The Wrath of Grapes

 California farmers destroying their own vineyards

Argentine vessel loaded with soybeans for China

          Rare earth extraction in China

The Wrath of Grapes

The Withering Grape in the Coal Mine

In northern California, it started with an oversupply of wine-making grapes, then a drought followed by massive wildfires, then the vineyards began to return while much of the crop growth retained a nasty smokey flavor that ultimately subsided, but American farmers became the brunt of retaliatory tariffs, the sign of resistance to Trump’s bullying tactics. Shortages of seasonal farmworkers – the immigration reality – and soaring insurance costs exacerbated bad to worse. Vineyards were torn out, representing a permanent downsizing of California’s crops, as those California almond and pistachio farmers were also finding themselves the brunt of global anger at American efforts to shove US policies down the throats of the rest of the world.

Take a walk into a Canadian supermarket and check out the wine/liquor department. You won’t find California wine or Kentucky bourbon anywhere. It is now considered unpatriotic for any

Canadian resident to buy any product made in the United States. Europe and China are more than ready to buy Canadian products and fill Canadian shelves without prohibitive tariffs. Trump had a slightly edited Reagan speech to use as his next excuse to slam Canada.

In the latest trade battle skirmish, you can tell that China already had detailed plans to tame Donald Trump’s misguided beliefs that he could control global trade to suit his purposes. Indeed, expecting Trump’s reelection, China learned the lessons of Trump 1.0, ready to counter their projection of what Trump’s 2.0 would likely look like. And boy was Beijing right on the money. Instead of seeking some sort of compromise from to Trump’s expected efforts toward global economic hegemony, China had a detailed action plan to counter Trump’s every move.

As the only other major military and economic superpower, China was not about to play by Trump’s rules. They had their military base in their landfilled air base in the Spratley Islands, and they were quite ready to confront regional fishing boats, plying on their normal local fishing grounds, with force. They asserted control over much of the East and South China Seas. Additionally, they had upgraded their military to challenge American superiority and were the direct beneficiaries of any new military technology developed by Russia.

Further, the Chinese leadership counted heavily on their perception that Donald Trump was destroying his own country in order to reinforce his own quest for autocracy, although Trump seemed devoid of the expertise to run his own land. Even Trump’s cabinet officers were considered a joke to China. Globally, as the United States was withdrawing its soft diplomacy through foreign aid, China was stepping in, from its Belt and Road trade-linking infrastructure initiative to out-and-out charitable giving.

But the next reaction was to Trump’s levying a 100% tariff on Chinese imports – that was part of a $700 billion annual trade between the powers, of which more than 2/3 was represented by US imports – which drew a carefully pre-planned Chinese decision not to buy any US soybeans (a loss of $20 billion to US farmers in the Midwest), filling their need with soybeans from Argentina, a nation which simultaneously got a currency bailout commitment (if they cooperated) of tens of billions of US dollars. It’s an understatement that US farmers were pissed, and a Trump pledge to use taxpayer dollars to fund a make-good payments (as happened in 2017 per Trump 1.0) failed to mollify the agricultural constituency. Most Republicans.

As noted by Scott Horsley, writing for the October 16th NPR: “Despite a bumper crop this year, [soybean] farmers are losing money as a result of rising costs and falling crop prices… This is a bitter harvest season for many American farmers… There's nothing wrong with their crops, which are bountiful. But even as grain elevators overflow with freshly picked corn and soybeans, farmers are losing money on every bushel. And there's not much relief in sight.

“Economist Shawn Arita of North Dakota State University says the crop sector is being hit by a ‘triple whammy… You have high production costs. You have low crop prices. And then you also have the trade situation that exacerbates the condition’… Brady Holst is one of the farmers being hit. He raises soybeans, corn and wheat in western Illinois. Holst typically sends part of his harvest down the Mississippi River and on to overseas markets like China. But thanks to the trade war, China isn't buying any U.S. soybeans this fall. That boycott is putting more downward pressure on already low crop prices.

“‘You used to just have to worry about weather,’ says Holst. ‘But seems like in the last 10 years, you basically have to worry about what's going on with politics here in the U.S. and then geopolitics in the world. Because you see so many things going on that affect how farmers are doing business.’” As Trump rattled his economic saber at China, Beijing’s next, preplanned response was instantly implemented.

Reality gave China a “trump” card: they controlled 70% of the Earth’s supply of rare earths, metals that have become necessities in all aspect of electronics and avionics manufacturing, from computers and automotive parts to jet fighters. So, by severely limited export of those essential elements, they could bring Western manufacturing to its knees. As this was on the table as Trump traveled to Asia to make nice… another expected Trump capitulation when his bullying failed. In advance of Trump’s trip, Treasury Secretary and his fellow cabinet officers were already negotiating the terms of Trump’s surrender to reality.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am still waiting for someone with the requisite expertise to tell me what benefits the United States, as a whole, has generated from Trump’s misguided tariff policy.

Cheaper Food Construction? Forgitaboutit!

Cheaper Food? Construction? Forgitaboutit!

Just when food prices are spiking upwards, housing affordability seems to be skipping most of a generation (or two), rents are skyrocketing, there seems to be no end in sight for rising prices at the grocery store or apartment complex. While office space in most major cities (not NYC) lies way under capacity, there aren’t nearly enough apartment buildings under construction. Add the impact of Trump’s tariffs appear to being born mostly by consumers, and the resulting underlying cost of construction materials, from aluminum and steel to pre-manufactured cabinets – basics in new construction materials – now seriously tariffed, is pushing unaffordable housing costs even higher.

Nevertheless, HIS head, Kristi “puppy killer” Noem, and Immigration Tsar, Tom “money bags” Homan, are hellbent on expanding and further unleashing masked and anonymous quota-driven warrantless ICE sweeps, indiscriminate and mounted with military precision. 70% of the “sweepees” are totally law-abiding, albeit undocumented but highly productive, workers and families. As California is particularly under attack by these Trump administration masters of cruelty, you can watch undocumented firefighters being taken off the line while combatting raging wildfires, clean-up crews looking over their shoulders as they make up the primary work force cleaning up the rubble from the Palisades and Altadena fires, as well as restaurants closing for lack of staff. If you have been fortunate enough to eat out, from a fast-food franchise or a more seated local eatery, you may have noticed major price increases.

Construction sites lie idle, unable to complete basic construction, stopping midstream as illustrated by the above photo of a building site devoid of construction workers. Factories are idled – like the Carolina Hyundai plant that was forced to rely on undocumented South Korean workers when they could not find enough skilled Americans (shuttered as those Korean workers were deported) – and slaughterhouses closing for lack of any American workers to do the required nasty jobs. Likewise, as ICE raiders saturate farms, the purge of these basic workers doing jobs Americans simply will not do, leaves crops rotting on the field. This is particularly devastating for smaller farms with fewer reserves and less access to costly, updated farm equipment.

All of this is rising in a world where, except for behemoth contractors and farmers, these societal basic smaller businesses are not benefitting from the rise of AI solutions and technology. Trump’s pledge to reduce costs lies in tatters under the relentless pursuit of his Project 2025 (now 50% implemented) rightwing purity. The stories from the real world are clear examples of why our basics – food, clothing and shelter – are making paycheck-to-paycheck the new normal, laying increasing challenges to our homelessness crisis. Take this example, multiplied across the nation, among New York State farmers, as described by Dan Gooding, Billal Rahman, and Amanda Castro in the September 9th edition of Newsweek:

“New York's small farms are beginning to feel the strain of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, with experts warning that an industry heavily reliant on undocumented workers needs an urgent solution from Congress… While much of the focus when it comes to immigrants in the Empire State has been the New York City metro area, the state itself is home to as many as 67,000 farmworkers across 30,000 farms mostly upstate and on Long Island.

“‘We are the most important part of the country, because no one can live without food,’ said one Mexican man who has worked in New York for 12 years, speaking to Newsweek on condition of anonymity. ‘So we can live without a car, without electricity, without many things. But we can't live without food.’ … The human impact of ongoing ICE raids is evident to those working on the ground. Another farm worker in New York, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, told Newsweek that ‘cows are going to die’ if the administration's deportations continue across the state… ‘It's a risk every day to go to work. It's a risk to go to the grocery store. It's a risk to drive your kids to school. It's a risk to drive your child to their doctor's appointment,’ the worker told Newsweek… The person said that the farming industry in New York won't be able to function without immigrant workers.”

According to Kristin Toussaint, writing for the October 8th issue of FastCompany.com, “About 40% of farmworkers in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants, and they’ve become a focus of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. Terrorized farmworkers have been forced into hiding, and farms have been left empty because of a scarcity of workers.

“Experts have long warned that Trump’s promise of mass deportations would threaten industries that rely on undocumented workers—like agriculture—and that it could lead to mass disruptions in our food system.

“Now, the Trump administration’s Labor Department seems to be admitting this, too… In a document explaining the administration’s new rule cutting farmworker wages, the Department of Labor writes that the labor shortage, in part due to ‘increased [immigration] enforcement,’ presents ‘a sufficient risk of supply shock-induced food shortages. . . . There is ample data showing immediate dangers to the American food supply.’

“‘The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatens the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers,’ per the document… Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), means that this threat will grow, it adds.”

Donald Trump and his mean-spirited senior advisors have become the healthcare, food production and business destroyers that we have not, in American history, ever seen perpetrated by an American president, free of guardrails by a Congress dedicated to raising retained income and wealth for the richest and a Supreme Court dedicated to enable an imperious leadership that is rapidly sinking our economy and political influence even with our traditional allies.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the deer-in-the-headlights complacency of most of the voting public, watching this meltdown before their very eyes in disbelief and denial, just may undo this most noble and accomplished Republic.

The Trade-Offs

 

The Trade-Offs

Limited Immigration, Lower Crime vs Police State, Stagnant Economy, Limited Personal Freedom, Risk of Arrest

There is no question that the MAGA approach to governance has some clear advantages. As federal troops and the Trump’s personal “secret” ICE police, federal surveillance, federal agencies restructure to eliminate opponents and opposing information, there will be very limited undocumented inward migration, traditional criminal activity will be reduced and any ambiguity in governance will be gone. The ability of corporate America to operate without regulations and with lower taxes might give them a short-term competitive advantage. Questions of governance will be answered quickly, efficiencies will not be limited by social or moral considerations, America will become more Christian with Caucasian Americans able to revert to their enhanced status without challenge.

If we return to a Constitution-driven nation, which is clearly not the case now, that fragile set of amendments, the first ten known as the Bill of Rights, plus the 13th through 15th amendments (the Civil War-driven civil rights amendments), women’s suffrage and term limits from subsequent amendments would be restored. But there are clear problems with that Constitution: it is significantly dated (and by virtue of recent Supreme Court interpretations, limited to the historical context at the time of passage), it is virtually unamendable under today’s divisive politics, it represents the rural reality of the United States (90%+ rural in 1789) in its political power allocations, it fails to create a one-person/one-vote reality and it fails miserably in containing corruption and conflicts of interest. On the other hand, autocracy embeds corruption and unchecked conflicts of interest as a fundamental aspect of governance.

For nations transitioning from backwardness, the failure to provide for the masses with lots of internal fighting (often violent), a strong, forward-thinking autocracy can leapfrog into a modern era. Indeed, China did not cross the one billion population mark until Deng Xioping, the father of modern China, assumed power in 1981. He recognized that that Mao may have formed the Peoples’ Republic of China, but Deng maintained, he missed the necessary steps for a Marxist state to evolve properly. Mao attempted to transition from feudalism into communism without an interim capitalism component. “Some must get rich first,” he said, and between Deng and his successor, Jiang Zemen, the vast majority of Chinese people moved from a nation of dire poverty, into a global power where poverty was substantially erased. Simply put, autocracy works as long as the leaders do not make substantial miscalculations. Old practices and cultural/religious barriers to modernization fall in the wake of a forced push into a government hell-bent on moving the nation into competitive, technological reality.

New Chinese strong man, Xi Jinping (2012-present), quickly did away with term limits and began becoming the most powerful leader since Mao. But he got a tad carried away with his own power, firing half the senior officers in his military, arresting mega-billionaires and building new towns without asking if anyone would want to live there… and his economy teetered, pushed over the edge by the pandemic. But he realized his policies were killing his own economy. Unlike the double-down autocrats who are convinced they are always right (as the Trump hat says: “Donald Trump was right about everything”), Xi restored the business leaders, accelerated a consumer economy… and is still in fix-t mode. Fortunately for him, his arch nemesis – Donald Trump – keeps leveling the playing field and helping China be great again, even as the United States is unraveling.

Thus, for nations that are already modern and competitive, however, a misguided autocrat can inflict pain and economic hardship to focus on repressive military or police superiority. North Korea and Iran are examples of this failure. Autocracies can be so focused on maintaining control that they can become severely isolated in a world where freedom and growth are very much dependent on international alliances and trade. China lived in that hell under Mao; Iran and North Korea are under that lead foot today. And as noted, Xi is undoing as much of his autocratic, egotistical nonsense as he can, and he is playing Donald Trump with a consistent and very successful strategy.

Invading US cities with federal or federalized troops may appeal to MAGA adherents, but polling tells us that this ICE fantasy is only popular with MAGA diehards. Gallup tells us that 62% of Americans find this effort unacceptable and un-American. Aware of the numbers, MAGA Trumpers are fighting as hard as they can to gerrymander Democrats out of existence, all with the profoundly partisan support of our Supreme Court. As hard as the Trump administration is dismissing the 7 million strong, October 18th “No Kings” rallies across the country as America haters, most the country is taking notice… and Trump’s disapproval levels have skyrocketed.

Whether Trump is so far along in his Russell Vought’s (OMB budget cutter that Trump himself as labeled as his “Darth Vader”) Project 2025 implementation that it cannot be stopped has yet to be determined. Freedom of speech, warrants required for felony arrests, bring our best universities (the real job creators) to their knees, censoring books while rewriting American history into obvious distortions, masked agents asking you for your papers, one-man imposed tariffs that are making everything more expensive, legislation that cuts regulation and taxes for the rich requiring cuts for everyone else are the trade off for implementing the vision of a single man who believes he must rig the elections to hold power.

And if you like the tradeoff, you will love the covered demolition of the East Wing of the White House (B&W photo above), theoretically paid by donors, to accommodate a monstrous new ballroom structure that will overwhelm the White House forever. Despite that almost every historical preservation society opposing what is viewed as a discretion of a national treasure, Donald Trump unilaterally wants to change the face of the White House, perhaps because he intends to live in it for the rest of his life… and pass in down to Don, Jr. How do we tell him, it’s not his house to redesign on his own?

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you like the imposition of an autocrat’s unitary vision for America, hang on, because you are in for a much, much bigger treat!

White House Down

    The Ballroom as Planned  

Demolition of the East Wing that Was supposed to stay 

Ballroom dwarfing the White House

White House Down

“It won’t interfere with the current building. It won’t be… It’ll be near it but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite place. I love it.”

Donald Trump in July as he told the world he was contemplating building a ballroom next to the East Wing of the White House.

When I got a tour of Mar-a-Lago before Trump’s presidency, oddly during a day that the septic tank was being purged (a most odoriferous moment), I was stunned by the garish similarity to the gold-on-everything motif of Middle East potentates. I suspect Donald Trump, fond of his gold fixtures in his Trump Tower residence, was innately drawn to what I call “ostentatious show-off” interior design… Rococo on steroids. Originally of Mar-a-Lago was the mega-wealthy Post cereal (later General Mills) heir, Marjorie Merriweather Post. She also married even more money later. After Ms Post died in 1973, the estate passed to the US government, but it was such a pain to maintain, an achromatism from the Gilded Age, that the government deeded back. Trump bought the estate for $7 million, bought some adjacent land for $3 million, and the over-the-top mansion was his.

What that purchase and his remodel of his flat in Trump Tower reflected, more than anything, was his flash and splash ego. Ballrooms were a vestige of grand royal palaces where courtiers and wannabes fawned over presence to the king. King George III would have appreciated the design for that garish building, but I suspect most Americans could not fathom why the United States needed its version of Versailles, a expensive, ostentatious building that needs extensive and expensive constant cleaning and maintenance. Indeed, if MAGA resented elitism, this ballroom was a massive smack in their face. For those who believed in a “No Kings” presidency, it was a clear sign that Trump did not see this effort that way. After all, he wanted a place where his sycophants could worship him.

“‘For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a Ballroom at the White House,’ wrote no one ever until Donald J. Trump posted the proclamation on his Truth Social platform Monday [10/20]… The president’s plans to build the kind of venue that most Americans associate with Disney princesses, Von Trapp family soirees and let-them-eat-cake dynasties became a reality this week as construction crews began tearing down the White House East Wing to build Trump's 90,000-square-foot, $300-million ballroom (up $100 million from estimates it cited earlier in the week). When completed, the venue will dwarf the main White House, boasting nearly twice the square footage of the executive residence.

“The first photos and footage of heavy machinery knocking down parts of the East Wing on Monday [10/20] triggered strong reactions from historians, preservationists, politicians and regular folk — all of whom took umbrage with the administration's unilateral decision to alter the 224-year-old official residence of presidents dating back to John Adams.” Lorrainne Ali, for the October 22nd Los Angeles Times. Not since the rebuild following the War of 1812 has any president unilaterally reconstructed the White House. All the additions that followed were authorized by Congress with support from the relevant historical societies. As the building aged, structural repairs were also necessary.

But can the president do this unilaterally without any reviews? Writing for the October 22nd FastCompany.com, Nate Berg addresses that issue:“Despite the White House’s historic and symbolic significance, there was little to protect it from the demolition work now underway. The White House, along with the Supreme Court building, the Capitol building, and several other properties, is exempted from historic preservation rules that would otherwise stand in the way of such a building being torn down.

“Under section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, a strict review process is required for federal projects that may affect historic buildings, leading to both public scrutiny and legal obligations surrounding any proposed changes to existing historic resources. When it comes to the White House, various other entities have some level of oversight, including the National Park Service, the Commission of Fine Arts, and the National Capitol Planning Commission, but none can fully override a project like the demolition and ballroom addition due to the building’s Section 106 exemption.

“During his time on the National Capital Planning Commission, Green says he participated in the Section 106 review process and found it beneficial to the outcome of the projects in question. ‘Projects generally improve as a part of that process,’ he says. ‘You’re having lots of eyes on them, having lots of different people with different interests look at these things and comment on them. They get better.’

“The White House ballroom project and its related East Wing demolition had very little, if any, public involvement. Though Trump initially said that several concepts were being considered for the project, the administration did not release any designs or name any architects ahead of July 31, when Trump announced that the White House had chosen Washington, D.C.-based McCrery Architects as the lead architect of the project. Trump has said the project, with an estimated cost of $200 million, would be funded by donors, himself included, ‘with zero cost to the American Taxpayer!’” Like that building wouldn’t need staffing and extensive, continuing maintenance.

The list of donors is an embarrassing presentation of billionaires and companies who are either government vendors or who routinely need government approval for their business operations or expansion. Names like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Comcast, T-Mobile, Lockheed Martin, Coinbase, etc. With Trump able to grant exceptions to his tariffs, for example, making sure Trump is well cared for is exactly how a kleptocracy works. Democracies do not need ballrooms; monarchies almost always have them.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I suspect King Trump just might expect to hang around for at least another term to enjoy his royal palace… and he just might have the gerrymandered redistricting he needs to be able to do that.

Who Doesn’t Enjoy a Good Hoax?

                                   As China eats our lunch in the MASSIVE global market for alternative energy

Who Doesn’t Enjoy a Good Hoax?

Even if it slowly kills you…

“It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. Climate change, no matter what happens, you’re involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people. But of course, their countries’ fortunes, and given those same countries, no chance for success. If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.” 

Donald Trump addressing the UN General Assembly on September 23rd.

Climate change alone, if unchecked, will cost the nation far more than the massive trillion-dollar tax cuts to the rich, but those at the bottom of the economic ladder will suffer the most. It is puzzling how massive flooding in some parts of the US, heavy drought and searing temperatures in others, all exemplified by our horrific tropical storms, storm surges and killer wildfires (the latter take millions and millions of oxygen-producing forest land away from us every year). There is no good economic reason to delete vetted government-sponsored climate studies from federal websites or to impose utterly absurd fabrications on a gullible public as nature’s power conclusively proves that climate change is the largest driver of risk on Earth.

Drought drives human migration and wars over remaining arable land. But disease-carrying insects, massive schools of fish migrate too, as coral beds and vast stretches of ocean-growing plant life and massive tracts of forests vaporize, making life on Earth increasingly challenging. Heat alone is rising fast, killing millions of people every year. Nature does not concern herself with political speeches or popular mythology attempting to deny or marginalize the impact of serious climatic “natural disasters.” It seems that even Donald Trump’s boombox voice gets a big ho-hum from nature… because nature is governed by the laws of physics with little reference to any resulting death or destruction.

Yet as the above quote from Trump’s UN speech so illustrates, bald-faced lying continues to fly in the face of tangible reality. As alternative energy has replaced coal as the global energy leader, as even fossil fuel giants are cutting their spends on oil exploration or upgrading and expanding their refining capacities, Donald Trump’s “factual” assertions confirm that the United States remains a major outlier in energy policies, although there is a significant rightwing movement in Europe who find it cheaper to lie to the public than implement the climate change containment target levels they pledged just a few short years ago. As China deploys more solar and wind power than any other nation on the planet, dominates the EV market with little in the way of competition from the US and is responsible for 74% of the global investment in alternative energy (EVs, solar/wind generators, batteries and infrastructure), Donald Trump babbles lies, like this part of his UN speech:

“Energy is another area where the United States is now thriving like never before. We’re getting rid of the falsely named renewables. By the way, they’re a joke. They don’t work. They’re too expensive. They’re not strong enough to fire up the plants that you need to make your country great. The wind doesn’t blow, those big windmills are so pathetic and so bad, so expensive to operate, and they have to be rebuilt all the time, they start to rust and rot. Most expensive energy ever conceived, and it’s actually energy—you’re supposed to make money with energy, not lose money, you lose money the governments have to subsidize, you can’t put them out without massive subsidies.

“And most of them are built in China, and I give China a lot of credit. They build them, but they have very few wind farms. So why is it that they build them and they send them all over the world, but they barely use them? You know, they use coal, they use gas, they use almost anything, but they don’t like wind, but they sure as hell like selling the windmills.” And despite mini-Trump, Texas Governor Greg “I can’t sustain our own power grid” Abbott’s trashing of alternative energy, without massive new alternative energy power generation, sometimes reaching 60% of all the grid power in the state, Texas would have become a land of flashlights and Generac back-up power a long time ago.

And while we are quite used to seeing California companies relocating to Texas for lower taxes and lax business regulation – though some companies are coming back because Texas does not have the research and engineering base available in California – Caroline Petrow-Cohen, writing for the October 14th Los Angeles Times, notes another reason: opportunity illustrated by the massive demand in Texas for green energy. “A San José-based tech company that sells roof shingles with built-in solar panels is the latest to announce plans to leave the Golden State for Texas… GAF Energy will relocate its headquarters to Georgetown, Texas, on Dec. 13, the company announced in a notification document filed with state officials. The company said its decision was motivated by better market opportunities in Texas, rather than an unfavorable business environment in California.”

Outside of the United States, there is now a global acceptance that humanity has now passed that magical global tipping point where slowing climate change is no longer enough; we are at the point where we have to remove greenhouse gasses as well. Think of this one example: as light, icy patches reflect sunlight away, dark patches that are growing as ice melts attract heat, creating a vicious cycle of self-perpetuating release of once frozen methane (24 times denser that carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere. It gets worse now even if we do nothing.

Still, the US government perpetuates myths about the “hoax” of global climate change, as LA Times correspondent, Hayley Smith, wrote on September 3rd: “Dozens of the world’s leading climate researchers on Tuesday [9/2] publicly rebuked a hastily assembled report from the Trump administration that questions the severity of global warming — marking one of the strongest repudiations yet of the president’s efforts to downplay climate change… In a withering 459-page document , more than 85 scientists denounced the Department of Energy’s July report as biased, error-ridden and unfit for guiding policy… The report ‘fails to adequately represent the current scientific understanding of climate change,’ they wrote. The authors include veterans in atmospheric science, physics, ecology, forecast modeling and several other fields at universities, think tanks and research institutions in the United States and abroad.

“Titled ‘A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,’ the [Trump administration] report was written by five researchers selected by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright. It was published after the White House dismissed more than 400 scientists working on the sixth National Climate Assessment and shut down the website that housed the previous assessments… The Environmental Protection Agency leaned on the Energy Department report in its hotly contested proposal to repeal the endangerment finding, a landmark 2009 determination affirming that planet-warming greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health and the environment. The finding is the basis of many federal climate efforts.

“Among its controversial conclusions, the Energy Department report determines that carbon dioxide-induced warming ‘might be less damaging economically than commonly believed,’ and that ‘aggressive mitigation policies’ — such as those designed to curb the use of fossil fuels — ‘could prove more detrimental than beneficial.’” Though this Trump effort to repeal the laws of physics failed at every level, there remains a huge MAGA contingent that believes every climate change lie emitted by this toxic administration.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am utterly terrified at this Trumpian effort hypnotically to lead us, lemming like, off a fatal climate change cliff of increasingly frequent, decimating “natural” disasters.

Tyranny and Waste

 

Tyranny and Waste

“The facts do not justify the President’s actions in Illinois, even giving substantial deference to his assertions… Federal facilities, including the processing facility in Broadview, have remained open despite regular demonstrations against the administration’s immigration policies. And though federal officers have encountered sporadic disruptions, they have been quickly contained by local, state, and federal authorities.” 

7th Circuit 3-0 ruling upholding a ban on the use of federal troops in Chicago

Picture millions of federal workers either wrongfully fired (standby for the costly lawsuits), furloughed or working without pay, all in an effort to sustain massive regulatory and tax cut almost exclusively providing the big benefits for the richest Americans, cutting medical and survival food services to the lower rungs of our economic ladder and spending untold billions of dollars to federalize national guard troops to be used to invade blue cities under any number of false or questionable premises. Add the unilateral decision to tear down the East Wing of the White House to accommodate building an American Versailles, a ballroom (named for the current President) fit for kings. They tell you construction won’t cost taxpayers a dime, but even forgetting about the upkeep and maintenance of this extravagance, the list of donors is a Who’s Who of those most likely to need governmental licenses, merger approvals or a get-out-of-jail card from a President who wields a personal cadre of thousands of lawyers within his administration, already jumping to implement his wishes without question. A fat paragraph defining massive waste and even greater corruption opportunities.

Even as Trump’s tariffs kick consumer prices through the roof, even as his popularity is plummeting fast than a rock toss off the Empire State Building, Trump knows that the key to his assumption of formal total control relies on gerrymandering elections, enjoying the carte blanche the Supreme Court has given him and, most of all, controlling the American military to follow his command without question, even if it means initiating attacks on foreign nations or deploying federal troops to assert unambiguous control of cities, where those who will never generate a majority to vote for him or his minions, despise his thinly disguised effort to subjugate and intimidate them into blind submission. Congress is already his, GOP governors have initiated the gerrymander that ends the possibility of a representational democracy, and election monitors are being sent to certain blue areas to let voters know they are being watched, and perhaps even photographed.

As with most dictators, even those who extend their quest for pure autocracy beyond “day one,” controlling a pliant military is essential to crush any opposition. The selection of a former junior officer, a recovering (?) alcoholic, to helm the Department of Defense/War, followed by a massive purging of both generals and the ranks of career soldiers, leaving only a Trump-loyal force, is part of this effort to have a military ready to do the President’s bidding without question. In mid-October, little man, reservist major Pete “Secretary of Defense/War” Hegseth, after severely lecturing a body of most of our flag rank officers and top NCOs, demanded that members of the press stationed at the Pentagon either sign a pledge to report only official Pentagon press release (and nothing else about our military) or surrender their press badges and vacate their desks inside the Pentagon.

Brian Stelter, writing on October 15th for CNN, noted: “Only one media outlet, the relatively obscure pro-Trump channel One America News, has publicly said it agreed to Hegseth’s new terms for credentialing… Trump-aligned outlets with more robust newsrooms, like Fox News, Newsmax and The Daily Caller, have all rejected the policy… Military Reporters and Editors, a professional organization, said in a statement that the policy represents ‘an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and on the American people, who deserve accurate reporting on how the world’s largest military is funded and managed with their tax dollars.’

“Military officers who regularly liaise with the press at the Pentagon have privately expressed regret about the clampdown. One longtime military reporter described ‘lots of grim, sad faces and apologies.’… The reporter, who requested anonymity to relay private conversations, said ‘there’s a thought among some of them that in a country where the military and civilians are somewhat living in parallel worlds, this will not help bridge any gaps.’”

CNN’s Haley Britzky, writing on October 25th noted even Congress would be cut out of the information flow: “The Pentagon is barring nearly all Defense Department personnel, including military commanders, from talking to Congress or state lawmakers unless they have received prior approval from the agency’s office of legislative affairs, according to a memo signed this month by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and obtained by CNN… ‘Unauthorized engagements with Congress by [Defense Department] personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives,’ says the memo.

“The directive applies to the civilian leaders of each military branch, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all combatant commanders and Defense Intelligence offices. The memo, dated October 15, does carve out an exception for the Pentagon Inspector General office, the agency’s internal watch dog.” So, all of this, directed at giving the President the unilateral rights, as he openly claims, to deploy the military at home or overseas as he alone directs, without any approval from any other governmental body, including Congress.

As the Supreme Court considers another emergency docket request from Donald Trump – to wit: if there are any guardrails against a President ordering federal troops into cities and states where mayors and governors strenuously object – you have to remember that this mockery of our high Court has already given Trump an unjustified 21-2 record on the so-called “shadow docket” (emergency” appeals for interim decisions without opinions or an examination by the Court of the underlying merits) to prevent lower court orders against the administration’s lawlessness from going into effect. This may be the last hope of stemming Donald Trump, who has already coopted the Department of Justice as his personal ministry of “I am your retribution,” from unilateral control, without provable justification, of our armed forces… anywhere. And if Supreme Court does anything other than uphold the trial court and the 7th Circuit ban on the use of federal troops without provable justification, it may well be game, set and match for the final decision needed to replace our democracy with a Trump-led autocracy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there are no issues which would seriously benefit the quality of life even for the vast majority of his MAGA followers, if democracy is de facto repealed by the Supreme Court, as evidenced by the consistency of their pro-Trump docket decisions without so much as an examination of the case or an opinion justifying their decisions.

The New Evangelicals/Neo-Catholics, Just Following Orders

  JD Vance

Pope Leo XIV

Sean Feucht

Evangelical Prayer meeting

The New Evangelicals/Neo-Catholics, Just Following Orders

“Someone who says ‘I’m against abortion but says I am in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life. Someone who says that ‘I’m against abortion, but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.” 

Pope Leo XIV, on September 30th

“You stand with me and I stand with you, and the church will continue to accompany and stand with migrants.”

Pope Leo XIV, on October 8th

“[I] would reject there is inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants in the United States under this administration.” 

 White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responding to Pope Leo’s remarks

"This is all a very calculated move, people. IT IS TIME TO WAKE UP! They chose a globalist and woke Pope from the West ON PURPOSE to stand up and criticize the leaders of the Free World."

Social Media Post from evangelical worship leader, Sean Feucht in May.

Having been raised as a protestant (Episcopal/Anglican), even functioning as an altar boy in my teens, my reading and understanding of the New Testament (added to the Old Testament) always emphasized charity, kindness, not sitting of judgement of others and loving/respecting others (the true meaning of “neighbors” that did not limit that love only to those in immediate proximity). The debates between protestants and Roman Catholics on abortion almost always centered around when human “life” would be deemed to have begun. Jews entered that debate, mostly on the same side as protestant beliefs.

For the most part, all of Christianity, Judaism and Islam cherished basically the same values. Indeed, protestants and Jews were offered safe haven in the 15th century by the Muslim Moors in Southern Spain, against Roman Catholic executioners of the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in the north. This was a far cry from the beliefs of the Crusaders hundreds of years earlier as they ventured to “free Jerusalem of the Mohammedans.” This is our cultural heritage for all “peoples of the book” as the Quran defines these faiths. It speaks of our commonality, not of the following centuries where so many religious leaders, for all of the above religions, perverted their holiest books to find reasons to hate, demonize and kill what these zealots defined as less-than-human apostates from those with differing religious beliefs.

My basic values remain that for those who hold these faiths as the basis for all their/our core values; the Torah, the New and Old Testament and the Quran are not “pick and choose” menus with lots of “opt in” or “opt out” choices. I have always wondered about the stated beliefs from powerful contemporary secular and religious leaders. Is a child born in India of Hindu faith, kind and charitable, doomed to hellfire under evangelical definition? Why? Purportedly a devout Roman Catholic, Vice President JD Vance invoked the most questionable concept of “ordo amoris” – “rightly ordered love” – to justify the harsh treatment of peaceful undocumented aliens, living in the United States, in a January 29th interview on Fox News: "There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that." The Pope quickly denied that his notion of “ranked love” was accepted Catholic doctrine.

On the evangelical side, an excellent analysis by Caroline Bologna in the October 11th edition of the Huffington Post, offers a new fundamental perspective on contemporary evangelical beliefs: “For many Americans, the gap between Christian teachings and MAGA politics is baffling. How can people profess faith in Jesus ― who preached love, mercy and care for the oppressed ― while supporting policies that punish immigrants, demonize LGBTQ people and glorify cruelty? … The key to understanding this apparent contradiction might lie in something called ‘vertical morality.’… In the context of religion, the superior is God. In politics, it might be an authoritarian dictator. In a cult, it would be the controlling leader. Whatever the circumstances, the idea is that behaviors are only right or wrong based on what the figure in power says….

“It's the great ‘Vertical morality is just how I describe what’s called ‘divine command theory’ in metaethics,’ she said. ‘I’m a teacher, so I’m always looking for ways to make complicated concepts a little more simple. It’s basically the idea that morality comes from authority above, which is what I was taught when I was raised within conservative Christianity.’” To understand this better, think of a military hierarchy. The generals speak with God, but the sequence of orders, which filter down through the ranks, must be followed. This notion is the great enabler of Trump’s quest for autocracy. Bologna continues:

“‘Horizontal morality prioritizes the well-being of our neighbors, communities and personal relationships,’ [April Ajoy, author of Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding A True Faith] explained: ‘We act in ways that cause the least amount of harm to those around us, regardless of beliefs. Someone with vertical morality may help someone in need because they believe that’s what God wants them to do, versus someone with horizontal morality may help that same person for the benefit of the person that needs help.’… Rather than unquestioning obedience and superficial optics, this approach focuses on genuine empathy, compassion and love toward others, recognizing the actual effects our actions have on people.”

I am disturbed when the purported ministers of Jesus’ most obvious teachings find reason to reject them while still claiming to be faithful Christians. There is something that defies logic in that, but there are enough people making biblical “menu selections” that guarantee that hate and demonization are acceptable behaviors for “good, God-fearing Christians,” a choice that guarantees Americans will continue hating each on that great red/blue divide.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I would like this obvious hypocrisy to fade away so we can just be Americans again.

A Hollywood Hissy-Fit or an Unstoppable Threat

vs vs 

A Hollywood Hissy-Fit or an Unstoppable Threat

“Some have labeled me unconstitutional because I am not a human being… That hurt me.”

Diella (Albanian for “sun”), on-screen address to parliament; “she’s” Albania’s appointed AI system,

a cabinet-level “Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence,” focusing on corruption.

The only 3-dimensional “being” pictured above is the last image. Diella (the first image) is a virtual politician (aren’t they all?), now a cabinet-level appointment in Albania, but Tilly Norwood (in the middle) is seeking an agent and has performed in a real production, sort of. “Norwood ‘is not an actor, it's a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers,’ the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA, said in a statement… ‘It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion and, from what we've seen, audiences aren't interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human.’

"‘Creating Tilly has been, for me, an act of imagination and craftmanship, not unlike drawing a character, writing a role or shaping a performance,’ Van der Velden [the Dutch creator] wrote, adding such creations should be judged ‘as part of their own genre’ rather than compared to human actors.” BBC.com, September 30th. You may recall that 2023 maze of Hollywood strikes that seems to have dismembered an already-unraveling film/TV/digital media industry. There was an ambiguous railing at AI generated scripts, virtual actors and completed AI productions, but other than stand in abject terror, rejecting the very concept of AI automation taking over creative jobs, the resulting collective bargaining agreements seemed to crush the AI can before kicking it down the road. But AI is absolutely everywhere, even in Hollywood.

WME and CAA, two of the largest talent agencies in the world, have each issued pronouncements against specific AI software able to create very realistic scenes with very realistic virtual “actors,” indicating that their acting talent will not be allowed to support such virtual productions as a general matter. Well, recently there have been some elections at some of these labor unions and guilds, and the most anti-AI militants seem to have come out on top. Since Hollywood collective bargaining agreements run three years (uh… 2023 + 3 = 2026, uh oh!), guess what’s looming again? Pit this militant anti-AI fever among “we can stop it” union rank and file against the raging unemployment that resulted from the 2023 strike… and from which the industry has never recovered… and one way or another, suffering looms large.

“‘It doesn't solve any 'problem' — it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry,’ the [actors’] union said… Actress and filmmaker Natasha Lyonne, known for her leading roles in Poker Face, Orange Is the New Black and Russian Doll, said anyone who works with Norwood should be boycotted… ‘Any talent agency that engages in this should be boycotted by all guilds,’ said Lyonne, who is currently working with ‘ethical AI’ to create a feature film that stars real actors.” Reuters on BBC.com.

It's a complete mess at every level in the world of artistic creativity, which pretty much defines my world as an entertainment attorney. Guardrails are almost non-existent, the biggest companies in AI admit they don’t truly understand how AI systems really learn or what is possible, trillions of dollars have been poured into this technology – standby for a litany of stock-market-shaking AI tech bubbles – and even our government is out of whack with reality.

Our confusion is exacerbated by an official refusal (read: the Copyright Office) to grant AI-generated “creativity” the benefit of copyright protection (except as to traceable human-created components) while at the same time courts allow a new definition, by some federal jurisdictions, of “fair use” to embrace access to copyrighted materials at a “teaching tool” for AI… that large language models (LLMs) need access to massive aggregations of information (creativity and history) to work. If you believe the numbers, individual companies, each with the wealth of entire countries, are powerful beyond power. We know that these issues will consume appellate courts, most certainly the Supreme Court, to resolve highly complex technologies which they clearly are not competent to resolve. That lack of competence is unlikely to stop the resulting rulings. And if the courts are ill-prepared, just think what a radically divided Congress looks like.

Our deeply fractured partisan Congress, populated with a large body of geriatric legislators with almost no capacity to understand, much less grapple with, containing and defining a desperately needed ground-up reset of AI-applicable definitions, protections, and guardrails for the intellectual property equivalent of a hydrogen bomb, is decades behind reality? Huge licensing agreements are entering the scene as the Tech Bros instead argue for no regulation and free use of “what’s out there” in feeding the generative AI LLMs the “knowledge” they need to be super-productive.

It is well and good to face “deep fakes” and privacy issues, but for the most part this massive AI war is wilder than our wildest wild west, with weapons that make six-shooters and Winchester rifles look like pop guns in the hands of angry infants. To labor unions and guilds, the accelerating pervasiveness of AI is over-simplistically viewed through the lens of protecting collective bargaining agreements and individual creative/personal rights. Really? That is going to work? I don’t think there is a serious practical analytical paradigm out there that has a shot in hell in grappling with this cosmic shift in computing power. Assume the crash position and brace, brace, brace!

I’m Peter Dekom, and we seem to have created the modern version of inventing the wheel, fire and nuclear weapons all at the same time; we clearly have no clue what to do with it… and remain productive human beings with meaningful lives.