Orange Is The New Extra Long Red Tie

No, Losin' Don will not spend one day in prison. 

Maybe I'm wrong, but even if he loses the election in November, even if he's convicted in one or more of his criminal trials, it ain't happening. 

Unlike ordinary people who can't afford bail, who can't afford to pay lawyers' fees for months and years on end, Trump has the means to drag these proceedings on and on and on. How many delaying tactics can he and his attorneys throw against the wall, hoping something will stick? He's trying to get at least one trial thrown out because he claims presidents are have absolute immunity; another because the chief prosecutor hired an old boyfriend. Even if he's convicted he'll appeal. If he loses his appeals he'll take it all the way to the Supreme Court. Look at the situation: we're six months away from the general election and only one of the criminal trials has started, and that one, based on what I read from the legal experts, is pretty weak. 

Trump and his cultish supporters want you to believe that it is a politically motivated "witch hunt". That it's "election interference". That President Biden is directing all the prosecutions. On one hand Losin Don claims that "they" are attempting to "rig" the election, on the other he is bragging that every indictment helps him in the polls. So why is he being charged with all these crimes? (not to mention the civil suits)

The simplistic answer is that he's a criminal. He acted criminally with impunity his whole life and his time as president did nothing to make him more law-abiding. He thumbed his nose at the legal system and virtually dared it to do something about it. I think that the various prosecutors said "Fuck this guy, I'm tired of his shit" and decided that he'd gotten away with too much for too long and something had to be done about it. Did politics enter into it? Insomuch that Republican prosecutors probably wouldn't have sought indictments, it was, but the motivation of the prosecutors is irrelevant if there was probable cause to indict. 

Grand juries are different than petit, or trial, juries. The purpose is not to decide guilt or innocence, but to determine whether there is sufficient cause for a trial. In Nebraska, the prosecutor has no role in grand jury selection and I assume the same is true in other jurisdictions. But if the prosecutor is seeking an indictment, they have to convince 12 out of 16 grand jurors that there is sufficient cause to proceed with a trial. They have done so. Multiple times. It's obvious that there is at least enough evidence to suggest that criminal activity probably happened and that a trial is needed to determine if there is enough to convict. It remains to be seen whether or not there will be convictions, but prosecutors rarely seek indictments if they don't think they can secure a conviction. There's no upside to a loss in a high profile trial. 

The Trumpists cry that if someone like their hero can be dragged into court, then it can happen to any of us. As if ordinary citizens aren't already subject to prosecution for crimes that they are alleged to have committed.  As if they and their hero haven't been advocating for the last eight years to "lock up" and even execute their political opponents.

The horrifying part of it all is that even if Losin' Don was incarcerated, it would not prevent him from being elected president.

Free Press

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but they are not similarly entitled to their own facts. Two things have contributed in recent years to the belief that everyone is entitled to their own facts. One is the proliferation of easy-to-use platforms such as blogs and podcasts. The ubiquity of cell phone cameras make everyone an on-the-spot reporter. These platforms are also easy to access. We have at our fingertips more information than previous generations could have imagined possible. The other contributing factor is the attacks that have sought to undermine any trust that we had in corporate, mainstream news sources. Do the "big dogs" get it right all the time? Do they sometimes rush to get a story out and get the facts wrong? Do they often have agendas, biases? Of course they do. They're run by human beings! But the belief that there's some kind of media conspiracy among multiple information outlets that are in competition with each other is not supported by facts. 

While there have always been people who were skeptical of what "the media" was telling them, it's only been since Donald Trump entered politics that previously respected news organizations were routinely labeled, without evidence, as "fake news". Most of us don't remember that the term fake news briefly referred to web sites that purposely "flooded the zone" with intentionally false information. The goal of these sites was to start rumors that would spawn and multiply throughout the information ecosystem until ordinary people would just assume that they were true. Trump quickly appropriated the label and applied it to any news that reported on his shortcomings. 

A big difference between news organizations like The New York Times, Fox News or CNN and the typical blogger or podcaster is one of access to information and experts to explain that information. Another is the time to sift through the multitude of events and tie to together multiple threads of information into a coherent narrative. This is their full-time job. This is what they do! Not a week goes by that I don't encounter someone who is skeptical of some news story...based on nothing more than their feelings. None are ever able to support their skepticism with facts. 

What confuses many people is the difference between the news and opinion sides of any news organization. "News" is what happened. "Opinion" (or editorial) is why it happened (according to the columnist). Yes, sometimes they get the facts wrong or jump the gun before all the facts are in, but you would be hard-pressed to find an actual lies, or even major errors in the reporting of  mainstream media. Editorial or opinion pieces are different since they are presenting...opinion.  "Senator 'A' hates children" is opinion. It's subjective and you could argue that Senator 'A'  doesn't hate children. "Senator 'A' voted for XYZ legislation which will decrease the funding for free school lunches for impoverished children" would be an example of a fact. Various conclusions can be drawn from that fact, and those conclusions are...opinion. An argument can be made that a news outlet shows bias by spending time identifying problems with one politician while ignoring issues with another. It very well might be bias. Or it might just be that one of them has a lot more problems than the other. Showing bias doesn't mean that the information being presented is wrong, just that the choice of what to publish is a function of what the outlet believes is important. 

We hear a lot about the "media narrative". Whether it's the recent speech by football player Harrison Butker or coverage of Losin' Don's various legal woes or Ron DeSantis' weird laugh, media skeptics insist that there's a "narrative", a story about how "they" want you to think and act that pervades everything that you hear, see and read in "the media". For this to be true there would have to be some shadowy cabal behind every newspaper and television network - puppet masters pulling all our strings. Somehow the media skeptics find this easier to believe than the possibility that they're simply reporting the facts. I've also noticed that when people complain about some unflattering information about them being disseminated they blame "the media", when often what's keeping the information alive is social media chatter. Are social media participants brainlessly parroting what "they" want them to believe, or is it just opinionated people latching on to something that confirms what they already think? 

Personally I try to keep informed with various sources of information. I trust that the news professionals are doing their jobs, but know that I'm not always hearing the whole story. 

Running Government Like a Business

It never seems to go away - an election is coming up and the challenger, who runs a business of some sort, claims to be "not a politician" and promises to run government like a business. This is usually in the context of budget balancing, but can also be in reference to perceived competence in something. My position is that the last thing that you want an elected official to do is run government like you would run a business. 

What is the purpose of a business? It's primary purpose is to make money for its owners. There may be ancillary benefits, such as job creation, or providing a product of benefit to the community, but first and last, a business exists to benefit its owners. I used to work for a company that was (mostly) locally owned. In the 70's it instituted an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). ESOP's, using various formulas, award employees with company stock from profits which they can receive as cash when the retire or otherwise leave the company. The company president, who at the time was the son of the company founder, liked to promote this ESOP as an example of how the company cared about its employees  (euphemistically called "associates"), treating them like family. In an unguarded moment at a shareholders' meeting, the company founder admitted that he instituted the ESOP because it allowed the company to legally avoid  taxes on that portion of the profits while still having access to the cash. (The percentage of profits that were the ESOP allocation existed as cash. Since the employees did not receive cash, but shares of stock, the cash still existed in the company's bank account and could be used for other priorities) So, the existence of the ESOP, even though employees benefitted as a side effect, had as the main beneficiaries  the primary owners, the founder's family. (In the wake of the 2017 corporate tax reductions, this company bought back all the ESOP stock and converted the shares to 401(k)  balances)

One wouldn't have to search for long to come up with examples of companies that laid off long serving employees in order to increase profits, or whole subsidiaries being shut down completely because they weren't generating enough revenue. Even pay increases are structured to benefit the owners. The legend of Henry Ford altruistically doubling pay rates so that his employees could afford to buy his cars is mostly myth. Anyone who knows anything about Ford knows that he wasn't the warm and fuzzy fatherly type. Ford was a control freak who attempted to control every aspect of his employees lives. But he also realized that his turnover rate was unacceptable. He was hiring 52,000 men a year to maintain a 14,000 man work force. The pay increase was his solution to the high turnover. Even so, his investors balked at this move, seeing it as counter to their interests. Maximizing profit for the owners is the primary, if not the only, goal of running a business. 

In contrast, the purpose of a government is to serve the people. In this country's founding document, the reason a government is being established is to (1) establish justice, (2) insure domestic tranquility, (3) provide for the common defense, (4) promote the general welfare and (5) secure the blessings of liberty. One can debate the specific meaning and application of these things, but it's pretty evident that "turn a profit" isn't on the list. "Run it like a business" advocates point out that government services cost money, and that it is irresponsible to spend more than is being taken in. Or spend so much in some areas that there are no funds available for other needed programs. This is a fair point, in many jurisdictions deficit spending is not an option, and it is good stewardship to not spend the public's money frivolously or wastefully. But the criteria by which it is determined what is and isn't waste is necessarily different in a service organization, i.e. a government, than it is in a for profit entity. 

A current example is the unilateral decision to eliminate state government positions that have been unfilled for more than 90 days. In a typical private business labor budgets are set in part by looking at the payroll expenditures for the previous year. The assumption is that the business was able to operate at the lower staffing level so it should be able to do it again. This outlook does not take into account the effect lower staffing levels had on anything other than the bottom line. I was a grocery store manager ten years ago when the unemployment rate locally was starting to consistently dip below 3%. Some of our departments were always understaffed. The Deli in particular was hard hit - it was a high sales volume, labor intensive department. Being even one person short negatively effected productivity, customer service and even basic sanitation. As it dragged on, it effected morale and turnover increased. When it was time to write the budget for the new year, the payroll expenditure for the short staffed year was the baseline. We were doomed to continue being overworked, providing bad customer service, unsanitary conditions and eventually losing sales. That's the business mindset. Until it could be demonstrated unambiguously that the decrease in sales exceeded the labor savings did the company's owners take any action - it wasn't a problem until it affected the bottom line. The executive order eliminating close to one thousand state jobs assumes the profit mindset and not the service mindset. All that is being scrutinized is the potential money savings, rather than attempting to find out why these positions haven't been filled. 

In addition to the differing views of finances, the role of a leader is necessarily different in government and business. In most businesses the owner is a virtual dictator. This is especially true in a privately held company, but can also be true in a publicly traded firm. Boards of Directors can fire a CEO, but in practice a company's management team acts virtually independently and with little oversight. A smart CEO will have a team of accountants, lawyers and other advisors, but in practice there's nothing to reign in a CEO from taking unilateral action. Government is structured differently. Executives, i.e. governors, mayors, presidents, are constrained by a web of rules limiting their power. Legislatures constitutionally have co-equal authority, as does the judiciary. A newly elected government executive whose "qualifications" were running a business is often surprised that they cannot do whatever they like once in office. They certainly don't want to hear "You can't do that". I even heard our current governor, in a meeting at my workplace, say "I'm the governor, I can do what I want". 

Related to the fallacy that a businessman will bring skills to the table that will make them a good elected official is the "outsider" myth. While there is some validity to the premise that we sometimes need fresh ideas, new faces and "change", you still have to know what the rules are before you can decide to break them. There is a very noticeable difference in approach between a president or governor who spent time in Congress, or even as a local executive, from one who was elected with no government experience. In the sports world, teams will often bring in new coaches to shake things up. But what doesn't happen is an NFL team bringing in a hockey coach, even if his team won the Stanley Cup. Sure, he was successful. Very successful! But the success was in an entirely different field, even if both were "sports", both involved "teams" and the goal in both was "winning". 

Someone wants you to vote for them because of success in the business world? Vote for someone else.