Friday's News Part 2 The Election (and Why Harris lost) and the trials

The point is, the voters wanted a CEO type, – one who is authentic. Official Washington, especially pundits, are a bit in the dark on how this paradigm works. Morality exists inside of various paradigms – and they are not the same. In Trump’s paradigm, he did nothing wrong. He has always worked hard at looking competent – but it is not his strong suit – so he wants a medal anytime he is seen that way. This is normal for a CEO, but not for a bureaucrat. The people don’t want a bureaucrat. They don’t trust them. The best thing Trump can do for a balanced country is get good bureaucrats, like Bondi. His book is the Art of the Deal, not the Science of the Deal. Doh!

The election was not stolen. People voted for authenticity over competence. It may not have been the worst choice. Had they wanted competence, Haley would be the President elect. She should have been VP – and may have passed on the job. It would be inappropriate for us to know that answer.

Harris lost because she did not explain the inflation that everyone was feeling (which the economic statistics are now pointing out). She was between a rock and a hard place. If she had said a recession was coming, she could not tout the economy. She should have said that it was coming because of the Trump tax cuts giving too much to Wall Street to play with.

The second reason is the Catholic swing voters. Obama did not mention abortion. Clinton and Harris did, which was a mistake. In Dobbs, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the ACLU did not explain that viability is because at that point, the fetus can be born – instead leading with women’s rights – a bridge too far for moderate Catholics. Once she focused on abortion, she was doomed.

Let’s look at the court cases. Chutkan (and only Chutkan) can nullify the Office of General Counsel opinion if she wants to exercise her powers under Rule 48A – which would force the DOJ to keep going – and would probably order that Smith not be removed. Is getting him so important? Probably not. Getting Stone is – but Trump would just pardon him. I hope that when the story is written, his role is revealed. Trump essentially told people under him to show that he won – probably because Stone said he should – and then they did a really sloppy job of trying to make it happen. Even the fake electors plot was sloppy – but was below Trump’s pay grade.

Either Luck or God kept us from what would have been a real test for the rule of law – which would have occurred if the people in the insurrection whose mission was to get to where members were hiding had succeeded and done God knows what. That may be lost to history. Ask me in 20 years. Eastman was wrong in his strategy. The 12^th Amendment would have simply thrown out the contested votes – but Biden still had more than Trump and would have been the winner. The majority of those votes legally cast – not the majority of the entire electoral college, what the Amendment requires.

The NY case should not have been a felony. The campaign finance angle was too much of a reach. Reducing the charge to a misdemeanor is not tragedy. In Georgia, justice has been done. Once the call to Roethlisberger was excluded from the charge and Rudy was held liable for what happened to Ruby and Shea, nothing more is needed.

The documents case was a dispute on who gets to keep most of the archives. Trump was badly advised. All the information should have been sent to the GSA and stored in Florida or New Jersey (a better option, given global warming). The classified fell into to categories – personal trophies (that as President he could have shared with Putin and may already have) and evidence of his relationship with Putin – all of which is now considered as Official Acts. When Canon first intervened with a special master, keeping those documents – which were overclassified – away from Smith – was reasonable because the question of Official Acts immunity was still open – and could only have been given to Smith once the issue was decided. The Special Master did not get the memo – nor did Smith or Trump’s lawyers. As a former poli-sci doctoral student – the question of official acts immunity is long settled by history – ever since the cases of the Louisiana Purchase and the Barbary pirates. Or even the siting of the national capital. Much of the Virginia side was Washington’s property. Washington could not have gotten away with doing that today.

AG James giving the Trump businesses the death penalty was justified – although the real case should have had to do with potential money laundering for Moscow through Deutche Bank. Once that was off the table, the NY cases should have been dropped – but the corruption uncovered in discovery could not have been swept under the rug. This case has legs – since incompetence is no defense for fraud. He needs to designate Bedminster as the site for his presidential library and let the chips fall where they may.

 

Friday's news - Part 1

Bibles

I am fine with teaching the Bible as literature, discussing creation myths as myth in science (astrology needs coverage too) and how the concept of God went from the Canaanite pantheon to the God of the Bible using archeology and anthropology to inform the discussion.

Biondi and Bessent.

Trump is crazy like a fox. He did a solid for Gates (and Johnson) by getting him out of Congress. Mr. Bessent is as competent as Larry Summers and Bob Rubin – and the rest of the Wall Street Oligarchy.  He probably has a bunch of alternative cabinet picks identified – or deputy secretaries who will actually run these departments. Even Gabbard is a good pick if she is the one who briefs Trump. He needs someone he will listen to.

Trump is testing the waters as to how much the Senate will let him get away with. Hopefully they will assert themselves – which Trump probably wants so that he can be Trump without real consequences.

Trump is authentic, meaning he leads with his feelings. He is also a is a sensualist – all people are to some degree in personality theory, and like all CEOs he is an introverted planner – meaning he plans for his self, doing such things as insurrections – which he was never accused of. There were always two alternative scenario, one that provides reasonable doubt – the real one has Trump as an active participant in the riot – knowing what really happened – and it had nothing to do with actually hanging Pence, The other exists because his involvement is coincidental – there are easy alternatives to that narrative that the Government could not eliminate as reasonable doubt.

Note to Trump - be authentic or be great

You cannot be both competent and authentic. Find an ex-Republican who has a set of reforms (hint, hint), give (him) a job and let you take the credit. You can super-charge Space Exploration, balance the budget and eliminate the IRS, all the while making sure families have enough money. 

If you love Trump and have his ear (bad joke), send this to him and tell him to take the deal. BTW, there are a few of us who know how to do what I suggest, provided you slow your roll. MB

News from Nov 13 points 1 and 2

Point One – Kamala lost the election the way Hillary did, by focusing so much on abortion that Swing State Catholics who are on the edge went the other way. Some are pro-life, some are pro-choice and the mushy middle swing – particularly in the Midwest. In 2008, I got a message to Alice Germond, who I had worked for at NARAL, to not let Barack focus on abortion. They took the advice and Obama got elected – promising to begin talks on late term abortion rules beyond the extant law. To prevent any compromise, the Bishops retaliated with the FOCA hoax to build up their mailing list for 2010.

In 2016, the Catholic bishops conspired with Trump, who conspired with the Internet Research Agency to get and exploit Hillary’s views on partial birth abortion. Hillary should have said, when asked, that Partial Birth Abortion was already illegal. She did not – rather she justified why it might be important. Oops.

This year, too much attention was spent on getting the liberal women she already had, rather than explaining that Trump’s policies put too much money into the hands of higher income individuals, who had the juice to outbid everyone else for food and housing. Voters would have understood such an explanation. This would have been a great time to mention that Manchin and Sinema had blocked ending the Trump tax cuts – so the 2024 economy was his, not Joe’s.

Just today, the government announced that inflation is up. This statistic measures what was happening in the period of time just before the election. Oops again!

Point Two Today the Republicans officially took the House. Just as home prices and the stock market are topping – largely due to the 2018 cuts. Congratulations, you caught the car. The only way to get things back on track is to deflate the speculation sector (or have the Fed put so much credit into circulation to sink the dollar) – and the way to do that without hurting the economy is to increase tax rates on capital returns (dividends, interest and pass-through income) and on gains. 

If the Republican Party wants to repay its voters, it needs to grow the consumer economy.  Higher taxes on capital will do this on its own. To do more, increase the minimum wage. In 2021, the GOP offered $10. $13 has the same purchasing power – $14 if the workday is shortened to 7 hours and the week to 4 days. This will get discouraged workers off the couch and their parent’s basements. 

The main thing on the agenda is tax reform. Increase the child tax credit to what VP Harris proposed – either in the lame duck so that she can sign it twice (as President of the Senate and then as President when Biden retires early). President Trump doubled the child credit in 2018. Families need it to double again and become refundable. 

It won’t be inflationary. Inflation follows the 90th percentile – not the working class. Giving the working class more money to spend will lead to more spending but not more inflation (until this leads to higher profits – and it will).

We have all of 2025 to work on the rest of tax reform. With both houses and a White House staff which will let Trump have a seat at the table, we need to give it to him. Job one is to get everyone behind a Goods and Services Tax instead of Tariffs – because giving the President enough control over the agenda to end his go-to practice of exercising power in the one way he could in the age of Pelosi. 

If part of enacting a VAT is removing the requirement for personal income tax filing for the vast majority of American families, - as suggested by Michael Graetz, the GOP will reap the benefits of those optics. Channel the child tax credit through wages by including it as an offset to an additional net business receipts tax, aka the Japanese subtraction VAT – as suggested by Lawrence B. Lindsey. Any additional surtax on higher rate individuals can be channeled through this tax. After the offsets to the tax for family income and health care coverage and reform, the surtax could top out between 20 and 26 percent in net revenue gain. To pay down the debt, sell tax prepayment bonds to either high income individuals or their employers – as I suggested to President Reagan and Senator Jepsen in 1984 as I was coming to DC as an intern. 

The only fly in the ointment is capital gains taxation. To transfer collecting this revenue to employers would require more disclosure than anyone wants their CEO or Board of Directors to know about. The alternative is an asset value added tax, which would also end the death tax entirely, although asset sales would be marked to market if sold after inheritance -but zero rated for ESOP sales.

Call this all the Fair Tax, option 2.0, which ends the need to restart Welfare to give money to poor households rather than including it with pay through the NBRT. If the states collect the credit invoice and subtraction VATs and the SEC collects the Asset VAT, Trump will be known as the President who abolished the IRS.

News from Nov 13 Point 3

There are ways, which will not be used, to object to the seating of those members of Congress who cooperated with the capital insurrection. Mr. Jefferson’s Manual is the controlling procedure, which provides for objecting to members of the House taking the oath. This is too late to stop an insurrectionist speaker from being elected (such as someone who was rounding up members to join lawsuits to overturn the election). Also, at any time, members could have submitted names of these members to the Ethics Committee to investigate their involvement to the events of that day. They still can. 

The Select Committee on the January 6th Insurrection should have submitted names as the involvement of members was discovered (such as the members of the House who met with President Trump in December 2020). They could have also asked the bipartisan Ethics Committee to add investigating insurrection to their rules – both regarding members and presidents elect. 

When the Committee reports out each case, instead of requiring a two-thirds majority to expel the member or to invoke the 20th Amendment making the vice president elect the acting president, a two thirds majority of each house would be required to seat the member or president-elect.

 In neither case would this change the partisan majority in the House, whose voters would have likely replaced the expelled members with another Republican. The president elect would be replaced by the VP elect, who will also be acting president if Trump’s mental and physical health continues to decline.

These steps would take courage – especially as they have no electoral benefit (except regarding Ron Johnson or others Republican senators with Democratic Governors. Ted Cruz’s seat would still be Republican, as would many insurrectionist Senators. I don’t expect Democratic members to show such leadership without electoral benefit.

It would take even more courage for Republicans to police themselves – especially regarding Gabbard and Gaetz. Are they serious?

About the Court and the numbering of presidents

Remember the case last summer where the presumption of fact by the government was overturned in environmental law? Not such a bad thing in a Trump second term. Trial Courts now have to decide on facts put forward by environmentalist lawyers. Which was the old standard from when I was taking Administrative Law in Grad School. Every regulation will be settled in Court in a way that could not have been done previous to las summer's ruling. At the time, I said this. Now I can say - I told you so!

The next two justices to go will be Alito and Thomas. They will be replaced with more modern law school graduates and professors. The clock will not be rolled back on social issues. Indeed, the reason affirmative action plans keep getting swatted down is because they are crap. 

Go with random selection of the middle group of applicants (not sure stars or sure failures) and dare people not to sue if legacies are left out of the random pool.

The other "don't be afraid" thing is the child tax credit. It is supported bipartisanly and it needs to be passed during the lame duck. We can even add a sweetener for the Vice President by putting at least some of what she campaigned on into the bill. Assuming she is not the President at some point between now and January 20th.

So Trump is likely to be 48, not 47. Vance will then be 49 due to actuarial factors. From 2001 to 2016, we had two presidents. From 2016 to 2032, we will almost assuredly we will likely have six - unless Vance is elected in his own right in 2028. I am counting Trump twice, because that is how we number regimes.

My note to Joe

 Some items to go out with a bang.

Call a special session to pass the bipartisan immigration reform and child tax credit bills or make sure that they get passed so Trump can sign them as is.

Pardon all undocumented immigrants for any crimes committed that get in the way of their applying for legal status.

Pardon Hunter. He did not deserve what happened to him or

Have Kamala do it. You know that you can make her the first female president - just by retiring early.

Paperwork crimes of Donald Trump

Was Trump involved in the plot to coerce members of Congress to support his stupidly planned plot? Yes. Did either Smith or the Congress do what was necessary to prove it? No. They went after election interference rather than the link to Russia or the violent plot. Prosecutors take the path of least resistance - and that path can be explained away under dirty tricks - just like the perfect phone call with Zaleski.  The actual crime was obstructing missiles to Ukraine as a flavor to Putin. Now the latter is an official act. The documents that Trump took that were classified will be declassified on January 20th. Preventing these from being used against him was why we had an insurrection and have a documents case. 

Official Washington does not like the idea of criminalizing foreign policy. That has been the unofficial policy since the Louisiana Purchase and the raid on the Barbary Pirates. The Supreme Court merely codified what is current practice and has been for over 200 years. 

Again, the cases against Trump were all about bad and fraudulent paperwork - essentially dirty tricks. If the actual knowledge of the violent plot had been prosecuted and the reasons behind it, the charges going away would be a scandal to dismiss. Plots to do bad political theater - especially when both plots (Ukraine and Stopping the Steal) were unsuccessful and entirely pathetic were not seen as important by the Senate Republicans who did not vote to convict.

I have done much better dirty tricks - ones that actually worked and were never noticed. So have most members of the Senate - on both sides.

Is attempting a dirty trick that had no possible way of working really a crime? Voters did not think so. Trump won this election fair and square by expanding his base. I have seen that done too. My career is based on it.

We're going to Mars and compromising on abortion

A few things Trump will likely do:

Make a deal on abortion that gores the oxen on both sides (compromise is the enemy of fundraising) with fetal hospice after the point that a child can be born - sometime between 6 and 15 weeks - and legal abortion before that. Trump is personally pro-choice and term-limited. A compromise would be a huge win.

Elon Musk will get lots of money, as will any practical solution to very demonstrable global warming. Defense will get less, but defense industries will get a net gain. A permanent lunar colony is the real bonus - as something on the far side of the moon may see the asteroid that could kill us all.

Wall Street will not let the coming recession become a depression - note that Dodd Frank worked during the pandemic's engineered recession. Also, the Republicans don't interfere with the debt limit when they are in charge. Taxes on capital will probably go up, - an asset value added tax is the best method - because if the debt is unacceptably high, this is the only place to find the money.  

Obamacare subsidies and the child tax credit may be made adequate by a subtraction VAT paid by employees - in exchange for scrapping the corporate profits tax. The. minimum wage will be doubled.- or at least raised to $12 per hour, as a reward to the Donnie Bros. They need to ask, however, and do so quickly. Instead of tariffs, do a goods and services tax that is border adjustable. Its the same thing as a tariff, without the retaliation - and it can be paid for by ending income taxes for all income under $110,000 per year.

If you want Trump to be great, share this video with Elon Musk and Joe Rogan.

Loose ends for Joe to do

1. Pardon undocumented migrants for any crimes committed by entering country.

2. Pardon Hunter

3. Call a Special Session to pass immigration and child tax credit compromises.

4. Resign and make Kamala 47th President.

Did Trump (or Vance) catch the car?

Unless one of the states called for Trump is changed to Blue, he is on the way to being 47. Since his side won the Senate,  his AG pick will be confirmed, absent some miracle. Susan Collins owes us one, which means Smith can be fired. The only saving the country is that Judge Chutkan must approve any DOJ motion to end the Trump trial in DC and (once the 11th Circuit puts the case on track) in Florida. 

God help Ukraine. 

Now the question is what to do with Trump as President. The economy Trump created with his tax cuts is still doomed to fail. The Dow is too high and housing prices are about to fall, putting Americans underwater on their mortgages again.

If Trump is found guilty in Florida (and he is dead to rights), he is not legally allowed to be president under the law once convicted of holding classified documents.

Under the 20th Amendment, Vance should still be named acting President if a 14th Amendment objection to Trump is upheld. The Democrats should have worked this out instead of hoping for electoral victory. Oops!

Trump is not getting any healthier. Winning does not add a day to one's life. If he dies before inauguration, the question for JD Vance is what he will do. Maybe he is the  one who caught the car.

About the Senate

Losing Joe Manchin is not a Democratic loss. Losing Sinema to Gallego is a pickup. If John Tester loses, then we are even on the night.

Jack Smith and God still have to vote on Senatorial insurrectionists - although getting rid of Cruz means that Abbott gets to appoint his replacement. Ron Johnson and Rand Paul need to be nervous - and Mitch is still ancient. All three of those Senators have Democratic Governors.

DC statehood would add two Democrats. Sadly, Hawley may win - although I still have hopes that Big Mo will surprise the AP.

Trump's "I can fix it" ad - weird to the end

Probably the most fascist political ad I have ever seen.  I can see why he approved that message.

Dobbs probably cost him the election, although people started souring on him in 2018. In 2020, never-Trump Republicans left President blank and voted down ballot. Some also voted Republican or stayed home in 2022. The antics of electing a Speaker and the resulting crap show, with 60% of the caucus voting with Trump's faction leading to the never Trumpers likely voting down ballot for Democrats this time. The GOP died when they did not vote for Boehner on the first ballot. The writing has been on the wall since then.

There are other reasons besides Dobbs to vote against Trump. Let's list them.

Border crossings are now down, largely due to Biden doing by executive order what the bipartisan compromise would have put into law - but Trump had the GOP walk away from. Immigration is  largely out of White House control and has more to do with Trump not giving aid to the region after hurricanes, as well as the long standing policy of sending convicts back to their home countries - where they destabilized them. The problems at the border and the responses are ground level/bottom up, not top down. The failures are bipartisan and the response is mostly driven by the permanent government at Homeland Security.

Biden is not responsible for sending migrants to New York and other sanctuary cities. That was DeSantis and Abbott, who put people on busses rather than working with the Federal Government to house migrant families in a coordinated manner. BLAME THE GOP for this. The campaign did not bring this up - probably because Dobbs and Trump's emotional dysfunction were lower hanging fruit.

Inflation for the masses came because prices chase the median dollar of income, which is at more than $160,000 per year. If you make less, inflation is hurting. The reason that number is so high is the Trump 2018 tax cuts, not the money given to families during the pandemic. These payments let workers stay away long enough to get better wages and jobs - but plenty did not and are now suffering.  

The rising Dow is a function of the Exchange Traded Funds holding junk assets being bid up before the tax cuts expire at the end of next year.  Because Democrats want to have their cake and eat it too - these arguments were not made. The economy will not crash - and may be crashing even as I write this - but it won't be apparent until next year. The response must be to raise taxes on the wealthy ASAP, not use the slow-down as a reason not keep the Trump cuts in place. Taking money from the Savings Sector is the only way to fix the current economy. Keep Larry Summers away from the White House and we should be OK. Again, the problem is that it is easier to go after the low hanging fruit. Also, most Democratic economists are probably in the dark about what is really happening - which is not a good thing.

The Biden plan was to repeal the Trump cuts in 2021-2022, but Manchin and Sinema sabotaged the bill - so this is truly a Trump economy. It would be worse without the stimulus payments.  Workers are still mostly hurting - but the asset inflation goosing the markets came from Trump, Manchin and Sinema, not Biden. 

Trump did not cause the COVID deaths. Masking did not stop the disease, nor would it have. COVID round one was from people sneezing on their friends and family, thinking it was allergies. The WHO and CDC did not notice. The deaths were on them, not Trump, although a White House staff which focused on more than Trump's image may have caught the error. The Manchin-Pelosi bailout kept the world going, not Trump. He does get credit for supporting vaccine research - by staying out of the way of the NIH. He bumbled his way into success on this. Also, Manchin is a major landlord. The stimulus, with supporting Federal Reserve action, helped him the most.

Blaming Trump for the pandemic is not really true. It is also low hanging fruit, however.

If the GOP establishment had not been taken over by MAGA and Coney-Barrett been appointed to the Court - thus preventing Dobbs - Trump would not have been the nominee and Dobbs would not have been an issue. Haley would likely have been the nominee and the result would be very different next week, although Vice President Harris is an excellent candidate and deserves the upcoming win. Still, if Trump had been trying to destroy the Republican Party from within, he could not have done a better job. 

Lastly, the Ad should not have run in DC Metro. There are no Trump votes in Northern Virginia, suburban Maryland, DC or Delaware. If it is a national ad buy, it will hurt Trump more than help him. Weird to the end.