The Thousandth cut

       Dreams of a thriving multiracial democracy were dealt another blow by the Supreme Court, which, yesterday ruled that colleges and universities could not take race into account when deciding whether or not to accept students.

      Couched in the garbled legalese which can make freedom sound like slavery, the 6 justice majority voted to go back to an earlier era when white privilege was enough to ensure admission to elite universities over equally qualified POC applicants.  Or, worse yet the admission of blacks with lesser grades whose only sin was being born black in a white man's world.

     It is ironic this latest attempt to roll back racial justice should come at a time of falling enrollment at many colleges.   These institutions will be scrambling to recruit students of any and all colors in an attempt to keep their student body numbers stable.   Elite institutions such as Harvard and other Ivy league schools are not worried at present and their degrees will still provide a path to wealth and power. 

     Society as a whole suffers when racism and other forms of oppression are allowed to thrive.  It will take many years to undo the harm of this court ruling.

Witnessing perfection

         I don't normally watch the Yankees play on the west coast.   The games usually start after my bedtime and in recent years the games have been 4 hour affairs which the yanks manage to lose anyway.  However, last night I decided to watch at least a few innings before bed.   Starting in the third inning, I sensed something special was going to happen when the yanks' journeyman pitcher, Domingo German, effortlessly retired the first nine men he faced.

       After a home run gave the visitors a 1-0 lead, I continued to watch in fascination as German continued to set down the home team in order.   By the eighth inning I was spellbound as it became apparent he had a chance to pitch the 24th perfect game in MLB history.   Never having seen a perfect game in its entirety, I hung with the telecast until German joined 23 other men to pitch the elusive perfect game.   While German may never be a HOF caliber pitcher, no one can take away last night's history making performance.

They will keep trying

        The Supreme Court delayed the country's transition to authoritarianism for a while longer by backing away from the independent state legislature theory.   By a 6-3 vote, the justices ruled that state legislatures are subject to their individual constitutions and the judicial oversight of state courts.

      That means GOP controlled state legislatures cannot nullify the will of voters if the legislature doesn't like the results of an election.  But don't worry, the right wing policy machine will come up with another dodge to cancel the votes of people they don't like and they will find allies in red states.  Democracy ain't easy.

Eating in

        According to the Wall Street Journal, many restaurants in the US are still suffering from a shortage of workers, despite wages having "shot up'' 5.2% since April of last year.  Adjusted for inflation, that comes to about a 1% increase.  That's hardly going to create a stampede of workers looking to cash in.

      What the article in the WSJ doesn't convey is the very real expense of eating out in today's economy.  The tab for a couple eating at a mid-priced restaurant in Plattsburgh can easily run over $100 when you throw in a couple of drinks and the tip.   Even bringing the family to McDonalds can set you back more than $50.

     Restaurants come and go, but their business model is predicated on cheap and abundant labor.   Paying people a fair wage and passing it on to the public will price many out of business.   As I write this, there are still waiting lines of people at many restaurants in town, at least on weekends.   Let's see what happens if they are forced to pay more to service the crowds.

The more things change

      When I was an undergrad, majoring in Political Science (which is neither political or science) and minoring in history, most of the dictatorships in the world were run by men whose support was concentrated in the upper levels of the military and the bureaucracy.   Leonid Brezhnev was a case in point, harking back to the Stalinist model.   

      My, how things have changed!   The latest iteration of a Russian dictator is more aligned with the Peter the Great model of absolutist monarch.  Vladimir Putin is propped up by a gaggle of plutocrats who owe their wealth and position to him.   As long as these men believe their interests are served by sticking with Putin, he will remain in power.  The reverse is also true.   The recent attempted coup by "Putin's chef" is a case in point.   Prigozhin must have been calling many of Putin's allies to see if he could pry them away from their allegiance.  When it appeared he could not do so, he abandoned the enterprise and supposedly accepted exile in Belarus.

    This state of affairs cannot last very long.   The loss of the Wagner group will significantly affect the war effort in Ukraine.  If the Ukrainians' counter offensive pushes Russian forces back, the calculus of Putin's allies will change.  Chaos is the most likely result with no clear leader emerging it will be a dangerous time for Russia and the world.

Priorities

       Yesterday's breathless reporting on the search for 5 voyeurs visiting the site of the Titanic's final resting place ended in a downer as cameras recorded a debris field near the wreck.   The grisly fate of the wealthy thrill seekers held the nation's and the world's attention for a few minutes.   As one blogger put it, it was the equivalent of jumping the Grand Canyon on a minibike for kicks.   Excuse me if I am less than impressed.s

silly season

        Who knew the governor of North Dakota was a candidate for the Republican nomination for president?   I certainly didn't until I saw a piece in the NYT this morning.  A billionaire by virtue of selling his software company to Microsoft, as one Democrat put it, every morning while shaving, he looks in the mirror and sees a president.

       This is the time in the election calendar when money, time and ego conspire to make almost any wealthy American believe they have a claim to the highest office in the land.  After all, look at the example of tRump.   What these hopefuls don't seem to remember is the decades of self promotion Donny Two Scoops engaged in before running.  But, for the moment, Doug Burgrum has just as many delegates as any of the candidates.   At least his policy prescriptions are the supposedly tried and true GOP talking points.   Low taxes, less government and entrepreneurship, along with the new litmus tests of anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ rights and whatever other baggage any serious Republican must carry.   Anyway, it' s still June.

NYS funded fun in the slush

       In an interview broadcast on my local NPR station this morning, Bryan Mann, who used to work at the station and has written extensively about issues in the north country, spoke about the latest state boondoggle.   It seems the state has boosted the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) budget by hundreds of millions of dollars.

     ORDA has responded to this cash infusion by spending much of it on venues which are not only likely to add to its revenue stream, but will require frequent and expensive maintenance.   Ski jump gondolas and biathlon trails may indeed attract such events as the recent World University Games, but the costs for staging such events run into tens of millions of dollars and ticket sales were in the $700,000 range.  Meanwhile, climate change may render the winter venues in Lake Placid obsolete in the near future.  That shiny new bobsled track won't work very well in a January downpour.

    Mann's reporting doesn't tell us who exactly benefits from the avalanche of cash from Albany, but it would be interesting to know why scarce resources are being spent on  a winter slush fund!!

     

The GOP protects all its potential felons

      The fundamental difference between today's Democratic and Republican parties is one stands for the rule of law and the other is essentially lawless.

     There is no clearer illustration of this dichotomy than Dem and GOP reactions to tRump's indictment for the mishandling of classified documents .  Most Democrats said we should let the legal system do its work and abide by the outcome.  Most Republicans on the other hand went into a full blown attack on the justice system in this country.   All you have to do is imagine the positions were reversed and Barack Obama was in tRump's position.  

An angry old man

        I spoke to one of my brothers-in-law yesterday on the occasion of Father's Day and he enthusiastically harangued me about the candidacy for President of left leaning grifter, Cornell West.   As we talked, the lyrics of Billy Joel's song, An Angry Young Man, played in my mind.  West is the consummate radical grifter whose politics sound pure until you look at the company he keeps.  

      West uses his academic position to mouth liberal politics for fun and profit.  He recently defended Ron DiSantis' educcation policies in a Wall Street Journal op-ed co written by a company standing to make a huge profit if Florida adopts their tests instead of the SAT.   West sits on the board of that company.  He made the announcement   of his presidential campaign on a right wing website that traffics in conspiracy theories.   He has decried Russia's invasion of Ukraine but insists the US has no moral standing to oppose it.

      All it will take to swing the 2024 election to the GOP candidate is a small minority of "protest" votes in a handful of swing states by Democrat defectors.   West knows this, much as Jill Stein and Ralph Nader did in 2016 and 2000.   The problem is, he doesn't care.  As the song says, he'll "go to his grave as an angry old man".  Unfortunately, in this case he may also take democracy to the grave as well.

How to succeed in tRumpworld

       Just tell a 77 year old narcissist what he wants to hear and you are automatically a trusted advisor, even if you have no expertise in the subject.

      That's the gist of a recent story in the Washington Post.  Tom Fitton, whose academic CV includes a BA in English managed somehow to get on the right wing outfit called Judicial Watch.   He then parlayed that grift into as many as 170 appearances on Faux News, arguing most of the time for tRump's position on whatever issue was being covered.   In the lead up to the twice impeached and now twice indicted disgraced former president's latest brush with the law, it appears that Fitton was tRump's svengali when it came to presidential records, maintaining with little regard for the law that Donnie Two Scoops had every right to keep and display classified documents after his return to private citizenship.  With advice like this, who needs  real lawyers.

And the grift goes on...

       My congresscritter, the execrable Elise Stefanik has a new fund raising e-mail.  After decrying the "persecution" of tRump by the supposedly out of control DOJ, Elise urges us to "Rush a donation to our official trump defense fund to stand with president trump".   However, if you check a box which will show you how the money will be allocated, the division of funds is on the order of 1% for the tRump fund and 99% for Elise.  A $500 donation nets $5.00 for the tRump fund and $495.00 for Elise's re-election.  And if you don't uncheck another small box, your contribution becomes a recurring monthly bill.  

High time and misdemeanors

       I'm guessing tRump won't miss his tee time in New Jersey this morning.  After being released on his own recognizance in a Florida courtroom, the now twice indicted, twice impeached, disgraced former president spent some time in little Havana, basking in his fans' adulation.  Then it was back to his golf club where he can count on a steady supply of sycophantic followers to prop up his notoriously fragile ego.

    As Heather Cox Richardson pointed out in a recent post, failing to hold previous highly placed wrongdoers to account has led us to this sorry state of affairs.   I didn't know that Jefferson Davis was never prosecuted for leading an attempt to destroy the country, but thanks to Andrew Johnson, he and many other leaders of the Confederacy were pardoned, leading to the myth of the "lost cause''.   

     Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon was another failure to hold highly placed elected officials accountable for their crimes.   As Richardson points out, had Nixon been tried and convicted it might have changed the actions of future presidents such as Reagan and Clinton.   

     Instead, we find ourselves trying to save our democracy from a 77 year old lying, thieving, traitorous blowhard who has beguiled a significant portion of the electorate into believing him innocent without even looking at the evidence.   Ah, America in 2023...

White Bronco Syndrome

       At least one cable network is covering the tRump indictment for misuse of classified records as if O J Simpson was still riding a white Bronco into the sunset.  On the one hand, evidence of his criming is supposedly so overwhelming that xxxL orange jumpsuits should be on order.  On the other hand, there are seemingly an infinite number of tiny loopholes Donny Two Scoops can wriggle through to freedom.  Which is it?  

      I have a feeling a tiny number of protestors will show up in Miami today; about equal numbers from either side and then the legal maneuvering will begin.  There is a limit to the attention span of even the most rabid followers of MSNBC.   A full fledged discussion of the color of the shoes the defendant is wearing just won't keep me watching the endless commercials that are part of the process.   On to Atlanta!!!!!!

Once Again

      Over the weekend, the disgraced, twice impeached former president resorted once again to his favorite rhetorical strategy when dealing with his perceived political opponents.  Projection, also known as ascribing your own actions to others, is a helluva drug, and tRump used it to assure his supporters they should believe him and not their lying eyes when it comes to the evidence the government presented to a grand jury.

     The ironic part of this whole fiasco is tRump is being charged under a bill he signed in 2018 which sought to protect classified documents by raising the conduct he exhibited toward said documents to felony status.  Hoist by his own petard!

     Next up is Fulton County prosecutor Fani Wells probable indictment of tRump for trying to subvert the 2020 election in Georgia.  The hits keep coming.

Life and death

       What do the deaths of James Watt and Pat Robertson have to do with tRump's indictment and the Canadian wildfires causing yellow skies over NYC.   It's a complicated tale in some ways, but relatively simple in others.

       Watt was Reagan's Secretary of the Interior and until his disgraced exit from that egregious administration he was a leading advocate for the rape of natural resources in the west.  He even went so far as putting up a list of national parks to be decertified.  You can draw a straight line from Watt and his advocacy of fossil fuel interests to climate change and the aforementioned Canadian wildfires.

      Pat Robertson is another piece of work.  Unable to pass the bar exam after college graduation he decided instead to go into the religious grift.   He was vastly successful in this endeavor and was one of the first televangelists.   He set the stage for the rise of the white supremacist, christian right wing political movement which spawned tRump and his many imitators.  Hopefully, tRump will be held accountable for his many crimes by the multiple indictments Federal, state and local prosecutors are churning out.   Meanwhile, I'm sure Satan is greeting Robertson warmly, shall we say!

coming attractions

     The Yankees and Phillies postponed their games last night due to air pollution concerns.  Indeed, NYC had the unhealthiest air quality readings in the world yesterday.   The games will be made up, but the deeper implications of the Canadian wildfires which caused the problems should be apparent to even the most casual fan.

     East Coast wildfires are far more rare than those in the west, mostly because rainfall is spread more evenly in the east during the summer.  Thanks in part to climate change, a prolonged period of dry weather  in northern Quebec has led to wildfires and a low pressure area steered the resulting smoke down the eastern seaboard leading to excessive air pollution.   I have a feeling we will be experiencing more events like this in coming years.  However, if I know anything about human nature, future major league ballparks will feature retractable domes.   Rather than deal with the disease, we will continue to treat the symptons.

They had the right of it

       As Roger Waters put it, "Money, it's a hit, don't give me that do goody good bullshit".   That should be the PGA's new motto after the US golf tour agreed to a merger with the Saudi Arabian LIV golf entity.  PGA commissioner Jay Monahan gave a world class seminar in hypocrisy as he tried to justify any association with the Kingdom's sports washing of its human rights abuses.

      After banning players who took the Saudi's money supposedly on moral grounds and recruiting high profile golfers like Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods to criticize the country's regime, the tour capitulated as the money spigot continues to gush billions of dollars with no end in sight.   The PGA lends legitimacy to Mohammed Bin Salman and his murderous regime which has gone so far as to kill a Saudi journalist who dared write about its crimes.   It will be interesting to see if Woods and Mcilroy walk back their morally based criticisms.  Or will they quote Pink Floyd's take on money and its pernicious effects.  "Money, so they say is the root of all evil today, but if you ask for a rise, it's no surprise they're giving none away."

      

The GOP and immigration

       Once upon a time, Republicans favored immigration and the booming economy it created.  They couldn't be bothered to craft a humane immigration bill which would help migrants coming to the US for a better life, but under Reagan, they did legalize millions of illegals.   Then, as now, these people do the jobs no citizen wants to do at the wages businesses are willing and able to pay.

     Now, Florida is testing the limits of cruelty to these vital workers.  A bill which passed the legislature and which will take effect in July will require businesses with more than 25 employees to use the E-Verify system.   This database will flag illegal workers and trigger deportation orders.  The bill also forbids the use of out of state licenses and makes getting health  care tricky for anyone without papers.   

     The result is an exodus of workers from the state in the weeks leading up to the law's inception.   I guess we'll find out how much the state misses immigrants in coming months.s

Terrorists or skilled negotiators ?

 Two different takes on the debt negotiation and its eventual resolution.   Paul Krugman in today's NYT makes the case Republicans didn't really care whether the deficit is cut or not.  Like the gang that couldn't shoot straight, they are mostly rando terrorists in it for the thrill of taking the US to the brink of default.  They didn't have any policy goals because they don't care about policy.

    Over at his blog, Jabberwocking, Kevin Drum has a diametrically opposed view.  In his estimation, McCarthy's merry band of nihilists knew exactly what they were doing and succeeded in making the Biden administration cut the social safety net spending by 5-10 %.

    As is usual in such cases, the truth is somewhere between Krugman's and Drum's telling.  The GOP and its donor class hate the idea of any income transfer, no matter how benign.  They cover their intentions with the usual blather about fraud and waste.  Meanwhile, Biden and his negotiators made most of the cuts reversible within a couple of years.  Both sides got something to crow about.  Nothing much to see here.