Terrible Totalitarian Tariff Tyrant Teetering?

 

Terrible Totalitarian Tariff Tyrant Teetering?

“Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” is one of the more famous questions in American history. Elizabeth Powel asked this of Benjamin Franklin on September 17, 1787, the last day of the Constitutional Convention. He replied, “A republic . . . if you can keep it.”

Until John Roberts’ reconfigured Supreme Court, the process of amending the US Constitution, outlined in Article V, has been very difficult and has only been used to add 27 amendments to the Constitution. It took 203 years to pass that last amendment, in 1992. The Article V process makes our Constitution the most difficult foundational document to amend among the world’s democracies. At least until the Roberts’ court set about repealing, embellishing or limiting the basic constitutional system of checks and balances by redefining the relationship among the three branches of government: legislative (Article I), Executive (Article II) and Judicial (Article III). The result: increasing Presidential powers and severely limiting congressional and judicial powers, even to the extent of exempting the President from prosecutable responsibility for criminal acts somehow associated with his official acts.

Slowly, the Supreme Court has given the President unilateral power to override past congressionally approved statutes, creating and funding federal agencies, and to usurp constitutionally allocated roles and responsibilities. That court has severely limited any federal judicial review of his edicts as well. We’ve been in a constitutional crisis almost from the beginning of Trump 2.0 with the President’s attempt to legislate by executive order. That crisis has just exploded exponentially.

One of Trump’s most important cornerstone executive orders began his unilateral imposition of an entire litany of tariffs for virtually the entire rest of the world. He declared the aggregate trade imbalance with all those nations to be a national emergency as if that were a sudden phenomenon. In fact, in 1971, the United States experienced its first balance-of-trade deficit since 1888, importing $2.26 billion more in goods and services than it exported, a reality that has since been with us for over half a century. Hardly an “emergency” by any definition.

On August 29th, a full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court’s finding in May that the vast majority of Trump-imposed tariffs “exceed any authority granted” by a decades-old law that gives the president sweeping economic powers during a national emergency. That 1977 law, known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, had been invoked by the White House to justify most of those import taxes (aka “tariffs”). That statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs” at all, in fact allows the President the right to issue sanctions against a foreign threat against the United States in a time of “emergency.” The appellate court put a stay on its ruling (until October) to allow the Trump administration time to appeal to our highest court.

“The ruling applies to a series of April executive orders that imposed 10% baseline tariffs on virtually every country and higher ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on dozens of trading partners. It also applies to a separate set of tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China to pressure those three countries to crack down on fentanyl trafficking and unauthorized immigration… Mr. Trump lashed out against the 7-4 ruling in a Truth Social post on Friday [8/29], calling the appeals court ‘Highly Partisan’ and noting that the tariffs are still in effect… ‘If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America,’ he wrote.” CBS News, August 30th.

As of this writing, the United States Treasury has generated a massive $159 billion in tariff receipts since those Trump-imposed tariffs were imposed, one of his revenue solutions to compensate for his massive budget deficit created mostly by the huge tax cuts for the rich under his very badly named “Big Beautiful Bill.” The United States might be required to refund wrongfully collected tariffs, bolstering the argument Trump’s tattering of one more provision of the Constitution is so huge that it must remain, along with the right to keep those wrongful tariffs in place. Basically, “if I screw up big enough, you cannot stop me!”

Indeed, under normal times, the almost unanimous conclusion of non-partisan constitutional scholars that Trump tariffs truly represent a serious overreach against those constitutional checks and balances would dictate Supreme Court affirmation of that U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s ruling. The Constitution is unambiguous, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act is obvious in its intent and scope, and the reversal of Trump’s tariff orders is beyond clear. But Chief Justice John Roberts has repeatedly led his conservative court to look the other way as Trump’s executive orders have so frequently defied the plain reading of the Constitution. Effectively, John Roberts has found a way to amend the Constitution by completely ignoring the only mechanisms for such amendments as set forth, with no ambiguity, in Article V of the Constitution.

This ability to play fast and loose with the Constitution, even with the most basic tenets that define representational democracy, has horrific consequences for the entire nation. A leader who has a national polling consistency of uniform disapproval, over each and every basic platform of his governance to date, now knows his lackeys in Congress are extremely unlikely to continue to control both houses of Congress if the upcoming elections are free, full and fair. His response: gerrymander the result so Democrats are quite literally pushed entirely out of the national political decision-making process. Forget “free, full and fair”!

I’m Peter Dekom, and the United States’ being a nation “of laws” has become a nation governed “by laws”… that just happen to be generated solely by an ego-starved autocrat increasingly identified as America’s dictator.

America vs the World (and Itself?) – Now What?

America vs the World (and Itself?) – Now What?

“It sort of saddens me. I think one of our superpowers as a country is our relentless optimism…

It is the fuel for entrepreneurship and other exceptional achievements.”

Neale Mahoney, a Stanford University economics professor, reacting to polling showing Americans no longer positive about their future.

So, what’s going on? Here’s a very long, run-in sentence about who we are: We are at each other’s throats, marching unambiguously into autocracy, federalized National Guardsmen and active-duty US military troops are marching into blue cities (with falling crime rates and African American mayors) purportedly to combat “rising crime” and protect ICE agents, HHS is demonizing the medical/scientific profession and vaccines that have worked well for years as preventable diseases soar, immigration policies that were to focus on undocumented criminals have been reduced to indiscriminate quota detentions that are playing hob with small businesses and farmers, prices are rising and ordinary federal benefits are falling to cater to huge, deficit busting tax cuts for the rich, our cultural institutions have a rightwing political mandate, America is now perceived as an unfriendly and cruel place to visit as our higher-educational institutions are under attack and our public school performance levels continue to plunge.

It’s not that blue cities don’t want to have an effective working relationship with professional federal policing agencies (like the ATF, FBI, etc.) to fight real crime, from drug trafficking to gang violence, but spurious politically motivated actions that destroy local businesses are nothing on their “to do” list. Taxpayers should not be funding a police state, backed by military, invading cities and towns that do not need that profoundly negative reality. We also do not need federal policies that close hospitals and nursing homes and throw millions of Americans out of medical care. Those tariffs have not brought back reshored manufacturing jobs, and layoffs have reached recent record levels. We are increasingly willing to demonize vulnerable demographics, rig elections through gerrymandering, and, in polls conducted by scholar Matthew MacWilliams, the percentage of Americans who prefer law and order autocracy has risen from an unacceptable 34% in 2016 to an even more unacceptable 38% today.

And those tariffs, intended to cover part of the federal budget shortfall from the tax cut for the rich… well… Even as Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs have been ruled an illegal usurpation of Congress’ Constitutional prerogative to set tariffs and taxes (Article I) – some tariffs generated under specific statutes remain, however – the President has alienated allies and neutral trading partners alike by his bullying tactics to set these tariffs. The tariff ban ruling is on appeal. Still, many of these tariffs have been levied for purely political reasons. Like assessing a 50% tariff on Brazil unless it stopped the prosecution of a corruption trial against former President Jair Bolsonaro, well identified as a Trump-like leader and ally. The tariff increase to 50% against India, punishment for buying Russian oil, instantly backfired as that US ally (and most populous nation on Earth) turned to China (India’s perpetual enemy). India’s PM, Narendra Modi, with exceptionally strong local support, refused to budge on what he felt were US efforts to control India’s internal policies. Modi instead joined a bevy of non-aligned and PRC bloc nations in an early September PRC event. Indeed, China is the big winner from Trump’s bully policies.

“[Celebrating WWII ‘Victory Day’ event, showcasing some of China's newest and most advanced weapons, PRC President Xi Jinping] burnished his credentials as a geopolitical powerbroker at a regional security summit in Tianjin, northern China, that ended on Monday [9/1]. He hosted more than 20 world leaders there, including Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi... ‘We should uphold fairness and justice,’ Xi declared at the gathering of the Shanghai Corporation Organization, seemingly trying to claim moral high ground amid the upheaval and strained relationships caused by Mr. Trump's global trade war and isolationist policies. ‘We must oppose the Cold War mentality, block confrontation and bullying practices.’

“Without mentioning the U.S. or its president by name, Xi told the assembled leaders of non-Western countries: ‘We must continue to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics.’” CBS News, September 2nd. Also in attendance was Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of NATO member Turkey. The message was clear: China was now a stable and reliable partner, with a military second only to the US but growing, a clear alternative to the “unstable, chaotic bully tactics” of the United States. While no Western US allies were in attendance, European nations were already well into trade negotiations with the People’s Republic. China holds itself out as a non-punishing global bully, offering trade advantages compared with the US.

Will placing our military troops in US cities – Chicago is next – become our future? San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer just found that the Trump administration violated a law known as the Posse Comitatus Act with its June deployment of 4,000 National Guard and 700 active-duty U.S. Marines to Los Angeles. The law sharply limits the use of federal troops for domestic enforcement. The order was stayed until September 12th to allow an appeal.

As the above quote suggests, Americans are also losing hope for their future. “A new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds that the share of people who say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living fell to 25%, a record low in surveys dating to 1987. More than three-quarters said they lack confidence that life for the next generation will be better than their own, the poll found… Nearly 70% of people said they believe the American dream—that if you work hard, you will get ahead—no longer holds true or never did, the highest level in nearly 15 years of surveys… The discontent reaches across demographic lines. By large majorities, both women and men held a pessimistic view in the combined questions. So did both younger and older adults, those with and without a college degree and respondents with more than $100,000 in household income, as well as those with less.” Lindsay Ellis and Aaron Zitner writing for the September 1st Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, from government influence and massive conflicted self-dealing, the Trump family has almost tripled its net worth since the Donald first became President. The latest grift: “The Trump family’s paper wealth after its flagship crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, opened trading of a new digital currency, WLFI, on Monday [9/1]. The launch is akin to an initial public offering, in which WLFI can now be bought and sold on the open market like a listed company’s shares. World Liberty says founders and team members’ tokens remain ‘locked,’ meaning they still can’t sell them. But the trading launch now puts a real-world valuation on their holdings, which previously were valued based on private sales.” Wall Street Journal, September 2nd.

As Trump bends over backwards to reward his perceived “winners” (read: the mega-rich) and does not give a rat’s derriere for the losers (everyone else, including his MAGA base), Trump is pushing the latter’s piece of the American pie almost entirely off the table. Accurate government statistics and independent financial oversight are Trump’s enemies. If anyone truly thinks pursuing a government-enforced vision of “correct thought” and monied-priorities has made this a better country destined to grow, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn they should think about buying.

I’m Peter Dekom, and this “vision for and of America” isn’t really good for anyone not already a multimillionaire or better… and we should return to being an “America” without blue or red coloration.

­­It’s Almost Funny, Almost… When You Think About it

 

It’s Almost Funny, Almost… When You Think About it

“There were some people who were talking about what their agencies were doing… But generally, what you heard was a competition for who could tell President Trump that he had saved the country more and they started trying to one-up each other.” 

Journalist Maggie Haberman acknowledged.

“I am not a crook.” 

President Nixon said in 1973.

“I’m not a dictator.” 

President Trump said on August 25th

They gathered to pay homage to the Dear Leader, showering him with compliments. Each governmental official was in serious competition for who could heap the greatest praise, offer the greatest token of appreciation, and provide the clearest description as to why Dear Leader was among the greatest of all time. It was a 3 hour and 17 minute marathon White House cabinet meeting on August 26th, not a North Korean Kim-Jong-Il worship session. It followed a litany of fearful corporate and national leaders bearing gifts for Trump, highly placed members of Congress suggesting the Kennedy Center be renamed for the First Lady and even suggesting that Trump’s face should be added to Mt Rushmore (which would look as pictured above). All this at time when Trump’s disapproval level, in virtually all of his policy decisions, was well above his approval level in all relevant polls. Most Americans sensed Trump’s efforts to be a dictator.

As Republican House members were getting trashed in townhall meetings, it was increasingly apparent that in a free and fair election, even with incumbent advantages, that the GOP was very likely to lose both houses of Congress in the 2026 midterms. Trump immediately set about ensuring that there would never again be a free and fair election, by demanding that red states gerrymander the Democratic Party into oblivion (and several red state governors immediate set that effort in motion, as some governors of blue states suggested a counter), Trump ordered a new census (always a once in a decade event, with next constitutionally scheduled census set for 2030) and pledged to eliminate the very popular vote-by-mail system (based on a recommendation from Vladimir Putin to Trump). Gerrymandering? The Supreme Court smiled and feigned helplessness to stop it.

I think Jackie Calmes, LA Times Columnist, said very well on August 28th: “When a president has to say ‘I’m not a dictator,’ we’re in trouble… It took months more for Nixon’s crimes to force him to resign in 1974 ahead of his all-but-certain removal by Congress. But a half-century later, Trump is unabashedly showing every day that he really does aspire to be a dictator. Unlike Nixon, he doesn’t have to fear a supposedly coequal Congress: It’s run by slavish fellow Republicans who’ve forfeited their constitutional powers over spending, tariffs, appointments and more. Lower courts have checked Trump’s lawlessness, but a too-deferential Supreme Court gets the last word and empowers him more than not.

“Americans are indeed in proverbial uncharted waters. Four months ago, conservative columnist David Brooks of the New York Times wrote — uncharacteristically for a self-described ‘mild’ guy — ‘It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising.’ It’s now past time.

“Perhaps more troubling than Trump’s ‘not a dictator’ comment was a related one that he made on Monday [8/25] and reiterated on Tuesday [8/26] during a three-hour televised Cabinet praise meeting (don’t these folks have jobs?). ‘A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator,’ he said. Alas, for once Trump isn’t wrong. MAGA Republicans are loyal to the man, not the party, and give Trump the sort of support no president in memory has enjoyed.

“A poll from the independent Public Religion Research Institute earlier this year showed that a majority of Americans — 52% — agreed that Trump is a ‘dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.’ Those who disagreed were overwhelmingly Republicans, 81% of whom said Trump ‘should be given the power he needs.’ Americans’ split on this fundamental question shows the extent to which Trump has cleaved a country founded and long-flourishing on checks and balances and the rule of law, not men.

“That Trump would explicitly address the dictator issue this week reflects just how head-spinningly fast his dictatorial actions have been coming at us… The militarization of the nation’s capital continues, reinforced with National Guard units from six red states, on trumped-up claims of a crime emergency. Trump served notice in recent days that the thousands of troops and federal agents will remain on Washington’s streets indefinitely despite a federal law setting a 30-day limit — ‘We’re not playing games,’ he told troops on Friday [8/22] — and that Chicago, Baltimore, New York and perhaps San Francisco are next.”

And yet nothing seems to deter Donald Trump’s quest for subservience and total control. Is it complacency, apathy or that a stunned public simply does not know what to do? This explanation seems consistent with the election of every modern dictator on earth, from Hitler to Orbán. Usually, those that might have been legitimately elected do not destroy elections until far later in their terms of office, but Trump is not certain he will be able to run again, so he wants an election process where only he, his party and his designee can win. And if the American public does react, he just might get his wish.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as factionalized bickering hamstrings the Democrats, the Trump dictator train is accelerating to the targeted victory, a permanent change in how the United States will be governed hereafter.

Doing What America Does Best – Lying

Doing What America Does Best – Lying

Waiting in Line and Doing It Right

“They’re trying their best. They’re waiting in line…But when you have a system that was essentially designed to fail from the beginning, it’s difficult to have faith in that system.” 

 Immigration attorney John Manley addressing the impossible path to citizenship for people from countries like Mexico

Take a good look at the above map. It is what is today continental US territory looked like when we declared our independence from King George III’s Brittain. That vast swath labeled “Spanish Territory” – much of which would wind up in the United States by military victory or purchase – defined the underlying heritage of a rather large section of American history and culture. We had no issue displacing (killing) indigenous people and pushing the white Spanish rulers of old out. Soon, immigrants from Caucasian Europe moved in as if no one lived in those lands. Andrew Jackson made it clear that America was a land for those white immigrants, not the people who lived there for centuries, if not millennia.

Whenever I hear someone say, “make American white again,” I wonder where the “again” is really coming from. Racism has become legitimized to a level not seen since the era of slavery and the Jim Crow time that seems to be what the MAGA evangelical horde has in mind. But it has been the white Europeans who were the “invaders,” not the indigenous people (now mostly mixed blood) who lost their land to the real invaders. As the focus on Donald Trump’s recruitment of thousands of new ICE agents seems to use repelling “invaders” (very much including those from those former Spanish holdings) as a patriotic cause, those who understand the genuine dynamic understand that Trump is recruiting an army loyal only to him above anyone or anything (including the Constitution) else.

Even past Republican presidents from states with strong Hispanic roots, like Ronald Reagan (formerly governor of California) and George W Bush (Texas governor) have embraced legal immigration for those from south of the border, as the Republican Party slowly collapsed any legitimate efforts at “earned” immigration status for such migrants. Reagan presided over the last serious effort at immigration reform (1986), as most Republicans have since supported keeping immigration from Mexico and points south chaotic as a political rallying point against Democrats. It worked. Conspiracy theories, led by Donald Trump, labeled such potential immigrants as rapists, murderers and criminals, even though statistics showed otherwise. In a survey by the National Institute of Justice, looking at the period between 2012 and 2018, “The study found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.”

When senior administration officials admonish those undocumented workers to self-deport so as to preserve the right to apply for a legitimate path to US citizenship – words uttered by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem or immigration czar Tom Homan – they know that will never happen. Writing for the July 28th Los Angeles Times, Rachel Uranga crushes that mythology… hard: “John Manley is sick of people telling immigrants to ‘stand in line’ and ‘do it the right way.’

“An immigration attorney for almost three decades in Los Angeles, he said what most don’t understand is that trying to legally come into the United States is nearly impossible for people from certain nations such as Mexico… ‘People are dying in line,’ he said. In some cases, ‘it’s literally a 150-year wait.’… Manley said one of his clients, a U.S. citizen originally from Mexico who petitioned his two brothers to become legal residents, waited more than 15 years and wound up burying them instead of giving them the good news…

“Immigration laws have not seen a wholesale reform in nearly 40 years, but as the Trump administration cracks down on unauthorized migrants, politicians are seeing a window of opportunity. Economists, immigration attorneys and scholars say that without another relief valve, it is not just the immigrants who will suffer but people in a wide swath of the economy.

“Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) [introduced] legislation that could provide a path to citizenship to 11 million immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for at least seven years. With a Republican-led House and Senate, the legislation, which died last year, is unlikely to pass, but Padilla said he wanted to reintroduce the bill because he sensed a ‘mood shift’ in Congress and across the country… He’s not the only one. This month in the House, Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) and Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) dusted off their legislation, the Dignity Act, which would give qualified unauthorized immigrants living here before 2021 up to seven years of legal status with work authorization.

“For decades, Republicans and Democrats have tried and failed to bring reforms to what is widely viewed as an outdated system, which in the last fiscal year approved 3% of the 34.7 million pending green card applications, according to David Bier, a researcher at the Cato Institute… ‘Given the extreme overreach of the Trump administration, I believe now’s the time,’ Padilla said. ‘You talk to colleagues on both sides of the aisle about farmworkers, agricultural workers. They say that farmworkers deserve better, but the political will hasn’t been there for many, many years.’

“But the imagery of Trump’s enforcement actions against noncriminals — videos of mothers wailing as they’re separated from children and arrests of workers and vendors outside Home Depots — have seeped into the national consciousness and drawn criticism across political lines… A Gallup poll released this month showed record-high support for immigration. When asked whether immigration is generally a good thing or bad thing for the country, 79% of U.S. adults called it a good thing. And a record-low 17% viewed it as a bad thing…

“Carl Shusterman, an immigration lawyer who has been practicing since the 1970s, says he sees it every day near his home on the Westside and in his practice… ‘Go into any restaurant and look at who’s cooking the food, or you see who’s building the buildings in the fancy, fancy neighborhoods, or who’s mowing the lawns or taking care of the kids, or just pick almost any industry, and you’ll see that ... there’s no way for these people to get legalized status.’” Yet as our economy is reeling from the loss of these productive, low-cost workers, hardliner-racists like Senior Whitehouse Advisor Stephen Miller scream for more deportation, claiming efforts are removing mostly criminals from the country. In truth, 70% of those deportees have no criminal records.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while most Americans are not hypocrites or cruel, those in charge of our immigration policies are… and worse.