll deductions) and have reached a certain age. Without taking into account survivors or disability benefits, you can't receive benefits if you've never worked or if you aren't old enough.  Social Security benefits are an entitlement because you are entitled by law to receive them.

So, whose money is it anyway? Most people think that it's theirs. They "paid into it", they get it when they retire. Yes and no. The fact that in order to receive benefits one would have had to have paid Social Security taxes throughout their working life confuses some people. They imagine that it works like a bank account: you put money in, and when you retire, you take it out. In reality, it's simply a tax, like any other tax. The main difference is that, like say a local wheel tax, it's earmarked for a specific program. The other difference is that it's a pay-as-you-go program. The payroll tax collected from today's workers pays the benefits of today's retirees. When today's workers retire, if all goes well, their benefits will be paid by tomorrow's workers.

But it's still my money, right? I paid into it, so I get it...right? Yes and no. If you reach retirement age and meet any other requirements, you will receive benefits. But what if you die before reaching retirement age? (There is such a thing as spousal and survivors' benefits, but for the sake of simplicity I will not factor them in to this example). If you die before reaching retirement age, your bank account, stocks, etc does not evaporate, but will be distributed to your heirs. It doesn't work that way with Social Security benefits. Firstly, the benefits, despite having had Social Security taxes taken out of your paychecks over decades, is in no real sense "yours" until you meet the requirements. That money is not set aside for your future use. There is no special fund earmarked for your use that "disappears" if you die early. Remember pay-as-you-go? The money that you would have received would have come out of the payroll deductions of the people working when you retired. If you die, or otherwise do not meet the requirements those funds are not yours.

But what about the Trust Fund? The Government has been looting it to pay for their deficit spending, when are they going to pay it back? The question itself reflects a misunderstanding of how the Social Security Trust Fund works. As explained earlier, current benefits are paid out of payroll taxes collected from current wage earners. 50 years of accumulated payroll deductions aren't paying for today's retirees; that money has been spent on yesterday's retirees. What is accumulated is the surplus. Until 2009 the taxes collected exceeded the benefits paid, generating an annual surplus. So where is that money? Before I explain, let's look at what happens to your money when you deposit it in a bank. Even though there is a vault in every bank with cash in it, this does not represent all the bank's deposits. Once you put your money in a bank a percentage of it is loaned out, and some is invested in interest-bearing securities. Currently, banks are required to have a cash reserve of 12% of assets. That means that 80% of what has been deposited in a bank isn't physically there in the form of piles of cash. It's earning its keep. This is similar, but not identical, to what happens to the surpluses in the Trust Fund. The Social Security Administration is required by law to invest any surplus in US Treasury Securities. This is what is meant when you hear about "the government" borrowing money from the Trust Fund.  Similar to how a bank is putting the money on deposit to work, the Trust Fund, rather than sitting on a pile of cash, is freeing up the cash for current use. If, rather than investing in Treasury securities, the Trust Fund invested in private securities, it would be a similar situation, except that the cash would now be in the hands of private companies (or individuals), rather than the US Government. Having this cash in government hands, rather than private investors reduces the amount of borrowing needed to make up annual budget deficits.

One of the problems with this setup is that eventually this internal debt will have to be paid back, but the bigger problem is that, at some time in the near future, the deficits between collections and benefits will eat up the accumulated surpluses.  This has nothing to do with Congress or the President "raiding" the Trust Fund, but it has everything to do with demographics. There will, of course, still be money coming in from payroll taxes, but estimates project that by 2034 there will only be enough incoming revenue to pay for 79% of benefits, with the percentage shrinking to 73% by 2089. To repeat, this has nothing to do with anybody supposedly raiding the Trust Fund, but everything to do with demographics.

The way this is set up isn't what we generally see in our day-to-day household finances, and frankly, politicians over the years, either though ignorance or telling us what we want to hear, have misrepresented how Social Security works. However, in this day and age, with information at our fingertips though our computers and smart phones, there is no excuse to be ignorant.

Why is it...?

Why is it that when Black Lives matter activists or NFL players protest police acting inappropriately, they're called thugs and Un-American, but Trump criticizes law enforcement, there's no similar outrage?

Why is it that when Michelle Obama said that she finally proud to be an American when her husband was elected President she was excoriated as unpatriotic and worse, but Trump can characterize our nation as a violent wasteland in his inaugural speech and people applaud?

Why is it that President Obama was widely viewed with suspicion by the military and thought to be disrespectful of our service members for no discernible reason other than people thought a "liberal" must be against the military, but Trump can make multiple remarks deriding Senator McCain's time in a prison camp, saying that he knew more than "the generals" and many other disrespectful remarks, and he is thought to be a friend of the military?

Why is it that under Democratic Presidents pristine morality was considered a prerequisite for a President, and that Republicans were able to portray themselves as defenders of Christian values, but Trump, whose whole life is in opposition to any kind of morality, let alone Christian, can be championed by Evangelicals as their savior?

Why is it that those who claim to like and support Trump seem to like a fantasy version of Trump that bears little, if any, resemblance to the real Trump?

Trump's Campaign Promises

Trump likes to brag that he has accomplished more than any other President in his first year. He also makes a point when he does fullfil a campaign promise, that he keeps his word. But is that true? Has he done more than any other president?

It is true that he has eliminated many regulations that cost his billionaire cronies money, but no legislative achievements to speak of. Here's a list of promises not kept:

• Build a "Great, big, beautiful" wall on the border with Mexico: no wall has been built
• Balance the budget "fairly quickly": backs a budget that increases the deficit
• Stop all Muslim immigration: travel ban has encountered numerous legal hurdles
• Repeal "Obamacare" on Day One: we still have the ACA
• Push for a Constitutional Amendment to enact term limits on Congress: no sign of this happening
• Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton: someone else is being investigated
• Make no cuts to Social Security or Medicaid: Republicans are discussing doing this with no pushback from Trump
• Invest $1 Trillion in infrastructure: no sign of this happening
• Defund Planned Parenthood: Nope
•  Open up libel laws: that pesky constitution
• Develop a plan to defeat ISIS in 30 days: or maybe there was already a secret plan, we kicked them out of their territory, but they still exist
• Establish a commission on radical Islam: must be a secret commission
• Guarantee 6 week paid parental leave: hahahahaha
• Allow health insurance to be sold across state lines: was already legal
• Send back Syrian refugees: they're still here
• End birthright citizenship: there's that Constitution again
• label China a currency manipulator: Xi Jinping is now Trump's BFF after some delicious chocolate cake
• Save the Indiana Carrier plant: they're still sending jobs south of the border
• Take no vacations: I guess every weekend being a three-day golf outing doesn't count
• Release tax returns "after audit is completed": yeah, right
• A massive tax cut: he may get the Republican tax bill passed, but it's not done yet and it's hardly a tax cut for more than half of Americans

The Single Issue Voter

Zeroing in on a single issue sounds good in theory. Be passionate about something, something that you feel is more important than anything else in the whole wide world. Throw all of your support to a candidate that agrees with your issue and refuse to vote for anyone who disagrees. All you have to do is convince more than 50% of voters of the importance of your issue and we're on the road to utopia.

Not so fast, Skippy.

The problem wit being a single issue voter is that our lives are not single issue lives. What's the most important? Abortion rights? The ACA? The candidate's morality? Tax issues? Defense? Immigration? What if all these issues (and more) are equally important? Or even pretty darn important if not as important as issue #1? What if the available candidates include one who agrees with you on issue #1, but not on issues 2, 3, 4...10; and another who disagrees on #1, but agrees on all the others? Most single issue voters will choose the candidate who agrees with them on issue #1.

This is the problem that we are dealing with in the age of Trump. We had a candidate (and now a President) who ran an unquestionably hateful campaign; has been credibly accused of over a dozen women of sexual harassment, even caught on tape admitting to it; lied repeatedly and obviously during the campaign and still does as President; shows no aptitude or competence and makes many statements betraying his ignorance; undermines the press and law enforcement;  is reckless in his discussion of military options...I can go on and on. But what many, many people based their decision on is one issue: abortion. Now I'm not going to argue for or against abortion, choice or any associated issues. But for those who vehemently oppose abortion in all circumstances, nothing else matters.

This is what we are up against when we bring up sexual harassment allegations against Donald Trump and now Roy Moore. To the dyed-in-wool abortion opponents, none of that matters because the other candidate is an abortion supporter. Abortion is their single issue. Nothing else matters and nothing will sway them.  And frankly, we're wasting our time trying to change the minds of people like that. Work on the people who are open to changing their minds.

And get your ass out and vote so that there are more of us than there are of them.

Did Anyone Read This God Damn Bill?

Few would argue that the tax code in the United States isn't in need of reform. Every lobbying group that has a shred of influence has convinced Congress to include exemptions and loopholes. Many of you know that I work for my state's Department of Revenue. I work mainly with sales tax and tax incentives; when I started work there I was stunned at the number exemptions and exceptions and how often the answer to the questions "Is that taxable?" was "It depends". In principle I was for a change to the tax code, but was skeptical that Republicans would make any changes that were helpful to low- and middle-income Americans. I am deeply skeptical that giving tax breaks to the rich and to big corporations is going to translate to more money in the pockets of people like me, even though the Trumpists and the Republicans assure me that they passed a "massive" tax cut that will benefit working Americans. I call "bullshit".

There's a lot wrong with what was just passed:

• The Republicans used suspect math in order to claim that the increase to the deficit and national debt would be under the threshold that allowed them to pass the bill with 51 votes instead of 60. 
•  Any tax reductions will expire in seven years. (This is so the math in the previous bullet point works - they know full well that a future Congress will not want to implement what most Americans will view as a tax increase by letting cuts expire)
• While some middle-income Americans will see lower tax bills (early back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that I am one of them) many more will see increases. 
• The biggest tax reductions affect the richest Americans as well as large corporations (the rationale is the big companies will use their tax windfall to increase wages and create jobs, ignoring the fact that most megacorps are sitting on huge piles of cash and not increasing wages. Wages increase due to market pressure and competition; jobs are created when demand increases)
• The Senate bill was rushed through with little debate and no time to read the bill, let alone understand what was in it (almost 500 pages) - handwritten changes appeared minutes before the vote and changes were made that lobbyists knew before the Democratic party Senators did. 
• Several non-tax related items appeared in the bill including drilling in the Arctic, classifying fetuses as "persons" in the tax code, ending the individual mandate's penalties, repealing the prohibition on non-profit groups from political activism and who the hell knows what else?
• Many Schedule A itemized deductions have been eliminated, while big ticket, 1%er deductions are retained or expanded
• Even though the standard deduction is doubled, personal exemptions are to be eliminated, hurting anyone with more than one child

It's pretty clear that this is not a middle/working class friendly bill, but mainly payback to the donor class. 

Does Elizabeth Warren Have Cherokee Ancestry?

Does Elizabeth Warren have Cherokee ancestors? Probably not, since there doesn't appear to be any documentation to support her belief. Is she lying about it? Also probably not. Families tell stories about their lineage, sometimes it turns out not to be true. I have long noted how there seems to be a huge number of people who, while outwardly white, claim to be part Cherokee. I'm not talking about people who actually know that they're Cherokee because they have actually met that parent or grandparent who is definitely Native American or because they are an enrolled member of one of the three Cherokee nations. No, I'm talking about those who claim an ancestor far enough back that no one living knows for sure: "My great-grandmother was one quarter Cherokee" - this means the actual Cherokee ancestor is five generations back. I personally never met any of my great-grandparents, let alone great-great-great-grandparents. But family lore is hard to deny and people like to tell stories and make their beginnings a bit more exotic. That doesn't mean that those who hear those stories are lying when they pass them on.

In my own family we have our share of undocumented family lore. My two adopted sons, according to their biological grandfather, are part Iroquois. Which nation among the Iroquois Confederacy I have no idea, but we always accepted it and never had a thought of verifying or documenting it. In my own family my Aunt Agnes told me stories about our Italian and South Slav ancestors and even talked about a branch of the family, her own half-siblings, that were still living in what was then Yugoslavia. No documentation until my uncle had a chance meeting with a cousin, the granddaughter of one of the half-siblings, who verified that we were descended from Italians who migrated to the Croatia/Slovenia region and Aunt Agnes' tales were proven true.

My point is that families tell stories about themselves and believing and repeating those stories doesn't make you a liar or a bad person. Elizabeth Warren isn't the problem here, it's a President who feels empowered to demean anyone who stands up to him and hasn't a clue about how to act like the representative of all the people.

Pocahontas? Again? Really?

Is "Pocahontas" a racial slur? I have no idea, but I have seen articles claiming that it is, and others claiming that it isn't. I've also seen Trump supporters rationalize that since Trump doesn't believe Warren's claim that she has Native American ancestry, he is not mocking Natives, he is mocking Warren for claiming to be Native. Is Elizabeth Warren part Cherokee? I don't know. She bases her claim on stories her parents and grandparents told her, but has no documentation. She is, however, one of untold apparently white Americans who claim to be part Cherokee. I'll let actual Native Americans decide if calling someone "Pocahontas" is a slur, but Trump undoubtedly means it as an insult, like all his other schoolyard nicknames like "Lyin' Ted", "Low-Energy Jeb" or "Liddle Bob Corker" and even "Rocket Man". What is a certainty is that bringing it into the ceremony honoring the Navajo Code Talkers was extremely inappropriate. Even his supposed words of respect were rambling and apparently not thought through: "You're very, very, special people. You were here long before any of us here". What? Then he segues into his insult: "We have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago..." Huh? We know in retrospect that he's talking about Senator Warren, "they" say? They say she was here "a long time ago" What the hell is he babbling about? "They call her Pocahontas"...no sir, you call her Pocahontas. You know that this couldn't have been part of his scripted remarks, it was one of his stream of consciousness idiotic ramblings. He somehow thought it was appropriate, since was honoring Indians, that he work in a poke to an opponent using the name of an historic Indian.

Even if this wasn't a racial slur, it was just another in a continual cascade of bad judgement and disrespect. 

The Republican "Tax Reform" Bills

Okay, Congress, fresh from it's cluster-fuck over repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are now working on "reforming" the tax code. So what's in the tax bills? (The House and Senate each have bills which differ from the other)

The main goal of the House's bill was to lower taxes on corporations. The top marginal rate would be lowered from 35 to 20 percent, pass-through corporations (S-Corps aka LLCs) would have a top rate of 25 percent, with a rate of only 9 percent on the first $75,000 (starting in 2022). Despite threats, the House bill does not include a repeal of ACA's individual mandate, although the Senate bill does. Businesses can also repatriate overseas cash assets at a rate of 12 percent. Businesses also will no longer be taxed on revenues earned outside the country. The estate tax is being phased out. According to some analysts, about 40% of American would pay less and 20% would pay more. However, any personal income tax cuts expire in 2023. The number of tax brackets decrease from seven to four. Many credits and deductions are being eliminated, including medical expenses, most college tax benefits, and the personal exemption and replaced with a larger standard deduction.

What I am seeing is that it is unclear exactly how this bill would affect me personally. I do not itemize, so I do not suffer from the loss of deductions. The elimination of personal exemptions for me is an increase of taxable income of $8100, which is more than offset by the doubling of the standard deduction, decreasing my taxable income by about $12,000. However, anyone with a household of more than three is going to lose out with these two changes. Two or less, there is a net benefit. I'm not sure how my business income will be taxed, or if allowable business expenses will change.

Note that the personal reductions expire while the business reductions do not. This is to shoehorn the bill into Senate requirements that the changes net less than a certain amount over a ten year period. The expiration of the personal income tax changes will allow the math to work, but we all know that a future Congress will not want to raise taxes (we've been down this road before), so in reality the costs will exceed the Senate cutoff. Meeting these requirements allows the Senate to pass a bill that is not subject to filibuster and which therefore can be passed with 51 votes (or 50 plus Mike Pence).

Of course the big push is to reduce corporate taxes, allegedly to boost job creation and so that employees can receive raises. In fact, the White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders recently announced that the "average American family" would get a "$4000 raise" from this tax plan, factoring in the ephemeral extra jobs and higher pay rates supposedly on the way. The problem with this is that American corporations, skittish about over-extending since the last recession and housing crash, are sitting on piles of cash that could already be used for investment and increasing wages. In the real world businesses do not create jobs or hand out raises simply because their taxes decrease. Investment, including expansion, happens because there is a greater demand for their product or service; raises happen when there is competition for labor, otherwise companies don't pay any more than they have to.

All in all, this "tax reform" bill appears to be primarily a giveaway for the billionaire class, while being branded as a bonanza for the working Joes and Janes of America.

helpful links:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/the-house-is-voting-on-its-tax-bill-thursday-heres-what-is-in-it/?utm_term=.447ad9e7f537

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/15/us/politics/every-tax-cut-in-the-house-tax-bill.html

Good Guy With a Gun

Assuming what we've heard so far is accurate, Stephen Willeford and Johnnie Langendorff are a brave men. Willeford heard gunshots from the church next door this past Sunday, grabbed his gun and ran toward the gunfire, shooting the man who had just killed 26 people in the church. He and Langendorff then pursued the killer in Langendorff's pickup, running him off the road and then waited until law enforcement arrived. They did what a lot of people like to think that they'd do in a similar situation. Most people believe that they will be heroic in dangerous scenarios, but you never really know what you'll do until you are right in the middle of it. These two stepped up and did what needed to be done. At the same time their actions confirmed what many gun owners believe: that a "good guy with a gun" will neutralize a "bad guy with a gun", and the answer to mass shootings is not to limit or restrict gun ownership, but to expand it, so everyone has a gun. In this case further bloodshed may very well have been prevented, but 26 people still died before the killer was stopped. There still wasn't a happy ending. Perhaps, gun advocates might argue, if someone inside the church was armed, it could have been prevented altogether.

Maybe. There have been other situations where armed bystanders did what most people do: ran and hid. There have been situations where citizens have drawn their guns, causing confusion for law enforcement. And to bring up a sore subject, since black men seem to get shot if the police suspect that they are armed, let alone have drawn a weapon, what happens when the police arrive and find a black "good guy with a gun"?

I don't pretend to know what the answer is. I can guarantee that the answer won't be simple and that nothing can prevent all shootings. But we sure need to talk about finding a solution. We don't even have good data to base a solution on because NRA influence in Congress has caused most research into gun violence to be suppressed. We can pontificate about immigration and "extreme vetting" 10 minutes after a Muslim kills people while shouting "God is great" in Arabic, but it's always too soon to talk about gun legislation.

Part of the problem is the army of strawmen that the NRA and their allies deploy. No one is suggesting repealing the Second Amendment, no one is demanding that the government "come for our guns", no one is suggesting that law-abiding gun owners be punished. Yet this is what many gun owners argue against, when few, if any, legislators are suggesting anything like that.

Mass killings are becoming the new normal. What are we going to do about it? Let's start with recognizing that something needs to be done.

Election Rigging

When I first heard the accusations of election rigging last year, I interpreted "rigging" as something akin to widespread election fraud, election commissioners suborned, voting machines hacked, paper ballots stolen, dead people voting, people voting multiple times, and dismissed the possibility that Secretary Clinton (who was the one who most often was alleged to have rigged the election) had that much power. There is no nation-wide body that oversees elections, but the rules are set by the states and administered locally.  But soon it became apparent that the word "rigged" was used in a much broader sense, making the word effectively meaningless. Sanders supporters threw the word around in the primaries, and it's obvious now if it wasn't obvious then, that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) preferred Clinton, despite their internal rules to remain neutral until a candidate received the party's nomination. But the fact remains that all candidates knew the rules for getting delegates beforehand, and fair or not, Clinton, playing by the rules that were in place, received more delegates than Sanders. (More on that later). During the general election campaign, Candidate Trump began throwing the allegation of rigging around, especially in late September and early October as polls seemed to show that Clinton had the upper hand. Without evidence, he claimed that all the polls were wrong (at least those that showed him behind) and that the election was rigged against him.  Never one to provide specifics when vague generalities will do, he even suggested that it was the media who was doing the rigging. It looked like he was preparing the excuses that he'd use after his election day loss.

But then he won, and you didn't hear anything more from him about election rigging.

Then came Donna Brazile's book where she claims that she had evidence that the Clinton campaign rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders. I read the excerpts from her book that was published by Politico, and despite the fundraising agreement raising numerous red flags, it didn't appear that the information that she was giving supported her conclusion that the primaries were rigged in Clinton's favor. Once again, the word "rigged" being used of any bias, favoritism, or just plain hard-nosed campaigning. It didn't take long for more details to come out casting doubt on Brazile's conclusions, including her statement this morning that the primaries were "a fair fight".

Of course Brazile's book was used by Trump to distract from his own problems with allegations of election rigging; his go-to stratagem is to accuse Clinton of whatever he's being accused of!

In my opinion, Trump's campaign, with Russian assistance, didn't rig the election either. Did Russians spread disinformation? I don't think that's in doubt any longer. Did Russians steal emails from the DNC? Our intelligence agencies believe so. Did the Trump campaign meet with and cooperate with Russians? More and more evidence is pointing that way, and more of them are being caught in lies. But did the Russians, with or without the cooperation of the Trump campaign actually hack into voting machines or cause any votes to be changed? I see no evidence of that either.

So when I hear or see the word "rigged", I tend to ignore it, because it's become a word without real meaning in popular usage.

The Militarization of Trump's America

Donald Trump, since deciding to run for President, has had a mixed record in his dealings with the military. On one hand, he has pushed for an increased military budget, given field commanders more freedom to conduct operations as they see fit and appointed several active and retired Army and Marine Generals to cabinet and White House posts. On the other hand he denigrated John McCain for having been captured during the Vietnam War, claimed that he knew more than "the generals" about ISIS, and accused "the generals" of having "killed Ryan", the Navy SEAL who died in a mission early in Trump's presidency. However, it's the latest tempest in a teapot, his conversation with the widow of a Special Forces Sergeant, that reveals deeper issues.

For one, I don't believe that Trump meant to be disrespectful to Mrs. Johnson. Her perception that he couldn't remember Sgt. LaDavid Johnson's name could have been just that: her perception. After all, Trump seems to struggle rhetorically at most times, and seems singularly unaware of how his words sound to others. While he appears to lake empathy, I'll give him credit for making the attempt, as it's part of the job. The part about him saying "he knew what he signed up for" I believe is a result of getting bad advice from John Kelly, a retired Marine General whose son was killed in action. Kelly, in a press conference, essentially confirmed that Trump said what Rep. Wilson said that he said, and that the guidance to say it came from him, Kelly. The problem is that "he knew what he signed up for" or words to that effect, would have a different affect on a parent who was a decorated service member himself than on a young, pregnant woman, who only knew that she lost her husband. In my opinion, Kelly gave Trump bad advice.

Trump could have still salvaged the situation if he had suppressed his inclination to viciously fight back and simply apologized and expressed sincere condolences. Instead he attacked a Member of Congress and in effect called a war widow a liar. President Bush was once faced with a widow who, upon encountering Bush at Dover Air Force Base when the body was brought home, was screamed at by her. He never attacked her or spoke badly about her. He let her vent, and then hugged her.

What was equally disturbing was Mr. Kelly's press conference and Kellyanne Conway's follow-up. He defended Trump's behavior and suggested throughout that the military were better, or above, non-military Americans, confirmed by his refusal to take questions from any reporters who were not either veterans or Gold Star family members. Conway extended the adoration of the military by suggesting that it was inappropriate for reports to question "a four-star general".

What?

One of the things enshrined in the Constitution that right-wingers claim to love so much is that the military in our country answers to a civilian, the President. In addition, the Secretary of Defense is customarily a civilian - it takes a Congressional waiver to appoint an active or recently retired service member. But our Secretary of Defense is a retired general. The National Security Advisor is a retired general, and the White House Chief of Staff, formerly Secretary of Homeland Security is a retired general. Trump has removed much civilian oversight and removed "restrictions" on what the military does. Do I think that the President should be micromanaging the military? No, but overall civilian control is essential. If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail; if your top advisors are all military, the all solutions look like military solutions. This is exacerbated by the under-staffing of the State Department.

Military solutions sometimes are the answer, but diplomatic answers must be on the table as well.

Despite Trump's attacks on individual military officers and his high opinion of his own strategic acumen, we are becoming a top-down, don't question authority type of nation.

And that's not a good thing.

Russia Distractions: Investigations into the So-Called Russian Uranium Deal & "The Dossier"

Anyone who pays any attention knows that the Trump campaign, and possibly even Trump himself, is being investigated for allegations that they colluded with Russia to influence the last Presidential election. Unlike the President, Special Counsel Mueller doesn't tweet his every thought, so we won't really know anything until the investigation is complete. However President Trump, as well as some of his surrogates, have been suggesting that it has been established that there was no collusion, and the real collusion was between President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and the Clinton Foundation with Russia in the instance of "The Russian Uranium Deal". There are also suggestions that the "dossier" on Trump that had a section on urinating Moscow hookers, was evidence of the Clinton campaign colluding with Russia.

The "Uranium Deal"
The allegation is that a Canadian mining company that owned uranium processing plants in the United States was sold to a Russian company resulting in the Russians having control over 20% of the United States' uranium and that this deal happened because The Clinton Foundation received a large bribe from Russian interests.  Sometimes the allegations are phrased as "Clinton sold the Russians 20% of our uranium".

What is true?

• The U.S. government did approve the sale of the uranium plants owned by Uranium One, a Canadian company, to Rostom, a Russian nuclear energy company
• The FBI, at the time of the sale, was investigating Rostom for bribery, extortion and other crimes

What isn't true?

• That 20% of U.S. uranium was sold to the Russians

The assets that were purchased in the United States were processing plants, not mines. If fully operational they had the capacity to process 20% of all uranium processed in the U.S. in a given year. Furthermore, even if these plants had any uranium in their possession, the company had no license to export uranium, so any that they did mine would remain here.

• That the approval was a quid pro quo for a large Russian donation to The Clinton Foundation. 

Despite the fact that the State Department was one of the departments that signed off on the Uranium One sale, Secretary Clinton did not participate in any of the discussions related to the sale. The Treasury Department was the lead cabinet department in the approval of this sale. 

This sale did not affect national security, including our stock of uranium, in any way, nor was Clinton involved except as the head of a department that had a small part in the approval process. 

The "Dossier"

Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, compiled 17 memos detailing interviews that he had with unidentified Russian sources. Some of the interviewees allege that the Putin government sought to promote Trump as a Presidential candidate and to undermine Clinton, and that the Trump campaign revived information from Russian sources that helped their campaign. The information tracks with a conclusion by the U.S. intelligence agencies that Russian worked to influence the Presidential election. Recently it has been revealed that funding for Steele's research came from the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, Trump is using this information to accuse the Clinton campaign, rather than his, of colluding with the Russians.

What's different?

• The allegations against the Trump campaign are that they actively assisted a foreign government in undermining and influencing the election; the Clinton campaign paid for information that established this. 
• Nothing about what the Russians are alleged to have done seems to have benefited Clinton, but were clearly designed to   undermine Clinton's campaign. 

Distractions

Whether there was active cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russian government remains to be determined. Mueller is working his way methodically through the evidence, and I for one will trust whatever he comes up with, even if it exonerates Trump. What I find disturbing is how Trump, at every step, is seeking to paint the investigation as a waste of money - money being the ultimate measure of value in Trump's mind. He acts as if it's a forgone conclusion that there is no evidence against him or his associates and that everyone knows this. He points at DNC/Clinton funding Steele's research and the uranium sale as evidence that it's the other guys who are the bad guys, not him.  

What I find scary, though, is the number of people who will believe whatever he tweets without even five minutes of research.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/29/the-dossier-and-the-uranium-deal-a-guide-to-the-latest-allegations/?utm_term=.f70ff0c893a6

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/10/27/claims-of-clinton-russia-uranium-scandal-are-a-real-empty-barrel/#3f9ef0837b55

Trump's Gaslighting

He did it again.

During the press conference with Mitch McConnell earlier this week President Trump suggested that we "not believe what we read", that he and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had a great friendship and working relationship, and just so you wouldn't think this was a new development, he told us that he "has had" a great friendship with Mitch. He wants us to think that a feud between Trump and McConnell is a creation of "The Fake Media", and that there's nothing to see here, please move along. But we don't have to rely on the media, we don't have to lean on the pundits, we don't have to be beholden to the "failing New York Times". We only have to read Trump's tweets, which are full of attacks on McConnell, including calls for him to resign.

This is not new, this is not the first occurrence of this behavior, this is not a slip of the tongue. This is gas-lighting, plain and simple. This is lying in order to manipulate someone. Most of these lies can be and are easily checked, so you would logically think that this would stop. But if you think about it, we all know people who act like this. Boyfriends, wives, employers, friends, who tell a big enough lie often enough that you doubt your own sanity. My first wife once insisted to me that a stop light that was on the corner two doors down from our house wasn't there; I doubted myself so much that I had to go out and check to make sure that it was really there. (It was)

This Presidential gas-lighting would seem insane if it wasn't for the fact that some people ignore what they see and hear and believe what Trump says. Why do you think there's the drumbeat on "fake news" and the constant attacks on specific media outlets? Doubt is thrown on all sources of information except for him? Even when the source of the information is him, like his tweets, if he wants to change the narrative he simply tells us that "the fake news" took it out of context, or he tells us what he really meant, or one of his mouthpieces spins it in a contradictory way, further confusing the matter. A few days after the election, when Trump had some rare conciliatory things to say about Secretary Clinton and was respectful to President Obama, and he talked about how "very, very, important" it was to him to be "President of all the people", I asked if we were supposed to forget all the hateful and divisive things that he said during the campaign?  An acquaintance of mine took the position that Trump hadn't said hateful or divisive things during the campaign. Little did I know how widespread that would be. 

So, are there four lights, or five?

Trump's Agenda: Destruction

Trump talked a good game in the campaign. He was going to do things! He was going to build a wall, he was going to strengthen our military, he was going to use his legendary deal-making skills to negotiate better trade agreements, he was going to propose a better, cheaper alternative to the ACA, he was going to put into place the most massive tax decrease in history, he was going to defeat ISIS...

But what, in the real world, not the make-believe world of campaigns, has he accomplished? Nothing legislatively. He claims to have signed a record number of bills, but they mostly consist of naming buildings & parks, and other ceremonial items, as well as bureaucratic tweaks, and about a third were bills reversing Obama-era regulations. "So", his supporters might reply, "he's signing a lot of executive orders since we have a do-nothing, ineffective, Congress". But the executive orders are mainly reversals of Obama administration regulation as well. Executive orders regarding immigration have been held up in the courts. 

A big part of this destructive path is that he simply has no idea how legislation works. He has no idea what the relationship between the Congress and the President is. This is what you get when you get someone steeped in New York media culture, who was the star of a "reality" show and who is the top dog at a huge tentaculer collection of interlocking businesses. In that world the CEO is the king, the emperor, the "one man" in "one man, one vote", everyone else is an employee. When you're President there are people that you can order around, and you can get two scoops of ice cream, but members of Congress don't work for the President. He has to work with them, not demand that they do his bidding. He also has no idea how complex legislation has to be. One of the reasons that he was legally able to cancel subsidies to insurance companies to help them cover low-income people is that, while the subsidies were written into the ACA, the funding mechanism was not. This small oversight left a vulnerable hole in the law. He doesn't understand that a loophole, while it can be a purposely crafted exception to a law, is just as often an interpretation that no one thought of when they were writing the law. I've seen this many times in the short time that I have been working in government.

His destructive tendencies are not just an outgrowth of his ignorance. His default action when questioned is to attack, whether it's the Democrats, his own party, foreign leaders, the press, or not unusually, his own cabinet and White House staff. Another default setting seems to be to lie big as often as possible. He lies when he doesn't know the answer, he lies when he knows the answer but doesn't want to appear stupid, he lies as an opening gambit to negotiation. All of this lying and second guessing about when he is or isn't lying sows chaos all around him. Look at his statements on North Korea, Congress and the media, chaos is the new normal.

We have elected a President with no plan other than to tear down...everything.

Trump and Science

The thing about science is that people who use science to make decisions like to see this elusive thing called "evidence"; to compile this mystical thing called "data" to confirm or disprove their ideas.

Not only does President Trump not understand science, but he holds scientists and their work in contempt, especially when they disagree with him. He has appointed as heads of cabinet departments people who have actively fought against the missions of those departments. Two examples are Scott Pruitt, the former Oklahoma Attorney General who repeatedly sued the EPA, as the head of the EPA; and Rick Perry, former Texas governor, who once campaigned on the promise to eliminate the Department of Energy, as the Secretary of Energy. And let's not forget the nominee for the USDA's Chief Scientist who was not in fact a scientist, no matter how broad you stretched the definition of "scientist". Trump has suggested that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. He has recently betrayed an abysmal ignorance of what "clean coal" is. (No, it's not coal that's been washed in a certain way).

The department and agency heads have plowed forward with their deregulation jihad without consulting the experts within their departments; see, they don't need no stinkin' experts, they know what they want! They want job growth (see the post on Trump and Business), the environment, food safety, workplace safety and healthcare be damned. Since our new administration has no need for experts, their minds being already made up, the proposed budget contains across the board cuts to any government agency that has scientists, researchers or anything else that has to do with knowledge. The National Institutes for Health, NASA, R&D for the Department of Energy, NOAA, the Department of Defense science researchers, Health & Human Services, Department of Agriculture, and let's not forget FEMA, have all been slated for budget cuts...drastic budget cuts.

It would be naive to believe that politicians never make scientific decisions based on partisan considerations, but it seems like Trump and his minions view relying on science as a weakness.

Trump and Business

In the last post I discussed Trump's position on the environment and how his decisions regarding it are made. One of the main points was that policy is set, not on how it effects the environment and by extension Americans' health and well-bring, but on bottom-line costs and supposed job creation. I say "supposed", because rollback of various regulations will likely cause costs to the affected corporations to decrease, but that this doesn't necessarily translate into more jobs. Companies, especially large companies, do not automatically pass on increased profits to their employees. The only legal responsibility of any board of directors or management team is to maximize profit for their shareholders. Employment levels at any company will be set according to the minimum needed to produce their product in quantities that meet the demand. Jobs will be created only if an additional demand for the product materializes, not because the profit margin increases. The coal industry is a great example. The demand for coal is down due to competition from other energy sources; in addition, fewer workers are needed due to increased automation. Scrapping regulation isn't going to resurrect coal industry jobs.

Trump knows this.

Trump, despite his history of bankruptcies and stiffing his contractors, knows how business works. His Mar-a-Lago golf club hires temporary workers on immigrant visas because it would cost more to pay local people.  I'm sure that he's never advocated hiring extra people just because the balance sheet was looking good that year. So what is his motivation for talking as if repealing regulations that cost companies money is a good thing? It can only be that he is working to make life better for, not the coal miner or assembly line worker, but for the owners of the coal mines and the factories. This is an updated version of the trickle-down economics of the eighties. Which didn't work in the eighties.

But what about the "record job creation" and the stock market setting new records every week? Surely that means that Trump knows what he's doing. Right?

Let's look at jobs. During Trump's first six months in office, 1.1 million jobs were created. Is that a record? Is that a good number? Any increase in employment is good, but not exactly a record; approximately the same amount of jobs were created during Obama's last six months in office, so we're essentially still coasting along on  2016's economy. Obama's  first six month of his second term had an increase of 1.2 million jobs - other presidents had similar numbers. (Obama's first six months of his first term saw a loss of 3.4 million jobs - coming off a nationwide recession).

How about the stock market? Here we see a similar trend. Trump likes to brag about record setting Dow Jones numbers, and technically he's correct. We are continually setting new records, however, since 2010 the stock market (based on the Dow) has been on a steady upward curve that has continued into Trump's term. To be fair, many economists predicted that Trump's unpredictability would cause the market to drop, which hasn't happened. But is the precipitous rise in stock prices indicative of a healthy economy? Maybe. It's at least an indicator that the people who are buying stocks think that the economy is going to continue to be healthy for a while. But before we get too excited about Trump's stock market savvy, remember that just this week he talked about the increase in value of the Dow Industrial Average stocks as if they negated part of our national debt.

Trump has no real knowledge of economics, or at least doesn't care about the rules of economics. He's all about talking about helping American workers and bringing jobs back, but his actions thus far have been, by chance or design, have benefited other billionaires, with scant evidence that the lot of working Americans is improving.

But slogans, we have good slogans - the best slogans.

Trump and the Environment

Lately when writing about President Trump I have emphasized his clownishness, his craziness, his seeming inability to focus on anything of import. But despite his cartoonishness, the aura of fakeness about him, he is very real and has been doing very real damage. Some of the damage is being done to the environment.

Trump's views on the environment were quite clear before he took office. Several years ago he claimed that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. He has never reversed himself. Trump's attack on the environment has several foundations:

1. His obsessive crusade to undo everything that President Obama accomplished
2. His tendency to view everything through the prism of business
3. His penchant for extreme, unscientific views on nearly everything
4. His realization that his base distrusts environmental regulation as a liberal scheme

#1 is pretty self-evident and doesn't require much exposition.

If you look at almost everything Trump does, it all comes back to money, to the hallowed bottom line. Precious few issues don't boil down to his position that if it lowers the cost of doing business, it's good, if it increases expenses, it's bad. It's a simple calculus, so simple in Trump math that it's more like first grade arithmetic. It really can't be argued that many regulations cost money. If there's a regulation that limits the amount of pollutants that an automobile can emit, it will cost more to produce than one that can belch forth as much toxic smoke as possible. It costs a factory more to safely dispose of it's waste than to simply dump it in a river. If you listen to virtually every proclamation that involves environmental regulations, it is justified as a money saver, as a job creator. It is seldom if ever framed as contrary to established science; the environmental impact is simply not an issue. Think back to the announcement about the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord - it was explained as burdensome because of the costs.  The overturning of the rule prohibiting certain coal waste products from being dumped was promoted as a way to increase coal industry jobs, not addressed as being environmentally unneeded. With Scott Pruitt as Environmental Protection Agency Director we have someone who so disagrees with the actual mission of the agency that he regularly sued the EPA while Attorney General of Oklahoma. In addition to Pruitt, the agency has been filled with industry lobbyists and has removed agency professionals from the decision making process. Her is a list of environmental regulations either overturned or in the process of being overturned:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump-environment-rules-reversed.html?_r=0

Trump's statement that climate change was a Chinese hoax was mentioned earlier. He seems to have a very shallow understanding of science and no desire to learn more, especially if it contradicts what he already believes. Based on his proposed budget Trump sees little worth in scientific research and has cut the budgets of many agencies that do that research, such as the National Institute of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, not to mention the EPA. 

Finally, there's the appeal to his base. Much of what Trump says and does is designed to "piss of the liberals". Right-wing talk radio, in particular Rush Limbaugh, have derided "environmentalist wackos" for years, feeding a revulsion among many of anything that is "liberal". He appeals to a scientifically ignorant segment of the population, making false claims, knowing that if he makes them loud enough and with enough schoolyard insults, his base will cheer. 

Yes, he is a clown, but he's a dangerous clown. 

Why Does It Always Have to Be About Trump?

To put it bluntly, this is some serious shit. We have had multiple hurricanes hitting the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean this year, with death and destruction. We have a lot of professionals in FEMA, the military (including the National Guard) as well as local organizations and individuals doing their best to help. Inevitably there will be problems and some people overlooked and areas poorly served, no matter what the intentions. People will complain, people will point fingers, local officials will highlight problems as often as they express thanks for the help. The targets of the complaints usually bite their tongues, realizing that some of the complaints are likely justified and even if not, those effected are under a lot of stress and striking back is counterproductive, not to mention cruel.

As usual, our President has made it all about him. He has attacked the Mayor of San Juan for complaining about the federal response, he has suggested that the people of Puerto Rico are lazy, he has crowed about "good reviews" (what is this a Broadway show?) and even posted a video highlighting all that he has supposedly done for Puerto Rico that the "Fake News" hasn't reported, whining all the while about the lack of appreciation. He has commented on how Puerto Rican rebuilding is  going to break the budget, and complained about how tough it is to get help to Puerto Rico because "it's in the middle of an ocean, a big ocean". And let's not forget the ridiculous photo ops that included remarks like "have a good time" and the throwing of paper towels.

As usual, no matter how grave the situation, it's all about Trump.

Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Any Weirder

Let's assume for a minute that NFL players kneeling during the national anthem is disrespectful. Many people (not me) think so. Many people (also not me) think that players who do not stand with their hand over their heart should be fired. This is something that should work itself out through the free market. Players, in my opinion, have the right to express their opinions, fans have the right to express their opinions by boycotting games, and owners have the right to make business decisions to protect their bottom line as long as it does not violate the law. Whether owners should fire kneeling players, or whether fans are morally correct in boycotting, is an issue that I'm not addressing right now.

What I am addressing and what I find astounding is that this is an issue that the President of The United States of America has decided to focus his attention on. Over a recent weekend the President tweeted over a dozen times regarding this issue, following up on an interview where he referred to those who knelt as sons of bitches and expressed his opinion that they be fired. There are various opinions about what Trump is hoping to accomplish. One view is that this is just another distraction from the ongoing probe into alleged collusion with Russian election interference; another is that it's some red meat to toss to his base, which includes people who agree with him wholeheartedly on this issue. Or maybe the man just has no filter. He has a track record of making statements that are inappropriate to someone in his position: he has pilloried companies that have made decisions that he disagrees with and has attacked legislators who don't vote with him.

What is indisputable is that there are more important issues that the President of The United States of America should be focused on: possibility of war with North Korea, the continuing battle over health care, tax reform, to name but a few. Our government has become a circus.

And as if it couldn't get crazier, Trump sends Pence to an NFL game to feign outrage, all the while neglecting to mention the Special Forces troops killed in Niger.

Black & Blue

As a follow up to the last blog post about labeling those you disagree with as terrorists, I'm going to look at "Black Lives Matter". A common reflexive response to "Black Lives Matter" has been "All Lives Matter" or "Blue Lives Matter", or to paint those who have been killed by the police as "thugs" or criminals who deserved what they got because they ran from the police, or the police "feared for their lives".

Why was there even a need for black people to say that their lives mattered? Because it appeared that black lives didn't matter. Black people were being killed in police shootings in situations that, to the ordinary person, didn't seem to justify a shooting. There was a perception that, to the police, black lives didn't matter, that it took little or no provocation for a black person to be killed by the police, where in similar situations involving white people, there would be no shooting. Responding with "All Lives Matter" is at best, tone deaf, or a dismissal of legitimate concerns, or perhaps just plain ignorant. It insinuates that the black community doesn't have anything to complain about, denies that there is any difference in the way white and black people are treated by the police. It's white people telling black people how they ought to think and feel about a situation that black people experience every day, but white only hear about, if that.

Another common response, especially after a police officer is killed is two fold. First, is to shout "Blue Lives Matter" and equate the killing of a police officer by a criminal with the killing by the police of a black person. As the son and brother of New York City police officers I can appreciate the danger that is the daily experience of a police officer. It is painful when I hear of anyone in law enforcement being killed or wounded in the line of duty. The difference however, is you expect criminals to act like criminals. A criminal killing a police officer isn't a representative of the governement, tasked with protecting the community. We expect dirtbags to be dirtbags, we shouldn't expect the police to be criminals, we shouldn't accept it as normal that a cop kills an innocent person. As terrible as it is when police are killed, they knew that it was a possibility, they signed up for the danger. A black man, on the other hand, didn't sign up, didn't volunteer, to put himself of jeopardy of being killed by a cop.

The other common response is to excuse the police officer's actions in a variety of ways. One class of reasoning involves intentional action by the victim, running away in particular, or not obeying commands. Unless someone is armed and it seems likely that they're going to shoot someone, why would running away constitute a reason for lethal force? Many jurisdictions prohibit their officers from engaging in high speed chases, so at least in those cases, they assume that they'll catch up with him some time later. Why not the same with foot chases? There are other situations where someone is acting "in a threatening manner". I could almost buy this. Someone charging at you with a knife, or just waving it around, can get to you pretty quickly, and if someone shoots at you, it's pretty impossible to get out of the way. I understand that preemptive action is sometimes required. The  problem that I have with the quick draw tactics though, is that in a lot of these cases is that it seems like cops are sometimes willing to talk to white people waving guns around and talk to them, while black people get shot without much chance to talk.

Then there's unintentional action. A cop shoots Philando Castile is shot while reaching for his license that the cop told him to reach for. Tamir Rice is shot playing with a toy gun. It seems like the threshold for "fearing for one's life" is a lot lower when the person is black than when he's white. The fact that the police officer may have sincerely thought that he was in danger is cold comfort to the family of the dead man. While I certainly want the police to be safe, I also want people, in particular black people to be safe from the police. When the priority is the safety of the police and not the safety of the community, the community is going to suffer.

A third rejoinder is that if someone wasn't breaking the law, then they wouldn't have been shot. In this case we're not necessarily looking at the traffic stops that result in shootings, but someone who is actively breaking the law, or is suspected of breaking the law, and is shot for one reason or another. It isn't the place of the individual police officer to serve as judge and jury, let alone executioner. There's a reason that we have courts and judges. Running a stop light isn't a capital offense. Shoplifting isn't a capital offense. Talking shit to a cop isn't a capital offense.

The militarization is also involved in this. Black people protest and the armored vehicles and cops in body armor and military style weapons are out in force, tossing tear gas canisters. White Supremacists show up armed for civil war, one of them even shooting a gun at a black man, and the police stand aside. The photo at the top of this post kind of says it all.

Some have tried to dismiss Black Lives Matter activists and categorize them as "terrorists", "thugs" or anti-police. There is certainly a broad range of tactics and opinions within the umbrella of Black Lives Matter. Some have accused them of being anti-police. Surely there are some within the larger group that are; certainly understandable if you think the police kill your young men with impunity. And there have been incidents of vandalism and looting that took place in conjunction with Black Lives Matter protests. But, despite any of this, Black Lives Matter is an idea. An idea that you can't just shoot black people because of a broken tail light, or because a cop gets nervous. An idea that says that black lives aren't better, that they aren't the only ones that matter, but that stands up and says that the situation where they don't matter is over.

Is Everyone That You Disagree With a Terrorist? Violence in Public Discourse.

I started noticing this during the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Anti-Government protesters, no matter how non-violent, were called terrorists. It was used as a pretext by Assad in Syria for the violent reprisals against anti-government elements which escalated into years of war. Now we're starting to see it here. To the right, Obama was a "terrorist sympathizer", Black Lives Matter protesters were terrorists, Antifa are terrorists. And the left isn't innocent either: Cliven Bundy & his group are terrorists, the White Supremacists are terrorists. Whatever you think of these groups, and despite the fact that some of them are armed, do they really rise to the level of "terrorists"? It seems that when we throw this label around indiscriminately it loses a lot of its impact. What seems to be more and more obvious is that some groups are using the willingness to use violence, or at least appearing to be willing to use violence, as a tool of public protest.

I don't know when it started, but I first became aware of heavily armed protesters in a couple of specific incidents in the last few years. Cliven Bundy is a rancher in Nevada who has had an ongoing dispute with the United States government over his use of public lands to graze his cattle. Ranchers frequently utilize public (i.e. government-owned) land for various purposes by leasing it from the federal government. Mr. Bundy was seriously delinquent in his leasing fee payments mainly because he didn't believe that the federal government was a legal entity and therefore had no authority to prevent him from using the land. The details are labyrinthine. When the Bureau of Land Management attempted to confiscate his herd in order to force payment, a large number of heavily armed Bundy allies resisted in a standoff with the vastly outnumbered government agents. Several Bundy supporters were photographed pointing weapons at federal officials. Some time later Bundy's sons were involved in a takeover of a wildlife refuge, also heavily armed. Protests throughout the country against Muslims and Muslim organizations have featured marchers with assault weapons outfitted in military style clothing. At the infamous Charlottesville pro-Confederate/Nazi/White Supremacist rally, there were a large number of militia types armed to the teeth. One rightist was even filmed firing a handgun at an opposition protester. While, other than that one incident, there have not been reports of anyone firing their weapons, it makes you wonder why you need to openly display weapons at a "free speech" march. The only reason that I can think of is to intimidate. Of course, that's not what they say. The stated rationale is often protection, but protection from what? The Antifa? A loosely organized reaction to violence on the right? Before there ever was a hint of Antifa right wing folks were marching around with their assault weapons. If you have a problem with sharia law and want to send a message to the local Muslims, why does that require being armed for the invasion of Grenada?

The left has escalated as well. Antifa counter protesters started showing up armed with baseball bats and flagpoles and have now graduated to firearms. It's only a matter of time before a protest becomes a firefight and another innocent gets killed, not by a car this time, but by a rifle. While the right started it, the left includes a subset that welcomes the violence. It's a recipe for disaster.

Some jurisdictions do not allow open carry of firearms. Boston's demonstration was a lot more low-key and decidedly non-violent perhaps because the testosterone level was lowered due to the lack of lethal weapons. In Kansas City recently the police disarmed some Antifa protesters. Many other cities have no restrictions on openly carrying guns in public. Before open carry became prevalent in our larger cities if the police saw someone brandishing a gun, let alone an automatic weapon, they could immediately be categorized as a "bad guy", now they have to decide whether it's someone with criminal intent or simply a citizen exercising his perceived Second Amendment rights. The shooting of five police officers in Dallas last year is an example of how confusing this could be. The march that the police were monitoring included a number of marchers legally allowed to openly carry weapons, once the sniper opened fire the spectacle of multiple people, armed with firearms, running. It's a miracle that the police didn't shoot any of the protesters who were running for their lives.

While I fully support the right for individuals to own guns, it seems that it would be common sense to restrict carrying weapons at these protests. A nightmare scenario could play out where a weapon goes off by mistake, both sides start shooting, the police start shooting...how many dead do you think there would be?

A Quick Break

Taking a few days off from pointing out Trump's incompetency, divisiveness, and his dangerous agenda. I'm not holding my breath, but maybe he'll handle this crisis in Texas as a President should. I'll withhold judgement for a bit.

Be assured the following hasn't been forgotten:

1. Russia
2. Conflicts of interest
3. Chaotic infighting in the White House
4. Encouraging bigotry, including white supremacy and Nazism
5. Irrational need to erase anything Obama did
6. Russia
7. Serial lying
8. Nepotism 
9. Golf every weekend
10. Saber rattling against North Korea, Iran and Venezuela
11. Plan that is no plan in Afghanistan
12. Sabotage of PPACA
13. Ill-considered removal of regulations (or perhaps benefiting his buddies)
14. Undermining the free press
15. Russia

So, What's the Plan, Afghan?

President Trump gave a speech last night outlining his "new" Afghanistan strategy. First I'd like to cover a few things that I liked, or agreed with, about the speech:

For the first time that I can think of, President Trump admitted that he changed his mind about something. Normally, when he changes positions, he either lies about his previous stance, or ignores it. He pointed out that his initial instinct was to withdraw from Afghanistan. He has been very vocal about our involvement there being a mistake, and his articulated foreign policy has been to avoid foreign entanglements. 

He also called out Pakistan, accusing them of harboring terrorists and providing a safe haven for them and for the Taliban. I have said myself that we should stop supporting Pakistan economically and militarily if their national interest is at odds with ours. One of the problems in this region is that the national interests of our allies are not always in alignment with ours, and often our friends are enemies to each other; Turkey and the Kurds are an example. 

He rejected the idea of an announced timetable for withdrawal. While I understand that the intention of Obama's announced withdrawal date was not only to let Americans know that we had an exit plan, but also to let the Afghan government know that we expected them to defend their own country and not depend on us indefinitely, the result was to embolden the Taliban to wait us out, knowing that our time was running out. 

There are also things that I am either against, or simply less than impressed with.

Once again we hear the refrain of "he sounded presidential", and that he stuck to his script. Has the bar gotten so low that "he can read" is now a qualification for greatness? He can read a teleprompter and sound like he's never seen the words before...blah, blah, blah.

Trump's justification for staying in Afghanistan is the military version of not understanding the economics of sunk cost. He wants us to stay because "our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made..." That's not a reason. That's saying we're going to continue to fight in Afghanistan because we've been fighting in Afghanistan. He also brings up the supposed dangers of terrorists groups filling the vacuum that a hasty withdrawal would leave. I don't buy it. Terrorist groups have formed more because we are there than because we left.  To a lot of these people we are an invading and occupying force, and infidels to boot. Every day we stay there we make it easier for the Taliban or ISIL to recruit. 

He complained about being dealt a "bad and complex hand". Yeah, well welcome to the presidency. Every president inherits problems. Obama inherited all this from Bush too, suck it up.

And despite Trump declaration that victory will have a clear definition, we're still pretty vague on what victory will look like, so, just like with the last two presidents, we'll never know when we're done. How will we know when ISIL is obliterated and Al-Qaeda crushed? Preventing the Taliban from taking over the country? For how long? They control 40% of territory right now, are we going to "obliterate" them too? If not, how do we know they won't come back?

Then there's the assertion that the Afghan government must do their share. The Afghan government is corrupt and it's military doesn't give a shit. Huge amounts of money has been skimmed off my corrupt generals and politicians. He doesn't want to engage in nation building, but it will take a much different Afghanistan to do what Trump wants them to do. And with this latest fuzzy long-term commitment, we've enabled the corruption and the dependence for who-knows-how-many-more years. 

And finally, let's not forget that the Taliban is not a terrorist group. They are the deposed government of Afghanistan that we ousted. What we are involved in is not a fight against terrorists, but a civil war. That's what we were involved with in Iraq before we got out. 

The bottom line is we heard a lot of tough talk, but no real change in how we're doing things.