The Conversation -- November 24, 2024
It's still a clown car, but it ain't funny. And who'd'a guessed? -- it's not running on ethical.
Ken Bensinger & David Fahrenthold of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump is keeping secret the names of the donors who are funding his transition effort, a break from tradition that could make it impossible to see what interest groups, businesses or wealthy people are helping launch his second term. Mr. Trump has so far declined to sign an agreement with the Biden administration that imposes strict limits on that fund-raising in exchange for up to $7.2 million in federal funds earmarked for the transition. By dodging the agreement, Mr. Trump can raise unlimited amounts of money from unknown donors to pay for the staff, travel and office space involved in preparing to take over the government.... And unlike with campaign contributions, foreign nationals are allowed to donate to the transition.... Mr. Trump is the first president-elect to sidestep the restrictions, provoking alarm among ethics experts." ~~~
~~~ Brooke Harrington in the Atlantic: In appointing Elon Musk & Vivek Ramaswamy to reorganize the federal government & slash spending, Trump has established "a new political arrangement...: a broligarchy, in which tremendous power is flowing to tech and finance magnates, some of whom appear indifferent or even overtly hostile to democratic tradition.... Though some of them have previously opposed Trump because of his immigration or tariff policies, the broligarchs share his politics of impunity: the idea that some men should be above the law.... The broligarchs' sense of their innate superiority has led many of them to positions on taxation quite similar to Trump's.... The Trump-friendly broligarchs' political ascendancy turns the rallying cry of the Boston Tea Party on its head, achieving representation with minimal taxation.... The broligarchs are distinct from old-school American oligarchs in one key respect: Their political vision seeks to undermine the nation-state system globally.... Cryptocurrency is the financial engine of the broligarchs' political project." This is a gift-link from laura h. and well-worth a read. Thank to her. ~~~
~~~ Marie: I never got the point of cryptocurrency beyond the scam aspects of it (proved beyond reasonable doubt when Trump got involved in crypto), but Harrington explains how the bros plan to weaken the U.S. and other nation-states -- by replacing the fiat money with crypto, in which they are heavily invested.
Maegan Vazquez of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he has picked Brooke Rollins, a former Trump White House policy adviser, to serve as agriculture secretary.... Rollins is president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a group that has put together proposals for a second Trump term. The institute, which has nonprofit status, was launched in 2021 by a group of Trump administration veterans.Like the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, AFPI has sought to provide policy recommendations for the next Republican presidential administration to efficiently stand up an executive branch that will swiftly undo President Joe Biden's legacy..... The organization is chaired by Linda McMahon, Trump's pick for education secretary.... With Rollins, Trump has now announced the full lineup of his proposed Cabinet secretaries."
Mark Berman & David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "Again and again, when Donald Trump has faced scandal and scrutiny, Pam Bondi was there to defend him. Bondi said the Justice Department's special counsel investigation into whether Trump associates coordinated with Russian interference in the 2016 election needed to be dissolved. She declared that the 45th president's first impeachment in 2019 was a 'sham.' And when Trump was indicted four times after leaving office, Bondi was blunt about who deserved legal scrutiny -- and it wasn't the former president. 'The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,' Bondi declared on Fox News in 2023, soon after Trump's fourth set of criminal charges. 'The investigators will be investigated.'"
The Drink-Bleach Brigade. Emily Anthes & Emily Baumgaertner of the New York Times: "Mr. Trump's choices [to lead health agencies] ... have all pushed back against Covid policies or supported ideas that are outside the medical mainstream, including an opposition to vaccines. Together, they are a clear repudiation of business as usual.... Robert F. Kennedy Jr., [slated to lead HHS,] has a long track record of spreading falsehoods about vaccines and using his nonprofit, Children's Health Defense, to promote a database of misleading interpretations of research data. He once asserted publicly that 'there's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.'... Dr. David Weldon, Mr. Trump's pick to lead the C.D.C., has also promoted anti-vaccine views.... While in Congress, Dr. Weldon was known for pushing the false notion that thimerosal, a preservative compound in some vaccines, had caused an explosion of autism cases.... Mr. Trump's choice for F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Martin Makary -- a pancreatic surgeon at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine -- has been broadly supportive of childhood vaccines. But he has questioned the benefits of certain shots.... Dr. Makary has become known -- in opinion articles and on podcasts and spots on Fox News -- for critiquing vaccine mandates and many other parts of U.S. Covid policies, and for arguing that doctors have underestimated natural immunity." ~~~
~~~ Ken W. copied part of an article by Tara Haelle, published in Nature in October, that speaks to "the staggering success of vaccines": "
"A May study in the Lancet estimated that vaccines against 14 common pathogens have saved 154 million lives over the past five decades -- at a rate of six lives every minute. They have cut infant mortality by 40 percent globally and by more than 50 percent in Africa. Throughout history vaccines have saved more lives than almost any other intervention.... The Lancet study found that each life saved through immunization resulted in an average 66 years of full health, without the long-term problems that many diseases cause. Vaccines play a role in nearly every measurement of health equity, from improving access to care, to reducing disability and long-term morbidity, to preventing loss of labor and the death of caretakers."
~~~ MB: Ken copied this excerpt without attribution or quotation marks. I've gone back in and added a proper citation. But PLEASE, I ask you all not to pass off the writing of others as your own. It's just by chance that I caught this and was able to identify the real writer.
What if the president*-elect picked as advisor who's more hard-right-crazy than John Bolton? Oh ~~~
~~~ Edward Helmore of the Guardian: "Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton has laid into Sebastian Gorka, the president-elect's pick for counter-terrorism chief, as a 'conman' whose selection is not 'going to bode well for counter-terrorism efforts when the [national security council's] senior director is somebody like that'.... Democratic National Committee spokesperson Alex Floyd called Gorka 'a far-right extremist who is as dangerous as he is unqualified to lead America's counter-terrorism strategy'."
Alex Horton & John Hudson of the Washington Post: "Sebastian Gorka, the pugilistic commentator who leveraged fears about Islam as a threat to Western civilization into a short-lived role in the first Trump administration, is poised for a second run inside the White House. Gorka was tapped to serve as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism..., Donald Trump said Friday night. Previously, Gorka was an adviser on national security matters for Trump for seven months until his abrupt exit. The role, which doesn't require Senate confirmation, will position Gorka to provide counsel and input on issues he has focused on for years, including hard-line approaches on militant groups and immigration. But if his previous role at the Trump administration is any indication, he is poised to ruffle feathers even among reverent Trump loyalists and other Republicans, who have described him as fringe and underqualified.... 'Almost universally, the entire team considers Gorka a clown,' said a person close to the national security transition team. 'They are dreading working with him.'"
⭐Gabor Scheiring, a former member of the Hungarian parliament, in Politico Magazine: "Trump's goal this time is to remake the American government to enhance his power. He ... he is following a playbook pioneered by Hungary's Viktor Orbán.... Modern-day autocracies come to power through elections, leading to electoral autocracies. These regimes are built from within the democratic system.... Orbán's power grab program runs on two components that you can think of as hardware and software. The populist hardware consists of hijacked institutions. The software is made up of populist discourses and narratives that are used to create and enlist the consent of the ruled. Dismantling the hardware of the Orbán-Trump project requires first defeating its software.... When economic grievances and cultural resentments combine, they create a potent force, generating consent for the autocrat to do what it takes to change the hardware.... Project 2025 echoes Orbán's playbook, pushing to dismantle liberal influence in the 'administrative state' and strengthen executive power." Scheiring has some suggestions for undermining Trump's rule.
Max Bearak of the New York Times: "Negotiators at this year's United Nations climate summit struck an agreement early on Sunday in Baku, Azerbaijan, to triple the flow of money to help developing countries adopt cleaner energy and cope with the effects of climate change. Under the deal, wealthy nations pledged to reach $300 billion per year in support by 2035, up from a current target of $100 billion. Independent experts, however, have placed the needs of developing countries much higher, at $1.3 trillion per year.... As soon as the Azerbaijani hosts banged the gavel and declared the deal done, Chandni Raina, the representative from India, the world's most populous country, tore into them.... 'It is a paltry sum,' Ms. Raina said.... Speakers from one developing country after another, from Bolivia to Nigeria to Fiji, echoed Ms. Raina's remarks and assailed the document in furious statements."
Robert McFadden of the New York Times: "Fred R. Harris, a maverick Oklahoma Democrat who served eight years in the Senate and who lost a race for his party's 1976 presidential nomination in a populist campaign that challenged politics as usual and proposed radical changes for America, died on Saturday in Albuquerque. He was 94."
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Brooke Harrington, in The Atlantic, describes What the Broligarchs Want from Trump
[The doge] "heralds a new political arrangement in Washington: a broligarchy, in which tremendous power is flowing to tech and finance magnates, some of whom appear indifferent or even overtly hostile to democratic tradition.
....
Though some of them have previously opposed Trump because of his immigration or tariff policies, the broligarchs share his politics of impunity: the idea that some men should be above the law. This defiant rejection of all constraint by and obligation to the societies that made them wealthy is common among the world’s ultrarich... Trump has exemplified this ethos, up to the present moment: He is currently in violation of a law—which he signed into effect during his first term—requiring incoming presidents to agree to an ethics pledge."
Apropos of Laura's post above, here is a TL;DR article about the failure of a fintech enterprise in which people placed their savings on-line into high yield accounts. The concepts of "non-bank savings" and "banking as service" were new to me. At least $95 million has disappeared and individuals are being offered pittances to settle their losses. In this case, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is not paying savers to cover their losses, as it would for an FDIC member bank, even though some of the funds went through FDIC "partner" banks at some point. The FDIC says it can't address claims without a bank reconciliation; the "non-bank" savings model apparently relies upon fintechs ensuring that no one bank can obtain a consolidated audit of who owns what savings in which accounts; the settlement trustee (who used to be a Trump-appointed FDIC Director) says that "the regulators" (FDIC, Federal Reserve, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority [FINRA] should cover these accounts. "The regulators" say nuh-uh. The accounts seem to be hybrid broker-invested money-market type accounts with real banks providing back-office services.
This whole thing is confusing and I have not been able to clarify. It seems that "fintech" start-ups sell people the simple idea that these high-interest "deposits" are as safe as FDIC bank accounts, when they are in fact not covered by FDIC and are high risk, and that "brokers" are not liable for losses, because these are investments, not savings. This appears to me to be fraud, but nowhere in the linked article did I see that word.
Expect more of this when DiJiT's fintech bros get to ride free over the rubes.
PS, I have some old Imperial Chinese Railroad Bonds if anyone is interested, as good as gold once the PRC acknowledges their redemption responsibility.
I have a suspicion that climate change deniers are definitely
not gardeners or farmers.
This is the first fall season that I've had a few strange things
happen in my garden, for example, in this area rhododendrons
bloom in April to May, Mine did that, and now are starting to
bloom again. We have had lots of rain and it is now much warmer
than usual for late November. (There is a new variety that blooms
twice, but I don't have that one).
When I went out this morning, the hydrangeas have also started
blooming again. The buds were supposed to be for next spring.
If this were to worsen and happen to everything, there would be
nothing for the bees next spring.
No bees, no fertilization (unless we can get those immigrants to
do it by hand before they're shipped out).
Jamelle Bouie reflecting on Fredrick Douglas
Pollination, not fertilization.