Changing the Rules, Punishing Companies Left and Right

 

“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed:

I am your retribution.” 

 Donald Trump at CPAC, March 4th

It’s one thing for a political party to lose an election. It’s quite another when the victorious party punishes those who sided, or who seemed to side, with the other side. Perhaps that victorious party takes additional step to make it difficult for the losing side ever to win an election in that tainted jurisdiction. Voter manipulation under the guise of fixing fraud. Politicians elected to office in strong red states with powerful evangelical constituents are finding themselves representing an electorate that feel God’s mandate to bring the blues state to heel. That’s a bad mix where your voters believe in their God-given right to be the relevant deciders in accordance with their interpretation of the Bible. Indeed, their voter restrictions tend to favor those who adhere to a notion of White Christian nationalism and marginalize those who do not.

But lest you think this is just a MAGA disease, the backlash from non-MAGA voters who feel that a distinct Christian minority is infringing on their secular or non-Christian-fundamentalist is creating an equal but opposite blue state reaction. Cases in point. 

Florida and Disney. When Disney backed its Disney world LGBYQ+ employees against a litany of restrictions directed at that community, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, with his lockstep legislature in tow, decided to punish the Mouse House for opposing his views. After a few ill-conceived statutes that attacked Disney World’s special district (where Disney called the shots but paid virtually all the taxes) – they forgot about Disney’s long-term tax commitments based on that special status – Florida finally seized control from Disney, placed DeSantis ultra-right-wing evangelicals in charge of a renamed district while making sure Disney remained the major taxpayer. “Don’t Say Gay” and “Stop Woke” slammed down hard on the theme parking and its surround assets.

California and Walgreens. Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom erected billboards in Florida touting California’s open door to abortions and strong opposition to the ominous “Stop Woke” legislation. On March 8th, “Newsom announced that the State of California would not renew a multimillion-dollar contract with Walgreens — not because Walgreens had failed to comply with its contractual obligations but rather because it had responded to Republican legal warnings and decided not to dispense an abortion pill in 21 red states. Newsom used his political power to punish a corporate position he opposed.

“Weeks earlier, a federal judge blocked enforcement of a new California law intended to combat medical misinformation, because the state’s definition of the term was so vague that it couldn’t survive First Amendment scrutiny. This ruling came on the heels of multiple adverse rulings against California at the Supreme Court. In 2018 the court struck down a California rule that required pro-life pregnancy centers to publish information about free or low-cost abortions. During the pandemic, the court repeatedly rejected California public health regulations that discriminated against religious worship. And in 2021 the court invalidated a mandatory donor disclosure law that violated court precedent that dates back to the civil rights era.

“California is not alone in its efforts to suppress constitutionally protected rights. Late last month the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that New York’s so-called Boss Bill, which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of their ‘reproductive health decision making,’ may violate the expressive associational rights of pro-life organizations that require employees not to have abortions and to refrain from extramarital sex.” David French writing for the March 12th New York Times. These are the culture wars, fought not just to push strongly felt policies but to defeat and humiliate those who disagree. Making examples, punishing those who oppose, constitute a hyper-polarizing litany of “retribution,” as Donald Trump calls it.

What is abusive or even a criminal violation in one state, perhaps even elevated to a charge of murder in the case of abortion, is a fundamental right in another. For example, “Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas issued a directive to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate as ‘abuse’ both surgical and pharmaceutical interventions for transgender children, regardless of the good faith and desires of the parents, children and caregivers involved.” NYT. In New York and California, those procedures are protected by law. But where does this tit-for-tat angry reciprocity lead?

“[If] a government both enacts contentious policies and diminishes the civil liberties of its current ideological opponents, then it sharply increases the stakes of political conflict. It breaks the social compact by rendering political losers, in effect, second-class citizens. A culture war waged against the civil liberties of your political opponents inflicts a double injury on dissenters: They don’t merely lose a vote; they also lose a share of their freedom...

“In a nation as diverse as the United States, conflicts over values are inevitable, but our most basic civil liberties must remain inviolate. To govern otherwise both inflicts a grave injury on dissenting citizens and violates the letter and spirit of the Constitution itself. Our right to speak, much less to parent, should not be contingent on our ability to gain political control.

“The much better course for our democracy is to uphold a legal corollary to the golden rule: Defend the rights of others that you would like to exercise yourself. It doesn’t end the culture war. We’ll still clash over contentious issues. But maintaining a bedrock defense of civil liberties lowers the stakes. Protecting individual freedom tells all Americans and all American families that the social compact holds and — win or lose on any given issue, regardless of how controversial — this country is still their home.” NYT. Playing to the crowd as opposed to doing what’s right has usurped American politics and threatens even the viability of the very existence of the United States. Political compromise has become a lost art.

I’m Peter Dekom, an impassioned progressive, but I understand that unwarranted undermining and belittling your opponent and seeking to use the law to punish those who disagree with your vision just might bring our little experiment in democracy to an abrupt and permanent halt.

 

The Developed World’s Outlier on All Things Healthcare: The United States

It’s a push-pull for many mainstream Dems to appear as if they are centrists and appealing to independents who occasionally buy into the GOP claims of “creeping socialism.” Because of the same root word – “social” – in both “socialism” and “social programs,” two very different concepts, Republicans have coasted on using “socialism” simply to defeat government programs that have some taxpayer support and even those programs paid for by those generating the elder benefits.

Government ownership of all real estate, farms and manufacturing is “socialism.” Except for an occasional government corporate or bank bailout, there’s no sign that the United States is in any meaningful way veering toward “socialism.” Social programs, on the other hand, would include public schools, Social Security and Medicare. Republicans rely heavily on older generations who fought “communism” (forced socialism under heel of a powerful and repressive elite), and for whom “socialism/communism” are fighting words. The Korean and Vietnam wars were ostensibly focused on these “horribles.” Add the word “entitlements” to the mix, and the GOP hopes that they can make their anti-government constituents hopping mad.

You can pretty much get the equivalent of the some of the best US university educations in Germany for literally a few hundred bucks year and zero student loans. When you leave a hospital in any other developed country, usually, you just leave with discharge papers. No bill. No invoice. No insurance claims. No approvals. No risk of rejection. We are the only developed country in the world that lacks universal healthcare, perpetually rejected by Republicans as “creeping socialism.” The point to long delays in other countries, which does happen on occasion, claiming that those participating in universal healthcare hate it. Canadian healthcare is a favorite trashing grounds for Republicans, but any poll of Canadians reveals they’d rather give up hockey than the universal healthcare!

Healthcare costs were so high (union benefits added $2,000 per vehicle on average) that US automakers decamped to Ontario decades ago, where the same unions and wage rates existed, simply to cut those healthcare add-ons that did not exist in Canada. We also pay more for essential prescription drugs than any other country in the world. The recent reduction in the cost of insulin will not hit the drugmakers at all… their production volume has more than made up for any loss of profits. Big Pharma is a treasure trove of campaign contributions and a massive user of expensive lobbyists to ensure that they can charge pretty much what they want in the US. Insurance carriers have fought mightily against universal healthcare, and even though Trump’s earliest campaign promises (see above picture) assured Americans he had a plan, (a) that plan, if it even existed, was never presented to Congress and (b) the GOP filed lawsuit after lawsuit to get the Affordable Care Act repealed.

Michael Hiltzik, railing in the March 26th Los Angeles Times, digs deeper into resistance to reasonableness in healthcare: “You might get the impression from the Biden administration’s insulin price cut and its initiative allowing Medicare to negotiate over other pharmaceuticals that the drug pricing issue is finally being taken seriously in Washington… Sadly, no.

“The evidence that nothing much has changed arrived just this week, with a notice from the Department of Health and Human Services rejecting a petition for a price cut on Xtandi, a wonder drug for prostate cancer that was developed with public funding at UCLA… The drug is marketed in the U.S. by Pfizer and the Japanese drug company Astellas for $189,800 a year. In Canada, a year’s supply costs $32,558, and in Japan it costs $31,594. Neither country contributed a dime to Xtandi’s development. In no other developed country does it cost more than $57,000…

“The agency’s rejection is at odds with Biden’s stated goal of bringing down prescription drug prices across the board, which he expressed in a July 2021 executive order. The law allows the government to provide competition to bring prices down, but HHS won’t budge… HHS’ rejection also comes at a time when Moderna and Pfizer, the developers of the most widely used COVID vaccines, are coming under fire for planning to jack up the prices of the vaccines fivefold , to $130 per shot. That decision landed Moderna Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel in the hot seat for nearly two hours during a Senate committee hearing Wednesday [3/22]… Bancel explained that Moderna’s price is based on ‘the value of a product to the healthcare system. ... How much money can be saved’ from its usage.

“This is a standard price-setting method among drugmakers. In this, the pharmaceutical industry is unique: No other industry asserts that its prices should be based on the higher costs of alternatives… Xtandi’s pricing testifies to the lobbying power of Big Pharma. Last year, Pfizer spent $14.8 million on government lobbying; PhRMA, the drug industry lobbying arm, $29.2 million ; and Astellas Pharma, $2.4 million… The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $82 million on lobbying last year; as Matthew Cunningham-Cook and David Sirota of the Lever point out, Pfizer’s chief federal lobbyist, Jennifer Walton, is on the chamber’s board of directors.

“The legal grounds for the Xtandi users’ petition stems from the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which governs the exploitation of inventions developed with federal funding. Bayh-Dole allows private companies to commercialize inventions that grew out of federally funded research, but it reserves certain rights for the government to protect the taxpayers’ investments.

“Chief among them are ‘march-in rights,’ which allow the government to order rights holders to license a federally funded invention to other manufacturers… The law allows the government to offer a license itself to alternative drugmakers to ensure that the drug is widely accessible if it concludes that a manufacturer hasn’t taken sufficient steps to make a product publicly available or hasn’t brought it out on ‘reasonable’ terms… Pfizer, PhRMA, Astellas and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have all listed Bayh-Dole march-in rights as a top lobbying concern.

“The government has never exercised its march-in rights. Xtandi was an ideal test case, because of the government’s indisputable role in its development, and because its U.S. price plainly narrows patients’ access to the drug.” While corporate America enjoyed the Trump-era reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, as the deficit soared as a result, costs soared for the rest of us. If you are wondering why Americans are willing to venture into cartel-dominated Mexican border towns for medical care and prescription drugs, you need only look at never-ending GOP resistance in Congress against what is common in every single other developed country on earth… and even some second world nations as well.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Republicans will support conspiracy theories, religious extremists, rabid and well-armed militia before they lift a finger to make life better for most of us; all they offer is a culture war that defies the Constitution.

Just One of the Many Reasons the Rich Get Richer

If you think that there is a different legal system for those with money and power, you are absolutely right. Aside from the ability to make massive campaign contributions and deploy professional lobbying experts, one of the most significant bases for that power is the ability to engage expensive teams of lawyers, creating mazes of transparency barrier to sidestep laws and regulations, that truly intimidate governmental enforcement officials. You’ve watched Donald Trump use the system to delay and deflect civil and criminal prosecution. Lots of lawyers! You wonder how Fortune 100 companies wind up paying little or no tax, but when you look at the staffing of their legal departments and see over 100 in-house tax lawyers, you might get a hint. 

When state tax authorities and the federal Internal Revenue Service seek to audit mega-wealthy individuals or very large corporations, they are acutely aware of the need to have a sizeable team of committed auditors spend a very long time to find the hidden treasure. Not the same as auditing a middle-class taxpayer who would generate a very small result but consumes a very small effort from a single auditor. That IRS is understaffed is hardly a secret. 

Even as the GOP reduced federal taxes on corporations from 35% to 21% in 2017 (a pre-pandemic gift to the rich from the Trump administration), creating an additional trillion-dollar hole in the federal deficit, Republicans remain deeply committed to helping the mega-rich avoid paying taxes. In their new anti-“woke” efforts, they expect to fill that deficit hole by cutting programs that benefit the bottom 90% of Americans. 

The recent Inflation Reduction Act provision that added $80 billion to the IRS is in the crosshairs of the Republican Party. The ultra-right-wing conservative constituency of House Republicans wants that $80 billion repealed as a condition to their lifting the debt ceiling. They apparently want to make it too difficult for the agency to pursue the mega-rich, forcing them to turn ordinary taxpayers into the IRS’ major collection focus. Between that and the recently passed infrastructure bill, slightly higher taxes for corporations and the super-wealthy actually reduce that deficit hole. Biden’s new $6.8 billion budget would further reduce the deficit, with minor increases in tax rates that only impact those earning over $400,000 a year. Needless to say, the GOP has made it clear that this budgetary request is dead on arrival.

Meanwhile, in addition to overstaffing, the IRS is burdened by an antiquated hardware and software system that further slows that federal agency down. Surprisingly, an alarming number of audits still rely on “paper” documentation and review. Not surprisingly, it is an open secret that without the ability (read: budget) to deploy sophisticated teams of senior auditors against deep rich pockets, the IRS is forced to rely much more heavily and soaking the little guys. Rebecca Chen, writing for the March 12th Yahoo!Finance illustrates the nation and scope of the problem: “Financially vulnerable families are burdened with never-ending notices and refund delays.

"‘Families with low incomes are relatively easy and inexpensive to audit compared to more wealthy individuals and corporations,’ Joanna Ain, associate director of policy at Prosperity Now, a national nonprofit driving change towards racial economic equality, told to Yahoo Finance. ‘I can imagine a huge and a very scary burden for low-income families to get these notices from the IRS and to go through that process.’…

“Nearly 50% of the IRS' total audits went to families making less than $25,000 and claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). The burden of the IRS audits disproportionately falls on lower-income families, with households making less than $25,000 facing the largest audit scrutiny among other income ranges in 2022, according to data released by TRAC… Dragged-out audits can hurt lower-income households because many depend on tax refunds to pay bills. Although the IRS recently released a new website portal to help fix issues faster, many families must amend returns during an audit, which can take up to another 16 weeks to process.

“[Jan Lewis, a CPA and chair of the tax executive committee at American Institute of Certified Public Accountants], for example, is helping a young family claim the Child Tax Credit and she can see the impact… ‘They have two kids under the age of four, they are working, they are trying to do their best and it's a real hardship,’ the CPA said. ‘I've been waiting for that refund since April of 2022. We're in February of 2023. And we can't even tell them when they're going to get their refund.’… But that's not all. Lewis said some taxpayers are so afraid of the IRS that they just pay the agency even if they're in the right… ‘They are scared the IRS is gonna come get them so they pay the balance when they really shouldn't,’ Lewis said.

“More than 97% of lower-income families who got audited in 2022 receive the audit by mail. This is because the tax agency replaced many of its face-to-face audits with letter audits as a cost cutting measure… ‘The way [the IRS] audits the family is mechanical, whereas the higher-income family, when they're being audited, they (may) have lawyers involved,’ Ain said. ‘You need to spend more money on the higher-income audits than the lower-income audits.’

“Lower-income taxpayers also often have trouble understanding the audit letters and navigating the process… ‘Correspondence audit letters fail to provide a point of contact,’ Erin Collins, the National Taxpayer Advocate, wrote in her annual report to Congress. ‘Low-income taxpayers encounter communication barriers that hinder audit resolution, leading to increased burdens and downstream consequences for taxpayers.’” But you do have to hand it to the Republican Party; they have successfully traded supporting religious fundamentalism, minimizing non-White/non-Christian minorities’ power at the polls and waging a culture war in exchange for a philosophy that government needs to be severely constrained in regulating the environment, the financial system and taxation, and a continued special treatment for the rich (that failed “a rising tide floats all boats” strategy). 

I’m Peter Dekom, and we are watching GOP supported special interests eroding equal treatment under the law, moving our nation away from democracy into the illiberal world of autocracy, theocracy and plutocracy… in short, the majority of Americans simply do not matter.

A Small Criminal Incident, a Big Result from Right-Wing US Policies

“García Luna, who once stood at the pinnacle of law enforcement in Mexico, will now live the rest of his days having been revealed as a traitor to his country and to the honest members of law enforcement who risked their lives to dismantle drug cartels.” 

Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Breon Peace on February 21st after the drug-cartel-related conviction of a former Mexican cabinet member and ex-Public Security Secretary

“Why don’t you take care of your young people? Why don’t you take care of the serious problem of social decay? Why don’t [you] temper the constant increase in drug consumption?”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador López Obrador asked the US in his daily news conference on March 9th

After four US citizens traveling to the easternmost part of northern Mexico – Matamoros – for vastly less expensive medical treatments/procedures and prescription drugs, were abducted from their white van (pictured above) on March 3rd, the FBI issued a $50,000 reward for the arrest and capture of the perpetrators and the safe return of the Americans. By making arrest of the perps a condition of the reward, the FBI side-stepped the US government ban on paying ransoms. Some in Mexico claimed it was a case of mistaken identity; the Americans were mistaken as participants on the “other side” of a cartel war. The Americans were found. There were three casualties: two dead, one shot and one unharmed. International pressure was so strong that a major cartel even apologized and turned its killers of the Americans.

Most should be aware that the Mexican border region with the US is exceptionally dangerous; the litany of well publicized accounts in every medium imaginable makes that very clear. But even my Mexican-born wife, a retired engineer who emigrated to the United States and became a citizen decades ago, will not cross the border or fly into her former homeland. She knows that every corner of Mexico is run directly or indirectly by drug cartels. She remembers the kidnappings that began decades ago, the ransom demands, and those who were never found again even when those demands were met.

As the above referenced quote suggests, the corrupt reach of the Mexican drug cartels goes all the way to the top. Even as Luna protested his innocence, the evidence against him was overwhelming. “García Luna, who denied the allegations, headed Mexico’s federal police and was later the country's top public safety official from 2006 to 2012. His lawyers said the charges were based on lies from criminals who wanted to punish his drug-fighting efforts and to get sentencing breaks for themselves by helping prosecutors.” ABC News, February 21st. 

Even as US authorities worked with and through Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the hovering dirty little secret that is seldom discussed – that cartels control Mexico – was swept aside. It is generally accepted, for example, that while most of the big Mexico premium hotels may be managed by Western companies, most of them are actually owned by the cartels or high-ranking shot callers. There literally is no safe place in the entire country, although some areas are more dangerous than others.

But this malignancy very much reflects failed American policies and denialism. As I have blogged repeatedly, there is no way these cartels could have reached the pinnacle of power – well beyond Mexico – without the ample supply of high-tech guns (estimated to be around 90% of all cartel weapons) easily purchased in and smuggled from the United States. Indeed, American gunmakers have even emblazoned Mexico hero-bandits on many of those weapons. Good marketing strategy, right? 

The money generated from American addicts and social drug users has fueled the cartel rise to power and given them the money to buy stockpiles of those guns. Cartels have better weapons than the local Mexican police, many of whom are on cartel payrolls anyway. Cartel power would not exist without this money and the ability to buy those weapons, many of which are military grade. Want to buy a legal gun in Mexico? Three years, training, background checks, psychological exams… and you can buy one gun from the only legal gun store in Mexico.

But those cartels terrorize locals from northern South America, then Central America, particularly through the triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras… then into Mexico. There is no recourse, no police who can arrest offending killer cartel operatives in so many communities, even entire countries, for those impoverished victims whose sons are often force-recruited into cartel armies. The infamous MS-13 began in Los Angeles but eventually became super-powerful in El Salvador. 

So, fearing for their lives, unable to make a living in war-torn cartel country, caravans of victims make their way to the US border seeking a safe place to survive. Surviving a horrific world, made that way with major complicity of US gun laws, US drug money and US-backed local politicians and police who are on cartel payrolls. Indeed, Republicans continue to fight meaningful gun control and push against asylum-seekers, victims of gangs with smuggled US-made weapons, trying to escape their American-made hell. Our last significant immigration legislation was passed in 1986. Republicans have since fought every effort to update that policy, even when proposed by GOP presidents.

Americans also pay the highest prescription drug prices anywhere. Any GOP plan on point has always tried to protect the massive profits generated by pharmaceutical companies operating in the US. We are the only developed nation without universal healthcare, with many red states refusing to expand Medicaid coverage for millions of Americans. This pushes an increasing number of Americans, especially those near our southern border, to seek medical and dental treatments in Mexico and to buy prescription drugs they cannot afford in the United States. Medical needs. And even simple tourism.

It happens all the time. The March 7th Associated Press describes one former tourism favorite: “The State Department’s travel warning for Tamaulipas [the state where Matamoros is located] warns U.S. citizens not to travel there. However, with it being a border city, U.S. citizens who live in Brownsville or elsewhere in Texas frequently cross to visit family, attend medical appointments or shop. It would also be a crossing point for people traveling deeper into Mexico.

“As the headquarters of the powerful Gulf cartel, Matamoros was once relatively calm. For years, a night out in Matamoros was also part of the ‘two-nation vacation’ for spring breakers flocking to Texas’ South Padre Island… But increased cartel violence over the last 10 to 15 years frightened away much of that business. Sometimes U.S. citizens are swept up in the violence.

“Three U.S. siblings disappeared near Matamoros in October 2014 and were later found shot to death and burned. They had disappeared two weeks earlier while visiting their father in Mexico. Their parents said they had been abducted by men dressed in police gear identifying themselves as ‘Hercules,’ a tactical security unit in the violent border city.” Violence has reached into beachy and historic cultural travel venues in every corner of the country, costing Mexico billions in lost travel-related revenues. So what? The cartels control the country, and they love our guns and money. Tourism is chump change to them.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for American Republican hardliners, their refusal to take the slightest responsibility for the horrors they have caused or enabled is infuriating.

What Artificial Intelligence Gone Awry Really Looks Like

What Artificial Intelligence Gone Awry Really Looks Like

Techno-Authoritarianism

To the uninformed, the above camera in a Chinese classroom appears to be valuable in evaluating teacher performance and whether or not the students are truly engaged. But add progressively intrusive AI analytics and you can link each individual student’s reaction to history lessons, political statements and any mention of a controversial topic. The ability of the government to utilize a combination of massive information-gathering together with humongous file server storage capacity has turned China into a mega-repressive regime with a long-term memory. Kids whose facial expressions suggest apathy, skepticism or disdain for politically “correct” thought can expect those AI- determined reactions to be stored on their permanent “social credit” profile.

“[Thus, t]he most audacious form of surveillance is China's ‘social credit’ system. The ruling party dishes out penalties and rewards based on a system created with the intention of incentivizing good behavior. Chinese citizens are given various penalties for a range of offenses -- including not paying taxes, jaywalking, walking a dog without a leash and how long someone plays video games, among others.

“Millions of travelers have also been barred from buying plane and train tickets and denied access to education. Unlike the United States, where companies use data to assess a person's creditworthiness for a loan or credit card, China's credit system applies to daily life… In 2018, individuals were blocked 290,000 times from taking senior management jobs or acting as a company's legal representative. For ethnic minorities, like Muslims, the surveillance can take a more intrusive turn… [as detained Uighurs have learned the hard way].” Fox News (5/1/20). 

Governments the world over are increasingly enamored of these Chinese surveillance systems, complete with highly intrusive AI analytics. Some simply amplify the “need to fight crime” mantra… others do not stop there. Writing for the February 26th Los Angeles Times, Paul Scharre, vice president and director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, notes: “If democracies don’t promote an alternative, Beijing’s repressive style will become a global norm….

“China is forging a new model of digital authoritarianism at home and is actively exporting it abroad. It has launched a national-level AI development plan with the intent to be the global leader by 2030. And it is spending billions on AI deployment, training more AI scientists and aggressively courting experts from Silicon Valley.

“The United States and other democracies must counter this rising tide of techno-authoritarianism by presenting an alternative vision for how AI should be used that is consistent with democratic values. But China’s authoritarian government has an advantage. It can move faster than democratic governments in establishing rules for AI governance, since it can simply dictate which uses are allowed or banned.

“One risk is that China’s model for AI use will be adopted in other countries while democracies are still developing an approach more protective of human rights… The Chinese Communist Party, for example, is integrating AI into surveillance cameras, security checkpoints and police cloud computing centers. As it does so, it can rely on world-class technology companies that work closely with the government. Lin Ji, vice president of iFlytek, one of China’s AI ‘national team’ companies, told me that 50% of its $1 billion in annual revenue came from the Chinese government.

“The government is pouring billions of dollars into projects such as the Skynet and Sharp Eyes surveillance networks and a ‘social credit system,’ giving it a much larger role in China’s AI industry than the role the U.S. government has in the industry here… China is building a burgeoning panopticon, with more than 500 million surveillance cameras deployed nationwide by 2021 — accounting for more than half of the world’s surveillance cameras. Even more significant than government cash buoying the AI industry is the data collected, which AI companies can use to further train and refine their algorithms.

“Facial recognition is being widely deployed in China, while a grassroots backlash in the U.S. has slowed deployment. Several U.S. cities and states have banned facial recognition for use by law enforcement. In 2020, Amazon and Microsoft placed a moratorium on selling facial-recognition technology to law enforcement, and IBM canceled its work in the field. These national differences are likely to give Chinese firms a major edge in development of facial-recognition technology.

“China’s use of AI in human rights abuses is evident in the repression and persecution of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang [Province in western China], through tools such as face, voice and gait recognition. Under the Strike Hard Campaign, the Chinese Communist Party has built thousands of police checkpoints across Xinjiang and deployed 160,000 cameras in the capital, Urumqi. Facial-recognition scanners are deployed at hotels, banks, shopping malls and gas stations. Movement is tightly controlled through ID checkpoints that include face, iris and body scanners. Police match this data against a massive biometric database consisting of fingerprints, blood samples, voice prints, iris scans, facial images and DNA…

“The U.S. government needs to be more proactive in international standard-setting, working with domestic companies to ensure that international AI and data standards protect human rights and individual liberty. International standard-setting — through organizations such as the International Organization for Standardization, the International Electrotechnical Commission and the United Nations International Telecommunication Union — is one of the lower-profile but essential battlegrounds for global tech governance.” 

Except there are too many current uses of AI-driven surveillance technology right here in the United States, including both state and federal agencies. It’s not even about “you” anymore. “Surveillance technology has long been able to identify you. Now, with help from artificial intelligence, it’s trying to figure out who your friends are… With a few clicks, this ‘co-appearance’ or ‘correlation analysis’ software can find anyone who has appeared on surveillance frames within a few minutes of the gray-haired male over the last month, strip out those who may have been near him a time or two, and zero in on a man who has appeared 14 times. The software can instantaneously mark potential interactions between the two men, now deemed likely associates, on a searchable calendar.

“Vintra, the San Jose-based company that showed off the technology in an industry video presentation last year, sells the co-appearance feature as part of an array of video analysis tools. The firm boasts on its website about relationships with the San Francisco 49ers and a Florida police department. The Internal Revenue Service and additional police departments across the country have paid for Vintra’s services, according to a government contracting database… But the firm is one of many testing new AI and surveillance applications with little public scrutiny and few formal safeguards against invasions of privacy.” Noah Bierman, LA Times, March 3rd.

There are way too many buyers of such systems all around the world. They are the great enabling tools of autocracy. And these sales must stop and the use of these intrusive systems severely curtailed.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I have to wonder what “culture warriors” like Florida Governor and de facto presidential candidate Ron DeSantis would do with surveillance tools like this freely used against… all of us.

Oy...

 

“What the enemies of Israel have not been able and won’t be able to ever achieve — to see an isolated and economically struggling Israel — is happening due to the actions of the current Israeli government… Capital is flowing out of the country. Businesses and investors are questioning whether they will see return on their investments if the independence of the judiciary is jeopardized. This is a crisis of Israel’s own making.” 

 Dany Bahar, an international affairs professor at Brown University.

The relationship between the United States and Israel runs deep. US President Harry Truman reacted within minutes of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, the first head of state to recognize that new nation. Senior WWII veteran US military officers, like Al Schwimmer, a New York native, and Mitchell Flint, born in Kansas, literally created what became the Israeli air force. Golda Meir (born Golda Mabovitch), moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to what was to become Israel, becoming prime minister in 1969. The United States has been Israel’s champion, her major supplier of military hardware throughout her existence, supporter against UN challenges, and these two nations have historically been exceptionally close allies since inception.

So many American Jews have been passionate Zionists, believing in and supporting the very essence of Israel, a Jewish homeland established with historical Biblical roots. Through battles with neighboring Arab states and internal and often violent struggles with local Palestinians, who have yearned for their own independent state, Israel has prospered. In 1993, during the Clinton administration and with strong US support, Israel and the local Palestinian authority agreed to the notion of a separate Palestinian state under the Oslo Accords. 

Despite its often-violent relationship with local Palestinians, who divided themselves into extremists under Hamas rule in Gaza and the more accommodating leadership under the Palestine Liberation Organization, until the Trump administration, the notion of a two-state solution – Palestine would be formed on what is known as the West Bank (see above map) – was accepted by the United States and Israel. Theoretically, Jerusalem would remain an open city as the centerpiece of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The Trump administration, courting a Jewish vote, moved US recognition of Jerusalem is the true capital of Israel and effectively joined the Benjamin Netanyahu regime’s de facto repudiation of the two-state solution under the Oslo Accords. Jewish settlements in the West Bank, always a threat to that two-state solution, instantly expanded. During Israeli elections, Netanyahu’s “brotherhood” with Donald Trump was anything but subtle, as the above Israeli election-era billboard illustrates.

The Biden administration has mildly returned to supporting the two-state solution, which is now almost impossible. Last year, Netanyahu, under the cloud of a corruption prosecution, lost his PM position… but by crafting a coalition with his extreme religious right returned power as PM on December 29th. He pledged concessions to those anti-Palestinian members of the Israeli parliament (the unicameral Knesset), within his ultra-orthodox rightwing coalition, that began to formalize the full and unqualified annexation of the West Bank as a permanent part of Israel, making it clear that Israel was a Jewish state with Jewish values, and taking steps to give the Knesset the right to overrule Israel’s Supreme Court by a simple majority vote, long viewed as major check and balance against autocratic tendencies. Without a constitution, the judicial system was seen as a necessity to promulgate democracy and human rights. Was this anti-democratic move becoming the new Israel?

As told by Tracy Wilkinson, writing for the March 22nd Los Angeles Times, this fast-track effort toward autocracy – led fiercely by Netanyahu and his new political allies – has alienated a large segment of American Jews and a very significant portion of the Israeli population itself: “With massive street protests, a mutiny by elite military reserve officers and outrage from diplomats, academics and former officials, Israel seems steeped in epic crisis.

“Shock waves over radical plans by the new right-wing Israeli government are also cascading thunderously in the U.S., alienating Jewish Americans while raising questions about the Biden administration’s ability — or willingness — to confront the troubles… Israel’s figurehead President Isaac Herzog warned bluntly of civil war… ‘The abyss is within touching distance,’ Herzog said last week, making the bleak assessment after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a proposed compromise over his coalition’s efforts to weaken the Israeli Supreme Court and national judiciary.

“Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, wants to subjugate judges to politicians and make it easier for members of the Knesset, or parliament, to overturn court decisions. But the debate now goes much deeper than the judiciary to the essence of democracy itself, critics say… ‘This is not just a political crisis; this is an existential crisis,’ Rabbi Noah Farkas, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, said hours after returning from an urgent trip to Israel late last week [mid-March]… Though both sides have legitimate grievances, he said, the questions being raised are starkly fundamental… ‘What does Jewish mean? Zionist? What does being an Israeli mean?’ Farkas said.

“‘This is a coup d’etat,’ Alon Pinkas, who served as a senior foreign policy advisor in several Israeli administrations, said in an interview from his home in Tel Aviv. He and those who voice similar sentiment believe that the changes Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox and extreme nationalist ruling partners are planning would create a new form of government in Israel. It would be a regime changer, they say, creating something akin to a religious autocracy instead of the “Jewish and democratic state” that has long characterized how Israel legally defines itself.” On March 23rd, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition approved legislation that would protect the PM from being deemed unfit to rule because of his corruption trial and claims of a conflict of interest surrounding his involvement in the judicial changes. Protecting a politician from corrupt actions?

The US government, loath to take on its traditional ally, protested… mildly. “The Biden administration is warning Israeli officials against moving ahead with legal changes that would green light the reestablishment of settlements in the West Bank, a flashpoint with Palestinians that the U.S. warns will inflame violence during a heightened point of tensions.

“State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said in a lengthy statement Tuesday [3/21] that the U.S. is ‘extremely troubled’ over the advancement of legislation in the Israeli Knesset that rescinds parts of a nearly two-decade old law that prohibited Israeli communities to be built on specific territory in the West Bank.” The Hill, March 21st. While Netanyahu backed off a bit from out-and-out annexation of the West Bank, to please the Biden administration, he certainly did not address his fundamental changes to check and balances. The denigration of Israel’s judiciary to be subject to reversal by the very legislative body it was supposed to contain, also signaled a troubling shift to American politicians into autocracy. The Knesset could become the highest court in the land, politicians making political decisions depending on who voted for them?

While Benjamin Netanyahu is a long away from dictators like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, he is looking a lot like illiberal leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and, had his inspired Capitol insurrection and pressured efforts to overturn the 2020 election worked as planned, even Donald Trump. It is sad to watch once clearly democratic countries slide into autocracy, a transitioning label called “anocracy,” where clear and usually religiously “justified” minorities believe that they are the only constituency that can set national values and govern. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and Israel’s strong jerk to the autocratic right should be a severe lesson to comparably biased Americans, very much the emblem of the MAGA GOP, of how fragile democracy really is.

Intimidating Grand Juries, Juries and Prosecutors, a New MAGA Must

 

"The FBI (Fake Bureau of Investigation) & the Department of Injustice, together with the Trump Hating Thug, Jack Smith, are interviewing, harassing, and subpoenaing people that work for me relative to the BOXES HOAX, & the 'Peacefully & Patriotically' speech I made at the January 6th protest of the Rigged and Stollen (sic) Presidential Election, where so many have been treated horribly and Unconstitutionally… This is a Gestapo type operation! Are they doing this to the Biden people? I don’t think so!" 

January Trump post on his Trump Social website

For anyone believing that Trump did not call on his followers to do what they needed to do at the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021 or that those who fired bear repellent or hit police officers or who smashed windows, trashed Capitol offices or went into hard physical battle with police were “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” (the official GOP description of those attackers), I have bridge you should buy in Brooklyn. People died there. We now have a vivid and highly videoed litany of what rightwing MAGA Republicans do when they are unhappy about elections and law enforcement. From Charlottesville to the Capitol to the armed militia on the steps of the Michigan Capitol steps. Tucker Carlson’s fake news “vindication” notwithstanding.

You may recall how, at the January 6th Trump remonstration at the Ellipse, Trump asked the Secret Service and the Capitol Police, who informed him that those gathered on the other side of metal detectors were armed, to turn off those machines. “They’re not here to hurt me,” he replied. Those rapt attendees were among those who joined the March to the Capitol… and participated in the break-in, the attack on the officers, intending to stop an election certification vote and “hang Mike Pence.” Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, Oath Keepers, many of whom were tried and convicted of serious felonies for their actions.

Donald Trump is a master of turning what would appear bad politically to almost anyone else to serve as a recruiting drive for both political donations and violent political action. He is the “victim,” a purported stand-in for his “you could be next” MAGA following, protecting his flock and making damned sure that any grand juror, prosecutor, ordinary juror must accept the risk that if they indict (or worse) Trump, their lives will be at risk. His mere stated assumption of his imminent arrest on March 22nd, which did not pan out, resulted in $1.5 million in donations pouring in to support Trump’s defense. The repeated efforts by Trump and his retinue to assert both “executive privilege” and “attorney-client privilege,” the latter of which is not legally sustainable if such attorney-client conversations are most probably part of suborning criminal conduct, have been shot down by trial and appellate courts at every level.

But Trump just might be beginning to believe the he just might avoid trials and convictions as the Teflon defendant. He has not been indicted or prosecuted to date, and the lead case about hush money paid to a porn star is hardly the national horrible that he might face in connection with obstruction, unlawful possession of classified materials, inciting an insurrection or attempting to influence election officials to “find” votes. But Trump has one big card to play if he is genuinely facing charges. Intimidation. To stop prosecutions in the first place. And make sure jurors won’t convict him if he is tried.

As literally hundreds of death threats poured into the mailroom at the offices of Manhattan Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg, prosecuting the Stormy Daniels’ hush money case against Trump, one particular message stood out: “A powdery substance was found Friday [3/24] with a threatening letter… New York City police and environmental protection officials isolated and removed the suspicious letter, and testing ‘determined there was no dangerous substance,’ Bragg spokesperson Danielle Filson said. The substance was sent to a lab for further testing, police said… ‘Alvin, I am going to kill you,’ the letter said…

“Hours earlier, Trump posted on his social media platform that any criminal charge against him could lead to ‘potential death & destruction.’… Trump also posted a photo of himself holding a baseball bat next to a picture of Bragg, a Democrat. On Thursday [3/23], Trump referred to Bragg, Manhattan’s first Black district attorney, as an ‘animal.’” Associated Press, March 25th. Trump also likened Federal Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, as “worse than the Gestapo,” that horrific pre-WWII era Nazi police force used to gather Jews for transportation to death camps.

Lest there be any doubt that the underlying cause of these threats, Trump has repeatedly called on his followers to take to the streets and “protest, protest, protest” with nary a suggestion that such protests be peaceful.

Trump has generally made his worst threats verbally, often away from microphones and cameras as well. But recently, perhaps feeling that he could create such a hostile environment against any judicial body seeking to convict or incarcerate him, Trump is now putting those threats in writing. And as Ron DeSantis is beginning to discover, the Florida Governor’s lack of national and international experience is drawing the wrath of even senior members of his own party. Maybe Americans really don’t want the United States to be nothing more than a big Florida. And perhaps that could explain why Trump’s poll numbers are rising again. Trump is definitely feeling his oats.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if Americans really want lower taxes for the rich and minority rule by White Christian nationalists, or increasingly violent polarization, they have a plethora of choice within the Republican Party.

Sick and Without Medicare or Employer Healthcare – Good Luck with That

All those billionaire and centimillionaires are so generous with their gifts to major hospitals where they live, fostering upgrades, research and operational support? Right? Kindness on steroids, even though they do get their names prominently featured on buildings, clinics and donor walls. Oh, and there is one more unwritten benefit: in the event of severe injury or catastrophic illness, these donors, in direct proportion to their gifts, get special hospital rooms, catered food and doctors who will drop just about anything else they are doing to provide medical services worthy of the President of the United States.

But many of these donors are often the same critics of “unsustainable” Medicare, excessively “generous” Medicaid (even where it isn’t fully available) and “confiscatory” taxes. They are often those who claim that those who are accorded the universal healthcare in every other developed nation on earth are truly denied full-level emergency care, always face interminably long lines and are provided with inferior healthcare. Funny, even with some delays where medical treatment is not critical, there are very, very few complainers in the rest of the developed world when they can walk out of a hospital after a long stay without paying a dime. Or where there monthly cost for prescription medicines is capped at between $10 and $20. Ask them if they would trade for a US-based healthcare system and most would laugh derisively.

For those who claim our federal and state taxes unfairly burden the rich, you’d have to explain to me why all those loopholes continue (like the infamous “carried interest” rule that accords fund managers capital gains rates even when they made no investment) and why we lowered the federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and still major corporations pay far less, if anything. A tax cut that was supposed to pay for itself and create first-rate jobs instead hemorrhages the federal deficit, promulgated stock buybacks but not jobs. You would also have to justify why the United States has more billionaires and centimillionaires, even corrected for inflation, than at any other time in history or why major corporate CEOs earn over 600 times their median employees pay (in the 1950s, it was 50 times). See also my recent How to Earn More as Fortune 500 CEO: Fail blog.

Our Social Security and Medicare systems were built on the financial assumption that the US population would continue to grow, and that there would be an increase in working Americans to support elder Americans. But American citizens’ birthrates have fallen below replacement rates, so we have a contracting population combined with new federal policies aimed at cutting back immigration. Since the underlying structure is no longer one capable of supporting these vested social programs (hardly “entitlements”), it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that if you do not want to punish older Americans, financing for these programs has to come from “somewhere else.” Instead, the fundamental GOP approach is to cut the programs or delay the benefits… but leave those rich folks alone.

While US-driven research has produced some of the most advanced medical technology on earth and pharmacological research like no other, access to that technology may just depend on what kind of healthcare coverage you can afford… knowing that Americans pay more for the same prescription meds than any other nation on earth. Daniel Stone, a Los Angeles physician and writing for the March 4th Los Angeles Times, notes that the “U.S. is spending trillions of dollars for substandard care, and patients are suffering…

“In calling out the system I intend no disrespect to the talented and heroic overachievers in nursing, pharmacy, medicine and the other providers who fight the system every day on behalf of our patients… Despite such efforts, the sad but undeniable fact is that our healthcare system — the way the U.S. distributes and pays for healthcare — makes it the most expensive failed enterprise in the history of human civilization.

“Part of what set me off that week was a series of examples of my patients’ chronic struggles to access mental health services. After years of poor funding and a deluge of demand since the pandemic began, providers are in short supply. Scarcity is coupled with barriers imposed by insurance networks. Absent reasonable access to services, primary care doctors like me become the psychiatrists of first and last resort, pushing the bounds of our competence. But what else can we do?

“A second part of the week’s grind was the latest obstacles to drug therapy. The costs are so high for so many medicines that even insured patients struggle. Take Ozempic. There’s no generic, and it’s a financial stretch at nearly $900 a month, but it helps my diabetic patients — until last week, when they couldn’t find it. Why? Because of its newly recognized use for weight loss. It’s suddenly so popular that pharmacies run out. How can a system allow wealthy individuals looking to shed a few pounds to use their cash to elbow aside diabetics who actually need the drug?

“A third conspicuous failure of our healthcare system, looming in the background every week for physicians like me, is hospital funding. Hospitals have survived for years by collecting high fees from commercial insurers to subsidize losses from treating Medicaid and Medicare patients. With a rise in the cost of care, and a shift toward patients on government plans and away from private insurance, even the most prestigious and well-managed hospitals, both locally and nationally, face an emerging flood of red ink. Many are cutting costs sharply to preserve solvency. In a rational system, the revenue that supports critical institutions like hospitals would not be subject to perennial financial crises.”

What seems to underlie legislative efforts to “fix the system” is the massive flow of campaign contributions (or negative ads for those who do not fall in line) to ensure that those who generate the most profits from healthcare keep those profits in any purported “fix.” Unless the underlying costs of powerful special interests are addressed and contained, until getting through medical school (including nursing) is no longer a lifelong drag on the graduates struggling with loans, we are going to keep complaining… and making sure that the mega-rich can get even mega-richer. Meanwhile, our healthcare and retirement systems are shuddering and quaking in disrepair.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if our underlying political and economic systems are supposed to be predicated on fairness, we truly have the most failed economic reality in the developed world.

Irregularity, a Banking Disease

   

It’s no secret that businesses generally do not like governmental regulation. Self-regulation, however, appears to be more spin-control that true consumer-directed protection. Where regulation of risk is crucial – to consumers, workers or the environment – BIG OIL and BIG FINANCE, are often the first in line to talk a good game but also to make sure they do not have to spend money that can be avoided by making vastly less expensive than campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. Remember, if compliance is voluntary or close to it, corporate America – a legal construct that only has a fiduciary duty to shareholders and no one else – almost never wants to saddle itself with a cost that its competitors do not also have. So, guess what? Between the PR machine and those legislative influence payments, they generally do not happen.

This pressurized corporate effort to avoid governmental oversight has real world consequences. Whether it is a string of train derailments in Ohio, literally contaminating entire neighborhoods, oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico or collapsing banks sending shutters of instability across our entire financial sector, “we the people” pay… much, much more than if the subject companies faced the kind of scrutiny that their business operations really required. Risk management within companies and their insurers (who often syndicate risk to several entities) is usually a wager based on internal “probabilities” and “cost-benefit analyses” where serious consequences are simply accepted if the odds look good. It is no substitute for genuine governmental oversight. A measured level of death and disaster is just part of the acceptable risk. Their risk. Your life.

It’s also no secret that government regulations – environmental, worker-consumer safety and financial – are always in the crosshairs of the Republican Party, sometimes with the complicity of Democratic Congresspeople elected in primarily red states. However, federal regulatory agencies faced a sustained bloodbath under the Trump presidency. For example, the Consumer Protection Agency was placed under the helm of a distinctly pro-business director, and the Environment Protection Agency was severely constrained as thousands EPA employees were let go.

Railroad safety also succumbed to industry lobbying to a pro-business president: “Trump’s administration, which rolled back more than 100 environmental rules in total, watered down several regulations at the behest of the rail industry. [Trump] withdrew an Obama-era plan to require faster brakes on trains carrying highly flammable materials, shelved a rule that demanded at least two crew members on freight trains and dropped a ban on transporting liquified natural gas by rail, despite fears this could cause explosions.” The Guardian, February 22nd.

And now we have two small-to-medium sized banks, Silicon Valley and Signature banks failing, being taken over by regulators with depositors covered under the FDIC plan or a follow-up federal pledge to guarantee any uncovered deposits. Why? Simply, deregulation played a major role. Didn’t the post-2008 legislation, resulting from the crash of those “too big to fail” institutions, fix the bad risk problem? Let’s look at recent history to see what happened: “Under regulations implemented in accordance with the Dodd-Frank banking reform law of 2010 safety-and-soundness standards were tightened for banks with more than $50 billion in assets… Those larger banks were required to submit annual disclosures to the Fed, meet stricter liquidity and risk management requirements, and undergo ‘stress testing’ that would reveal how they would fare under extreme financial scenarios.

“Mid-sized banks launched a vigorous lobbying campaign to raise that threshold. In testimony submitted to the Senate Banking Committee in 2015, Greg Becker, the chief executive of Silicon Valley Bank [SVB], called for raising the threshold as high as $250 billion… Becker’s statement bristled with the buzzwords and catchphrases beloved of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. He asserted that without the change, the regulations would be so burdensome that ‘SVB will likely need to divert significant resources from providing financing to job-creating companies in the innovation economy.’… Becker referred to ‘SVB’s deep understanding of the markets it serves, our strong risk management practices, and the fundamental strength of the innovation economy.’

“As it happens, SVB plainly didn’t understand how the markets it serves were vulnerable to lock-step flight from its deposit accounts, had weak or paltry risk-management practices, and failed to recognize that the innovation economy has its ups and downs… The industry’s lobbying yielded fruit. President Trump raised the Dodd-Frank threshold in 2018. At the signing ceremony, Trump labeled the regulations ‘crushing.’ He said, ‘Those rules just don’t work.’” Michael Hiltzik, writing for the March 13th Los Angeles Times. SVB and Signature then fell below a new, asset level threshold raised during the Trump years… and thus were permitted to rely on their own internal risk management assessments without much in the way of federal oversight.

Reynold Aquino, writing for the March 12th Newbreak.com, adds: “The [SVC] collapse was preceded by an announcement from the bank that it had sold a number of securities at a loss and planned to sell $2.25bn in new shares to improve its balance sheet. This news prompted VC firms to advise their companies to withdraw their holdings from the bank, which caused a run on the bank and led to its ultimate collapse. Federal regulators stepped in to take control of the bank after its failure.

“Critics have focused on a list of Republican senators who voted to reduce regulatory oversight on Silicon Valley Bank in 2018. Howard Forman, a professor at Yale, shared the list which includes names like Senators Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, and Mitch McConnell, as well as a few Democrats, including Senators Joe Manchin and Tim Kaine. David Sirota, founder of The Lever, specified that ‘50 Republican senators and 17 Democratic senators voted to ignore warnings and weaken risk regulations for Silicon Valley Bank. Donald Trump signed the bill into law. And now the bank is the 2nd biggest bank collapse in American history.’…

“While external factors, such as inflation and a drop in available VC funding, contributed to the collapse of the bank, some banking experts argue that the bank might have managed its interest rate risk better if parts of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulators package had not been rolled back under President Trump. The Dodd-Frank Act was introduced by the Obama administration in response to the Great Recession, which was sparked by the banking collapse of 2007 onwards. The Act introduced new financial regulations, including a reduction in the frequency of stress tests conducted by the Federal Reserve for banks whose assets totaled between $100bn and $250bn.” I guess business gets what they pay for… except the rest of us pay so much more.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the underlying battle of slogans prevents the average voter from truly understanding what happens when some those extreme slogans get passed and implemented… because campaign and lobbying money talks.

What is America Next? A View from the UK

It easy to focus on the shenanigans in Congress, the machinations of attack and defense in our nation’s capital, the tweeting and social media battles, the investigations of political players and their families, the crass political manipulations, a Supreme Court that act more like an autocratic legislature and the red vs blue national conflicts. If the United States has in devolved into a White Christian nationalist (oddly cast as “red”) faction struggling against a “blue” progressive “we’re all in this together” egalitarian constituency, the bigger question is whether Washington, D.C. is the relevant battleground at all.

As the GOP’s slim majority in the House and the Dem’s tiny majority in the Senate, we’re not likely to see any significant legislation until 2025, when the 2024 Congress is seated and the next President elected. In the meantime, we may see a few less-than-controversial bills slide through, somehow we will probably revisit the debt ceiling debacle more than once, and a few confirmations are likely to slide by, but the mega-issues that will define our nation’s future are indeed raging across the land, bitter, extreme and mutually exclusive. Just not in Washington.

First, there fewer bi-partisan state legislatures than you might think. 32 states are currently deemed “trifecta” governments: where the governor and both houses of state legislatures are controlled by a single party. The reality has to focus on the four most populous states with the biggest economic clout: blue California (which lost one House seat in the recent Census), blue New York (which suffered the same fate), red Texas (which picked up one seat) and red Florida (which did the same).

Sure these states are anything but “pure” red or blue; after all GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy is from California, and virtually all of Texas’ mega cities are run by blue municipal administrations. At the state governance level, however, the blue is deep and red often deeper. That these four states account for a third of both our population and GDP underscores their importance. Politicians from these seminal states seem to be purposely embracing direct confrontation with each other as the new normal. Game on?

California and New York are high tax/high regulation states, while Texas and Florida are quite the opposite. As the change in House representation reflects, migration away from higher taxes and costs of living have favored Texas and Florida, with a small trickle of tech companies following those trends. With more superstar universities and tech communities, New York and California have the edge. Many believe that where people are moving to is a very important future indicator.

On November 18th, obviously after our recent election, the prestigious UK The Economist published one of a series of articles attempting to explain the United State political scene to its global readers. Republished on January 19th, “To understand America’s future, watch the four mega-states California and New York on the left, Florida and Texas on the right” (by senior columnist Alexandra Suich Bass) focuses on the seemingly irreconcilable differences that have fractured and hardened our nation into red and blue vectors.

“Dividing along ideological lines, the mega-states offer opposing visions for the country’s direction and therefore embody the idea that America is becoming increasingly split… By design, the federalist system enables states to run their own experiments, serving, in the words of Louis Brandeis, a former Supreme Court justice, as ‘laboratories of democracy.’

“[Single party political dominance] helps explain why the states create partisan policy experiments that do not reflect voters’ will. For example, Texas now has a law banning abortion from conception, with no exception for rape or incest, although most Texans oppose such severe restrictions.

“Like the country, the mega-states are heading towards different poles, and the policies they are spinning out are in direct confrontation with one another. For example, California and New York have advanced green-energy policies, with California going so far as to ban the sale of petrol-powered automobiles from 2035. Meanwhile, Texas recently banned financial firms that are not supportive enough of oil and gas extraction from doing business in the state, and Florida has barred investment decisions based on environmental, social and governance principles…

“California and, to a lesser extent, New York see themselves as blue beacons of the Democratic agenda. Having already pioneered policies on access to abortion, climate change and benefits for undocumented immigrants, in 2023 they are likely to push to new extremes on the environment, social welfare and labour law. Florida and Texas see themselves as pioneers of cutting-edge Republican policy and will serve up divisive new laws on social issues and elections.” But it is in these direct governor-to-governor confrontations, policies meant to underscore the divisions between us, that the battle for control of America rages.

“California and, to a lesser extent, New York see themselves as blue beacons of the Democratic agenda. Having already pioneered policies on access to abortion, climate change and benefits for undocumented immigrants, in 2023 they are likely to push to new extremes on the environment, social welfare and labour law. Florida and Texas see themselves as pioneers of cutting-edge Republican policy and will serve up divisive new laws on social issues and elections…

“Florida’s and Texas’s busing of recently arrived immigrants to Democratic cities is one example. The battlefronts will be numerous, from immigration enforcement to abortion. Expect to see plenty of jousting between the governors and attorneys-general of the mega-states in 2023… “Nowhere will this be more visible than in the rivalry between Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, and Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. [Pictured above] Both are likely to be presidential contenders and will look to use their states as ‘symbolic representations of what they would offer the American people,’ says Ken Miller of Claremont McKenna College in California. Voters may have to choose between the Golden State and the Sunshine State as a vision for the whole country in 2024.” The Economist. If Congress cannot pass significant legislation, states most certainly can. With a right-wing Supreme Court, those conservative state legislatures seem to have the edge.

We politely refer to this battle as a “culture” war, “woke” liberalism vs conservative old-world values. But the undertones of White supremacy, intolerance of “diversity” and insertion of clear Christian evangelical values are now pitted against a movement towards a more open society, which is concerned about climate change and equality among all Americans. All this portends instability, perhaps greater violence and increasingly irreconcilable differences. With all the guns available here, the rest of the world wonders if this “greatest nation on earth” can hold together. So do I.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless we find a way for Americans to get along, which may have to wait until the younger generations take over (if we last that long), we inch closer to the “great unraveling” of our almost two-and-a-half century experiment in democracy.