What Half of the American Electorate Seems to Miss

Massive flooding in W VA

 Midwest devastation

Gulf and Atlantic Coast horrors

West Coast Heat/Blazes

What Half of the American Electorate Seems to Miss

As raging wars threaten to engulf us, as politics unravels our democracy, there is a bigger, more obvious issue.

Even as political storms whirl around us, encouraging Americans to demonize and dehumanize those with opposing views, I look back on those purportedly villainous MAGA southerners and recall some of the warmest most hospitable people I have ever met. I still have those memories. They bring a warm smile to my lips, as I wonder if my little one-year-old granddaughter will ever be able to experience that warmth. My California-born-and-raised son, today a successful financial consultant, loved his undergraduate education in North Carolina and his MBA studies in Virginia. I keep wondering how we can be “Americans” again.

But as Republicans in Congress fall prey to Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” aimed to coddle spoiled-brat billionaires and mega-millionaires with continuing and new tax cuts these brats absolutely do not need, programs that will probably follow the pattern of all the recent such rich-folks tax cuts and generate no real solid new jobs or businesses… Yet these tax cuts will definitely tank any effort to control our ever-growing deficit that has the rest of the world downgrading the dollar and dollar-denominated assets, while kicking the interest rate on our deficit borrowings (e.g., the sale of treasury bonds) to the highest rates in recent decades. The credit-rating services are lowering US government to new, never before witnessed, depths.

To accommodate those tax cuts that enable third and fourth homes, yachts, private (mega-polluting) jets, champagne travel and luxury, there have to be some sacrifices, the GOP tells us, creating mythologies to justify their actions (“Medicaid recipients don’t work,” when those able to work actually do; “there is massive fraud and waste in Veterans programs, Medicare and Social Security,” when even DOGE failed to find any real proof of this assertion)… but why are those sacrifices loaded on to those least able to afford them?

Hey, the Republican Party maintains as a basic platform either that the horrors of climate change are exaggerated or non-existent. They want to take down non-fossil fuel infrastructure projects, oddly creating most of the relevant new jobs in red states. They want to encourage the old world “drill, baby, drill” or “extract, baby, extract” fossil fuel mantras that seem to fall on deaf investor ears… but they are forcing this damaging mandate anyway. “We can’t afford to fix it.” “It is a global problem that we cannot control.” “We choose business over tree-hugging, climate change wokeness.” Nature does not care one whit; she started with nothing and has no issue starting over.

Our divide and conquer political battle may take down the United States, replacing democracy with one-man rule, but pretending climate change is not a serious problem will continue to kill us, less slowly all the time. Migrating insects, following the change heat patterns, are bringing diseases to areas not remotely prepared for the resultant outbreaks. Migrating farmers all over the world are moving to areas where crops can still grow… but they are hardly welcomed with open arms.

All of the “trigger” climate occurrences have been met or almost met. The Outer Banks in North Carolina are disappearing. Miami area streets are routinely flooded after heavy rain. Condos are sinking in Florida, due to a very porous limestone substratum, sink holes are abounding and property insurance and required retrofitting are so expensive that many are losing their homes with no place to go. Cities all across the United States are experiencing life-destroying heat waves. There is almost no place within the United States – which is itself a selfish perspective – where billions of dollars of climate-related damage are not raging. But don’t worry, the administration has NOAA’s weather tracking, NASA’s older weather satellites are not being replaced, and FEMA is on the verge of being shut down or seriously defunded. New diseases? Defund the CDC.

“Earth's energy imbalance is growing faster than anyone expected — and scientists don't understand why… To complicate matters several NASA satellites that provide the highest-resolution picture of this imbalance are nearing the end of their lives, and researchers fear their lone replacement isn't sufficient. In the worst case scenario, scientists could lose one of the leading indicators of climate change, as the next-best way of measuring the energy imbalance has a lag of about 10 years.

“‘What we get from [these] satellites is roughly one decade faster data, so that's why it's so critical,’ Thorsten Mauritsen, a professor in the department of meteorology at Stockholm University in Sweden and the lead author of a commentary on the issue, told Live Science. ‘The absolute best option is that NASA continues.’…

“Earth's energy imbalance is the difference between the amount of energy our planet receives from the sun and the amount it radiates outward into space. The imbalance is mainly caused by our emissions of greenhouse gases, which trap a portion of the energy radiating from Earth inside the atmosphere, driving temperatures up.

“Satellite data suggest Earth's energy imbalance has more than doubled over the past two decades, massively exceeding the increase predicted by climate models. In 2023, the imbalance reached 1.8 watts per square meter (0.16 watts per square foot), which was twice what models estimated based on rising greenhouse gas emissions, according to the commentary, which was published May 10 in the journal AGU Advances — but scientists still aren't sure why there has been such an increase in the imbalance recently.” Sascha Pare in June 5th LiveScience.com. You do have to wonder why our leaders either only learn lessons the hard way, live in denial land or are at their best when they simply pass the buck to future administrations and generations. But nature is not so flip… resulting damage does not get kicked down the road; it is front and center NOW!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I guess if we do not care that gun violence is the number one killer of American children and teens, why would we express the slightest concern that we are destroying their future by underestimating climate change?

Can a Party that Botched Immigration and Seldom Speaks with a Unified Voice Defeat MAGA?

Can a Party that Botched Immigration and Seldom Speaks with a Unified Voice Defeat MAGA?

“When you have the most Latino district in the country outside of Puerto Rico vote for Trump, that should be a wake-up call for the Democratic Party… This is a Democratic district that’s been blue for over a century.” 

 Representative Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, who saw Mr. Trump win every county in his district along the border with Mexico.

Keeping in mind that the majority of Trump’s MAGA followers are not issue oriented; they will do whatever their strongman directs and believe anything he says even if proven false. They delight in the decimation of the federal bureaucracy (their view of the demon “deep state”), even if it crashes to the ground and they lose vital benefits that most of them depend on. Efforts to win them back needs to be the result of efforts to recapture or solidify liberals and moderates who are open to change… not addressing MAGA diehards on their own terms.

And here is the “Democratic BIG INTERNAL SQUABBLE”: A strong “progressive” surge may indeed redefine the Democratic Party over the long haul, but they cannot begin to protect the LGBTQ if they are not in power. For younger voters, “socialism” is a viable economic strategy; for middle-aged and older voters, it represents a betrayal of the political dogma they were raised to fight. Focus instead on the younger male, working class and Hispanic voters the Dems have lost in recent elections. And more than a few issues that non-MAGA voters care about.

Trump’s unfounded belief that tariffs are paid by the nations they are assessed against assures a continued unstable and declining economy. There’s never been a tariff paid by the country the tariff is assessed against. Tariffs are a regressive tax – most negatively impactful against those who spend most of their money on buying “stuff” versus investing and controlling big assets… hence the lower and middle classes versus the rich. Tariffs are only paid by the US importers and their ultimate consumers. It is, to put it simply, a sales tax. As long as Trump tries to impose this false economic vector, the economy will sputter, rising and falling on “news,” as TACO Trump struggles to make a bad economic plan work. It won’t! Costs were rising and will continue to rise.

Hammer home that “businessman Trump” is no longer the go-to “economic guardian” for us all. Explode that myth, which Americans will encounter in their daily lives. AFFORDABILITY is the underlying issue. So is the LOSS OF UPWARD MOBILITY, as the benefits of living in America are transferred to the rich and paid for by the rest of us. Today, most younger Americans do not expect to live better than their parents; in fact, they expect a life of less.

Not only is Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill as disaster for 80% of Americans – carefully designed to have those Medicaid-slashers delayed until after the midterms and to have the mini-tax benefits to middle income taxpayer expire on their own (as the big cuts for the rich become permanent) – there is an overall vector of cutting public benefits and safety measures, shifting costs to underfunded states, all to benefit the richest in the land. Republicans rely heavily on “trickle-down” economics to justify the big tax cuts – “that rising tide” myth which has never produced real economic benefits for anyone but the rich. Yet the GOP majority are slowly eliminating the only clear path to upward mobility – education – by attacking our best colleges, sticking graduates with unsustainable debt and underfunding education from primary school to graduate education. Anti-“woke” policies have long since replaced hard-ass subjects as the focus of too many of our 13,000 separate school districts.

After the WWII with the GI Bill and the post-1957 reemphasis on infrastructure and education (the “Sputnik” reaction), the US economy soared, upward mobility was the rule, and the individual well-being of most Americans reached magnificent heights. If we all want to live better, we must replace the wrongful “a rising tide floats all boats” falsehood with a refocus on providing the best education from the best schools for the least per-student cost for as many Americans who want that staircase to upward mobility. Plus continued INVESTMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE, particularly alternative energy. Well paid jobs on steroids!

IMMIGRATION has been a massive failure by the Democrats, which kept getting worse over the years. The Republicans loved every moment, fighting immigration reform to keep the issue alive as election-supporting rage… going feeding frenzy crazy as racist zealots (notably senior White House advisor Stephen Miller – as the mastermind – underqualified Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, anti-constitutionalist AG Pam Bondi and stormtrooper and Immigration Tsar Tom Homan) hit the accelerator pedal as Trump began his Project 2025 purge of undocumented aliens the instant he took office in Trump 2.0. It was considered, literally, the GOP Trump card. MAGA followers even believed there were undocumented Haitians eating their pets! But Trump administration overzealous efforts gave power to Dems, over an issue that belonged once solidly to the GOP. No more!

After announcing they would focus on removing convicted criminals first, Trump officials began to alienate Americans with cruelty, masked ICE agents making random stops, ripping workers from the farms and small businesses, pulling long time US documented residents from their productive (tax paying) jobs and businesses, implementing Trump’s personal vendetta against California, as the only state where federal military forces are deployed as de facto police officers, and killing cohesive communities of US citizens mixed with hardworking long-term undocumented workers. Many Americans applauded, but these were mostly MAGA believers.

The Trump administration even coopted the US Supreme Court in a sustained and exceptionally cruel effort to deport, without due process, individuals picked up off the street and airlifted to harsh prisons in countries with which they had no connection. Pretending that once the deportees were in foreign hands, notably El Salvador, and so informing our courts, the Trump administration claimed no jurisdiction to bring them back. What the party does to change its approach to immigration — and to change how voters see Democrats on immigration — may be the most consequential and difficult decision it faces as it searches for a path back to power. Dems must accept that controlling our borders and limiting immigration are simply political facts of life that they must embrace… intelligently. Whether they like it or not.

But the Democrats were handed a huge and POWERFUL CRUELTY ARGUMENT as the Trump administration received an unpleasant report from a July 7th official filing by El Salvador with the United Nations: “Over 200 migrants who were sent to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison [pictured above] under accusations that they were members of a violent criminal gang are the responsibility of the United States, the government of El Salvador told a United Nations working group: "In this context, the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities, by virtue of international agreements signed and in accordance with the principles of sovereignty and international cooperation in criminal matters," El Salvador officials said in their report to the U.N.

I’m Peter Dekom, the Dems have the tools to retake the majority in America, but they need to deal with the above issues with a new and unified perspective or accept their second rate status for the foreseeable future… not just “against things Trump” but for tangible steps for a better future.

China in an Era of Weak US Foreign Policy Expertise

China in an Era of Weak US Foreign Policy Expertise

There’s something happening here; what it is is not exactly clear

"The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable."

NY Times journalist Thomas Friedman, at Trump’s slashing alternative energy initiatives to favor BIG OIL & BIG COAL.

China is very complicated and clearly aiming to replace the United States as the predominant economic and military power on Earth. Their universities are accelerating in AI research, hovering to equal or surpass US efforts. Their fleets are now moving beyond the disputed channels in the China Sea, bolstered by a fully militarized, manmade (landfill) airport and support systems in the Spratley Islands. They are challenging Philippine military vessels in traditional Philippine fishing zones, harassing Taiwan and the US vessels that support it, and letting Japan and S Korea know who’s boss. Now, often in conjunction with Russian naval vessels, they are extending their range to encircle Australia and venturing north around Alaska and the melting northwest passage.

With two modern aircraft carriers, stocked with modern attack and fighter jets, they now have the largest navy (in numbers of ships) in the world, and as their sophistication grows, potentially the equal of US naval power. But they have several huge advantages over the United States. First, their forces are concentrated in the Asia Pacific area, while the United States has seven active fleets deployed across the globe. We are thus spread thin when it comes to supporting our south and eastern Asian allies. Second, their military (the Peoples’s Liberation Army – PLA), while politicized to some degree, has only seasoned, highly experienced officers at the top, dwarfing the leadership of our own Department of Defense, led by an emotional, immature, inexperienced alcoholic Secretary of Defense… and lumbers under “DEI cuts” of some of our best senior officers.

But all is not rosy in China these days. The tariff battles with the United States combined with high-tech export bans of sensitive US-designed technology have taken their toll. Chinese college grads are finding a harsh entry-level job market, unemployment of what should be China’s elite engineers and scientists is high, and an over-built and over-leveraged residential real estate market is tanking both property values and the increasingly shaky debt leveraged in support of those failing efforts. The net impact is an unstable economy, one that has imperiled the underlying “peoples’” promise of the Communist Party: give us your total support and we will provide a solid economy for all of our people. An essential part of that economic pledge, one that dramatically impacts both nations, is the profound interdependence on US trade.

President Xi Jinping, now in his third term in a nation that once limited such leaders to a two-term maximum, is playing politics at new and, for him, probably an uncomfortable level. His rapprochement, his very treaty commitments, with Russia were meant to destabilize the US international power dynamics. And while he is exercising an end-run to create stronger trading ties with the European Union and other nations equally aghast at Trump’s bully tactics, nothing quite replaces the sheer volume of Sino-American trade. Xi has reduced the size of the powerful Standing Committee of the Politburo to five members, tied with the lowest number in PRC history. While this appears to be a purge to concentrate his power, he has also announced new efforts to “coordinate” economic and military efforts with Russia and various internal Chinese political entities. In “tealeaf reading” parlance, “coordinate” in China means power-sharing, something that would seem an anathema to a Chinese dictator.

But as much as Xi is facing obstacles to his plans, he has one strong ally in helping him achieve his global power-reach: Donald John Trump. To aid China in its development of AI and all sorts of other technologies, Xi is grateful for Trump’s reversal of alterative energy initiatives (where China is soaring) and his cultural assault on America’s best research universities, his bizarre need to keep the best and the brightest international students (who often stay in the US and become the greatest domestic job creators) out of xenophobic America. He smiles at how, despite Trump’s recent announced support of NATO, he knows that not one single other member of NATO remotely trusts him or his treaty obligation if a NATO nation is attacked. The United States is the only NATO signatory to have benefitted by that clause after the 9/11 attacks.

Xi is happily aware of the battle, even within the Republican Party, over immigration tactics and military support for Ukraine against Russia. Featherweight Secretary of Defense, Pete “how high should I jump” Hegseth, himself a serious national security risk based on his proclivity of using relatively unsecure communication platforms, appears to have halted congressionally approved and desperately need military supplies to Ukraine. Immediately after that announcement and following a totally unproductive call between Trump and Putin, Russia launched its most devastating attack against Kyiv. Despite contradictory statements from his own military, Hegseth justified his hold on those shipments so as to keep US military weapon systems at full capacity. That news made China happy for yet another reason:

“Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat that Beijing can’t accept Russia losing its war against Ukraine as this could allow the United States to turn its full attention to China, an official briefed on the talks said, contradicting Beijing’s public position of neutrality in the conflict… The admission came during what the official said was a four-hour meeting with EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas on Wednesday [7/2] in Brussels that ‘featured tough but respectful exchanges, covering a broad range of issues from cyber security, rare earths to trade imbalances, Taiwan and Middle East.’” CNN, July 4th. China is watching the objective metrics of America’s self-unraveling, gleeful that many of these approaches may not be reversible or may take many years to fix. China has more freedom to pursue taking Taiwan these days. As the US pulls back on international aid, China has repeatedly stepped in to take our place. Putin and Xi were particularly gratified at the rapid demise of our Voice of America radio platform.

With the stock market vacillating at every bit of news, Xi is focused on the real economic harm Trump’s policies have done to the United States: “Analysts have sounded the alarm after the value of the U.S. dollar suffered its worst drop in nearly five decades. The sudden plunge in value is reportedly likely to trigger a price hike in everyday items as well as cause visitors to the country to experience a jump in expenses.” The Mirror US, July 4th. As the US increases its deficit to implement the tax cuts for the rich, the marketplace for US treasuries (how we finance the deficit) has demanded significantly higher interest because of the general global perception that the US is now a much riskier economy. We pay that interest as one of our highest priorities.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as much as Donald Trump has declared China to be our number one enemy, his only weapon seems to be “tariffs,” but no one on Earth has done more to amplify and solidify China’s growing global power (at our expense) than Trump himself.

American History 101 – Sooner of Later, Using the Military as Cops Massively Fails

Anger over 1765 Stamp Act     

                                            1770 Boston Mascare 

American History 101 – Sooner of Later, Using the Military as Cops Massively Fails

It is precisely what triggered the American Revolution

“Let me observe… how fatal are the effects, the danger of which I long ago mentioned, of posting a standing army among a free people.” 

Then future US President Sam Adams about the Boston Massacre.

“Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the President has to remove people from this country.” 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, testifying in Congress, butchering the true meaning: to protect citizens from unlawful arrest and detention.

Our Founding Fathers were so repulsed by King George III’s use of soldiers to enforce his civil dictates in domestic affairs that they slowly began meeting, leading to the Stamp Act Congress and so much more. The British had stationed soldiers in Boston in 1768 to enforce these policies and maintain order, but their presence only aggravated the situation. Americans went far beyond the “taxation without representation” captured neatly by the 1773 Boston Tea Party. Americans railed to a more generalized use of troops – British Army soldiers breaking into civilian homes, without warrants, until the pot boiled over with seething American anger. One of the most feared aspects of British rule was the use of armed force to crush domestic resistance to the King’s edicts. It seems that nothing motivated the American Revolution more than the British use of troops to enforce their unpopular edicts.

Look at the United States today. If you don’t live in a culturally diverse city, and you just watch Fox news and its social media ilk, you just might not see the parallels between the forces that angered the Americans so much against their legitimate government that they started a revolution to drive those government forces from their shores. These Americans were mostly volunteer citizen soldiers willing to die to obtain their freedom. Paramilitary ICE has just been funded to be the largest US police force in history, able to arrest wantonly without warrants. And hardly just undocumented aliens. They are supported by Marines, federalized National Guardsmen and, sometimes, by local police. So, I would like to present a refresher course in how the American Revolution responded to an unelected autocrat dictating how Americans could live, earn money, and import goods from England… using military force.

I owe this blog to the inspiration of a July 4th Los Angeles Times editorial written by Eli Merritt, a political historian at Vanderbilt University. The reality of history that led to that Revolution was a slow escalation by Britain in repressive tactics against those who opposed royal dictates imposed by an autocrat thousands of miles away. Even those appointed by the King to became local autocrats, in what was to become the United States, enjoyed abusing anti-royalists immensely. Make no mistake, before this escalation in repression, most Americans were happy British subjects, many with pride in their heritage. Even as the revolution mounted, royalists remained solidly behind their kings. Is history repeating itself?

There is little doubt but that Donald Trump has reached into a plethora of autocratic models as he mounts efforts to be the sole political power in this country. But if this nation does not have the appetite for an armed insurrection, if its massive size (the third most populated nation on Earth) and scattered political leanings suggest less than a uniform civilian aversion to his dictatorial ways, are there any lessons in our Founding Father’s past that might prove useful?

Merritt: “Parliament’s Stamp Act tax of the mid-1760s ignited the Anglo-American conflict. Yet, as historians broadly agree, it was escalating martial law in Boston under different legislation, the Coercive Acts of 1774, that transformed American resistance into full-scale revolution.

“Let’s start by recalling what had happened four years earlier during protests over the Townshend duties, a series of taxes Parliament added to everyday goods, including tea, exported to the colonies. The British ministry responded to the unrest by stationing approximately 2,000 redcoats in Boston… On the night of March 5, 1770, in an accidental bloodbath set off by the pelting of soldiers with snowballs, the British opened fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians outside the Custom House, killing five and wounding others… The problem worsened after the Boston Tea Party. The hacking to pieces of 342 crates of tea owned by the East India Co. in late 1773 was, of course, criminal activity. As such, it warranted the full application of colonial and municipal law against the offenders.

“Instead of leaving justice to the locals, however, Parliament passed the four draconian bills known as the Coercive Acts. To enforce them, in a fatal progression, King George III’s ministers dispatched a military governor and occupying army to Boston, in effect imposing martial law on the entire colony for the unlawful actions of a few… Each of the Coercive Acts struck at the heart of Massachusetts self-rule. The Boston Port Act shut down all trade through Boston Harbor and its surrounding waterways, while the Massachusetts Government Act dissolved the colony’s assembly, courts and town meetings. The remaining two acts allowed trials to be relocated overseas and forced residents to house British troops at the governor’s discretion.

“Taken together, the Coercive Acts constituted an unprecedented assault on the rights and freedoms of the American people. Colonists decried them as ‘barbarous,’ ‘diabolical’ and ‘Tyrannic’ — the work of a ‘Despotic power.’… What followed is familiar to many Americans. Massachusetts, under martial law, summoned the other colonies to a continental congress in Philadelphia. In reaction, the king and Parliament declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion, ordering thousands of additional redcoats across the Atlantic to crush dissent and make arrests.

“A conflict the British thought they could resolve with boots on the ground only escalated. On April 19, 1775, in another tragedy of unintended carnage — this time triggered by a stray bullet — the king’s troops gunned down eight colonials on Lexington Green, turning protest into civil war.” King Trump does have his super-loyalists, with little or no affinity for the Constitution, a document that few of his enforcers seem to be familiar with. Who are the primary Trump enforcers? Attorney General Pamela Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Immigration Tzar Tom Homan and Secretary of State Maro Rubio. And now…????

I’m Peter Dekom, and here we are again with a dictator (carrying about the same popularity level enjoyed by King George III before the Revolution), using military (and paramilitary) forces to enforce his orders, with rising resistance being met with military repression… so what are we going to do about it?!

Can We Learn to Live in a Police State, Even a Secret Police State?

Can We Learn to Live in a Police State, Even a Secret Police State?

A voice from Los Angeles, where due process is fading.

“The secretive approach taken by immigration agents as they conduct unlawful suspicionless stops has not only created a culture of fear, but has also needlessly impeded local law enforcement… Because their vehicles and uniforms are not clearly marked — and their tactics can be highly aggressive — the public cannot easily discern who is a federal law enforcement agent and who may be a criminal. ... The confusion and distrust sown by defendants’ unlawful law enforcement practices has thus compromised public safety.” 

An 18-state coalition in a lawsuit filed June 6th against the federal government.

“I think it’s clear that agents are trying to create a certain spectacle of intimidation and lack of democratic control… By anonymizing themselves, they’re indicating that they are not accountable to any sort of public.” 

 Stuart Schrader, history professor at Johns Hopkins University.

"Governor Gavin Newscum is trying to KILL our Nation’s beautiful California," Trump posted to Truth Social just days after his November 2024 election win. "For the first time ever, more people are leaving than are coming in. He is using the term ‘Trump-Proof’ as a way of stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to 'Make California Great Again,' but I just overwhelmingly won the Election." 

 Donald Trump

Donald Trump screams about oversized federal government, yet his Big Ugly Bill adds a massive $170 billion more for immigration enforcement, of which $150 billion is allocated to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), making ICE the largest police agency in the United States. Apparently, often without accountability to anyone. Living in Los Angeles, I can assure Americans that such efforts are not making much of dent in taking undocumented aliens out of federal benefit programs (they’re just not there, although most such workers pay taxes that support such benefits for citizens and green card holders) or saving states much in the way of public education.

Likewise, small businesses – including construction companies trying to meet housing shortages, hotels, restaurants, childcare, etc. – are suffering, many simply closing or stopping construction. And no Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, as we have learned so many times in the past (which you seem to have missed), legal residents, including US Medicaid recipients seeking work, will not accept agricultural harvesting, meatpacking or slaughterhouse jobs at any price. Housing costs will rise accordingly, as well food costs with less harvesting, even as Trump seems willing to allow a limited number of undocumented farmworkers to remain under supervision.

That lovely “Alligator Alcatraz” detention facility for undocumented arrestees, hastily built in the sweltering heat of the Florida swamps, is estimated to cost $450 million/year to operate. As Trump is slowly shutting down FEMA, massive fires and floods notwithstanding, his administration is looking to use money budgeted for FEMA to fund that facility. Taxpayers continue to fund Stephen Miller’s vision of a white Christian nationalist country with extreme cruelty, decimation of constitutional rights and the exceptionally expensive reshaping of how labor really works in this country. For diehard MAGA followers, this is heaven on Earth, until their local economies are crushed, many of their community friends and workers simply disappear and costs, already laboring under Trump inane TACO tariff policies, skyrocket.

As wildfires rage in central California, with a smug look on his face, Donald Trump makes it pretty clear that federal aid to California is going to be limited if anything is allocated at all. This despite the fact that the Silicon Valley was the major campaign contributor to his election, that some of the areas of maximum devastation are Trump strongholds and that California residents pay $80 billion a year more in federal taxes than the federal benefits it and its residents receive. The 3rd quote above illustrates Trump war on California, as does the fact that California (the vegetable capital of the nation and the tech job-creator center for everyone) is the only state, so far, where federalized National Guardsmen and active duty US Marines are deployed as de facto police as they “assist” ICE in their nefarious roundup.

And while ICE agents are arresting US Congresspeople doing their jobs in New Jersey (investigation federally funded detention facilities), as a US Senator is arrested in his office building as he attempts to ask DHS Secretary Noem a question at a press hearing, all that does not begin to compare with the mockery of the US Constitution being perpetrated in California. As Jenny Jarvie, writing for the July 7th Los Angeles Times, tells us: “For many Angelenos, the spectacle of armed federal agents — faces hidden behind neck gaiters and balaclavas — jumping out of unmarked vans to snatch people off the streets presents a clear threat to public safety.

“As federal immigration agents have ratcheted up enforcement raids, arresting and detaining anyone they suspect of violating immigration laws, critics warn that their tactic of masking — particularly when wearing plain clothes and no visible marker of identity — spreads fear and panic across communities and imperils citizens as well as immigrants without legal status… ‘It’s very dangerous,’ said Scott Shuchart, who worked for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from 2022 until January of this year as an assistant director for regulatory affairs and a policy counselor… If somebody comes up to you with a mask and a T-shirt and no badge, why would you think that they are exercising a legitimate authority, as opposed to being a violent criminal trying to do you harm?’ Shuchart said. ‘How do you know that you need to not resist to avoid arrest, as opposed to resist arrest to possibly survive the encounter?’

“But defenders of federal immigration agents also cite security as a reason for masking… They present immigrants without legal papers as a threat to public safety, even though the majority of people ICE arrested across L.A. in early June had no criminal record. They also argue that masking is necessary because a convergence of factors — supercharged political rhetoric, more sophisticated facial recognition technology, and increased threat of doxxing on social media — makes the job more dangerous for agents in the field.

“‘We have a lot of agents whose faces are being put on social media platforms across the country,’ said Mathew Silverman, national president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Assn. ‘We have politicians right now that are saying, ‘We will find these federal agents who have masks on. We will expose them.’ It’s just creating an era in law enforcement where trying to do the jobs of law enforcement is becoming more and more difficult.’

“Critics of law enforcement tactics say masking does not make officers safer and only escalates tension. Some argue federal agents operate under no greater threat than local officials… ‘Regular police officers operate every day with their faces uncovered and their badge numbers visible, and it’s not considered unsafe for their identities to be available to people in the public,’ said Stuart Schrader, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University.” The issue is compounded by ICE imposters extorting undocumented arrestees, kidnapping for ransom or simply wreaking a vendetta for strictly personal reasons.

Secret police are the signature move for dictators the world over, from Hitler and Mussolini to Putin and Xi. Definitely not America!!! Without even a badge number, there is absolutely no path to accountability. This must stop now!!!

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you want to make a bad situation so much worse, to provoke the maximum violence you can, drop thousands of troops and tons of unidentified secret police into any US community… and watch the chaos, strong resistance and economic unraveling explode.

Banana Republic Marxism for America, Trump Style

We’ve See Fire and We’ve Seen Rain

The death and destruction in Central Texas have been devastating. While the area is prone to some flooding, that area has seen almost four months’ worth of rain in a day. “Most of the deaths confirmed so far [well over 100], including 28 children, were in Kerr County, where a girls' summer camp was inundated by flood waters. There, the Guadalupe River rose by 26ft (8m) within 45 minutes. The San Gabriel River also burst its banks, with drone footage showing the devastation in Georgetown.” BBC.com, July 7th. Or, as the July 7th Newsweek puts it: “The flooding of the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, about 50 miles outside San Antonio, was astounding in its speed: 26 feet in less than an hour. Four months’ worth of rain in a couple of hours. In the dead of night. In an area with spotty cell service. A true recipe for disaster. The system that dropped so much water didn't come out of nowhere; it was the remnants of a tropical storm. Which is to say, the National Weather Service was not caught off guard, they saw it coming even if they may not have been able to predict the ferocity of the rains.”

Meanwhile, in fire prone California, as of this writing, the Madre Fire, the largest in the state so far (80,000 acres and expanding), began Wednesday (July 2nd) in the Los Padres National Forest, federally managed land area in Central California. The blaze prompted evacuation orders, warnings and highway closures in residential San Luis Obispo County about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Kern County has also experienced various levels of evacuations.

So, as you read this, you would hardly guess that today’s blog is really about water shortages. Half of America’s water basins are at risk, and millions of acres of forests and productive agricultural land join regional big cities in the “Big Parch” of roiling desertification. When needed rains do come, the land has often been dried out as hard as a ceramic bowl; instead of soaking the earth, that rainwater aggregates and follows the contours of the land it then floods.

All this in a country that is winding down FEMA, thus shoving disaster relief to underfunded states, and one that just slashed the budget for alternative energy to favor BIG OIL and BIG COAL. Religious leaders and MAGA Republicans write all this “natural disaster stuff” off as “normal seasonal changes” or simply “bad weather.” Or, “until the rest of the world cleans up their act, we cannot afford to lead any of these climate initiatives that challenge our nations’ biggest industries.” But we are reaching desperation when it comes to water supplies to major cities (impacting hydroelectric power generation too), including urban areas where you might least expect that to occur. Sure, there are a few bandages that are holding in places like Las Vegas. As that population added half a million new residents, water restrictions and massive water recycling have produced an annual 20% reduction in water use. But as Matthias Binder, M.Sc., points out in the July 6th Climate Cosmos, these serious water shortages are spreading, soon to shock cities that never thought “it could never happen here”:

“The Colorado River Basin is experiencing the worst drought in recorded history, with snowfall and runoff into the basin well below normal since 2000. The elevation of Lake Mead has dropped more than 150 feet since 2000, marking an unprecedented decline in what was once America’s largest reservoir. The Secretary of the Interior made the first-ever shortage declaration in 2021, triggering mandatory water restrictions for millions of Americans. The cumulative volume of lost runoff water during the historic drought of 2000 to 2021 was approximately equal to the full capacity of Lake Mead. If the reservoir drops below 895 feet, it is considered a ‘dead pool’ condition, which will jeopardize the Hoover Dam’s ability to provide electricity – leaving nearly 1.3 million people in Arizona, California, and Nevada without power…

“Although California’s drought has eased in recent years, moderate drought and abnormally dry conditions still reign in the north, affecting 54 counties as of July 2024, with the state also seeing its 14th driest June on record since 1895. Reports also show California is running out of groundwater as basins remain seriously depleted, accounting for approximately 41% of the state’s water supply…

“[Despite the horrific recent floods in central Texas, by] one estimate, the state’s municipal supply will not meet demand by 2030 if there’s a severe drought and no water solutions are implemented. Towns and cities could be on a path toward a severe shortage of water by 2030, data compiled in the state’s 2022 water plan by the Texas Water Development Board indicates, if there is recurring, record-breaking drought conditions across the state. Lake Travis — the largest reservoir supplying Austin — was only 38% full in January 2024, down from 80% full in January 2022. South Texas is significantly impacted, as Lower Rio Grande reservoirs dropped from 33% to 23% full from 2023 to 2024, with a repeat of these conditions potentially resulting in lower water supplies than ever…

“Florida could face a significant water supply shortage as early as 2025, according to projections from the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research (EDR), with the situation worsening through 2040. In the General Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2024–2025, there were 281 water-related member projects identified by Florida TaxWatch as budget “turkeys” (totaling $410.3 million). The state’s continued rapid economic and population growth underscores the need for a consistent, comprehensive and coordinated statewide strategy for funding water projects. This represents a shocking reversal for a state traditionally known for its abundant water resources…

“‘The American West is certainly in a water crisis,’ according to Reed Maxwell, a professor and researcher at Princeton University, with ‘the decadal pattern for continual aridification in the West,’ which means the West keeps getting drier and hotter. It’s being amplified by human-induced climate change. The conditions in the American west, which we’re seeing around the Colorado River basin, have been so dry for more than 20 years that ‘we’re no longer speaking of a drought,’ said Lis Mullin Bernhardt, an ecosystems expert at the United Nations. The rapid water loss in snowpack regions is a sign that the Rocky Mountain West is transitioning to a more arid climate rather than simply undergoing periodic droughts…

“Of all the freshwater basins that channel rain and snow into the rivers from which we draw the water we rely on for everything from drinking and cooking to washing and cleaning, nearly half may be unable to meet consumers’ monthly demands by 2071, meaning serious water shortages for Americans. Shortages won’t affect only the regions we’d expect to be dry: with as many as 96 out of 204 basins in trouble, water shortages would impact most of the U.S., including the central and southern Great Plains, the Southwest, and central Rocky Mountain states, as well as parts of California, the South, and the Midwest. According to Colorado State University research, nearly half of the 204 freshwater basins they studied in the United States may not be able to meet the monthly water demand by 2071.” While numbers projecting 50 or more years down the line may produce complacency, the damage will creep from now to then and beyond. The crisis is today!

I’m Peter Dekom, and even if you do not care about the loss of hydroelectric power or potable drinking water, if you like to eat, remember that agriculture accounts for some 70 per cent of all fresh water used globally, making it the largest consumer of water in the United States.

Is the Trump Reconfigured Supreme Court Reserved for Those with Wealth and Income?

Is the Trump Reconfigured Supreme Court Reserved for Those with Wealth and Income?

"This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens [resting on a theory that the court has refused to apply in cases brought by less powerful plaintiffs… Also, I worry that the fuel industry's gain comes at a reputational cost for this court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests… This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens." 

 Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s June 20th scathing dissent on a case involving the EPA’s right to grant California a waiver for more stringent vehicle emissions regulations.

“We have come to a point at which campaign finance regulations reviewed by the Supreme Court are almost presumptively unconstitutional. It’s very difficult to imagine that the justices agreed to take up this case to buck that trend, rather than continue it.” 

Steve Vladeck, Professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

“At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity.” Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wiritng for the majority in Trump vs US, 2024.

“The United States is more ideologically divided than it has been since Reconstruction. The court’s October 2024 term, which ended June 27, presented a number of cases that posed politically controversial issues concerning the aspects of the culture wars and challenges to the actions of President Donald Trump. Time and again in these cases, the court came down on the conservative side, in 6-3 decisions.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.

Does it strike you as profoundly un-American for a wealthy President and his billionaire cronies to threaten to “primary” a sitting member of Congress of that President’s own party (i.e., over fund his/her primary opponent in the next election) to oust any dissenting members of Congress? On average, a member of the House represents about 800,000 constituents, faces an election every two years, and spends 70% of their workday seeking campaign contributions. Senators (two per state) have it easier, with elections only every six years. Money defines American elections like no other on earth. Virtually all Republican members of Congress, solely out of fear of being primaried out of office by MAGA billionaire contributions, openly and willingly defied their own statements, their own pledges to their constituents, held their noses and voted for their abominable Big Ugly Bill. Nary a Democratic vote was anywhere to be found. Ugh!

There are lots of high court cases on campaign contributions, which contributions are severely curtailed in number of major democracies around the world… but money decides US elections like never before. A political system that accords political power based on personal wealth is a “plutocracy” or an “oligarchy,” and where government is structured for advantages, favors and exoneration based on payments to the leadership, the term for that form of government is “kleptocracy,” reflecting a system of legitimized political theft. Like watching major Trump campaign contributors greasing a pardon for a criminal pardon? Yep!

The main issue is allowing big money to buy elections, often creating a waterfall of cronies getting juicy, sometimes lifetime, appointments that define government. In short, in these un-American governmental structures, the rich call the shots and get the benefits and the rest of us are screwed. In the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs FEC, the Court opened the floodgates to SuperPACs (Political Actions Committees) able to spend in support of issues and candidates without any caps, as long as such contributions were not directed by the candidates themselves. What followed resulted in a MAGA takeover of the GOP, as billionaires funded extreme primary candidates willing to dig their heels in and never compromise. But that result wasn’t enough for the Republican Party.

Under an effort led by then Ohio-Senator, JD Vance, the Republican Party filed a lawsuit to allow candidates to have direct control of SuperPAC financing, also without limits. National Republican Senatorial Committee vs FEC, is the case now set for the Supreme Court’s October term. As the above quote from constitutional law expert, Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, suggests, this use of money has effectively created a one-party rule. Add in the recent shadow docket decision, Trump vs CASA, where individual federal trial courts are now severely limited in issuing national injunctions, even in cases of obvious unconstitutional Presidential executive orders or mandates.

The period leading up to the July 4th signing of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill saw a number of Republican members from both the House and the Senate voice the most obvious objections to the proposed litigation – funding tax cuts for the mega rich by cutting survival level benefits for the poor – yet the Presidential threat of “consequences” to Republicans (being primaried out of office) produced a near unanimous GOP vote to pass the legislation. The most dire cuts in Medicaid (which provides essential medical services for poor Americans) won’t take effect until after the 2026 mid-term elections. How convenient!

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions seem to have leaned heavily in favor of conservative religious beliefs, classes of individuals who have enjoyed social and cultural dominance since the nation was founded and big money squirming to limit individual rights to challenge their corporate practices or attempt to make the tax code responsive to the needs of those most vulnerable. Allowing the powerful to get special treatment does indeed seem to be the Court’s most consistent recent legacy. From allowing SuperPACs funded by the rich to use their money to sponsor political causes without limits to giving the President of the United States a get out of jail free card for ostensibly criminal acts with some nexus to the purview of his office.

Recently, the Court deprived the Governor of California of the right to object to the President’s federalization of his National Guard and effectively using such troops to assist a very unpopular ICE purge of undocumented workers, very intentionally and effective provoking angry citizens in what was otherwise a mass of mostly calm and peaceful protectors in Los Angeles. Using very flimsy evidence of “out-of-control” violence that mirrors the minor violence that has occurred in celebration of local baseball and basketball championships. The Supreme Court ignored the Presidential gloating on Truth Social, reflecting on how he can do whatever he wants now. The Big Beautiful Bill also created massive new funding for ICE agents, resulting in the largest police force this country has ever seen.

As a personal note, I know of friends and acquaintances who are leaving the United States for “elsewhere,” or at east funding their child(ren) to move overseas for college… and life. For some Americans in countries where Trump’s tariffs and immigration policies are viewed as direct threats, there are stories of Americans being refused service in restaurants in major ex pat enclaves in Mexico. Many are returning to the United States, some looking for other countries to move to. The United States has become a country where individual votes matter less and less, where the government and its monied supporters, live within a nation with the greatest income/wealth divide in American history.

And while the undertone of the lower income MAGA voices is to revitalize rural values at the expense of urban majorities, it is precisely this rural population that is getting screwed the most by Trumpian leadership. For vast swaths of MAGA supporters, they will watch local nursing homes and hospitals close, access to Medicaid denied, all as they face horrific climate change damage, explained aways by their representatives in Congress as “bad weather,” cutting FEMA funding along the way. Big Oil is snarling with laughter.

Indeed, the powerful belief in God – a major shared trait in isolated farming communities dependent on nature to water their crops – is precisely what manipulative MAGA politicians use to purge climate change containment and the creation of cheaper alternative energy… suggesting that the Bible tells us that after the Great Flood, God promised no more global natural disasters. Funny, that the Pope doesn’t see it that way, but it’s the way Trump wants them to react.

I’m Peter Dekom, so in answer to the above title question, unless Americans get angry enough to force change, is a resounding “yes”!