June 2023 – Page 3 – Irregular Bullshit

Fig. 1. “Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, March 15, 2023.” Pool photograph by Vladimir Gerdo, March 15, 2023, via Reuters, fair use.

When it comes to aiding Ukraine, Joe Biden is all about Vladimir Putin’s “red lines.” Syria, however, would seem very much to be a very different story.^[1]

Audrey Decker, “US Rushes F-22s to Stop Russian Harassment Over Syria,” Defense One, June 14, 2023, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/06/russia-continues-harass-us-jets-over-syria-top-air-force-general-says/387528/

Ukraine

Fig. 2. “Destroyed Russian military vehicles located on the main street Khreshchatyk are seen as part of the celebration of the Independence Day of Ukraine in Kyiv, August 24.” Photograph by Gleb Garanich for Reuters, August 24, 2022,^[2] fair use.

Gabriel Gavin, “Putin admits Russia doesn’t have enough weapons and drones,” Politico, June 13, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-ukraine-war-russia-doesnt-have-enough-weapons-and-drones-putin-admits/

Max Seddon, “Putin sides with Russia’s military in clash with Wagner,” Financial Times, June 14, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/b9d91a08-0f89-4986-855b-42232c5291a6

Sam Skove, “Ukraine War Could Last a Decade, Top Ukrainian Official Says,” Defense One, June 14, 2023, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/06/ukraine-war-could-last-decade-top-ukrainian-official-says/387523/

Neoliberalism

Work

Fig. 3. The spectre of Death, in the form of a large skeleton, rises with the smoke and flames of the burning Asch Building during the Triangle fire, as people jump and fall to their death. Artist unknown, from International Ladies Garment Workers Union Photographs (1885-1985) at The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

Larry Summers had predicted that several years of high unemployment would be necessary to curtail inflation.^[3] This despite the fact that supply chain problems are causing inflation,^[4] not workers. So it shouldn’t be the least bit surprising that Summers—and everybody else who preached the neoliberal gospel—was wrong.^[5]

Helpfully, Eric Levitz will explain to you why, specifically, Summers was wrong.^[6] But we should emphasize yet again that neoliberalism is entirely bogus as an economic ideology, completely discredited intellectually,^[7] which is why, generally, Summers was wrong. But I guess we’re all surprised anyway.

Steve Bohnel, “Fitzgerald vetoes minimum wage hike bill, saying it violates county charter,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 14, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-local/2023/06/13/fitzgerald-vetoes-minimum-wage-hike-bill-stating-it-violates-county-charter/stories/202306130122

Eric Levitz, “Larry Summers Was Wrong About Inflation,” New York, June 14, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/larry-summers-was-wrong-about-inflation.html

Gilead

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Fig. 4. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Okay, yes, it’s interesting that Donald Trump is said to be “scared shitless.” Prem Thakker’s strongest evidence amounts to a Trump staffer explaining that the dinner at Miami’s Versailles Restaurant and the fundraiser at his Bedminster Golf Club are part “baby-sitting” so they won’t have to deal with him being in a rage.^[8] Okay, except Trump is always this way, and has been since long, long, long before this indictment. Indeed, speaking of Trump, a number of—I am not any sort of mental health professional—mental health diagnoses come to mind, including narcissistic rage.^[9]

Spencer S. Hsu et al., “Trump special counsel shifts focus of possible indictment to S. Florida,” Washington Post, June 7, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/06/miami-grand-jury-trump-classified-documents/

Alex Isenstadt and Kyle Cheney, “Trump notified that he is the target of an ongoing criminal investigation,” Politico, June 7, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/07/trump-notified-that-he-is-the-target-of-an-ongoing-criminal-investigation-00100920

Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein, and Josh Dawsey, “Trump charged in classified documents case, second indictment in months,” Washington Post, June 8, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/08/trump-classified-documents-mar-a-lago/

Marc Caputo, “‘Prosecuting Politicians is Hard Here’: Why South Florida is a Tough Place for DOJ to Try Trump,” Messenger, June 8, 2023, https://themessenger.com/politics/trump-south-florida-miami-doj-jury-challenge

Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

Hugo Lowell, “Donald Trump charged with illegal retention of classified documents,” Guardian, June 8, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/08/donald-trump-charged-retention-classified-documents

Stefania Palma, “Donald Trump says he has been indicted on federal charges in documents probe,” Financial Times, June 8, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trump-is-desperately-trying-to-define-the-narrative-about-his-federal-indictment

Gabriel J. Chin, “Trump indictment unsealed – a criminal law scholar explains what the charges mean, and what prosecutors will now need to prove,” Conversation, June 9, 2023, https://theconversation.com/trump-indictment-unsealed-a-criminal-law-scholar-explains-what-the-charges-mean-and-what-prosecutors-will-now-need-to-prove-207469

Joseph Ferguson and Thomas A. Durkin, “Trump charged under Espionage Act – which covers a lot more crimes than just spying,” Conversation, June 9, 2023, https://theconversation.com/trump-charged-under-espionage-act-which-covers-a-lot-more-crimes-than-just-spying-207373

Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html

David Gilbert, “‘We Need to Start Killing’: Trump’s Far-Right Supporters Are Threatening Civil War,” Vice, June 9, 2023, https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxjjgb/trump-supporters-are-threatening-civil-war

Ankush Khardori, “The ‘Lock Him Up’ Election,” New York, June 9, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-turns-2024-into-lock-him-up-election.html

Tom Nichols, “Trump’s Indictment Reveals a National-Security Nightmare,” Atlantic, June 9, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/06/trumps-indictment-reveals-a-national-security-nightmare/674362/

Jennifer Rubin, “Merrick Garland and Jack Smith come through: Trump will face justice,” Washington Post, June 9, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/09/trump-indictment-garland-smith-justice/

Jonathan Turley, “Trying Trump: Scandal May Be His Element — But This Time May Be Different,” Messenger, June 9, 2023, https://themessenger.com/opinion/trying-trump-scandal-may-be-his-element-but-this-time-may-be-different

Aruna Viswanatha, Sadie Gurman, and C. Ryan Barber, “Trump Charged Over Willful Retention of Classified Information, Obstruction,” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-associate-also-indicted-in-mar-a-lago-documents-case-759cbb17

Marc Fisher, “Trump’s path to indictment: ‘Isn’t it better if there are no documents?’” Washington Post, June 10, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/10/trump-classified-documents-path-bathroom-indictment/

Michael S. Schmidt et al., “Trump Supporters’ Violent Rhetoric in His Defense Disturbs Experts,” New York Times, June 10, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/10/us/politics/trump-supporter-violent-rhetoric.html

Kyle Cheney, “He devised a fringe legal theory to try to keep Trump in power. Now he’s on the verge of being disbarred,” Forbes, June 11, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/11/john-eastman-disbarment-trial-trump-00101407

Richard Nixon [Justin Sherrin], “On the Trump/Nauta Indictment,” Patreon, June 11, 2023, https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-trump-nauta-84420752

Marina Pitofsky, “Barr ‘shocked’ by Trump indictment details: “If even half of it is true, then he’s toast,’” USA Today, June 11, 2023, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/06/11/bill-barr-donald-trump-classified-documents-indictment/70310878007/

Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/

David Aaron, “How Much Prison Time Does Former President Trump Face? Applying the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines,” Just Security, June 12, 2023, https://www.justsecurity.org/86901/how-much-prison-time-does-former-president-trump-face-applying-the-u-s-sentencing-guidelines/

Isaac Chotiner, “Will the Judge in Trump’s Case Recuse Herself—or Be Forced To?” New Yorker, June 12, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/will-the-judge-in-trumps-case-recuse-herself-or-be-forced-to

Spencer S. Hsu et al., “Trump scrambles to find lawyer before first federal court appearance,” Washington Post, June 12, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/12/trump-documents-lawyer/

Molly Jong-Fast, “Even a Damning Federal Case Can’t Break the GOP’s Devotion to Donald Trump,” Vanity Fair, June 12, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/donald-trump-federal-indictment-case-gop

Eric Lutz, “Judge Aileen Cannon Could Blow Up Trump Documents Case,” Vanity Fair, June 12, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/aileen-cannon-trump-documents-case

Nick Madigan, Verónica Zaragovia, and Richard Fausset, “Floridians Would Make Up Trump’s Jury Pool. Here’s What Some Are Saying,” New York Times, June 12, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/us/trump-voters-florida-jury.html

Jeannie Suk Gersen, “The Case Against Trump Is Strong, but There Are Problems Ahead,” New Yorker, June 13, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-case-against-trump-is-strong-but-there-are-problems-ahead

Shayna Jacobs et al., “Trump arraigned, pleads not guilty to 37 classified documents charges,” Washington Post, June 13, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/13/trump-court-miami-indictment/

Bess Levin, “Trump Basically One Day Away From Hiring a Lawyer Who Advertises on the Side of a Bus to Defend Him,” Vanity Fair, June 13, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/donald-trump-lawyer-search

Hugo Lowell, “Trump finds no new lawyers for court appearance in Mar-a-Lago case,” Guardian, June 13, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/13/trump-finds-no-new-lawyers-mar-a-lago-documents-arraignment

Jesús Rodríguez, “In the MAGA mirror, Trump’s legal peril looks like a personal threat,” Washington Post, June 13, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/06/13/trump-arraignment-courthouse-crowd/

Gabriel Sherman, “Donald Trump Advisers Worry Over Legal Team Civil War: ‘It’s All Coming to a Head,’” Vanity Fair, June 13, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/donald-trump-legal-team-indictment

Maanvi Singh, “Trump claims ‘political persecution’ in speech after arraignment,” Guardian, June 13, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/13/trump-new-jersey-speech-after-arraignment

Prem Thakker, “Trump ‘Is Scared Shitless,’” New Republic, June 14, 2023, https://newrepublic.com/post/173620/rump-is-scared-shitless

Glenn Thrush, Nicholas Nehamas, and Eileen Sullivan, “Trump Is Arraigned on Documents and Obstruction Charges,” New York Times, June 14, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/13/us/politics/trump-arraignment-documents.html

^[1]Audrey Decker, “US Rushes F-22s to Stop Russian Harassment Over Syria,” Defense One, June 14, 2023, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/06/russia-continues-harass-us-jets-over-syria-top-air-force-general-says/387528/↩
^[2]Reuters, “Ukraine puts destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv,” August 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ukraine-puts-destroyed-russian-tanks-on-idUSRTSALV9Q ↩
^[3]Eric Levitz, “Larry Summers Was Wrong About Inflation,” New York, June 14, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/larry-summers-was-wrong-about-inflation.html ↩
^[4]Paul Hannon, “Why Is Inflation So Sticky? It Could Be Corporate Profits,” Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-is-inflation-so-sticky-it-could-be-corporate-profits-b78d90b7; Nouriel Roubini, “‘Most U.S. banks are technically near insolvency, and hundreds are already fully insolvent,’ Roubini says,” MarketWatch, April 1, 2023, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/most-u-s-banks-are-technically-near-insolvency-and-hundreds-are-already-fully-insolvent-roubini-says-18b89f92 ↩
^[5]Eric Levitz, “Larry Summers Was Wrong About Inflation,” New York, June 14, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/larry-summers-was-wrong-about-inflation.html ↩
^[6]Eric Levitz, “Larry Summers Was Wrong About Inflation,” New York, June 14, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/larry-summers-was-wrong-about-inflation.html ↩
^[7]David Benfell, “A monster that does not bleed and cannot be killed,” Not Housebroken, June 9, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/06/09/a-monster-that-does-not-bleed-and-cannot-be-killed/↩
^[8]Prem Thakker, “Trump ‘Is Scared Shitless,’” New Republic, June 14, 2023, https://newrepublic.com/post/173620/rump-is-scared-shitless ↩
^[9]George Simon, “Understanding and Dealing with Narcissistic Rage,” Counselling Resource, July 24, 2017, https://counsellingresource.com/features/2017/07/24/understanding-narcissistic-rage/↩

The Whiskey Rebellion

June 14, 2023benfell

Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh

Fig. 1. Along Mifflin Road in Pittsburgh’s Hays neighborhood. Photograph by author, December 1, 2020.

The Whiskey Rebellion gets at most a passing glance in the history classes I took in California. Around Pittsburgh, it’s a tourist attraction, principally around the city of Washington, about 30 miles south, but there are sites and historical markers all around the area, including on Bower Hill in Scott Township, where the one shooting battle occurred. In short form, it was a tax rebellion—yes, shots were fired, and yes, people got tarred and feathered—against a tax levied on whiskey. Though the tax was later repealed, historians consider the rebellion significant for its test of the new Constitution’s ability to impose taxation.

Whiskey, according to a Washington museum, had become something reminding me of marijuana in some northern California counties, ubiquitous even as a medium of exchange. Folks around western Pennsylvania felt the tax was unworkable and unfair. Federal troops suppressed the rebellion, hauling a bunch of folks off for trial, but in order to improve communication (in a formal but somewhat archaic sense, which includes transportation^[1]), the National Road, now U.S. Route 40, but still bearing the name in some places, was built.

Pittsburgh today “is a drinking town,” according to one of my passengers, “with a football problem.” When I arrived here in 2019, I was shocked by the number of Confederate flags; the gun nuttery, with explicit references to Second Amendment dogma,^[2] Gadsden (“Don’t Tread On Me”) flags, artillery displays, and “no trespassing” signs that promise not to call 911; thin blue line flags and other expressions of support for white supremacist gangsters, obviously in reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement; a fetishization of military service, evident in banners and artillery displays purportedly meant to honor veterans; a seemingly compulsive display of the U.S. flag that feels like compensation (for what? the treasonous Confederate flags?); and impossible-to-ignore expressions of support for Donald Trump, flags even, where you might otherwise expect the U.S. flag, and beginning in 2020, “fuck your feelings” bumper stickers and yard signs, “make a liberal cry” bumper stickers and signs. The 2020 election remains “stolen” for a lot of folks around here.

While the Confederate flag is a Civil War reference, I can’t help but suspect that the more apt parallel for Pittsburgh is the Whiskey Rebellion; that it’s about alcohol and about a particular anti-elitist Greater Appalachian rage^[3] is quintessential Pittsburgh. Stephen Brumwell tells much of the story in his book review;^[4] I have ordered the book.

Stephen Brumwell, “‘The Whiskey Rebellion’ Review: A Young Nation, Suddenly Tested,” review of the book Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis by Brady J. Crytzer, Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-whiskey-rebellion-review-a-young-nation-suddenly-tested-3a2a692b

Gilead

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Fig. 2. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

In recent days, I spoke with five current and former [Donald] Trump advisers about the Lord of the Flies–like chaos engulfing Trump’s defense team. The problem, these advisers say, is that Trump turned over his entire defense strategy to Boris Epshteyn, a Russian-born investment banker and lawyer with no criminal defense experience. Epshteyn’s detractors complain that Epshteyn guards access to Trump and treats dissent from lawyers as a sign of disloyalty. (Epshteyn did not respond to a request for comment.)

Epshteyn’s rapid ascent in Trumpworld is part of Trump’s long history of empowering outsiders who demonstrate unflinching loyalty. “Boris filled a void in the postpresidency. There was no [Steve] Bannon around. No Corey [Lewandowski]. No Roger [Stone],” said former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg. The 2020 campaign veteran said Trump likes Epshteyn because he embraces the let-Trump-be-Trump philosophy. “He’s one of those operators who encourage Trump’s worst instincts,” they said.

One major point of contention for Trump advisers is that Epshteyn recommended attorney Evan Corcoran to represent Trump. Corcoran’s notes about Trump’s alleged efforts to obstruct the FBI investigation into the classified documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago formed the foundation of special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment.^[5]

The irony lies in Donald Trump supporters pointing to his legal team, realizing they can’t afford such a team themselves, and inferring from this that they are in jeopardy themselves:

“Do you have millions of dollars to hire the lawyers he got? No? So they can bring any charges against you,” said Louis Medina, a retired Miami native who was clutching a bullhorn in a wheelchair, covering his legs with a Trump flag, around 10 a.m.

“They’re coming for you next!” bellowed Laura Loomer, the far-right activist, to a group of people encircling her just before noon. One of them, a woman in a denim hat with bedazzled “TRUMP” letters, nodded vigorously.^[6]

Trump uses this message in his campaign:

They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you. And I just happened to be standing in their way.^[7]

Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html

Ankush Khardori, “The ‘Lock Him Up’ Election,” New York, June 9, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-turns-2024-into-lock-him-up-election.html

Richard Nixon [Justin Sherrin], “On the Trump/Nauta Indictment,” Patreon, June 11, 2023, https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-trump-nauta-84420752

Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/

Eric Lutz, “Judge Aileen Cannon Could Blow Up Trump Documents Case,” Vanity Fair, June 12, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/aileen-cannon-trump-documents-case

Neoliberalism

Work

County Executive Rich Fitzgerald has vetoed legislation recently passed by the Allegheny County Council to increase the minimum wage for county workers.

Earlier this month, the council voted 10-4 to increase the minimum wage to $18 an hour in 2024, $19 in 2025 and $20 in 2026. . . .

In a prepared statement, County Council President Pat Catena said it was “regrettable” that Mr. Fitzgerald vetoed the pay increase.

“Rich Fitzgerald extolled the virtues of his idea to legislatively establish a minimum wage for County employees on the record at the Council’s December 4, 2001 regular meeting. Now, as a lame duck Executive, that very same Rich Fitzgerald has flip-flopped on exactly this same issue,” Catena said.

According to the county charter, a vote of two-thirds of the council—or 10 members—are needed to override a veto. That means as long as no council member changes their original vote—excluding Ms. [Suzanne] Filiaggi, who could join fellow Republican Mr. [Sam] DeMarco in voting against the pay increases—the legislative body will have the votes to overturn it.^[8]

Imperialism

Russia

Ukraine

Fig. 4. “Destroyed Russian military vehicles located on the main street Khreshchatyk are seen as part of the celebration of the Independence Day of Ukraine in Kyiv, August 24.” Photograph by Gleb Garanich for Reuters, August 24, 2022,^[9] fair use.

Russia’s president [Vladimir Putin] told a group of pro-war bloggers on Tuesday that he supported defence minister Sergei Shoigu’s initiative, unveiled last weekend, to bring the irregular groups under central control — an edict Wagner’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has pointedly refused to obey. . . .

With a force of up to 50,000 at its peak, largely recruited from prisons, Wagner has emerged as one of Russia’s most effective and notorious units. At great cost, it helped capture of the symbolically important town of Bakhmut, one of the few notable successes in Putin’s sputtering invasion.

That prominence made Prigozhin, who until last autumn had denied Wagner so much as existed, into a national figure and underscored how the group enjoyed Putin’s personal patronage. Putin admitted on Tuesday for the first time that he personally signed pardons for the prisoner recruits and said some of them had committed more crimes after finishing their service.^[10]

It looks to me like Yevgeny Prigozhin is in campaign mode. The Financial Times reports that he’s gone on a speaking tour and he is apparently still defying the order to sign a contract with Russia’s defense ministry.^[11] This seems unlikely to dampen speculation that he may launch a coup against Vladimir Putin.^[12] But Putin seems oblivious to any danger:

Even as he backed the defence ministry’s move to subordinate the militias, [Vladimir] Putin implied that much of [Yevgeny] Prigozhin’s criticism of the army had been correct — a possible sign that Wagner had yet to entirely lose his support.

“At the start of the special military operation, we quickly realised that the ‘carpet generals’ [ . . .] are not effective, to put it mildly,” Putin said. “People started to come out of the shadows who we hadn’t heard or seen before, and they turned out to be very effective and made themselves useful.”^[13]

The dissonance persists.

Max Seddon, “Putin sides with Russia’s military in clash with Wagner,” Financial Times, June 14, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/b9d91a08-0f89-4986-855b-42232c5291a6

Neoliberalism

Banking

Commercial real estate

Fig. 5. “The iconic Crescent stands as recognizable landmark in the upscale neighborhood of Uptown, Dallas.” Photograph by Dallasedits [pseud.], July 5, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Mike Ege, “Plan To Save Downtown San Francisco From Doom Loop Approved by Lawmakers,” San Francisco Standard, June 13, 2023, https://sfstandard.com/politics/city-hall/plan-to-save-downtown-san-francisco-from-doom-loop-approved-by-lawmakers/

^[1]Think of means of communication prior to the telegraph, like the Pony Express.↩
^[2]My analysis, not the one embraced by the U.S. Supreme Court, is here: David Benfell, “Deconstructing the second amendment,” Not Housebroken, November 30, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/10/04/deconstructing-the-second-amendment/↩
^[3]David Benfell, “Barack Obama asks, ‘Why is it that the folks that won the last election are so mad all the time?’” Not Housebroken, November 4, 2018, https://disunitedstates.org/2018/11/04/barack-obama-asks-why-is-it-that-the-folks-that-won-the-last-election-are-so-mad-all-the-time/; Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (New York: Penguin, 2011).↩
^[4]Stephen Brumwell, “‘The Whiskey Rebellion’ Review: A Young Nation, Suddenly Tested,” review of the book Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis by Brady J. Crytzer, Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-whiskey-rebellion-review-a-young-nation-suddenly-tested-3a2a692b ↩
^[5]Gabriel Sherman, “Donald Trump Advisers Worry Over Legal Team Civil War: ‘It’s All Coming to a Head,’” Vanity Fair, June 13, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/donald-trump-legal-team-indictment ↩
^[6]Jesús Rodríguez, “In the MAGA mirror, Trump’s legal peril looks like a personal threat,” Washington Post, June 13, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/06/13/trump-arraignment-courthouse-crowd/↩
^[7]Donald Trump, quoted in Maanvi Singh, “Trump claims ‘political persecution’ in speech after arraignment,” Guardian, June 13, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/13/trump-new-jersey-speech-after-arraignment ↩
^[8]Steve Bohnel, “Fitzgerald vetoes minimum wage hike bill, saying it violates county charter,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 14, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-local/2023/06/13/fitzgerald-vetoes-minimum-wage-hike-bill-stating-it-violates-county-charter/stories/202306130122 ↩
^[9]Reuters, “Ukraine puts destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv,” August 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ukraine-puts-destroyed-russian-tanks-on-idUSRTSALV9Q ↩
^[10]Max Seddon, “Putin sides with Russia’s military in clash with Wagner,” Financial Times, June 14, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/b9d91a08-0f89-4986-855b-42232c5291a6 ↩
^[11]Max Seddon, “Putin sides with Russia’s military in clash with Wagner,” Financial Times, June 14, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/b9d91a08-0f89-4986-855b-42232c5291a6 ↩
^[12]Julia Ioffe, “‘Putin’s Chef’: The Man Behind Russia’s Shadow Army,” Puck, December 13, 2022, https://puck.news/putins-chef-the-man-behind-russias-shadow-army/; Maria Katamadze, “Can Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin challenge Putin?” Deutsche Welle, February 19, 2023, https://www.dw.com/en/can-wagner-head-yevgeny-prigozhin-challenge-putin/a-64744266; Allan Woods, “Why Vladimir Putin isn’t shutting down the outspoken ‘thug’ running the Wagner Group,” Toronto Star, May 15, 2023, https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2023/05/15/why-vladimir-putin-isnt-shutting-down-the-outspoken-thug-running-the-wagner-group.html ↩
^[13]Max Seddon, “Putin sides with Russia’s military in clash with Wagner,” Financial Times, June 14, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/b9d91a08-0f89-4986-855b-42232c5291a6 ↩

Pardon Donald Trump? Um, no, but you might want to watch the state-level cases anyway

June 13, 2023benfell

Gilead

Donald Trump

Fig. 1. Donald Trump, depicted in an orange jumpsuit, reportedly by the Drudge, via Mediaite,^[1] fair use. Apparently, no mugshot was taken when he was actually arrested.^[2]

I guess it’s pretty easy to lose track of Donald Trump’s legal travails. The Financial Times has a list of six current cases against him, both criminal and civil.^[3] Given the difficulties of Jack Smith’s indictment,^[4] the state-level prosecutions may yet prove most promising, particularly as presidential pardon power, which Trump claims he can use on himself, does not apply to state convictions.^[5]

Coup attempt

The problem is not with the indictment itself: there is no real worry that it will be dismissed as legally insufficient, or that the charges are false, or that the crimes aren’t serious enough. The indictment and the evidence appear very solid, and rely on no novel theories. But the fact that this is a good indictment—and, even more, that [Jack] Smith had no choice but to bring the prosecution once he found the facts that he did—does not insure that the consequences for the country will be positive.^[6]

Can we please take this one step at a time? We don’t even have the outcome of this or five other cases against Donald Trump.^[7] I’m not even seeing here a good path to analyzing this with a futurism-style scenario analysis such as one of my old professors at California State University, East Bay, Lonny Brooks, lectured about. We’re just getting too far ahead of ourselves.

Casey Newton, “The platforms give up on 2020 lies,” Platformer, June 6, 2023, https://www.platformer.news/p/the-platforms-give-up-on-2020-lies

Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html

Ankush Khardori, “The ‘Lock Him Up’ Election,” New York, June 9, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-turns-2024-into-lock-him-up-election.html

Richard Nixon [Justin Sherrin], “On the Trump/Nauta Indictment,” Patreon, June 11, 2023, https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-trump-nauta-84420752

Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/

Eric Lutz, “Judge Aileen Cannon Could Blow Up Trump Documents Case,” Vanity Fair, June 12, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/aileen-cannon-trump-documents-case

Hush money

Fig. 3. Cartoon by Jesse Duquette, undated, via “Minneapple23” [pseud.] on Imgur, April 1, 2023, fair use.

Tori Otten, “On Same Day He’s Arrested, Trump Faces New Legal Troubles for Different Crime,” New Republic, June 13, 2023, https://newrepublic.com/post/173604/day-hes-arrested-trump-faces-new-legal-troubles-different-crime

White Christian nationalism

Fig. 4. In terms of geographic area, Pennsylvania is very much a white Christian nationalist kind of place. Photograph by author, January 5, 2023.

Some white Christian nationalists are advocating for a constitutional convention. That’s the Convention Of States (COS) Project. And the New York Magazine article^[8] is mostly about that. But also,

Among progressives, there is some, albeit far more limited, convention interest. Last week, California governor Gavin Newsom joined in, calling for a convention to propose a gun-control amendment. The most prominent left-wing proponent is Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor who, in 2016, debated alongside [Mark] Meckler and argues that a convention is the only way to achieve fundamental democratic reform because of gerrymandering, money in politics, and the Electoral College. “The anxiety many have — and I think it’s fair — is that a convention will be minoritarian,” Lessig said, referring to the lopsided power small states would have if each state gets a vote. As such, “it’s really critical to embed a democracy constraint on the convention process.” Still, whether a convention would abide by any constraints, especially in such a volatile political climate, is an open question.^[9]

I think we need to break up the country first. White Christian nationalists want a country that the rest of us don’t want and if we’re talking about using the Constitution to settle so-called “culture war” issues, then no matter how you spin it, you are defining the country as something some of us, of whatever political persuasion (other than anarchism), will not want.

The fear I’ve always seen associated with the constitutional convention idea, repeated here, is that there are no actual constraints on what it could do. Mark Meckler, a leader of COS, advocates a constitutional amendment, presumably to be passed in the normal way, to enable single-issue constitutional conventions. But other white Christian nationalists fear a convention could be hijacked by progressives to, for examples, curtail gun rights and guarantee abortion rights.^[10]

Will it happen? Casey Quackenbush thinks, under certain circumstances, it might.^[11] And as I alluded to earlier, this isn’t the first I’ve heard of the idea. That doesn’t mean it’s particularly gaining traction. I think I need to see a few things happen that right now flatly aren’t, like a Republican victory in 2024 such that they can control the agenda and trajectory of any such convention.

Casey Quackenbush, “The Constitutional Kamikaze,” New York, June 13, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/the-dark-money-behind-mark-mecklers-convention-of-states.html

^[1]Alex Griffing, “Drudge Puts Trump in an Orange Jumpsuit as Site Monitors His Potential Indictment,” Mediaite, August 29, 2022, https://www.mediaite.com/news/drudge-puts-trump-in-an-orange-jumpsuit-as-site-monitors-his-potential-indictment/↩
^[2]Sarah D. Wire and Alexandra E. Petri, “Trump charged with 34 felony counts in alleged hush money cover-up case,” Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-04/donald-trump-alleged-hush-money-investigation-indictment-arraignment ↩
^[3]Financial Times, “The cases against Donald Trump,” Financial Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/0452cacc-26d4-409f-9ff6-cf5213c2987f ↩
^[4]Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein, and Josh Dawsey, “Trump charged in classified documents case, second indictment in months,” Washington Post, June 8, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/08/trump-classified-documents-mar-a-lago/; Marc Caputo, “‘Prosecuting Politicians is Hard Here’: Why South Florida is a Tough Place for DOJ to Try Trump,” Messenger, June 8, 2023, https://themessenger.com/politics/trump-south-florida-miami-doj-jury-challenge; Gabriel J. Chin, “Trump indictment unsealed – a criminal law scholar explains what the charges mean, and what prosecutors will now need to prove,” Conversation, June 9, 2023, https://theconversation.com/trump-indictment-unsealed-a-criminal-law-scholar-explains-what-the-charges-mean-and-what-prosecutors-will-now-need-to-prove-207469; Isaac Chotiner, “Will the Judge in Trump’s Case Recuse Herself—or Be Forced To?” New Yorker, June 12, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/will-the-judge-in-trumps-case-recuse-herself-or-be-forced-to; Joseph Ferguson and Thomas A. Durkin, “Trump charged under Espionage Act – which covers a lot more crimes than just spying,” Conversation, June 9, 2023, https://theconversation.com/trump-charged-under-espionage-act-which-covers-a-lot-more-crimes-than-just-spying-207373; Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html; Jeannie Suk Gersen, “The Case Against Trump Is Strong, but There Are Problems Ahead,” New Yorker, June 13, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-case-against-trump-is-strong-but-there-are-problems-ahead; Hugo Lowell, “Donald Trump charged with illegal retention of classified documents,” Guardian, June 8, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/08/donald-trump-charged-retention-classified-documents; Eric Lutz, “Judge Aileen Cannon Could Blow Up Trump Documents Case,” Vanity Fair, June 12, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/aileen-cannon-trump-documents-case; Nick Madigan, Verónica Zaragovia, and Richard Fausset, “Floridians Would Make Up Trump’s Jury Pool. Here’s What Some Are Saying,” New York Times, June 12, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/us/trump-voters-florida-jury.html; Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/; Jennifer Rubin, “Merrick Garland and Jack Smith come through: Trump will face justice,” Washington Post, June 9, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/09/trump-indictment-garland-smith-justice/↩
^[5]Kimberly Wehle, “Biden Isn’t the Only Official Who Could Pardon Trump,” Politico, May 2, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/05/02/donald-trump-pardon-00094636 ↩
^[6]Jeannie Suk Gersen, “The Case Against Trump Is Strong, but There Are Problems Ahead,” New Yorker, June 13, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-case-against-trump-is-strong-but-there-are-problems-ahead ↩
^[7]Financial Times, “The cases against Donald Trump,” Financial Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/0452cacc-26d4-409f-9ff6-cf5213c2987f ↩
^[8]Casey Quackenbush, “The Constitutional Kamikaze,” New York, June 13, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/the-dark-money-behind-mark-mecklers-convention-of-states.html ↩
^[9]Casey Quackenbush, “The Constitutional Kamikaze,” New York, June 13, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/the-dark-money-behind-mark-mecklers-convention-of-states.html ↩
^[10]Casey Quackenbush, “The Constitutional Kamikaze,” New York, June 13, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/the-dark-money-behind-mark-mecklers-convention-of-states.html ↩
^[11]Casey Quackenbush, “The Constitutional Kamikaze,” New York, June 13, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/the-dark-money-behind-mark-mecklers-convention-of-states.html ↩

Silvio Berlusconi is dead. Long live Silvio Berlusconi

June 13, 2023benfell

Illiberalism

Fig. 1. Photograph by Joachim F. Thurn, August 1991, Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F089030-0003, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.

Frances D’Emelio and Colleen Barry, “Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian leader tarnished by multiple scandals, dies at 86,” Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-06-12/silvio-berlusconi-dead-italy-prime-minister

Ishaan Tharoor, “Silvio Berlusconi’s political style lives on,” Washington Post, June 13, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2023/06/13/silvio-berlusconi-trump-netanyahu-far-right/

Neoliberalism

Banking

Commercial real estate

Fig. 2. “The iconic Crescent stands as recognizable landmark in the upscale neighborhood of Uptown, Dallas.” Photograph by Dallasedits [pseud.], July 5, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Kate King, “Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives,” Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/hotel-owners-start-to-write-off-san-francisco-as-business-nosedives-e84c64ef

Caroline O’Donovan, “Workers want to stay remote, prompting an office real estate crisis,” Washington Post, June 12, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/12/office-real-estate-san-francisco/

Kevin Truong and Noah Baustin, “Westfield Gives Up Downtown San Francisco Mall,” San Francisco Standard, June 12, 2023, https://sfstandard.com/business/westfield-gives-up-downtown-san-francisco-mall/

Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Credit Suisse, 2023

Fig. 3. “The monument sign in front of the parking lot of the Silicon Valley Bank headquarters at 3003 West Tasman Drive, Santa Clara, California.” Photograph by Minh Nguyen, March 13, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

You know the ideology is strong when the Federal Reserve is still figuring out what was apparent months ago, that its interest rate rises, meant to discipline workers but not price-gouging corporations,^[1] imperil banks^[2] and fail to address actual causes of inflation—supply chain issues exacerbated by the Ukraine War and COVID-19 pandemic.^[3]

Nick Timiraos, “Jerome Powell’s Big Problem Just Got Even More Complicated,” Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-jerome-powell-big-problem-more-complicated-ba27ece4

Work

Fig. 4. The spectre of Death, in the form of a large skeleton, rises with the smoke and flames of the burning Asch Building during the Triangle fire, as people jump and fall to their death. Artist unknown, from International Ladies Garment Workers Union Photographs (1885-1985) at The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

Recently, my 13-year-old began to question why she must attend school and study subjects that don’t interest her. How can I tell her she must go into school each day, when two years ago she was told to stay at home for her own safety? How can I tell her that without education she may not get a “good” job when – after my own experience – I’m no longer sure what a “good job” should look like. Is it one that nets a higher income? Or that offers personal fulfilment? And with AI on the horizon, will the jobs she might be interested in even exist in five years’ time?Plus, how can she look to the future at all when we’re racing towards a climate emergency and war is raging close to home?^[4]

At minimum, a “good job” conforms to Article 7 of the International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights:

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work which ensure, in particular:

(a) Remuneration which provides all workers, as a minimum, with:

(i) Fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value without distinction of any kind, in particular women being guaranteed conditions of work not inferior to those enjoyed by men, with equal pay for equal work;

(ii) A decent living for themselves and their families in accordance with the provisions of the present Covenant;

(b) Safe and healthy working conditions;

(c) Equal opportunity for everyone to be promoted in his employment to an appropriate higher level, subject to no considerations other than those of seniority and competence;

(d ) Rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay, as well as remuneration for public holidays^[5]

And I desperately wish that privileged people would stop writing shit like this:

I learned that no job is more important than your mental health; that money, while desirable, doesn’t solve all problems. Moving to France – where property prices are lower – gave me financial breathing space, and I was able to build a freelance career. The payoff has been amazing – I now do what I enjoy, set my own hours and never experience the “Sunday night dread” that used to poison the last hours of my weekend.^[6]

People who can worry about their mental health are privileged. People who can say “money, while desirable, doesn’t solve all problems”^[7] are privileged. People who can move to France are privileged.

Gillian Harvey, “The ‘work hard and you’ll get a good job’ mantra is no longer true – so what do I tell my kids?” Guardian, June 12, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/12/work-hard-good-job-kids-young-people-future

(dis)United Kingdom

Prime minister

Fig. 5. President Reagan on the South Lawn during the arrival ceremony of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom. U.S. Government photograph, November 16, 1988, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Paul Dallison, “Boris Johnson quits as member of parliament with blast at Partygate probe,” Politico, June 9, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnson-steps-down-as-member-of-parliament/

Michael Savage and Toby Helm, “Furious Tories turn against Boris Johnson after ‘bias’ outburst,” Guardian, June 10, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/10/furious-tories-boris-johnson-bias-outburst-rishi-sunak-nigel-adams-byelection

Jim Pickard, “Johnson’s angry exit from parliament poses fresh dilemmas for Sunak,” Financial Times, June 11, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/f42455a7-8d68-4f00-861b-e7016b098721

Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey, “Rishi Sunak would block Boris Johnson comeback as Tory MP, sources say,” Guardian, June 12, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/12/rishi-sunak-would-block-boris-johnson-comeback-as-tory-mp-sources-say

Polly Toynbee, “This is Starmer’s moment. Thatcherism has collapsed, and the Tories are at each other’s throats,” Guardian, June 12, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/12/keir-starmer-moment-thatcherism-collapsed-tories-existential-crisis

Gilead

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Fig. 6. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The court hasn’t even been called to order, but what do I see? Chaos.

Jon Sale, a prominent Florida defense attorney who worked on the Watergate prosecution team and turned down the opportunity to join Trump’s defense team last year, said that the pros and cons of representing Trump are obvious.

“Without engaging in hyperbole, it’s arguably the biggest case in the world,” said Sale. “But the cons are illustrated by three of his four lawyers quitting in the last few weeks. He needs a good Florida lawyer with an impeccable reputation who is very experienced in this.”

The club of former Trump lawyers has a deep bench, highlighting the challenges his legal team is likely to face in the months ahead. Trump is known as a difficult client — he eschews legal advice, sometimes issues public threats to engage in illegal activity and frequently skips out on his legal bills.

One veteran South Florida defense attorney, Philip Reizenstein, said there’s an “incalculable value” for Trump’s team in having a well-respected local attorney who is familiar to the judge and who knows the judge’s preferences and habits. “No experienced lawyer handles a case out of town without a good local counsel,” he said.^[8]

The lawyers making an appearance with [Donald] Trump on Tuesday will be the top former federal prosecutor Todd Blanche and the former Florida solicitor general Chris Kise, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump’s co-defendant, his valet Walt Nauta, will be represented by Stanley Woodward.

Trump and his legal team spent the afternoon before his arraignment interviewing potential lawyers but the interviews did not result in any joining the team in time for Trump’s initial court appearance scheduled for 3pm ET on Tuesday after several attorneys declined to take him as a client.

Trump has also seemingly been unable to find a specialist national security lawyer, eligible to possess a security clearance, to help him navigate the Espionage Act charges. . . .

After interviewing a slate of potential lawyers at his Trump Doral resort, the former president settled on having Kise appearing as the local counsel admitted to the southern district of Florida as a one-off, with Blanche being sponsored by him to appear pro hac vice, one of the people said. . . .

Trump is said to still be searching for a lawyer in the mold of Roy Cohn, the ruthless New York fixer who defended and mentored him before he was later disbarred — and the fear of potentially being asked to take similar actions has been a persistent issue.

That fear has loomed large for numerous lawyers Trump’s advisers have contacted, the people said, in particular after Trump might have made Evan Corcoran, another former lawyer who withdrew from his defense in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation, into a witness against him.^[9]

Those calls [for Aileen Cannon to recuse herself] are entirely justified: As government integrity and ethics experts Norm Eisen, Richard Painter, and Fred Wertheimer wrote Monday in Slate, Cannon’s “prior, fundamentally erroneous approach casts a shadow over the proceedings,” and has given “reasonable observers of this case” cause to “question her impartiality.” That approach included a decision last year to grant Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago, which would have brought the case to a standstill. It was widely-criticized as a “genuinely unprecedented decision,” as former George W. Bush Homeland Security official Paul Rosenzweig told the New York Times last year, and an affront to the separation of powers.

“In the tank for Trump hardly describes it,” constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe wrote at the time.

Her decision was ultimately shot down by a conservative appeals court, with three judge panel — two of whom were also Trump appointees — ruling that Cannon “improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction, and that dismissal of the entire proceeding is required.” “The law is clear,” the appeals panel wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”^[10]

Jacqueline Alemany et al., “Trump lawyers meeting with Justice Dept. on classified documents case,” Washington Post, June 5, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/05/trump-lawyers-meeting-justice-doj/

Josh Dawsey and Amy Gardner, “Trump-funded studies disputing election fraud are focus in two probes,” Washington Post, June 5, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/06/05/trump-funded-studies-disputing-election-fraud-are-focus-two-probes/

Rozina Sabur, “Flood at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort raises suspicions in classified documents case,” Telegraph, June 5, 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/05/donald-trump-mar-a-lago-resort-flood-pool-documents/

Chris Walker, “Trump’s Lawyers Have 2-Hour Meeting With DOJ Over Mar-a-Lago Documents Case,” Truthout, June 5, 2023, https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-lawyers-have-2-hour-meeting-with-doj-over-mar-a-lago-documents-case/

Casey Newton, “The platforms give up on 2020 lies,” Platformer, June 6, 2023, https://www.platformer.news/p/the-platforms-give-up-on-2020-lies

Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html

Ankush Khardori, “The ‘Lock Him Up’ Election,” New York, June 9, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-turns-2024-into-lock-him-up-election.html

Richard Nixon [Justin Sherrin], “On the Trump/Nauta Indictment,” Patreon, June 11, 2023, https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-trump-nauta-84420752

Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/

Eric Lutz, “Judge Aileen Cannon Could Blow Up Trump Documents Case,” Vanity Fair, June 12, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/aileen-cannon-trump-documents-case

Speaker of the House of Representatives, 2023

Fig. 7. Photograph credited to Office of Congressman Kevin McCarthy, date inconsistent with title but given as November 9, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Marianna Sotomayor and Leigh Ann Caldwell, “McCarthy, Republican lawmakers reach deal to end House floor standoff for now,” Washington Post, June 13, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/12/house-republicans-impasse-mccarthy-debt-ceiling-negotiations/

Imperialism

Russia

Ukraine

Fig. 8. “Destroyed Russian military vehicles located on the main street Khreshchatyk are seen as part of the celebration of the Independence Day of Ukraine in Kyiv, August 24.” Photograph by Gleb Garanich for Reuters, August 24, 2022,^[11] fair use.

It was about a month ago that U.S. intelligence suggested that Vladimir Putin was exhausting his troops and weaponry in Ukraine.^[12] Now Putin admits he’s short of weapons.^[13]

A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, published in April, found that Western sanctions were preventing Russia from bringing in the components needed to manufacture advanced weaponry. “While the quality of the military equipment used by the Ukrainian army continues to improve thanks to the Western aid, the quality of Russia’s weapons continues to degrade,” the analysis concluded.^[14]

This doesn’t sound anything like a war that Ukraine can’t possibly win. The question here, really, is of western, especially U.S., support.^[15]

^[1]Francesco Canepa, “ECB confronts a cold reality: companies are cashing in on inflation,” Reuters, March 2, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/ecb-confronts-cold-reality-companies-are-cashing-inflation-2023-03-02/; William Horobin and Carolynn Look, “Lagarde Says ECB ‘Absolutely’ Must Avoid Second-Round Effects,” Bloomberg, September 16, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-16/lagarde-says-ecb-absolutely-must-avoid-second-round-effects; Justin Lahart, “Giving Labor Less of the American Pie,” Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/giving-labor-less-of-the-american-pie-11675792087; Nick Timiraos, “Fed’s Jerome Powell Braces for Longer Inflation Fight Amid Hiring Surge,” Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/feds-jerome-powell-to-address-economic-outlook-with-hiring-surge-in-spotlight-11675781503 ↩
^[2]Victoria Guida and Sam Sutton, “‘There’s going to be more’: How Washington is bracing for bank fallout,” Politico, March 12, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/12/silicon-valley-bank-fallout-washington-00086662 ↩
^[3]Paul Hannon, “Why Is Inflation So Sticky? It Could Be Corporate Profits,” Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-is-inflation-so-sticky-it-could-be-corporate-profits-b78d90b7; Nouriel Roubini, “‘Most U.S. banks are technically near insolvency, and hundreds are already fully insolvent,’ Roubini says,” MarketWatch, April 1, 2023, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/most-u-s-banks-are-technically-near-insolvency-and-hundreds-are-already-fully-insolvent-roubini-says-18b89f92 ↩
^[4]Gillian Harvey, “The ‘work hard and you’ll get a good job’ mantra is no longer true – so what do I tell my kids?” Guardian, June 12, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/12/work-hard-good-job-kids-young-people-future ↩
^[5]International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, December 16, 1966, United Nations, General Assembly resolution 2200A (XXI), https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-economic-social-and-cultural-rights ↩
^[6]Gillian Harvey, “The ‘work hard and you’ll get a good job’ mantra is no longer true – so what do I tell my kids?” Guardian, June 12, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/12/work-hard-good-job-kids-young-people-future ↩
^[7]Gillian Harvey, “The ‘work hard and you’ll get a good job’ mantra is no longer true – so what do I tell my kids?” Guardian, June 12, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/12/work-hard-good-job-kids-young-people-future ↩
^[8]Spencer S. Hsu et al., “Trump scrambles to find lawyer before first federal court appearance,” Washington Post, June 12, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/12/trump-documents-lawyer/↩
^[9]Hugo Lowell, “Trump finds no new lawyers for court appearance in Mar-a-Lago case,” Guardian, June 13, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/13/trump-finds-no-new-lawyers-mar-a-lago-documents-arraignment ↩
^[10]Eric Lutz, “Judge Aileen Cannon Could Blow Up Trump Documents Case,” Vanity Fair, June 12, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/aileen-cannon-trump-documents-case ↩
^[11]Reuters, “Ukraine puts destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv,” August 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ukraine-puts-destroyed-russian-tanks-on-idUSRTSALV9Q ↩
^[12]Patrick Tucker, “Without A New Draft, Russian Offensive Operations Are Over, US Intel Chiefs Say,” Defense One, May 4, 2023, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/05/without-new-draft-russian-offensive-operations-are-over-us-intel-chiefs-say/386003/↩
^[13]Gabriel Gavin, “Putin admits Russia doesn’t have enough weapons and drones,” Politico, June 13, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-ukraine-war-russia-doesnt-have-enough-weapons-and-drones-putin-admits/↩
^[14]Gabriel Gavin, “Putin admits Russia doesn’t have enough weapons and drones,” Politico, June 13, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-ukraine-war-russia-doesnt-have-enough-weapons-and-drones-putin-admits/↩
^[15]Julia Ioffe, “Peace & Gossip in Munich,” Puck, February 21, 2023, https://puck.news/peace-gossip-in-munich/↩

The excuses for Wyoming being equal to California in the Senate….

June 12, 2023June 12, 2023benfell

Gilead

Competitive authoritarian regime project

Fig. 1. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Clarence Mitchell during signing ceremony of the voting rights act. Yoichi Okamoto, August 6, 1965, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Jason Willick worries that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could produce chaos.^[1] What is this compact?

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact purports to take effect once states carrying 270 electoral votes (the minimum needed to win the presidency) have agreed to its terms.

The aim is to replace the electoral college with an improvised popular-vote system for electing presidents without amending the Constitution. Minnesota’s move means that 16 states and D.C., controlling 205 electoral votes, are now parties to the compact. Michigan’s Democratic-controlled legislature is also set to vote on the compact. If the Great Lakes State becomes the 17th to approve it, compact member states will control 220 electoral votes, bringing them more than 80 percent of the way to 270.^[2]

I have previously taken up this topic in a blog post entitled, “Mitigating the democratic deficit in the United States,” where I recommended instead that big states should divide up into smaller states.^[3]

I still think breaking up large states whose residents are grossly under-represented^[4] is a better idea, but the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact wouldn’t require constitutional changes or jurisdictional break-ups. Willick thinks the compact might run into other legal problems, hence chaos.^[5]

For now, I’ll accept that chaos. The democratic principle of one person, one vote, is severely compromised when Wyoming gets the same number of senators as California and when the number of senators is used to inflate the number of electors each state sends to the electoral college.^[6] This was, of course, by design. Willick praises the present system for limiting the number of candidates.^[7] But when we have a choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden and are supposed to choose the lesser of two evils, we’re only getting evil.

Jason Willick, “This blue-state election compact could create a constitutional crisis,” Washington Post, June 11, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/11/democratic-electoral-alliance-potential-constitutional-crisis/

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Donald Trump potentially faces on the order of 20 years in prison.^[8] That is, if I interpret David Aaron’s article correctly and that’s not at all certain. It also, to state the obvious but important, depends on Judge Aileen Cannon^[9] and a jury^[10] convicting Trump.

Given the importance of this case, perhaps the most important criminal trial in the history of the United States—certainly the most watched—and in light of what Judge [Aileen] Cannon did in the search-and-seizure case last year, I think she must step aside. I think she must grant a motion to recuse herself, unless she does it before a motion is even made.

And the reason I say that is that she treated [Donald] Trump as special, or, to put it another way, she was partial to Trump as a former President, which should not have any influence on the way this trial is conducted. I’m concerned that the partiality she expressed in her decisions last year creates a reasonable perception in the mind of a fair-minded person that she is not impartial—which is the test. Her behavior when she was ruling on the search-and-seizure case creates a reason to doubt her impartiality.^[11]

The case was filed in the West Palm Beach court division of the Southern District of Florida, meaning the jury may be selected from registered voters in Palm Beach County, home to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where he has lived since leaving the White House. Mr. Trump lost Palm Beach County to President Biden by nearly 13 percentage points in 2020.

But a jury pool made up of Miami-Dade County voters, to the south of Palm Beach, is also a possibility, particularly if it is determined that the federal courthouse in Miami, where Mr. Trump is expected to make an initial appearance on Tuesday, is best equipped to accommodate what will likely be one of the highest-profile criminal trials in American history.

Mr. Trump lost Miami-Dade by only about seven points in the last election, getting strong support from Hispanic voters in particular; more than two-thirds of the county’s residents identify as Hispanic, according to census data.

Both counties, however, have grown more Republican in recent years, and Republican candidates have had significant success in statewide races. Mr. Trump won Florida in both 2016 and 2020, and the state has twice elected Gov. Ron DeSantis, currently Mr. Trump’s main rival for the Republican presidential nomination.^[12]

What we’re getting here is a more detailed look at the reasons people are particularly worried about this judge and the yet-to-be-selected jury.^[13]

A curious aside: There is, in absolutely none of the coverage I’ve looked at, any question whatsoever about Trump’s guilt. Which is to pretty blatantly acknowledge I’m not looking (much anyway) at right-wing media. I’m satisfied that Trump is indeed guilty, so I’m not faulting anyone else for agreeing. But we should also realize that this is what “conviction in the media” looks like, with an unsympathetic defendant and relentless coverage of the supposed evidence against him, combined with a ridiculing of his—well, they are, actually—ludicrous defenses.

I hope y’all understand quite clearly that I’m not dying on that particular hill. Just sayin’.

As I’ve been piecing all this together, though I happened to notice other coverage: Trump’s legal team is in disarray (and I might be in error for writing of that team in the singular rather than the plural).^[14] It is, I suppose, theoretically possible that this chaos might yield a performance that even Cannon can’t ignore. Don’t hold your breath. Hope she recuses.

Casey Newton, “The platforms give up on 2020 lies,” Platformer, June 6, 2023, https://www.platformer.news/p/the-platforms-give-up-on-2020-lies

Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html

Ankush Khardori, “The ‘Lock Him Up’ Election,” New York, June 9, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-turns-2024-into-lock-him-up-election.html

Richard Nixon [Justin Sherrin], “On the Trump/Nauta Indictment,” Patreon, June 11, 2023, https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-trump-nauta-84420752

Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/

Illiberalism

Fig. 3. Photograph by Joachim F. Thurn, August 1991, Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F089030-0003, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.

[Silvio Berlusconi’s] Forza Italia political party was a coalition partner with current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a far-right leader who came to power last year, although he held no position in the government.

His friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin put him at odds with Meloni, a staunch supporter of Ukraine. On Berlusconi’s 86th birthday, while the war raged, Putin sent the former Italian leader best wishes and vodka, and the Italian boasted that he had returned the favor by sending back Italian wine. . . .

Berlusconi’s party was eclipsed as the dominant force on Italy’s political right: first by the League, led by anti-migrant populist Matteo Salvini, then by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, with its roots in neo-fascism. Following elections in 2022, Meloni formed a governing coalition with the help of Berlusconi and others.^[15]

Neoliberalism

Banking

Commercial real estate

Fig. 4. “The iconic Crescent stands as recognizable landmark in the upscale neighborhood of Uptown, Dallas.” Photograph by Dallasedits [pseud.], July 5, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

I’m thinking this is what a ‘doom loop’ looks like.

(dis)United Kingdom

Prime minister

Only old ideologues believe [Margaret] Thatcher’s mantra that all this should be “left to the markets”. Her outsourcing of services deliberately avoided trade unions, cementing the bottom half of wages to the floor. She caused inequality to soar, never to return to its 1970s level, with hard-won working rights lost to zero-hours contracts, a gig economy and freelance insecurity. Yet, despite the recent strikes, more people think unions play a positive rather than a negative role in Britain today.

David Cameron and George Osborne’s austerity was inspired by Thatcher: the smaller the state the better, they insisted. For decades, the UK collected far less tax than equivalent EU countries – and now pays a heavy price in a failing NHS, social care, education and everything else. But Tory MPs are blind to the seismic change in public attitudes: they put their faith in Sunak’s promised tax cuts as the party’s salvation, expecting a 2p income tax cut next March, and demanding more. Polling in key seats shows that that is no life raft, however. Just 12% prefer cutting taxes and spending less on public services, with 38% wanting to keep tax and spending as they are. Another 36% want taxes raised, with more spent on public services. Labour will be wary of trusting such public altruism, but it shows an extraordinary shift in sentiment, with Labour being more trusted on solid economic management. After the crash, austerity, Brexit and Covid, the public is rejecting old Thatcherite nostrums.^[16]

Jim Pickard, “Johnson’s angry exit from parliament poses fresh dilemmas for Sunak,” Financial Times, June 11, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/f42455a7-8d68-4f00-861b-e7016b098721

^[1]Jason Willick, “This blue-state election compact could create a constitutional crisis,” Washington Post, June 11, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/11/democratic-electoral-alliance-potential-constitutional-crisis/↩
^[2]Jason Willick, “This blue-state election compact could create a constitutional crisis,” Washington Post, June 11, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/11/democratic-electoral-alliance-potential-constitutional-crisis/↩
^[3]David Benfell, “Mitigating the democratic deficit in the United States,” Not Housebroken, December 20, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2018/07/15/mitigating-the-democratic-deficit-in-the-united-states/↩
^[4]David Benfell, “Mitigating the democratic deficit in the United States,” Not Housebroken, December 20, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2018/07/15/mitigating-the-democratic-deficit-in-the-united-states/↩
^[5]Jason Willick, “This blue-state election compact could create a constitutional crisis,” Washington Post, June 11, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/11/democratic-electoral-alliance-potential-constitutional-crisis/↩
^[6]David Benfell, “Mitigating the democratic deficit in the United States,” Not Housebroken, December 20, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2018/07/15/mitigating-the-democratic-deficit-in-the-united-states/↩
^[7]Jason Willick, “This blue-state election compact could create a constitutional crisis,” Washington Post, June 11, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/11/democratic-electoral-alliance-potential-constitutional-crisis/↩
^[8]David Aaron, “How Much Prison Time Does Former President Trump Face? Applying the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines,” Just Security, June 12, 2023, https://www.justsecurity.org/86901/how-much-prison-time-does-former-president-trump-face-applying-the-u-s-sentencing-guidelines/↩
^[9]Isaac Chotiner, “Will the Judge in Trump’s Case Recuse Herself—or Be Forced To?” New Yorker, June 12, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/will-the-judge-in-trumps-case-recuse-herself-or-be-forced-to; Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html; Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/↩
^[10]Marc Caputo, “‘Prosecuting Politicians is Hard Here’: Why South Florida is a Tough Place for DOJ to Try Trump,” Messenger, June 8, 2023, https://themessenger.com/politics/trump-south-florida-miami-doj-jury-challenge; Nick Madigan, Verónica Zaragovia, and Richard Fausset, “Floridians Would Make Up Trump’s Jury Pool. Here’s What Some Are Saying,” New York Times, June 12, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/us/trump-voters-florida-jury.html; Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/↩
^[11]Stephen Gillers, quoted in Isaac Chotiner, “Will the Judge in Trump’s Case Recuse Herself—or Be Forced To?” New Yorker, June 12, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/will-the-judge-in-trumps-case-recuse-herself-or-be-forced-to ↩
^[12]Nick Madigan, Verónica Zaragovia, and Richard Fausset, “Floridians Would Make Up Trump’s Jury Pool. Here’s What Some Are Saying,” New York Times, June 12, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/us/trump-voters-florida-jury.html ↩
^[13]Marc Caputo, “‘Prosecuting Politicians is Hard Here’: Why South Florida is a Tough Place for DOJ to Try Trump,” Messenger, June 8, 2023, https://themessenger.com/politics/trump-south-florida-miami-doj-jury-challenge; Isaac Chotiner, “Will the Judge in Trump’s Case Recuse Herself—or Be Forced To?” New Yorker, June 12, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/will-the-judge-in-trumps-case-recuse-herself-or-be-forced-to; Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html; Nick Madigan, Verónica Zaragovia, and Richard Fausset, “Floridians Would Make Up Trump’s Jury Pool. Here’s What Some Are Saying,” New York Times, June 12, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/us/trump-voters-florida-jury.html; Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/↩
^[14]Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html ↩
^[15]Frances D’Emelio and Colleen Barry, “Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian leader tarnished by multiple scandals, dies at 86,” Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-06-12/silvio-berlusconi-dead-italy-prime-minister ↩
^[16]Polly Toynbee, “This is Starmer’s moment. Thatcherism has collapsed, and the Tories are at each other’s throats,” Guardian, June 12, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/12/keir-starmer-moment-thatcherism-collapsed-tories-existential-crisis ↩

Jack Smith can and might lose

June 12, 2023June 12, 2023benfell

Things have been unsettled lately. First, a couple months ago, I got rear-ended in a hit-and-run. The damage appeared superficial, but on principle, I’m not about to take shortcuts in caring for this car, especially when my not-really-a-livelihood depends upon it.

The body shop was finally able to get to the car last week and the damage amounted to around $1,500. As it turned out at least one backup sensor—it detects traffic when I’m backing up—had been knocked out of kilter. And paint was involved in the repair, suggesting there was exposed metal, something you do not want when you live with salted roads in the winter. Colussy Collision Center actually knocked that repair out fairly quickly, in about three days.

But the right rear door weatherstripping has come loose, probably from excessive use. It’s literally falling off the door jamb. I figure I can’t wash the car without it and I can’t have passengers climbing in and out through that door with it. Which means I’m back down. Which means I’m headed to Rohrich Toyota this morning to see about getting it fixed.

Which means I’m not caught up here.

It’s been an expensive couple of months. I had a 50,000 mile service on the rear differential and the transmission, which Toyota does not recommend, but my old mechanic in Petaluma is adamant should be done and a tune-up to do. The car is also due for a state inspection.

And of course, it has all hit at once. Which is why the games that Uber plays with driver pay will put drivers out of business. I’ve been hoarding credit for the seven years since I finished my Ph.D.; I’ll probably manage to get through this, but when many other drivers encounter similar situations, they simply won’t have the money available to get through.

Gilead

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Fig. 1. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Here’s one way Aileen Cannon, the judge on the Mar-a-Lago classified records case,^[1] whose previous rulings favoring Trump were humiliatingly reversed,^[2] matters:

To take one extreme example, consider the impact of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29(a). This rule—obscure to most Americans, though well known in the criminal-defense bar—gives a federal judge the power to dismiss a prosecutor’s case at the end of the prosecutor’s presentation on a finding that the government has not presented sufficient evidence from which a jury could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This broad discretion is rarely used, because it allows a judge to substitute their own judgment for that of the jury. But it does exist and, more important for our purposes, it is completely unreviewable. For reasons of double jeopardy, if a judge dismisses a case at the close of the prosecutor’s presentation, that’s the end of it. One does not have to be completely Machiavellian to see in this power the prospect of judicial interference and disruption.^[3]

Paul Rosenzweig also points to the possibilities that Cannon can severely restrict the evidence that Jack Smith can present, that she controls the timing of the trial, that the jury might favor Donald Trump despite efforts in voir dire to exclude biased jurors, and even that the jury might nullify the charges against Trump. He is clear that many of the charges against Trump could only be brought in Palm Beach,^[4] thus excluding my implicit assumption that Smith had the option to bring the case in a more favorable court.^[5]

The picture I’m getting is that Smith has indeed put together an exceptionally strong case.^[6] The trouble that Rosenzweig is pointing to is mainly with the judge, though the jurisdiction can’t be excluded.^[7] Jonathan Turley, who wrote before it was known that Cannon would hear the case, thinks it unlikely a federal judge would agree to hear the case before the 2024 election;^[8] indeed, delay might be the simplest thing Cannon can do. And my fear^[9] remains that all of this has been for nothing.

Rosenzweig wants us to understand why it is that, despite such an apparently strong case, it is still possible, for reasons beyond the Department of Justice’s control, for the prosecution to fail. We should, in his view, be forgiving.^[10] That’s a tough one to swallow given that this is a case that they clearly didn’t want to bring.^[11] We will see how it plays.

Casey Newton, “The platforms give up on 2020 lies,” Platformer, June 6, 2023, https://www.platformer.news/p/the-platforms-give-up-on-2020-lies

Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html

Ankush Khardori, “The ‘Lock Him Up’ Election,” New York, June 9, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-turns-2024-into-lock-him-up-election.html

Richard Nixon [Justin Sherrin], “On the Trump/Nauta Indictment,” Patreon, June 11, 2023, https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-trump-nauta-84420752

Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/

(dis)United Kingdom

Prime minister

Fig. 1. President Reagan on the South Lawn during the arrival ceremony of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom. U.S. Government photograph, November 16, 1988, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Jim Pickard, “Johnson’s angry exit from parliament poses fresh dilemmas for Sunak,” Financial Times, June 11, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/f42455a7-8d68-4f00-861b-e7016b098721

Imperialism

Russia

Ukraine

Fig. 1. “Destroyed Russian military vehicles located on the main street Khreshchatyk are seen as part of the celebration of the Independence Day of Ukraine in Kyiv, August 24.” Photograph by Gleb Garanich for Reuters, August 24, 2022,^[12] fair use.

Shaun Walker, “‘Three months ago, this wasn’t possible’: exiled Russians dare to dream of Putin’s fall,” Guardian, June 10, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/10/russia-exiles-life-after-vladimir-putin

Ishaan Tharoor, “Ukraine’s current counteroffensive may dictate the fate of the war,” Washington Post, June 11, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2023/06/11/counteroffensive-stakes-future-fate/

^[1]Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html ↩
^[2]Mariana Alfaro and Eugene Scott, “Judge’s openness to special master for Mar-a-Lago documents raises new questions in criminal probe,” Washington Post, August 29, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/29/special-master-trump-biden-pennsylvania/; Robert Barnes and Perry Stein, “Supreme Court rejects Trump request on Mar-a-Lago documents,” Washington Post, October 13, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/13/supreme-court-trump-mar-a-lago-classified-documents/; Devlin Barrett, “Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents already examined by FBI, Justice Dept. tells judge,” Washington Post, August 29, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/29/trumpspecial-master-documents/; Devlin Barrett, “Appeals court sides with Justice Department in Mar-a-Lago case,” Washington Post, September 21, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/21/mar-a-lago-appeal-court-ruling/; Aaron Blake, “A thorough rebuke of Judge Aileen Cannon’s pro-Trump order,” Washington Post, September 22, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/22/thorough-rebuke-judge-aileen-cannons-pro-trump-order/; Jess Bravin and Aruna Viswanatha, “Judge Grants Donald Trump’s Request for Independent Review of Mar-a-Lago Documents,” Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-partly-grants-donald-trumps-request-for-independent-review-of-mar-a-lago-documents-11662395427; Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, “Trump suffers setback as appeals panel rejects Cannon ruling,” Politico, September 21, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/21/donald-trump-special-master-00058176; Ann E. Marimow and Devlin Barrett, “Judge’s special-master order a test of Trump’s post-White House powers,” Washington Post, September 6, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/06/trump-judge-cannon-special-master-order/; Charlie Savage, “‘Deeply Problematic’: Experts Question Judge’s Intervention in Trump Inquiry,” New York Times, September 5, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/us/trump-special-master-aileen-cannon.html; Charlie Savage, “U.S. Asks Court to End Special Master Review of Files Seized From Trump,” New York Times, October 17, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/14/us/appeal-special-master-trump.html; Eric Tucker, “Judge grants Trump bid for special master in Mar-a-Lago case,” Los Angeles Times, September 5, 2022, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-09-05/judge-grants-trump-bid-for-special-master-in-mar-a-lago-case; Ariane de Vogue and Katelyn Polantz, “Supreme Court rejects former President Donald Trump’s request to intervene in Mar-a-Lago documents fight,” CNN, October 13, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/supreme-court-trump-mar-a-lago/index.html ↩
^[3]Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/↩
^[4]Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/↩
^[5]David Benfell, “Jack Smith set to fail?” Not Housebroken, June 10, 2023, https://disunitedstates.org/2023/06/10/jack-smith-set-to-fail/; Marc Caputo, “‘Prosecuting Politicians is Hard Here’: Why South Florida is a Tough Place for DOJ to Try Trump,” Messenger, June 8, 2023, https://themessenger.com/politics/trump-south-florida-miami-doj-jury-challenge ↩
^[6]Richard Nixon [Justin Sherrin], “On the Trump/Nauta Indictment,” Patreon, June 11, 2023, https://www.patreon.com/posts/on-trump-nauta-84420752; Marina Pitofsky, “Barr ‘shocked’ by Trump indictment details: “If even half of it is true, then he’s toast,’” USA Today, June 11, 2023, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/06/11/bill-barr-donald-trump-classified-documents-indictment/70310878007/; Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/↩
^[7]Marc Caputo, “‘Prosecuting Politicians is Hard Here’: Why South Florida is a Tough Place for DOJ to Try Trump,” Messenger, June 8, 2023, https://themessenger.com/politics/trump-south-florida-miami-doj-jury-challenge; Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/↩
^[8]Jonathan Turley, “Trying Trump: Scandal May Be His Element — But This Time May Be Different,” Messenger, June 9, 2023, https://themessenger.com/opinion/trying-trump-scandal-may-be-his-element-but-this-time-may-be-different ↩
^[9]David Benfell, “It is now even more urgently orange jumpsuit time,” Not Housebroken, June 5, 2023, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/08/24/it-is-now-even-more-urgently-orange-jumpsuit-time/; David Benfell, “Jack Smith set to fail?” Not Housebroken, June 10, 2023, https://disunitedstates.org/2023/06/10/jack-smith-set-to-fail/↩
^[10]Paul Rosenzweig, “The Three Biggest Obstacles to Convicting Trump,” Atlantic, June 11, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-biggest-obstacles-convicting-trump/674366/↩
^[11]Ankush Khardori, “The ‘Lock Him Up’ Election,” New York, June 9, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-turns-2024-into-lock-him-up-election.html ↩
^[12]Reuters, “Ukraine puts destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv,” August 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ukraine-puts-destroyed-russian-tanks-on-idUSRTSALV9Q ↩

It’s outhouse time for the Tories

June 11, 2023June 11, 2023benfell

(dis)United Kingdom

Prime minister

There comes a point when, regardless of how one feels about the politics, a party has been in power too long. Too many among them take too much for granted.

I disagree with Tories on many things. This is not about that. It’s just time for the Conservative Party to go spend some time alone in the political outhouse.

Labour won’t be much better. It has now nearly been purged of anything Jeremy Corbyn, which is to say 1) that it has been purged of any acknowledgement that Palestinians are human beings entitled to human rights, for to say so has been judged anti-Semitic; and by which I also mean to recognize 2) that Labour is the British equivalent of the Democratic Party in the U.S., hopelessly wed to an intellectually utterly bogus neoliberal dogma.

Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh

Century III Mall

Fig. 2. “The exterior of the closed Century III Mall taken from a drone . . . in West Mifflin.” Photograph by Benjamin B. Braun, May 11, 2023, via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,^[1] fair use.

Neena Hagen, “‘We have to do something’: West Mifflin officials will soon decide the fate of Century III Mall,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 11, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/business/development/2023/06/11/west-mifflin-century-iii-mall-at-moonbeam-roof-condemn-hearing/stories/202306070103

Infrastructure

Fig. 3. Post-collapse scene at the Fern Hollow Bridge, photograph by National Transportation Safety Board, January 29, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The need for more [truck] parking comes against a backdrop of an increase in fatalities in crashes involving large trucks, those defined as weighing more than 10,000 pounds. The number of deaths rose 10% during the first six months of 2022 over 2021, after increasing 13% from 2020 to 2021, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates.

Some of those crashes were blamed on tired truckers. Driver fatigue was a contributing factor in at least 13 truck crashes investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board since 2011.

The federal government limits how long truckers can be on the road, but when it’s time for them to rest, many truck stops might as well post “No Vacancy” signs. There are 11 trucks for every parking space, according to the trucking industry.^[2]

It’s important to be clear that this is a problem of neoliberalism. It is one more supply chain issue.

Jonathan D. Salant, “The Pennsylvania Turnpike is adding more truck parking spaces as a dangerous shortage persists,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 11, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/06/11/pennsylvania-turnpike-truck-parking-safety-spaces/stories/202306090072

Gilead

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Violent rhetoric was to be expected in the wake of Donald Trump’s indictment. And yes, we should be concerned for all the reasons stated in the New York Times article.^[3] But what remains to be seen, since the coup attempt on January 6, 2021, is the sort of uprising I had earlier expected.

That hasn’t happened and I now have little reason to expect it. Gotta tell you, they aren’t doing their toxic masculinity right when they’re all mouth and no substance.

The good news, obviously, is that no one is being physically hurt by a so-far nonexistent rebellion. The bad news is that the people who would launch it remain in the shadows.

Casey Newton, “The platforms give up on 2020 lies,” Platformer, June 6, 2023, https://www.platformer.news/p/the-platforms-give-up-on-2020-lies

Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html

Ankush Khardori, “The ‘Lock Him Up’ Election,” New York, June 9, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-turns-2024-into-lock-him-up-election.html

Neoliberalism

Work

Fig. 5. The spectre of Death, in the form of a large skeleton, rises with the smoke and flames of the burning Asch Building during the Triangle fire, as people jump and fall to their death. Artist unknown, from International Ladies Garment Workers Union Photographs (1885-1985) at The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

The economy is in excellent health, except if you talk to economists, who think that’s too good to be true. For a while they fretted that the economy was overheated and that inflation would spin out of control. Some blamed President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill; one such person was Olivier Blanchard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. But although inflation did rise to 9.1 percent in June 2022, it’s been falling ever since—it’s now 4.9 percent—and in a recent paper, Blanchard teamed with former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to concede that he’d been wrong. The spike, they wrote, was attributable not to the Biden stimulus and its effects on the labor market but rather to price hikes caused by Covid-driven supply chain snafus, now abating. Inflation hawks can still point to the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, price index, which rose to 4.4 percent in April, the last month for which data are available. But one month is hardly a trend, and in other recent months the PCE has been falling. . . .

In the meantime, the indicator du jour has become productivity. Productivity, or worker output per hour, is the engine of economic growth. It has been declining for an unprecedented five straight quarters. Nobody really knows why. But the news pages of The Wall Street Journal advised us last week to “Get Ready for the Full-Employment Recession.” In fact, argued Journal reporter Gwynn Guilford, the full-employment recession is already here, and reduced productivity—too many workers producing too little output—is the cause.

A recession is usually defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. We haven’t had that. Gross domestic product rose 2.6 percent in the last quarter of 2022 and 1.3 percent in the first quarter of 2023. Guilford’s recession pronouncement substitutes for GDP an alternative indicator for economic growth, gross domestic income, or GDI, which fell 3.3 percent in the last quarter of 2022 and 2.3 percent in the first quarter of 2023.

GDP and GDI measure the same thing—economic growth—GDP from the buyer’s perspective (how much did you spend?) and GDI from the seller’s (how much did you receive in wages and profit?). Logically these should be the same number, because (to paraphrase Paul Simon) one man’s purchase is another man’s sale. In practice, they aren’t, for complicated statistical reasons I don’t pretend to understand, but usually they’re pretty close. Right now they’re far apart, suggesting that the seller is somehow getting shortchanged. Guilford, the Fed, and a lot of economists think the problem is that too many people have jobs.^[4]

Banking

Commercial real estate

Fig. 6. “The iconic Crescent stands as recognizable landmark in the upscale neighborhood of Uptown, Dallas.” Photograph by Dallasedits [pseud.], July 5, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Carol Ryan, “Property Loans Are Starting to Crack,” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-06-09-2023/card/heard-on-the-street-property-loans-are-starting-to-crack-0tae3dxXRfn1hWR5jqar

^[1]Neena Hagen, “The fall of the Century: Once a retail shopping jewel, the West Mifflin mall has been left to rot,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 21, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/business/development/2023/05/21/centuryiii-west-mifflin-mall-slag-heap-kaufmanns-sears-police-closed-crime/stories/202305210039 ↩
^[2]Jonathan D. Salant, “The Pennsylvania Turnpike is adding more truck parking spaces as a dangerous shortage persists,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 11, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/06/11/pennsylvania-turnpike-truck-parking-safety-spaces/stories/202306090072 ↩
^[3]Michael S. Schmidt et al., “Trump Supporters’ Violent Rhetoric in His Defense Disturbs Experts,” New York Times, June 10, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/10/us/politics/trump-supporter-violent-rhetoric.html ↩
^[4]Timothy Noah, “The Real Reasons Why Workers Are Producing Less,” New Republic, June 6, 2023, https://newrepublic.com/article/173230/real-reasons-workers-producing-less ↩

Elon Musk wants to get rid of the block function.

June 10, 2023benfell

Gilead

Twitter

Fig. 1. “Elon Musk shared a video of his entrance on his Twitter account.” Photograph attributed to Elon Musk, October 26, 2022, via the New York Post,^[1] fair use.

The reason my Twitter accounts still live is that in an age of desiccated customer service, Twitter is sometimes the only way to get ahold of a company, including the one, Uber, I have the extreme misfortune to still be stuck working for.

When I was active on Twitter, my policy was to block liberally and often. I recommended this policy to everyone. Now I find out it’s costing Elon Musk money.^[2] So much the better.

Mike Masnick, “Elon Musk Says Twitter Is Going To Get Rid Of The Block Feature, Enabling Greater Harassment,” TechDirt, June 9, 2023, https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/09/elon-musk-says-twitter-is-going-to-get-rid-of-the-block-feature-enabling-greater-harassment/

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Casey Newton, “The platforms give up on 2020 lies,” Platformer, June 6, 2023, https://www.platformer.news/p/the-platforms-give-up-on-2020-lies

Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html

Ankush Khardori, “The ‘Lock Him Up’ Election,” New York, June 9, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-turns-2024-into-lock-him-up-election.html

Imperialism

China

Fig. 1. “Map of Qing Empire filled with the flag.” Graphic by Daniel222potato [pseud.], via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Gordon Lubold and Warren P. Strobel, “White House Says China Has Had Cuba Spy Base Since at Least 2019,” Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-says-china-has-had-cuba-spy-base-since-at-least-2019-42145596

^[1]Thomas Barrabi, “Elon Musk barges into Twitter HQ as deal nears: ‘Let that sink in,’” New York Post, October 26, 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/10/26/elon-musk-barges-into-twitter-headquarters-as-deal-nears/↩
^[2]Mike Masnick, “Elon Musk Says Twitter Is Going To Get Rid Of The Block Feature, Enabling Greater Harassment,” TechDirt, June 9, 2023, https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/09/elon-musk-says-twitter-is-going-to-get-rid-of-the-block-feature-enabling-greater-harassment/↩

Downfalls

June 10, 2023benfell

Imperialism

Russia

Ukraine

This is the first time that someone is speaking about the possibility of post-Putinism. Three months ago, this wasn’t possible. [European Union] countries thought that [Vladimir] Putin would be president for years and years if not decades and decades. . . . Now, the perception has changed.^[2]

“This regime should be destroyed,” [Mikhail Khodorkovsky] said during the opening session. “There is no other road to a peaceful normal future for Russia and for Europe and the whole world.”

The Russian opposition has been saying this for years, and it can often sound like wishful thinking. But with the Russian army on the back foot, drone strikes and military incursions hitting inside Russia and infighting between the elites spilling into the public domain, some in Europe are also beginning to wonder if Putin is as secure in the Kremlin as they had thought.^[3]

Gilead

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Donald Trump has, after all, been indicted for mishandling classified records.^[4] I still have my doubts in a new blog post entitled, “Jack Smith set to fail?

Casey Newton, “The platforms give up on 2020 lies,” Platformer, June 6, 2023, https://www.platformer.news/p/the-platforms-give-up-on-2020-lies

Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html

Ankush Khardori, “The ‘Lock Him Up’ Election,” New York, June 9, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/trump-indictment-turns-2024-into-lock-him-up-election.html

Competitive authoritarian regime project

Fig. 3. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Clarence Mitchell during signing ceremony of the voting rights act. Yoichi Okamoto, August 6, 1965, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Robert Barnes, “Supreme Court: Alabama must draw new voting map favorable to Black residents,” Washington Post, June 8, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/08/supreme-court-alabama-redistricting-voting-rights/

Christian Farias, “John Roberts’s Shocking Defense of Black Voting Rights,” Vanity Fair, June 8, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/john-roberts-supreme-court-voting-rights-ruling

Neoliberalism

Work

Lizzy McLellan Ravitch, “Workers again ponder whether their jobs are essential, as poor air quality poses risk to outdoor employees,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 8, 2023, https://www.inquirer.com/news/outdoor-work-risks-smoke-air-quality-philadelphia-20230608.html

Beth Saunders, “The US has a child labor problem – recalling an embarrassing past that Americans may think they’ve left behind,” Conversation, June 9, 2023, https://theconversation.com/the-us-has-a-child-labor-problem-recalling-an-embarrassing-past-that-americans-may-think-theyve-left-behind-204078

Self-driving cars

Fig. 5. Photograph by Mark Doliner, August 1, 2012, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

Tesla’s 17 fatal crashes reveal distinct patterns, The [Washington] Post found: Four involved a motorcycle. Another involved an emergency vehicle. Meanwhile, some of [Elon] Musk’s decisions — such as widely expanding the availability of the features and stripping the vehicles of radar sensors — appear to have contributed to the reported uptick in incidents, according to experts who spoke with The Post.^[5]

Faiz Siddiqui and Jeremy B. Merrill, “17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot,” Washington Post, June 10, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/

^[1]Reuters, “Ukraine puts destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv,” August 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ukraine-puts-destroyed-russian-tanks-on-idUSRTSALV9Q ↩
^[2]Bernard Guetta, quoted in Shaun Walker, “‘Three months ago, this wasn’t possible’: exiled Russians dare to dream of Putin’s fall,” Guardian, June 10, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/10/russia-exiles-life-after-vladimir-putin ↩
^[3]Shaun Walker, “‘Three months ago, this wasn’t possible’: exiled Russians dare to dream of Putin’s fall,” Guardian, June 10, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/10/russia-exiles-life-after-vladimir-putin ↩
^[4]Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein, and Josh Dawsey, “Trump charged in classified documents case, second indictment in months,” Washington Post, June 8, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/08/trump-classified-documents-mar-a-lago/; Marc Caputo, “‘Prosecuting Politicians is Hard Here’: Why South Florida is a Tough Place for DOJ to Try Trump,” Messenger, June 8, 2023, https://themessenger.com/politics/trump-south-florida-miami-doj-jury-challenge; John Cassidy, “Trump Is Desperately Trying to Define the Narrative About His Federal Indictment,” New Yorker, June 9, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trump-is-desperately-trying-to-define-the-narrative-about-his-federal-indictment; Gabriel J. Chin, “Trump indictment unsealed – a criminal law scholar explains what the charges mean, and what prosecutors will now need to prove,” Conversation, June 9, 2023, https://theconversation.com/trump-indictment-unsealed-a-criminal-law-scholar-explains-what-the-charges-mean-and-what-prosecutors-will-now-need-to-prove-207469; Joseph Ferguson and Thomas A. Durkin, “Trump charged under Espionage Act – which covers a lot more crimes than just spying,” Conversation, June 9, 2023, https://theconversation.com/trump-charged-under-espionage-act-which-covers-a-lot-more-crimes-than-just-spying-207373; Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html; David Gilbert, “‘We Need to Start Killing’: Trump’s Far-Right Supporters Are Threatening Civil War,” Vice, June 9, 2023, https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxjjgb/trump-supporters-are-threatening-civil-war; Alex Isenstadt and Kyle Cheney, “Trump notified that he is the target of an ongoing criminal investigation,” Politico, June 7, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/07/trump-notified-that-he-is-the-target-of-an-ongoing-criminal-investigation-00100920; Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html; Hugo Lowell, “Donald Trump charged with illegal retention of classified documents,” Guardian, June 8, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/08/donald-trump-charged-retention-classified-documents; Tom Nichols, “Trump’s Indictment Reveals a National-Security Nightmare,” Atlantic, June 9, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/06/trumps-indictment-reveals-a-national-security-nightmare/674362/; Stefania Palma, “Donald Trump says he has been indicted on federal charges in documents probe,” Financial Times, June 8, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/09/trump-indictment-garland-smith-justice/; Aruna Viswanatha, Sadie Gurman, and C. Ryan Barber, “Trump Charged Over Willful Retention of Classified Information, Obstruction,” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-associate-also-indicted-in-mar-a-lago-documents-case-759cbb17 ↩
^[5]Faiz Siddiqui and Jeremy B. Merrill, “17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot,” Washington Post, June 10, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/↩

Lightning has struck. But to what effect?

June 9, 2023benfell

Gilead

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

The indictment was unsealed:^[1]

[Donald] Trump faces a total of 37 counts on seven different charges, including willful retention of national-defense information, withholding a record, false statements and conspiracy to obstruct. On five of the counts, Trump was charged alongside his military valet, Walt Nauta, who went to work at Mar-a-Lago resort after working in the White House. Nauta separately faces a false-statements charge.^[2]

But the judge, for now, anyway, is Aileen Cannon, of special master infamy.^[3] And it’s in a jurisdiction that just doesn’t convict politicians or celebrities. Indeed, to read the closest Marc Caputo comes to an explanation for that^[4] is to wonder how many folks they’ll have to churn through even in order to empanel a jury.

Casey Newton, “The platforms give up on 2020 lies,” Platformer, June 6, 2023, https://www.platformer.news/p/the-platforms-give-up-on-2020-lies

Ankush Khardori, “The Chaos Inside Trump’s Legal Team,” New York, June 8, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/donald-trumps-lawyers-on-his-dysfunctional-legal-team.html

Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html

Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh

Infrastructure

Fig. 2. Post-collapse scene at the Fern Hollow Bridge, photograph by National Transportation Safety Board, January 29, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Hallie Lauer, “Pittsburgh formed an infrastructure group after the Fern Hollow collapse. But Gainey hasn’t appointed anybody,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 8, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-local/2023/06/08/pittsburgh-bridges-mayor-ed-gainey-infrastructure-commission/stories/202306080108

Julia Felton, “Fern Hollow Bridge to close for construction work,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, June 9, 2023, https://triblive.com/local/fern-hollow-bridge-to-close-for-construction-work/

(dis)United Kingdom

Prime minister

Fig. 3. President Reagan on the South Lawn during the arrival ceremony of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom. U.S. Government photograph, November 16, 1988, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

I’m remembering Richard Nixon, on November 7, 1962:

You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you. I have always respected you. I have sometimes disagreed with you.

But, unlike some people, I’ve never canceled a subscription to a paper and also I never will.^[5]

(You usually only hear the first part of the first sentence.) Six years later, Nixon would be elected president. And then re-elected, only to resign in the face of an all-but-certain impeachment.

In Boris Johnson’s case, however, I think surely there must yet be some bigger and better scandal he can involve himself in.

^[1]Aruna Viswanatha, Sadie Gurman, and C. Ryan Barber, “Trump Charged Over Willful Retention of Classified Information, Obstruction,” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-associate-also-indicted-in-mar-a-lago-documents-case-759cbb17 ↩
^[2]Aruna Viswanatha, Sadie Gurman, and C. Ryan Barber, “Trump Charged Over Willful Retention of Classified Information, Obstruction,” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-associate-also-indicted-in-mar-a-lago-documents-case-759cbb17 ↩
^[3]Alan Feuer, “Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case,” New York Times, June 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/aileen-cannon-trump-judge.html ↩
^[4]Marc Caputo, “‘Prosecuting Politicians is Hard Here’: Why South Florida is a Tough Place for DOJ to Try Trump,” Messenger, June 8, 2023, https://themessenger.com/politics/trump-south-florida-miami-doj-jury-challenge ↩
^[5]Richard Nixon, [press conference], November 7, 1962, transcript University of Pennsylvania, undated, https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/RichardNixonConcession.html ↩