The Never-ending Saga of Surprise Fees and Surcharges

 

As a business traveler, when I am focused solely on my work, I am continually angered by the “resort fee” often added to my hotel bill. Generally, I select accommodation close to my meeting venues, sometimes even in that same hotel. I never seem to use any of those “resort” facilities and usually do not even know what they are. Banks also love to charge all kinds of fees – from minimum balance to overdraft fees way out of proportion to the cost (particularly when you have significant deposits in other accounts under the same name), lots of “transaction fees,” all the while generating interest income to their coffers that they seldom share with you. Medical add-ons for all kinds of reasons (out-hospital specialist, etc.) plague hospital invoices, particularly for emergency admissions when an unconscious patient wakes up to find add-ons that turn out to be excluded under that patient’s healthcare policy. Don’t even talk to me about cruise lines!

The harsh reality is that many of these fees are not clearly disclosed upfront, even when they are charged 100% of the time. President Biden has been railing against “junk fees” throughout his administration and managed to pass some protection against “balance billing” from medical facilities. The federal Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 was enacted signed into law on December 27, 2020 and contains many provisions to help protect consumers from surprise bills, including the No Surprises Act. Some states have their own, more restrictive laws on their books.

The Mayo Clinic explains the gist of this federal statute on its Website: “‘Surprise billing’ is an unexpected balance bill. This can happen when you cannot control who is involved in your care — like when you have an emergency or when you schedule a visit at an in-network facility but are unexpectedly treated by an out-of-network provider. Surprise medical bills could cost thousands of dollars depending on the procedure or service.

“If you have an emergency medical condition and get emergency services from an out-of- network provider or facility, the most they can bill you is your plan's in-network cost-sharing amount (such as copayments, coinsurance and deductibles). You cannot be balance billed for these emergency services. This includes services you may get after you are in stable condition unless you give written consent and give up your protections not to be balanced billed for these post-stabilization services.”

As noted, the Biden administration, getting increasing pushback from the Republican dominated House of Representatives, summarized its goals in this June 15, 2023 White House press release, where the President has been jawboning private sector companies “to end surprise fees by fully disclosing fees to consumers upfront. Together, these companies service millions of consumers each year, all of whom will receive a better shopping experience without surprise fees imposed at checkout.

“Junk fees — hidden, surprise fees that companies sneak onto customer bills — are a pervasive problem in industries across the economy. That’s why the President has been calling on federal agencies, Congress, and private companies to take action to address these fees and provide consumers with honest, transparent pricing. A large body of research has shown that fees charged at the back-end of the buying process, along with other types of junk fees, make it harder to comparison shop, impede competition, and lead to consumers paying more.”

Recently, the big news is that the airline industry has seriously ramped up charging checked baggage and even on-board carry-on luggage fees, a nasty habit that began two decades ago. The reason for that practice is mired not only in the “I want more profits” motivation but in the way our federal tax code is written. Writing for the March 15th The Conversation, Boston University Associate Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law, Jay L. Zagorsky, explains: “Five out of the six biggest U.S. airlines have raised their checked bag fees since January 2024… Take American Airlines. In 2023, it cost US$30 to check a standard bag in with the airline; today, as of March 2024, it costs $40 at a U.S. airport – a whopping 33% increase.

“As a business school professor who studies travel, I’m often asked why airlines alienate their customers with baggage fees instead of bundling all charges together. There are many reasons, but an important, often overlooked cause is buried in the U.S. tax code… Airlines pay the federal government 7.5% of the ticket price when flying people domestically, alongside other fees. The airlines dislike these charges, with their trade association arguing that they boost the cost to the consumer of a typical air ticket by around one-fifth.

“However, the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations specifically excludes baggage from the 7.5% transportation tax as long as ‘the charge is separable from the payment for the transportation of a person and is shown in the exact amount.’… This means if an airline charges a combined $300 to fly you and a bag round-trip within the U.S., it owes $22.50 in tax. If the airline charges $220 to fly you plus separately charges $40 each way for the bag, then your total cost is the same — but the airline only owes the government $16.50 in taxes. Splitting out baggage charges saves the airline $6.

“Now $6 might not seem like much, but it can add up. Last year, passengers took more than 800 million trips on major airlines. Even if only a fraction of them check their bags, that means large savings for the industry… How large? The government has tracked revenue from bag fees for decades. In 2002, airlines charged passengers a total of $180 million to check bags, which worked out to around 33 cents per passenger.

“Today, as any flyer can attest, bag fees are a lot higher. Airlines collected over 40 times more money in bag fees last year than they did in 2002… When the full data is in for 2023, total bag fees will likely top $7 billion, which is about $9 for the average domestic passenger. By splitting out the cost of bags, airlines avoided paying about half a billion dollars in taxes just last year.” Yup, the cost of checking bags has been steadily and significantly increasing for decades… and it shows no sign of letting up.

The solution of all to these surprise billings could follow the No Suprises Act provisions on medical bills. Require upfront disclosure, consolidate all charges into one cost, adjust any conflicting provisions (like the tax code), and add a requirement of “reasonable and necessary” to these side charges. Ah, but with a “whatever business wants” mantra in the GOP-dominated House, don’t hold your breath. As much as corporate America praises capitalism, they hate level-playing field competition even more than taxes and government regulation. they can pretend they are providing a product or service at one price but charge a whole lot more.

I’m Peter Dekom, and one of the reasons direct government consumer-directive legislation works is that it levels the playing field for similarly situated companies.

Livin’ in a Land Where Almost Everyone is Red or Blue

  VS

It was once blue and gray. We’ve been here before. If you live in Los Angeles or Boston, it is very difficult to comprehend how anyone could ever vote for autocratic populist Donald Trump. Likewise, if you live in Oklahoma City or Bismark, the notion of voting for radical leftist Joe Biden is deeply abhorrent. Such passions now border on the religious zeal of a deeply faithful committed churchgoer. Those adhering to the opposite view in a land where the sea is virtually all blue or red are evil, unpatriotic and destroying our nation. Those who are intensely uncomfortable living where there is one overwhelming shared political belief, because they have opposite feelings, are often pressured to move to more compatible political venues. Or they simply hide their beliefs.

Families are often fractured, couples divorce, where those schisms are just too strong to ignore. Put a poster in your front yard or on your bumper representing the opposite political choice in such areas of uniform belief, and you may just provoke a violent reaction that flies in the face of the First Amendment. Even driving a car with a California license plate can provoke serious red state wrath. So, today’s blog examines the impact of peer pressure on individual political choice, even where personal values would suggest a very opposite result. Peer pressure is everywhere on this planet, and nations without a strong history of democracy often unravel quickly in a sea of political conformity.

Let’s start with the fact that someone participating in an anonymous survey may report a voting preference different from his or her actual political preference. Also, realize that how a question is asked on a survey may tilt the response. Here is an extreme (fabricated) example: “Are you a patriotic Republican American or are you a radical socialist Democrat?” Here’s what peer pressure place on African Americans in a recent study described by David Leonhardt in the March 22nd The Morning in the New York Times:

“The political scientists Chryl Laird and Ismail White used a creative strategy several years ago to study the voting patterns of Black Americans. Laird and White took advantage of the fact that some surveys are conducted through in-person interviews — and keep track of the interviewer’s race — while other surveys are done online.

“In the online surveys that Laird and White examined, about 85 percent of Black respondents identified as Democrats. The share was almost identical during in-person surveys done by non-Black interviewers. But when Black interviewers conducted in-person surveys, more than 95 percent of Black respondents identified as Democrats…. It is a fascinating pattern: Something about talking with a person of the same race makes Black Americans more likely to say they are Democrats. As Laird and White concluded, voting for Democrats has been a behavioral norm in Black communities. People feel social pressure from their neighbors, relatives and friends to support the Democratic Party.”

This is a pretty simple example, but this notion of peer pressure and public willingness openly to defy a heavily prevailing preference not only accounts for some polling inaccuracies but to a very basic human trait. “Similar social pressure exists in other communities, of course. A liberal who attends a white evangelical Southern church — or a conservative who lives in an upscale Brooklyn neighborhood — knows the feeling. And Laird and White emphasized in their 2020 book, ‘Steadfast Democrats,’ that Black Americans have behaved rationally by sticking together. It has allowed them to assert political influence despite being a minority group. Consider that President Biden’s vice president and his only Supreme Court pick are both Black.” NYT.

It is equally interesting to note that the extremes within political parties tend to govern the overall image of that political party to others. Georgia Congresswoman and MAGA evangelist, Republican Majorie Taylor Greene, has become the face of the GOP to many, while ultra-liberal New York Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is what many Republicans see as a typical Democrat. But the majority of voters in both parties, as well as independents, are more moderate often with surprisingly diverse political beliefs. Yet we tend to group different races, ethnicities and religion sects into homogeneous political blocs. For those building political campaigns where the margin of victory is often very slim, making those assumptions could cost their candidate an election.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I hope that the great red/blue divide can find a solution in the very diversity that made this nation great in the first place.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – How Does Interest Rate?

   

“They don’t want the stock market to go up another 10% from here.” 

Johns Hopkins economist Jonathan Wright on the Federal Reserve Caught in the Middle

When low interest rates made slorping hogs out of corporate America, borrowing cheap money to fund mergers, acquisitions, expansion, a whole lot of senior managers made a whole lot of wasteful decisions, and income inequality and real estate prices soared for average consumers. Banks still wouldn’t lend much to small businesses, and our nation’s refusal to tax wealth – the only real solution to a more balanced budget – and the low interest rates on our federal deficit borrowings – encouraged inane decisions to cut taxes for the rich more palatable. So, the Trump era added trillions of dollars to our deficit (dropping the federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% in 2017), effectively passing on any additional interest on our national debt to all taxpayers. A reverse Robin Hood, sock it to the middle and lower classes so that rich taxpayers could get… richer.

So those self-same MAGA Republicans who cut those tax rates for the rich, shifted the cost of those huge benefits only for the ultra-rich, over to the rest of us. And now, they are clamoring to cut those deficits by decimating “wasteful entitlements” – pledging to cut Social Security and Medicare and let autocracy the world over rise unchecked – so that their billionaire contributors can return to the Big Slorp. Effectively: enjoying absurd wealth while refusing to pay proportionate taxes on that accumulation of trillions and trillions of dollars of new net worth enhancers… while the rest of us pay for it as corporate profits have soared.

So here sits the Federal Reserve, holding rates steady at the highest numbers in decades, but hinting a reduction is in the offing soon. States that have been pockets of high-level employment, mostly in the financial and tech sectors, are watching unemployment rates significantly about the national average. Layoffs define the new normal as prime office space in these urban areas lies vacant, office buildings are plummeting in value, slamming the banks (mostly local) that funded the construction/acquisition of these downtown behemoths into uncertainty. Yes, in local communities where local banks funded office towers that are now worth less than their outstanding mortgages, bank failure looms.

For the biggest of the big, they often fund much of their borrowings with commercial paper and much less with traditional bank loans. Some of this paper, bearing low interest, is long term debt that doesn’t reflect the higher fed rates that impact most of us. Even though not directly controlled by the fed, you can see the results in higher credit card interest rates, commercial lending (like buying or leasing a car), student loans and absurdly high mortgage rates that hurt new buyers and make those holding older mortgages smile. In a simple analysis, the younger you are, the more recently you joined the job/housing market, the worse off you are. Gen Z is shedding hope faster than snow-bound dog sheds its winter coat. Short term debt is exceptionally costly to most of us.

Justin Lahart, writing for the March 21st The Wall Street Journal, adds: “The Federal Reserve is still aiming to lower interest rates later this year, and for many U.S. households and small businesses those rate cuts can’t come soon enough. But for big companies able to tap the corporate bond market, and for investors riding a rising stock market, relief from the Fed doesn’t seem all that necessary… Changes in the Fed’s benchmark fed-funds rate have a strong effect on a variety of short-term rates, such as those on bank deposits and money-market funds. But their influence on longer-term rates, such as those on corporate bonds, can be more tenuous…

“[The fed is crushing the little guy with restrictive rates.] The idea that the Fed’s target rate is restrictive is driven by a variety of models, many of them versions of the Taylor rule put forth by the Stanford economist John Taylor. These calculate where the Fed should set rates based on its inflation target, current inflation, estimates of how much slack there is in the economy, and estimates of where rates will eventually need to settle. Three versions of the rule calculated by the Atlanta Fed suggest the Fed’s target rate should now be 3.9% to 4.7%.

“A lot of Americans probably don’t need to consult the Taylor rule to conclude rates are restrictive: They can just look at the interest their credit-card accounts are charging. The average interest rate on commercial bank credit-card plans in the fourth quarter was 21.5%, according to the Fed. That is the highest in the 30 years of available data, and compares with just 14.9% in the fourth quarter of 2019, right before the pandemic hit.

“Recent research from former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and co-authors suggests that households’ high borrowing costs might even help explain what has been a bit of a mystery: Why, despite a strong job market and moderating inflation, consumer moods remain so dour.

”Small businesses, too, often tap credit cards, with a recent Fed survey finding that 56% of them regularly used cards for financing—more than any other source of credit. Lines of credit, also commonly used by small businesses, are also tied to short-term rates. Constraints on small businesses can translate into less robust job growth. Companies with fewer than 100 employees account for about a third of private employment, while research has shown that young, small businesses on the way to becoming larger ones are a deciding factor in U.S. job growth.” The current fed rates hold steady at a range of 5.25% to 5.5%.

The MAGAns love all this, and even though the President has zero control over setting these interest rates, they know he will be blamed for all the consequences – and there are lot of them – adding to their Trumpian claim that “he alone can fix it” combined with the bizarre notion that Trump is a savvy businessman. Biden can’t, but Trump can?! Despite his numerous and proven fraud claims, a man who claimed he had hundreds of millions of cash but now cannot post his bond in the NY court (asking for donations from his constituents) and who added trillions to the federal deficit via his tax cut which only benefitted the rich, Trump is the go-to economy expert? Until the fed can figure out how to cut rates without restoring hog-slorping cheap money for billionaires, no president alone can fix it. After all, a true assessment is a simple Trumpian reality: “Elect me and I can make income inequality a whole lot worse.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and the political mess you see over the economy is the willingness of most Americans to believe in unjustified “elect me” slogans, outsourcing their opinions to mendacious candidates who will actually make the economic reality for most of us much, much worse.

Tanked by Big Oil

There’s no question that the price of gasoline and diesel fuel at the pump is a rather direct product of the law of supply and demand and that OPEC+ (which includes Russia, a petroleum producer rough the size of Saudi Arabia) is the major oil and gas price-fixer on earth. OPEC+ nations set production limits and increases for the largest aggregation of oil producing nations on the planet. Think of all the fossil fuels on Earth as sitting in a global bathtub. Everyone has to pay the same price for the same fuel, no matter where the oil and gas are actually located. Sure, individual governments can subsidize the price of fuel to their residents, add a tax to the price at the pump or require enhanced refining techniques to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. And yes, the quality of the oil also impacts price. Simply put, Texas oil drillers do not set the price of oil anywhere, even what is extracted from Texas; it is priced based on that global “bathtub” price.

So, when you hear such sophisms as Trump’s mantra “DRILL, DRILL, DRILL,” that is flawed for two clear and provable facts: 1. The United States pumps more oil and gas today than it did during the Trump administration years (see above chart). & 2. Even if we generated even more oil and gas extraction by drilling more, that would unlikely have much of an impact on the price at the pump. The war in Ukraine has a greater impact, and OPEC+ is clearly the main cause for price gouging.

Despite massive conservative pockets in the state, Donald Trump hates California and loves to exaggerate our ills, which are truly not particularly different from most of the rest of the country. We are the tech and vegetable center of the nation, produce lots of oil and gas, and if California were a separate nation, we’d have the fifth (teetering on becoming the fourth) largest economy on earth. We are coping, along with the rest of the Southwest, with water issues (and solving them), and our climate makes us particularly attractive to homeless folks. We also have our own border with Mexico and seem to be able to handle a complex immigration conundrum without having to transport undocumented asylum seekers to Texas. Our crime rates, on a per capita comparison, are also better than most red states.

But California does have stricter automotive and industrial fossil fuel emission requirements, which does make our gasoline a bit more expensive to refine. Our state taxes at the pump are indeed higher than most other states, but then we are coping with some very real geological reasons that tend to contain greenhouse gas emissions into basins, often surrounding major urban areas. Smog. California has long focused on reducing air pollution with increasing success. Cars and trucks sold here do face stricter emissions controls, which have become the standard of most of the rest of the US…. since California has more cars and trucks than any other state.

But Big Oil has embraced Trump’s ragging on California as a radical leftist state with out-of-control regulations, a “primary cause” of those higher gasoline prices. It seems that California actually cares more about the health and safety of its residents than it does about Big Oil’s massive recent increase in profits. Hmmmm? Clearly, the MAGA move to eliminate EPA environmental protections against pollution and greenhouse gasses signal that Big Oil’s Profits are their unequivocal priority, and health and safety are expendable. Big Oil is spending a fortune on ads blaming these nasty environmental protections are the reason oil prices are rising. Really? Not so fast, as this excerpt from a March 19th Los Angeles Times Editorial Board piece explains:

“If you live in California you’ve probably run across ads blaming high gasoline prices on state laws and policies. They’re online, on television, in mailers, on highway billboards and even on gas pumps themselves. One of them asks in big, bold letters ‘why is our gas expensive’ and directs you to a ‘facts per gallon’ website that complains about government gas taxes and fees.

“It’s all part of a multimillion-dollar ad campaign by the oil industry to deflect attention from its greed and shift blame for the nation’s highest gas prices onto California’s environmental policies. Oil companies want you to believe that what you pay at the pump has nothing to do with the record-high profits they’ve been raking in, but rather, is the fault of California’s leaders for trying to protect consumers, public health and the climate… But the ‘facts’ are curated to mislead and exploit cash-strapped Californians’ economic anxieties to undermine environment- and consumer-friendly policies that some of the most powerful companies on Earth don’t like… It’s just more misdirection from fossil fuel interests that want to keep profiting from a product that’s polluting our air and overheating the planet…

“The industry is spreading these ads across the state because of new laws California has passed to take reasonable steps to protect consumers from price gouging, force more transparency about industry profits and emissions and end new drilling near homes and schools, a health protection the industry is trying to overturn through a referendum on the November ballot…

“It is true that a portion of what Californians pay at the pump goes to state and local taxes and fees, which fund road repair, pollution reduction projects and other public benefits. But an even greater percentage of the per-gallon cost goes to the oil industry for refining, distribution and marketing and as profit, according to the California Energy Commission… We don’t know exactly what all that money being sucked up by oil refiners, distributors and retailers is paying for because those details have long been shrouded in mystery. While some of it goes toward operating expenses, a good portion is pure profit, which surges when gas prices spike and flows into the coffers of Chevron, Valero and other oil companies.

“It’s also unclear why Californians pay so much more for gas. In February, California’s prices were $1.35 per gallon higher than the rest of the country, and between 30 to 40 cents of that is what UC Berkeley economist Severin Borenstein calls a ‘mystery gasoline surcharge’ that cannot be explained by higher taxes, fees or environmental standards…

“But oil companies want you to believe they are struggling. The industry claims that the state’s six major oil refiners were losing an average of 31 cents per gallon by the end of last year, citing self-reported figures whose accuracy has been questioned by state officials. In fact, oil companies have been making a killing recently, posting some of their most profitable years ever while most Americans struggled to afford groceries, gas and other essentials.” Simply, Big Oil has never had it so good, even in California.

I’m Peter Dekom, and between massive campaign contributions and misleading ads, Big Oil pretends to be conservation-minded, but its actions and policies are anything but.

Cry Me a River

Known permafrost zones in the Northern Hemisphere. 

Except for the 15% of Americans who still deny the existence of climate change and the majority of MAGA Republicans polled who believe that either we cannot afford the “liberal” agenda to contain climate change or simply that is not remotely as dangerous as it has definitively proven that it is, the world is quivering and suffering from the direct consequences of climate change. From the searing heat rendering increasing areas of our planet uninhabitable, turning productive agricultural regions into deserts and forests into kindling, to uncontrolled atmospheric rivers, eroding shorelines and intensifying tropical precipitation and flooding, Mother Nature and her immutable laws of physics are deaf to the deniers and marginalizers. Nature does not care what anyone thinks; she began with nothing and is blind to having to redo so much of the planet.

There are a number of “tipping points,” not calculated with any precision as we seem to learn our lessons the hard way, that send our optimistic assumptions into the trash can of futility. For example, we all know or should know that white surfaces reflect heat and light while darker surfaces absorb it. It’s the difference between a hot asphalt parking lot and a whitewashed concrete alternative. A climatic “tipping point” is where a process continues even if we were able to stop human greenhouse gas emissions. And as reflective white ice and snow melt, what lies beneath is always darker, always retaining more heat.

If you address the massive permafrost (aka “tundra”), found in vast tracks of Canada and Russia (see above picture), for example, the underlying frozen soil has trapped the ancient mass of organic matter from millennia ago, much of which has decomposed or will rapidly decompose when defrosted releasing CO2 and methane (24 times denser than CO2) into the atmosphere. So, that only makes the planet hotter, which melts more permafrost, a repetitive cycle that no longer requires manmade greenhouse gas emission to wreck more climate change damage: A tipping point. Permafrost accounts for 8.8 million square miles in the Northern Hemisphere.

But as we focus on snow and ice in polar regions and rivers in the sky, many of us only look at terrestrial rivers when they overflow their banks. But not only do melting ice and snow cause that sort of flooding, climate change has many other impacts on our river flow. Writing for March 5th The Conversation, research scientists Michael Rawlins, Associate Director, Climate System Research Center and Associate Professor of Climatology, UMass Amherst, and Ambarish Karmalkar, Assistant Professor of Geosciences, University of Rhode Island, report the results of their recent study: “Rivers represent the land branch of the earth’s hydrological cycle. As rain and snow fall, rivers transport freshwater runoff along with dissolved organic and particulate materials, including carbon, to coastal areas. With the Arctic now warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the world, the region is seeing more precipitation and the permafrost is thawing, leading to stronger river flows…

“Historically, most water going into Arctic rivers flows atop frozen permafrost soils in spring. Scientists call this ‘overland runoff.’… However, our results suggest that as warming continues, an increasing fraction of annual river flow will come from under the surface, through thawed soils in the degrading permafrost. As the overall flow increases with more precipitation, as much as 30% more of it could be moving underground by the end of this century as subsurface pathways expand.

“When water flows through soil, it picks up different chemicals and metals. As a result, water coming into rivers will likely have a different chemical character. For example, it may carry more nutrients and dissolved carbon that can affect coastal zones and the global climate. The fate of that mobilized carbon is an active area of study… More carbon in river water could end up ‘outgassed’ upon reaching placid coastal waters, increasing the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, which further drives climate warming. The thaw is also revealing other nasty surprises, such as the emergence of long-frozen viruses…

“Our study found that the bulk of the additional precipitation will occur across far northern parts of the Arctic basin. As sea ice disappears in a warming climate, computer models agree that a more open Arctic Ocean will feed more water to the atmosphere, where it will be transported to adjacent land areas to fall as precipitation…

“Coastal lagoons may become fresher. This change would affect organisms up and down the food chain, though our current understanding of the potential affects of changes in fresh water and dissolved organic carbon is still murky… River water will also be warmer as the climate heats up and has the potential to melt coastal sea ice earlier in the season. Scientists observed this in spring 2023, when unusually warm water in Canada’s Mackenzie River carried heat to the Beaufort Sea, contributing to early coastal sea ice melting…

“There are concerns that rising river flows in that region are influencing the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the currents that circulate heat from the tropics, up along the U.S. East Coast and toward Europe. Evidence is mounting that these currents have been slowing in recent years as more fresh water enters the North Atlantic. If the circulation shuts down, it would significantly affect temperatures across North America and Europe.

“At the coast, changing river flows will also affect the plants, animals and Indigenous populations that call the region home. For them and for the global climate, our study’s findings highlight the need to closely watch how the Arctic is being transformed and take steps to mitigate the effects.” In short, “you ain’t seen nuffin’ yet.” If we do not ramp up on our global effort to contain greenhouse gas emissions, soon that plan will no longer be enough to stop the intensifying damage from climate change disasters; we will have to begin to suck massive amounts of existing greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere… or begin to enjoy the post-apocalyptic visions of Earth often depicted in movies.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if we do not care about ourselves in refusing to bear the burden of our profligate energy ways, you might think we might as least care about our children and future generations, who will suffer immensely more than us.

Don’t Want Dem Vaccinations; COVID Wasn’t So Bad?! Really?

 

Because so many Republicans remain unvaccinated, the partisan gap in Covid’s toll has continued to widen over the past year. 

NY Times Research, Released March 11th

Let’s start with this germy reality. Infections can spread quickly when large segments of the population don’t believe in taking clear and definitive medical preventative measures. With antivaxxers and GOP-proselytizers telling us of the “dangers from the vaccines” (which were always minimal compared to an actual COVID infection) and the damage to the economy from social distancing and lockdowns, it’s no surprise that those living in red states were infected and died significantly more than those living in blue states. As illustrated by a study by Jacob Wallace, PhD, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, PhD and Jason L. Schwartz, PhD, reported in the July 23, 2023 Journal of the American Medical Association points out based on a statistical study in Ohio and Florida:

“[The] excess death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters. The gap in excess death rates between Republican and Democratic voters was larger in counties with lower vaccination rates and was primarily noted in voters residing in Ohio…. In this cross-sectional study, an association was observed between political party affiliation and excess deaths in Ohio and Florida after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults. These findings suggest that differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republican and Democratic voters may have been factors in the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the US.” In short, reluctance to get vaccinated, practice social distancing and accepting lockdowns made a horrible disease so much worse, ensuring that enough people remained unvaccinated to spread the pandemic farther, wider and longer… across the entire US.

But the United States is rich nation, with more than enough government supplied vaccines and a sophisticated national medical infrastructure. For poorer nations, unable to get those vaccines, those living in communities with lots of interpersonal contact… they just died or got horribly ill with no real treatment options. But vaccine skepticism and a political mandate against social distancing in MAGA-land, as the above NY Times quote suggests, not only is COVID still here, somewhat diluted, it continues to infect and kill disproportionately in MAGA-dominated states.

For those willing to rewrite history, the danger was always exaggerated, but…: “Covid’s confirmed death toll — more than seven million people worldwide — is horrific on its own, and the true toll is much worse. The Economist magazine keeps a running estimate of excess deaths, defined as the number of deaths above what was expected from pre-Covid trends. The global total is approaching 30 million.

“This number includes both confirmed Covid deaths and undiagnosed ones, which have been common in poorer countries. It includes deaths caused by pandemic disruptions, such as missed doctor appointments that might have prevented other diseases. The isolation of the pandemic also caused a surge of social ills in the U.S., including increases in deaths from alcohol, drugs, vehicle crashes and murders.” The Morning from the March 11th New York Times.

That rising reluctance to vaccinate has migrated into a general notion. Many parents facing critical school-driven vaccination requirements often exert a “soft refusal” by opting to delay the vaccination decision. For young children entering school for the first time, unvaccinated children endanger their entire class. Jenny Gold, writing for the March 11th Los Angeles Times: “As measles cases pop up across the country this winter — including several in California — one group of children is stirring deep concerns among pediatricians: the babies and toddlers of vaccine-hesitant parents who are delaying their child’s measles-mumps-rubella [MMR] shots.

“Pediatricians across the state say they have seen a sharp increase recently in the number of parents with concerns about routine childhood vaccinations who are demanding their own inoculation schedules for their babies, creating a worrisome pool of very young children who may be at risk of contracting measles, a potentially deadly yet preventable disease.

“‘Especially early on, when a parent is already feeling really vulnerable and doesn’t want to give something to their beautiful baby who was just born if they don’t need it, it makes them think, ‘Maybe I’ll just delay it and wait and see,’ ’ said Dr. Whitney Casares, a pediatrician and author who has written on vaccination for the American Academy of Pediatrics. ‘What they don’t realize is if they don’t vaccinate according to the recommended schedule, that can really set their child up for a whole lot of risks.’…

“‘The pendulum swung back the other way, and we had a few years where vaccination rates were really high,’ said [California pediatrician, Dr. Eric] Ball. But the rumors and rhetoric surrounding the COVID vaccines have caused the pendulum to swing in the other direction. ‘We’re back to dealing with conspiracy theories, things that people heard on the internet, or something that their cousin’s neighbor’s roommate said. It’s really hard.’…

“A Pew Research poll conducted in March 2023 found that 88% of Americans are confident that the benefits of an MMR vaccine outweigh the risks, a percentage that has remained fairly consistent since before the pandemic… But support for all school-based vaccine mandates has fallen; 28% now say that parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children, even if it causes health risks for others, up from 16% in October 2019. Among Republicans, the share has more than doubled, from 20% in 2019 to 42% in 2023.” Once again, the recent outbreak of measles is significantly higher in vaccine-averse red state Florida than in blue California.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I suspect we should list medical science skeptics as a leading cause of infection and death of easily preventable diseases.

A Rapidly Tilting Playing Field – Gangs vs Cops

 

It’s bad enough that many of the uniformed January 6, 2021 insurrectionists, on the other side of the Ellipse metal detectors, were well-armed, caches of AR-15s in nearby vehicles – guns which they believed could legitimately be used, if asked, to force Donald Trump back into the presidency – but criminals of all sorts are embracing readily available tech upgrades that can turn their pistols and assault rifles into fully-automatic machine guns. Our misguided, and I believe constitutionally incorrect, judicial unleashing of guns as “normal citizens’” righteous property has not only fomented a ramp up in shootings (now the number one killer of children and teens) but placed our police officers at exceptional risk. Simply put, cops are very often outgunned and face risks that they have not faced since gangsters with Tommy guns in the 1920s and 30s.

Beyond unregistered ghost guns, which are growing number as 3D printers can easily replicate the necessary parts, very available “conversion” kits can turn a large magazine modern handgun or semiautomatic assault rifle, both of which are almost as easy to buy in most red states as a carton of milk, into a rapid-fire machine gun. Lindsay Whitehurst, writing for the March 12th Associated Press, explains: “Communities around the U.S. have seen shootings carried out with weapons converted to fully automatic in recent years, fueled by an increase in small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online.

“Laws against machine guns date from the bloody violence of Prohibition-era gangsters. But the proliferation of devices known by nicknames such as Glock switches, auto sears [pictured above] and chips has allowed people to transform legal semiautomatic weapons into even more dangerous guns, helping fuel gun violence, police and federal authorities said… ‘Police officers are facing down fully automatic weapon fire in amounts that haven’t existed in this country since the days of Al Capone in the Tommy gun,’ said Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ‘It’s a huge problem.’… The agency reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments from 2017 to 2021, the most recent data available.

“Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a Sweet Sixteen party in Alabama last year and another that left six people dead in a Sacramento bar district in 2022. In Houston, police officer William Jeffrey died in 2021 after being shot with a converted gun while serving a warrant. In cities such as Indianapolis, police have seized them every week.

“The devices that can convert legal semiautomatic weapons can be made on a 3D printer in about 35 minutes or ordered from overseas online for less than $30. They’re also quick to install… Once in place, they modify the gun’s machinery. Instead of firing one round each time the shooter squeezes the trigger, a semiautomatic weapon with a conversion device starts firing as soon as the trigger goes down and doesn’t stop until the shooter lets go or the weapon runs out of ammunition… ‘You’re seeing them a lot in stunning numbers, particularly in street violence,’ said David Pucino, deputy chief counsel at Giffords Law Center.

“In a demonstration by ATF agents, the firing of a semiautomatic outfitted with a conversion device was nearly indistinguishable from that of an automatic weapon. Conversion devices with differing designs can fit a range of guns, enabling guns to fire at a rate of 800 or more bullets per minute, according to the ATF… ‘It takes two or three seconds to put ... some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,’ Dettelbach said… From 2012 to 2016, police departments in the U.S. found 814 conversion devices and sent them to the ATF. That number grew to more than 5,400 from 2017 to 2021, according to the agency’s most recent data...

“Though the devices are considered illegal machine guns under federal law, many states don’t have their own specific laws against them. In Indiana, police were finding them so often — multiple times a week in the state’s capital — that the state changed the law to ensure it included switches… ‘We have to update the laws regarding machine guns to deal with the problems of today,’ Indianapolis Police Chief Chris Bailey said… Only 15 states have their own laws against the possession, sale or manufacture of automatic-fire weapons, according to Giffords. Indiana was one of many states that have regulations with exceptions. Five states have no state-level machine-gun regulations at all.

“But long before any prosecution, police have to find the conversion devices, often about the size of a quarter… Dettelbach recalled visiting a Texas police department after an ATF training on the devices. Afterward, the chief searched the weapons in the evidence room and found several with previously undetected conversion devices. ‘These items don’t always look as dangerous as they are,’ he said. ‘If you see some of them, they’re pieces of plastic and metal, and sometimes it’s even hard to recognize them when they’re actually on or in the firearm because they blend in.’”

In its rulings, effectively allowing ubiquitous gun ownership with very few controls, the Supreme Court has been the champion of armed gangs, a brisk market in smuggled American arms that have empowered those horrific south-of-the-border cartels and the US gangs that ply their product here, and a mounting death toll that writhes without common sense or the slightest moral justification. Read the Second Amendment sometime and ask yourself if anything in the plainest language of that 1789 Constitutional amendment supports a fundamental right of citizens to own and even openly carry military grade semiautomatic firearms. But somehow, the US Supreme Court does, expressed for the first time in hundreds of years in 2008 and years following. Has the Supreme Court become a dedicated body of rogue, black-robed cop killers?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am at a loss how the highest court in the land holds the right to own and use such assault weapons – designed primarily to kill lots of human beings in the shortest time possible – to be more valuable than the lives of American children.

Nobody Keeps Statistics on Mass Stabbings, I Wonder Why

 

More than a few Supreme Court justices apply originalism to their constitutional rulings, as did former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (RIP) once told a university audience (in January of 2013) the Constitution is “dead, dead, dead,” rather than a “living document.” It is judges like Scalia who are trying to kill it. Originalism forces the ruling justices to apply the laws, conditions and morals in existence at the time the relevant constitutional provision was enacted. Thus, a case challenging the legality of a semiautomatic assault weapon designed to kill or maim as many human beings as possible in the shortest time span is interpreted as if it were an armament from 1789, when the Second Amendment was passed. If a musket or flintlock were legal then, so then must be any firearm carried by an individual. Huh? A musket/flintlock has to be loaded for each shot, hardly instantaneous. There’s enough for the target to run away and avoid being killed. How about knives? Not a lot of mass killings with knives.

The current spate of “let everyone have a gun” rulings from the United States Supreme Court stem from originalist rulings, began in 2008 (hundreds of years after the second amendment passed) with Scalia’s opinion in Heller vs DC. If originalism ever becomes an invalid way to evaluate constitutionality of an instrument that was intended to be the guardrail for the country until there is a constitutional amendment to the contrary – in short the Supreme Court actually recognizes the our Constitution is “alive, alive, alive” as our founders intended – perhaps firearms will no longer be the leading cause of death for American children and teens. There are, however, several conservative justices who embrace the inane notion of originalism to this day.

To make matters worse, in 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, shielding the gun industry from liability in most cases. It the codification of that exceptionally inaccurate NRA mantra: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Of course, if you take away those guns, especially semiautomatic assault weapons, you eliminate the well-over-600 mass shootings in the US – where ten or more people are killed or wounded – that have occurred every year since 2020. And that’s just mass shootings. Just think how many people would have died if BIG TOBACCO had benefited from a law protecting them. Or industrial polluters releasing seriously toxic waste into the environment.

Even without a constitutional amendment, it would be so easy vastly to reduce gun deaths in the country by allowing individuals, state and local governments harmed by guns to sue the gunmakers for the death and destruction. That would be a wake-up call to gunmakers. Good luck finding insurance to cover the way they sell guns now. There clearly would be more than a few major well-deserved bankruptcies. Gun deaths would plummet. President Biden would love to see such a statute passed, simply repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

Think of the death and destruction gun homicides have caused. Like the “Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, United States, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people. Twenty of the victims were children between six and seven years old, and the other six were adult staff members.” OR “On October 1, 2017, a mass shooting occurred when 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada from his 32nd-floor suites in the Mandalay Bay hotel. He fired more than 1,000 rounds, killing 60 people and wounding at least 413.” Wikipedia

It comes down to making companies and individuals responsible for the very foreseeable consequences of their behavior. Gunmakers who sell to civilians do not deserve a free pass. Profits to weapons-manufacturers and dead children vs a life without fear of being killed with one of the over 330 million civilian guns “out there” (including 30 million semiautomatic assault weapons). And gun rights advocates, you know that anyone who wants a gun, even an assault rifle, can get one. Underage, mentally ill, a convicted felon, someone with uncontrolled rage, etc., etc.

There is a ray of light, as “responsibility” for providing easy access to guns is wedging its way into the legal system, albeit not against gunmakers… yet. Here’s recent example: “James Crumbley, the father of the teenager who killed four students at a Michigan high school in 2021, was found guilty Thursday [3/14] of involuntary manslaughter. The trial comes a month after the shooter's mother was convicted of the same charges. Legal experts say the groundbreaking verdict could set an important precedent for the extent to which parents of school shooters can be held responsible for their child's actions. In arguments during the weeklong trial, prosecutors said Crumbley was "grossly negligent." He bought a gun for his then-15-year-old son four days before the attack, failed to properly secure it, ignored his son's spiraling mental health and did not take ‘reasonable care’ to prevent foreseeable danger, prosecutors said. The charges handed down to both parents each carry a maximum punishment of up to 15 years in prison, which would run concurrently.” CNN.com, March 15th. Or we can keep watching our children die.

I’m Peter Dekom, and exactly when did common sense become a choice of last resort?

Economic Headwinds: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

 

If the Biden economy is so good, many ask, why are some meg-sectors – heavily in media, finance, tech and now manufacturing – laying off so many people? So many CEOs and financial gurus had predicted that by now, the United States would be mired in a recession. Back in October, JP Morgan Chase CEO and billionaire Jamie Dimon touted that there were “very, very serious” mix of headwinds was likely to tip both the U.S. and global economy into recession by the middle of next year. He added that “These are very, very serious things which I think are likely to push the U.S. and the world — I mean, Europe is already in recession — and they’re likely to put the U.S. in some kind of recession six to nine months from now.” His pessimism was echoed up and down Wall Street, mirrored in every corner of the financial sector, but… there does not seem to a recession looming here. In fact, the United States seems to have the most solid economy in the developed world.

We complain about price increases, but with the pressure to push immigrants out of the US and prevent them from entering, just as our incumbent population is facing seriously declining birth rates, we now have all sorts of labor shortages. So, we’ve substituted those lower cost immigrant workers with local US workers, who have responded by demanding and getting major wage increases. American unions have prospered accordingly. Americans are, on average, earning a whole lot more, even as commodities the world over rise in price. So, who’re the idiots embracing a policy to keep lower cost workers out of the country for jobs Americans just won’t do?

Yet despite good numbers, this economic pessimism just doesn’t go away. That job bubble may burst, however, in that constant hammering of economic doom, a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more people believe it, the less they’ll spend, and the more companies will have to lay workers off.

As reflected in the March 12th Quartz.com, Dimon admitted that the recession had not arrived but today: “Two years after warning that a ‘hurricane’ could hit the U.S. economy, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon re-upped his concerns Tuesday [3/12] about a potential recession in the U.S. He said the possibility of a recession is not ‘off the table’ and that the Federal Reserve should hold off on cutting interest rates for now. Dimon made the remarks at the Australian Financial Review Business Summit in Sydney.

“‘The world is pricing in a soft landing, at probably 70-80%,’ he told the summit via video link, referring to when inflation comes down without a painful rise in unemployment. ‘I think the chance of a soft landing in the next year or two is half that. The worst case would be stagflation.’

“Dimon has at least some track record of being inconsistent and missing the mark on the economy and emerging technologies. In mid-2022, he predicted that a ‘hurricane’ would hit the economy. He also has something of a love-hate relationship with blockchain technology, which drives cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. He once said blockchain is useful for exchanging assets or data, but in 2018, he called Bitcoin a fraud. Then in 2019, JPMorgan launched its own dollar-backed digital coin called JPM Coin for payments between clients.”

It seems almost Trumpian that if you repeat an inaccurate statement enough, it must be true. Oh, and by the way, eventually there will be a recession. It is a cyclical part of economics… and always has been. Wait long enough… But as pessimism has remained an unceasing chant in the last year or two, you might wonder what’s really going on. In tech, scientific disruptions (AI-driven) have marred many business plans. As the rollout of charging stations has not accelerated fast enough, the automotive sector has pulled back on EV manufacturing as sales have declined because of consumer fears over that charging issue. Higher interest rates impact everything, but only the Fed controls that. The fuel for so much corporate growth, cheap money, has left the building.

Still, we’re doing well enough, but the MAGA chorus points to higher food, rent and real estate costs as clear evidence that our entire economy is imploding. But it isn’t. Even as oil and gas output is hitting record amounts, Donald Trump has convinced his sheep that we have an energy crisis… as if “drill, drill, drill” would have the slightest impact on the price of oil, a global commodity where the US is unable to control pricing. Sam Dean, writing for the March 14th Los Angeles Times, adds: “Chief executives at accounting firms, cookie companies and Crypto.com have all laid off thousands of workers in the last year, and pointed the finger at one metaphorical culprit: economic headwinds.

“The phrase evokes a solemn CEO scanning the sky from the deck of the corporate ship. Eye on the horizon, he senses a change in the weather, a different snap to the rippling canvas, a new chop to the sea. With a grim set to his jaw, he concludes that only one course of action can save the voyage: massive layoffs… Headwinds have always blown around in business English, but the phrase economic headwinds serves a special purpose: a majestic waving of the hand, an abandon to the fates, an inkling of force majeure [literally an uncontrollable event or series of events, much like an act of God].

“‘It’s a useful term, because we can’t control the wind,’ said Thomas C. Leonard, a historian of economics at Princeton University. ‘If you’re a corporation trying to sell unhappy outcomes to shareholders or regulators, it’s a way of saying it’s a tough environment, but more importantly it’s a tough environment beyond our control.’… It’s a phrase heard often these days in the tech and media sectors, which face real challenges.

“Tech companies that could raise and spend cash freely when interest rates were close to zero are struggling to stay afloat. The ad market has hit the doldrums — in part because all those companies that used to have cheap cash to pump into ads now have to keep their powder dry — which has taken the wind out of the sails of many media businesses, which had been facing financial problems for decades. And in L.A., Hollywood studios have been slow to pick up the pace of production after last year’s strikes, as they face questions over the viability of the streaming business model.

“Executives in these industries are using the term precisely because of the contrast between their challenges and the wider world, Leonard said… ‘The wild thing is, notwithstanding the headwinds in media and technology, the economy is doing unbelievably well,’ Leonard said. Inflation is down, unemployment is at historically low levels, the U.S. is outperforming other rich countries, the stock market is booming, and inequality of wealth and income is falling, Leonard said.”

It seems that there is an attitudinal change in nation where political blame is rampant, and we explain away mistakes by avoiding responsibility… the CEO/candidate new normal. We really seem to believe that repeating inaccuracies and conspiracy theories enough will make them true.

I’m Peter Dekom, and too many of us seem to have outsourced our opinions to purported gurus who are, of late, increasingly more wrong than right.

Who Needs AI-Driven Mis- and Dis- Information When Direct Lying Works Better?

Who Needs AI-Driven Mis- and Dis- Information When Direct Lying Works Better?

Donald Trump on Steroids

“If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”

Donald Trump March 16th.

Whether it’s “little” things like describing his 10k square foot Trump Tower apartment as 30k square feet or testifying under oath at a 2021 deposition that he and his companies have a growing pool of cash over $400M and later telling a New York court he is unable to post a bond in roughly the same amount (it would still be his unless he loses) to enable an appeal, under the kindest interpretation possible, Trump is prone to hyperbole. But whether is the Big Lie (the “stolen election” which has been judicially refuted hundreds of times), calling January 6th convicted felons (often before juries and judges he appointed) “patriots” and “hostages,” telling gullible students that Trump University would make them real estate experts (a $25M fine was paid under that fraudulent claim) or that he never met E. Jean Carroll (despite multiple court findings to the contrary), the millions of MAGA faithful believe their “only I can fix it” God-mandated leader’s of America, every word. They even recreate a non-existent glorious era of Trump-era economic successes to bolster their faith in his leadership… and are willing to repeal democracy to push Trump back into the presidency.

It is in the fertile universe where lies are accepted as immutable facts or, for the more skeptical, “that just his way of speaking.” But if his followers will believe these obvious lies, those international election interferers (China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.) are gleeful… hell-bent on destroying American credibility and influence in the world, enabling Trump’s proclivity towards admiring dictators and isolating the United States from international involvement; to them, it is indeed like shooting fish in a barrel. Conspiracy theories are the language of MAGA voters, QAnon is real, grooming is pervasive in our schools, there is a deep state running the country (just not Trump’s deep state) and Democrats are Jew-hating, socialist/leftist radicals who need to be rooted out of any semblance of political power, their senior leaders arrested to face the “retribution” Trump has promised.

On rare occasions, where he does not deploy his autocratic special “double down,” Trump will either let a topic he raised – like cutting Social Security and Medicare – slip into the ether not to be repeated with a reverse accusation (“Your Social Security is going to be gone,” Trump warned of a Biden second term), or simply explain it away with simple interpretative lie. Like that “bloodbath,” a very clear invitation to his followers to resort to violence should lose the election, was “intended” only to apply environmental regulations that would stop the growth of electric vehicles and reflects what a Biden presidency would do to our economy. Really? Stand back and stand by!

For those of us in California, which would be the fourth largest economy on Earth if it were a separate country – largely self-sufficient in oil and gas, agricultural output, massive private investment capital, educational institutions among the finest in the world and a leader in cultural creativity – Trump’s massive lies about us and a pledge to rip the fabric of our state into shreds, if elected, is terrifying.

“In his quest for a second presidential term, Donald Trump has repeatedly cast California as a dire cautionary tale, attributing its challenges to the governance under Democratic policies. Labeling the state as a failing dystopia, Trump has not held back in his criticisms, ranging from accusing the state of water mismanagement that supposedly leaves even the wealthy in Beverly Hills with insufficient water for basic needs, to outlandishly claiming Governor Gavin Newsom offers migrants lavish incentives to relocate to California—a claim without any basis in reality.

“Trump's critique extends to alleging draconian measures by the state, such as child seizure for sterilization, further demonizing Governor Newsom with derogatory nicknames and portraying California as emblematic of national decline. This rhetoric, although aligning with a broader Republican narrative that views California as disconnected from American values, is underscored by Trump's ambitious plans to reshape California's policies dramatically should he return to office.

“Promising a sweeping use of presidential power, Trump aims to dismantle state laws on various fronts, including immigration, energy, environmental protection, and law enforcement. With plans to enact ‘the largest domestic deportation operation in American history’ and revoke renewable energy initiatives, Trump's vision for California signals profound conflicts with the state's Democratic leadership. Moreover, proposals to limit California's autonomy over emissions standards and water management, alongside aggressive law enforcement strategies, highlight the potential for escalated tensions between federal and state governance.” Stevie H Ball in the March 19th Newsbreak.com. That California pays a whole lot more in federal taxes than the federal benefits it receives, quite the opposite in a majority of red states, slips under the radar. If the rest of the United States had California’s assets and laws, we would be in vastly better shape.

What is amazing to me is the number of Republicans who have referred in the past to Trump as “dangerous,” “a liar,” “a lunatic,” as the former President faces a litany of criminal indictments never before faced by any American president, are now endorsing Trump and referring to him as a “great American.” Nobody in the body elected GOP officials – it’s really now just the MAGA Party – seems to be willing to defy Trump on much of anything. And we know that dictators rely heavily on the rubber stamp of their legislators, who understand the perils of crossing their fearless leader. Maybe Vladimir Putin can instruct Trump on how to conduct a popular election or Xi Jinping can inform him how to dispose of term limits. Stalin and Hitler have provided more than a few examples of “only I can fix it” leadership. Viktor Orban is already giving the MAGA world his instruction manual.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the reality of foreign election interference pales in comparison to domestic conspiracy theorists and out-and-out liars working from within.