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

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

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

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

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

Steve Vladeck, Professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swag and Spin – Did the 2024 Election Save Trump from Financial Ruin?

   

Swag and Spin – Did the 2024 Election Save Trump from Financial Ruin?

Donald Trump was raised at the knee of his father, Fred Trump and schooled and counselled by notorious tax evading lawyer, Roy Cohn. He was bailed out by his father on couple of cash-strapped investments but inherited a significant sum when his father passed. Even with an undergrad degree (his father greased the admission) from Wharton, until Trump had a White House platform, any reasonable examination of his business history would illustrate what a terrible businessman Trump truly was. Aside from his “between” presidential terms criminal conviction for bank fraud and tax evasion, his past was littered with his business failures. I’ll skip to some of his pre-presidential grifts as examples of his misunderstanding of basic economics, his willingness to lie even in documents with serious legal consequences, manipulate and throw anyone convenient under the proverbial bus.

Trump bloviates his extraordinary knowledge of and success when dealing with Chinese investors. But… “[In the early 1990s and facing insolvency,] Trump came to Hong Kong looking for deep-pocketed investors. He found them, in the form of a group led by Henry Cheng, of the New World group… one of Hong Kong’s leading developers and the second-generation head of one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest families… The Hong Kong investors bought a $300 million mortgage for $82 million… Trump retained some of the profit upside… When Trump’s Hong Kong investors sold the bulk of the project more than a decade later, they pulled in $1.8 billion, in what was billed as the largest residential real estate transaction in New York City history.

“Trump sued his Chinese partners, claiming that they had ignored higher bids and that they had evaded taxes. This seemed, as the New York Times put it, like ‘sour grapes.’” Mark Clifford, writing for the September 11, 2015, Wall Street Journal. Trump was, to use a recent Trumpian term, “obliterated” in that litigation, retaining only relatively small payment from what was once Trump’s largest holdings in NYC. Most truly successful billionaires in the United States do not face a litany of bankruptcies, where investors, employees and vendors are left high and dry. But Trump, a man who has difficulty admitting even his minor failures, has a different track record.

“Donald Trump led his companies through six bankruptcies to manage and restructure their massive debts… The New York Times, which conducted an analysis of regulatory reviews, court records, and security filings, found otherwise, however. It reported in 2016 that Trump ‘put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses, and other payments… The burden of his failures,’ according to the newspaper, ‘fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen.’” ThoughtCo.com, December 31, 2020.

With a great deal of help from a 6-3 MAGA Supreme Court, which has distorted the Constitution beyond recognition to accommodate the most corrupt president in American history, Donald Trump has a level of immunity for his actions benefitting himself while in office with no shortage of “favor-seeking” investors willing to shower Trump with deals and opportunities he has never enjoyed in his previous life. Reeling from lawsuits and criminal fines, Trump needed to win the 2024 election to continue that gravy train, avoid prison time and shore up his foundering empire. Much of the perception of Trump’s wealth and business savviness comes primarily from Trump’s statements, often made from glitzy locations, often themselves in financial peril.

On July 2nd, Russ Buettner, writing for the New York Times, penned a major expose of Trump finances entitled “Trump’s Finances Were Shaky. Then He Began to Capitalize on His Comeback,” based on reviewing thousands of pages of legal documents revealed in Trump lawsuits: “Last spring, even as Donald J. Trump’s march back toward the White House dominated public attention, his finances, largely out of view, faced serious threats… His office building in Lower Manhattan generated too little cash to cover its mortgage, with the balance coming due. Many of his golf courses regularly lacked enough players to cover costs. The flow of millions of dollars a year from his stint as a television celebrity had mostly dried up… And a sudden wave of legal judgments threatened to devour all his cash… Then, with his clinching of the Republican nomination, everything began to change.”

During Trump’s “presidential era,” he has generated an estimated $600M in revenue and net worth enhancement… and still growing. He has used his power in office as the bully stick, forcing money to flow into his coffers under the most tenuous of terms. For example, as Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is in the midst of selling Paramount (which owns, among many assets, CBS, which produces 60 Minutes) to David Elison’s Skydance Media, Trump sued CBS over a very negligible editing misstep over Kamala Harris, a defamation claim that normally would have zero chance of winning… but since the sale requires FCC approval, and the head of the FCC is a diehard Trumper who has slow-walked approval of that transaction, hinting that to get that approval, she better settle with Trump, Redstone indeed did settle… for $16 million, “which doesn’t include an apology, comprises payments made to the president’s future presidential library and legal fees.” Wall Street Journal, July 2nd.

Buettner’s analysis continues, tracking the post-2024 election Trumpian grift: ‘In the following months, Mr. Trump, along with his two eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr., refocused the family business, forming a series of partnerships, especially in cryptocurrency, with investors who were willing to bank on his victory… Once Mr. Trump won the presidency in November, that approach kicked into overdrive…

“In late 2023, Mr. Trump boasted of having between $300 million and $400 million in cash when he testified as part of that legal action, a lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general that accused the Trumps of defrauding their lenders. His cash stockpile, Mr. Trump said, showed ‘how good a company I built,’ and, he added in earlier testimony, ‘especially for a developer.’

“Contrary to those assertions, records filed in the fraud case suggest that Mr. Trump’s cash was not the product of a steady and strong empire. His balance had fluctuated wildly, hitting a low of $52 million in 2018, a small figure for the size of his operation. The subsequent increase came largely from the sale of properties and a payout of more than $150 million from a passive investment… Moreover, the version of Mr. Trump’s business that he projects — a real estate development company that executes large, complex tasks — hasn’t existed for a nearly a decade, since the Trumps’ last two major construction projects failed to make money.

“Instead, Mr. Trump’s wealth is now built on monetizing the family name in new ways and, intentionally or not, the office of the presidency. It is an enterprise in pursuit of multimillion-dollar checks — from actual real estate developers, from cryptocurrency and social media enterprises run by others. It is also a business that hawks Trump-branded trinkets like watches and gold-toned mobile phones to the president’s passionate supporters.

“Many of the deals open multiple channels for anyone to funnel cash to a sitting president, often in ways that are untraceable under current disclosure requirements. And because some of what is being sold is use of the president’s name, there are no clear metrics to gauge whether he has received market rate, a premium because of his office or, in effect, a hopeful bribe.

“The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said that Mr. Trump abides by all conflict-of-interest laws and acts with only the interests of the American public in mind… His family business announced numerous new deals that would financially benefit Mr. Trump directly, even as he made policy decisions that affected those industries or that involved countries in which the United States had political interests. Most glaringly, Mr. Trump is now both a partner in several crypto ventures and, as president, crypto’s chief policy regulator, and he has signaled that he wants his administration to have a hands-off approach to digital currencies.

“Today, those moves are seen by Mr. Trump’s detractors as a money grab of historic proportions. But an analysis by The New York Times of thousands of pages of internal Trump Organization documents filed in one of the legal actions against him suggests a more urgent motivation for Mr. Trump’s behavior: a need, rather than simply a desire, for easy money to keep his empire intact…” 

I’m Peter Dekom, and while Donald Trump has no real understanding of macroeconomics and has been a terrible businessman his entire life, he is a superb street-smart gansta-bully with zero ethical restraints… out for the big grift.

Who Doesn’t Like Living in a Country with a Massive, Warm and Fuzzy Secret Police Force?

 

Who Doesn’t Like Living in a Country with a Massive, Warm and Fuzzy Secret Police Force?

They may be one or two ICE officers in a car with no markings, maybe even a single agent… with no badge, no warrant and no individual identification. Even no uniform. How do people even know if these folks are even who they purport to be? And with little more than an opinion of an ICE official, people are often “quick deported” to countries that may have little or no relationship to the deported individual. Since detained folks that cannot instantly prove that they are US citizens are often whisked away into an immigration nightmare abyss, there is little doubt that some US citizens are now in other countries, often in horrible prisons (with no trial), with very few paths to release.

It's easy to kidnap just about anyone, since it seems to be happening in broad daylight every day. Imposters can have a field day. For example: “Police in southern California arrested a man suspected of posing as a federal immigration officer this week, the latest in a series of such arrests, as masked, plainclothes immigration agents are deployed nationwide to meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation targets.

“The man, Fernando Diaz, was arrested by Huntington Park police after officers said they found a loaded gun and official-looking documents with Department of Homeland Security headings in his SUV, according to NBC Los Angeles. Officers were impounding his vehicle for parking in a handicapped zone when Diaz asked to retrieve items inside, the police said. Among the items seen by officers in the car were ‘multiple copies of passports not registered under the individual’s name’, NBC reports…Diaz was arrested for possession of the allegedly unregistered firearm and released on bail.” The Guardian, June 28th.

As the US Supreme Court seems to have created a rubber stamp to Trump-mandated immigration injustice, even by letting a bona fide legal challenge against such actions sit in limbo with no interim remedies (as the deportation is carried out). On June 27th, in Trump vs Casa, Inc., announced on the last day of their current term, the United States Supeme Court, issued rough-hewn 6-3 majority ruling on a stay in the citizen birthright question, effectively blowing away the last guardrail from the judicial branch. Now, unconstitutional orders from the President have become exceptionally difficult (and expensive) to challenge.

It can be terrifying: “A group of armed federal immigration agents in Huntington Park, California, blasted their way into a family’s home Friday [6/27th] morning while searching for a man they accused of charging into a law enforcement vehicle, according to several media outlets… ‘I just heard the loudest blast of my life,’ resident Jenny Ramirez told NBC Los Angeles. ‘I told them, ‘You didn’t have to do this. You scared my son, my baby and myself.’ ’… Ring camera footage obtained by the outlet shows a group of armed Customs and Border Protection agents placing an explosive device near Ramirez’s home before a fiery explosion breached the front of the residence. The agents then entered one by one with weapons drawn.” Huffington Post, June 28th. They did not knock on the door, and the man they were seeking didn’t even live there.

To most Americans, this is not something they ever see. To many, it is just a come-uppance to big blue states for electing democrats… unless they live in a red state where their harvesting crew is too small to pick the relevant crops… to their car wash now relegated to an automated wash that requires no labor, a local restaurant that is forced to close or a construction site where a half-built home sits open to the elements, unfinished. Even if there are workers, the fear factor – Trump’s number one tool for governance on most levels – keeps too many at home. They are getting arrested at local courts, so many witnesses slated to testify in criminal or civil trials just don’t show up. Churches, hospitals and schools are open game as well.

If you are detained, even assuming a thick Texas drawl, can you prove you are legally in the United States? If you were born at home, do you even have a recognized birth certificate? Less than pure white increases the likelihood of being detained. Shopping at a big box hardware store also amplifies your risk, citizen or not.

California, of course, is passing legislation to require law enforcement officers to remain unmasked. Feds may not care. The Trump administration excuse that supports masking – they are protecting themselves from attacks – literally makes tracing an officer using illegal tactics from ever being identified, particularly when cell phones are often confiscated during a detention (legally, a “detention” by a government official, which does include soldiers, is an “arrest”). A similar bill is pending in Congress but given the GOP control (as well as the requirement of a presidential signature), it has no chance of passing.

“A new bill introduced by U.S. Representatives Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat would seek to address the scourge of unidentified, masked and plainclothed agents abducting people off the streets in executing President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign.

“The bill, dubbed ‘No Secret Police Act of 2025,’ would amend the Homeland Security Act of 2022 to prohibit federal immigration from wearing masks. According to Goldman, it would ‘get rid of masks, would require all agents to show their identification and insignia, and ensure accountability for these horrible, horrible policies.’… The legislation comes as Trump administration officials defend Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ ability to act with anonymity. In a recent Washington Post letter to the editor, ICE acting Director Todd Lyons wrote that ‘officers wear masks for personal protection and to prevent doxing.’

“But this purported right for agents of the state—who are empowered to use force in carrying out their duties—to shield their identities has, as Goldman put it, led to the use of ‘authoritarian tactics that resemble Soviet Russia more than they resemble a democratic United States.’… Indeed, one could be forgiven for mistaking footage of ICE arrests in recent months for kidnappings.” The New Republic. June 27th. It follows a well-trodden authoritarian practice, dramatically presented in a number of WWII era motion pictures. That dreaded knock on the door by men in trench coats, Gestapo officers.

The ability to arrest is determined, except in times of war and the like, by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution (while applies to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment). The relevant provision reads: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Hence warrants and arrests, unless committed directly in view of the arresting officer, require “probable cause,” which is always more than “mere suspicion.” Probable cause would not, thus, be justified by the color of one’s skin, their neighborhood, or that that one is leaving a Home Depot with a box of hardware. Yet, most of the actual arrests are based on little more. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and except in times of all-out declared war (e.g., Civil War, WW1 and WW2), what is going on in this round-up and deportment process violates the Constitution and the most basic definition of human rights… and a vast swath of Americans just do not care.

Johnny Get Your Gun, Just Maybe Not an AR-15

Johnny Get Your Gun, Just Maybe Not an AR-15

"If you throw a brick, a firebomb, or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains because we will kill you, graveyard dead. We’re not going to play." Brevard County, Florida, Sheriff Wayne Ivey at a press conference, June 12th

Even as Donald Trump approved modifications to turn a semiautomatic rifle in to a fully automatic weapon – is he preparing for a civil war? – local jurisdictions, with real mass shootings and criminals better armed than the police, are still clamping down on such weapons in their states or their cities. But eliminating the middlemen, the judge and the jury, seems to be a Trump favorite. Any pretense that he stands for the rule of law perished forever when pardoned his loyal, convicted January 6th felons when, knowing they were armed as he addressed the faithful at the Ellipse, he told them to march down to the Capitol. Mayhem ensued. The political assassination in Minnesota, on June 14th, was another circumstance where a Trump follower, dressed as a cop, eliminated the middlemen. As the above chart clearly illustrates, murder by gun with multiple victims never ends.

In 2008, ultra-rightwing Supreme Court Associate Justice, Antonin Scalia, made a mockery of the Constitution by insisting that the only way for courts to interpret that founding document was to look at the historical reality when the provision at bar was enacted, and apply the reality of that era to the relevant interpretation. That inane approach, called “originalism,” allowed Scalia to apply the law and use of flintlocks and muskets to his interpretation of the application of gun rights in the 21st century. In Heller vs DC, AR-15s and large capacity Glocks were treated as front-loading, single shot and wildly inaccurate muskets. Lower courts went crazy with pro-gun rulings. Open-carry everywhere, often even concealed-carry, was permitted. Mass shootings exploded. Gunshot became the number one killer of children and teens.

As Deidre McPhillips, writing for the June 9th Los Angeles Times wrote: “A landmark Supreme Court case in 2010 – McDonald v. Chicago – ruled that the Second Amendment applies to local governments, leading to a flurry of new laws and a deeper divide in state policy around firearms, with some states tightening restrictions and others weakening gun-related laws.

“Over the next 13 years, thousands more children died from firearm violence than earlier trends would have predicted – and all of the increase happened in groups of states that had more permissive gun laws, according to a study published Monday [6/9] in JAMA Pediatrics.” As the above quote from Brevard County, Florida, Sheriff Wayne Ivey, shoot first and ask questions later is as American as apple pie. Due process is a waste of time. When two senior lawmakers in ruby red state scoffed at California’s erosion of the rule of law, California Governor Gavin Newsom pointed out that their states, Mississippi and Alabama, had roughly double and triple, respectively, the number of murders as did California.

But until recently, every attempt by local and state governments to impose reasonable gun control was, you’ll pardon the expression, shot down. In 2025, perhaps stung by the resulting carnage, the Supreme Court appears to be noticing that this has to stop. They refused to hear two cases, where state laws imposing restrictions on semi-automatic weapons and having guns in cities, were upheld by appellate courts. And yes, America, gun restrictions save lives.

McPhillips continues: “Researchers grouped states into three categories based on firearm ownership and use policies – most permissive, permissive and strict – using a composite of policy scorecards from nonprofit advocacy groups: Brady, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Giffords Law Center.

“They found significant increases in the number of children who died from guns in states with looser laws: more than 6,000 additional deaths in states with the most permissive laws between 2011 and 2023, and more than 1,400 additional deaths in states considered to have permissive laws… Half of the states considered to have strict firearm laws – California, Maryland, New York, and Rhode Island – saw a decrease in pediatric firearm mortality in that time.

“Overall, there was an increase in child deaths from firearm-related homicides and an even greater increase in child deaths from firearm-related suicides, the study found. But pediatric mortality from others causes – including other suicides – did not increase in this time… Experts emphasize that many gun-related injuries and deaths are preventable, especially among children.” Sorry, the only real way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good state that tries to prevent that bad guy from accessing a gun!

Yet bad practices continue. American gunmakers have ensured that cartels below our southern border will continue to dominate. Invoking a federal statute relieving those manufacturers of liability for the use of their weapons in criminal activity, “The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday [8/5]in favor of U.S. gun manufacturers and blocked a liability lawsuit brought by the government of Mexico, which sought to hold the companies accountable for the trafficking of their weapons south of the border to fuel violence by the cartels.

“The government argued in its historic lawsuit that American firearms manufacturers, including Smith & Wesson, Glock, Beretta and Colt, were ‘aiding and abetting’ the illicit flow of weapons across the border… Mexico sought $10 billion in damages, court-mandated safety mechanisms and sales restrictions for U.S.-made guns.” ABC News, June 5th. And we complain about those cartels and tell Latin American countries that they need to get control of those criminal drug enterprises that we have armed! Seriously. We enable that cross-border drug traffic but take no responsibility for our actions!

I’m Peter Dekom, and our American obsession with gun ownership is not a necessary result of the 2nd Amendment, and the lives of our children must take precedence over selfish gun owners and violent gangs.

Where Ugly Meets the Big Sneak – As America Sleeps

 

Where Ugly Meets the Big Sneak – As America Sleeps

“We have heard from employers in our districts that recent ICE raids are not only targeting undocumented workers, but also creating widespread fear among other employees, including those with legal immigration status… This fear is driving vital workers out of critical industries.” 

From a June 27th letter from six California GOP legislators to Donald Trump.

Like a coven of witches and warlocks, at 3:28 (EST) in the morning of July 3rd, as House debate on one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in American history nears passage began, even GOP House members who swore in public to oppose the President’s gift to the rich (paid for by the benefits given up by the poor)… fell in line behind their cult leader. As those House members touted the contribution to Medicaid that new procedures would bring, administrators of hospitals and nursing homes everywhere (but particularly in rural regions) were making very clear that these barriers to Medicaid coverage were specifically intended to deny access even for qualified applicants, people who have depended on Medicaid and SNAP in the past, most of whom were already working; many nursing homes and rural hospitals that depend on Medicaid would close.

The general awareness of what’s Trump Huge Hideously Ugly bill stands for is and was exceptionally low. Aside from the hard budget cuts to Medicaid and SNAP are the other hidden sneak-gems of the legislation. As those Republicans who swore at the inadequacies and unfairness of Trump’s dream, knowing full well of the damage it would wreak on all but the top 20% of earners, Trump’s late night phone calls told the holdouts not to worry; he could make the necessary fixes by executive order. That Trump’s standing with voters once reversing, now rising again, is a testament to voting for candidates without addressing the issues that they embrace. Out-sourced opinions to personality cults, buying clever labels and conspiracy theories wholesale.

Even as Trump’s policies draw core support from white Christian nationalists who claim whites are a discriminated class, Trump’s popularity with Black Americans, recently plunging, has reversed. “The latest Quantus Insights poll, conducted June 23-25 among 1,000 registered voters, shows Trump's approval rating among Black voters has grown by 8 points since the beginning of the month… According to the poll, Trump's approval rating among Black voters currently stands at 31 percent, up from 23 percent at the beginning of June. Meanwhile, his disapproval rating is down 4 points, from 68 to 64.” Newsweek, July 3rd. They are stabbing themselves in the heart.

But if you appreciate sneakiness, try these tidbits in the Ugly bill on for size: the worst Medicaid cuts are slated to kick-in after the midterms. The tax breaks for the rich are permanent; the tax breaks for the middle class expire automatically in a couple of years. Incentives for cheaper energy production are gone, favoring BIG Oil. The increases for ICE are intended to continue, without reduction, until all the undocumented aliens are gone.

We know Trump has it in for California; he has been anything but subtle in that regard. The largest per capita focus of ICE raids, the only cities where combat-trained Marines have supplemented ICE agents with support from federalized national guards have been deployed are in California. Repeatedly, local California cities (and state authorities) tell the feds that where their forces appear, businesses fail and violence follows. There are almost no constituencies in the state that want the feds to stay… including the Marines and Guardsmen themselves!

According to the July 2nd San Diego Post, “Six Republican lawmakers from California have asked President Donald Trump to rein in sweeping workplace immigration raids, citing concerns from businesses in their districts and the fear now rippling through legal and undocumented workers alike… The June 27 letter [quoted above], led by State Sen. Suzette Valladares and signed by five other GOP legislators including Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones and Assembly Member Laurie Davies, represents a rare break in tone from a party that has largely supported Trump’s hardline immigration stance. While the lawmakers emphasized their support for enforcing federal law, they warned that broad raids are causing collateral damage, particularly in industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor.”

Construction has slowed to a crawl. Unharvested crops are rotting in the fields. Childcare, already horrible, continues to vaporize. Restaurants and hotels are facing financial ruin as staffing disappears. The resulting cost increases are everywhere, even without Trump’s inane tariff policies. Logic has left the building as hate floods in.

As Trump suggests that reexamining “moral character” (which appears to be opposing policies that Trump embraces) may well be factored in as the DOJ considers revoking US citizenship to those admitted already… as he plows forward to de facto repeal section 1 of the 14th Amendment (birthright citizenship), rightwingers are celebrating a powerful symbol of American cruelty: the merchandizing of the hastily constructed “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades. Those undocumented who might contemplate escaping could become reptile meals.

“The website for the Florida GOP [above] is promoting a shirt, hat, and beverage cooler in support of the quickly constructed, controversial building. The shirt and cooler feature an image of a nondescript building in a swamp with an alligator and snake in front of it... Alligator Alcatraz shirts and hats are also being sold by merchants on Amazon, featuring everything from a buff alligator with a gun to one behind bars for some reason.” FastCompany.com, July 3rd.

What continues to stun me is the utter rejection by the horde of MAGA evangelicals of the many lessons of kindness, charity, tolerance, not sitting in judgement of others (regardless of background or religion) and strong support for those in need that are the essence of the entire New Testament. If pastors supporting this mass cruelty, inflicting their toxic direction for fear of Trumpian “exorcism” on “true believers” in their pews, expect a place in heaven for themselves and their loyal flock, then I totally misunderstand what Christianity is all about. I never thought of the Bible as a menu. The Judaic-Christian morals that I thought were the bedrock of American democracy have eroded into callous sand.

I’m aghast at the quicksand of our democracy… and the seeming lack of required outrage from most Americans.

On a Wing and a Prayer, but Mostly a Prayer

 

                  Remnant of a commercial airliner and an Army helicopter from 

                         Reagan Airport crash, Jan 29th, that killed 167 passengers

On a Wing and a Prayer, but Mostly a Prayer

“I think it is clear that the blame belongs with the last administration…[Former DOT head Pete] Buttigieg and Joe Biden did nothing to fix the system that they knew was broken… During COVID, when people weren’t flying? That was a perfect time to fix these problems.”

 Dean Duffy, Department of Transportation head at a May 19th press conference at the DOT.

As we watch near-hits (not, “near-misses”) at airports across the land, as aircraft crashes rise and military aircraft threaten commercial traffic, and archaic systems across the land, but most visibly at Newark’s major airport (one of the main NYC hubs), crash or blank out, you have to ask yourself why this escalation in commercial flying risks in the United States is so bad, much worse than anything we have seen in recent years.

Asks LA Times journalist, Michael Hiltzik (LA Times column on May 20th), “Who’s responsible for the aviation mess? Transportation Secretary Duffy says it’s everyone but him.” Standard Trump administration response, even as two cabinet level Trump appointees whose major qualifications appear to be as former Fox News personalities – Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – just cannot do much more than remain silent or blame the Biden Administration. The above quote is classic, particularly since Trump was President during a significant part of the COVID pandemic. When asked, Hegseth never did explain why Army helicopters frequent commercial airspace without clearance from civilian traffic controllers.

But GOP opposition to authorizing needed FAA technology upgrades and adding more air traffic controllers is the main culprit, along with the dramatic inexperience of Duffy and Hegseth amplified by DOGE efforts to trim the federal workforce. Blame Biden. He managed to pass an infrastructure bill that included serious upgrades to our nation’s ports and airports, which Republicans are trying to repeal, federal savings that would give tax cuts to the rich.

But flying, for pleasure, business or even necessity is a normal part of American life, so naturally when there are a string of mishaps that, remarkably all happen after Trump took office, DOGE eliminated as many federal employees as possible… including offering buyouts to air traffic controllers who take years to train… under the “watchful” eye of some of the least competent and least knowledgeable cabinet and subcabinet appointees in our nation’s history, well, that “blame Biden” mantra doesn’t cut it anymore. And while we cannot blame the January 29th collision over the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport on Trump, 9 days after he was sworn in for Trump 2.0, stuff that developed later is all Trump. As Hiltzik continues:

“The highest-profile failure (so far) is the disaster named Newark Liberty International Airport, where flight delays can last for the better part of a day and questions about safety are rife… Duffy, a former reality show contestant and four-term congressman, comes to the blame game with dirty hands. Let’s take a look…

“First, in 2019, when Duffy was a Republican member of Congress from Wisconsin, the bill to fund the Department of Transportation among other agencies came before the House. Duffy voted against it. So did 179 other members of the GOP caucus; 12 Republicans joined the Democrats to pass the measure… Second, the pandemic year in which ‘people weren’t flying’ was 2020. That year, the domestic passenger count plummeted to 369.4 million from 926.7 million the previous year. It was the lowest figure since 1984… Who was president in 2020? Not Biden, but Donald Trump.

“After 2020, passenger loads crept back up, reaching 666.2 million in 2021 and continuing higher to the record of 982.7 million last year. If there was an opportunity to upgrade the air traffic system at the least inconvenience to passengers, it was 2020. But nothing was done then, on Trump’s watch… I asked the Department of Transportation last week if Duffy could reconcile these evidently misleading and inconsistent statements. I’m still waiting for a reply.

“Duffy has maintained that it’s still safe to fly in and out of Newark, despite outages during which air traffic controllers’ screens went black and radios went silent — for 30 seconds on April 28 and 90 seconds on May 9. A backup system failed at the airport May 11 for 45 minutes, causing delays and cancellations for hundreds of flights.

“Duffy admitted to the right-wing radio host David Webb on May 12 that he had switched his wife’s flight reservation for the next day from Newark to LaGuardia airport. He subsequently explained that he didn’t say to do so because he thought Newark was unsafe, but to spare her a long delay. In other words, he had found a solution for his family, but not for the overall traveling public, which didn’t speak well for his management of the mess at Newark.

“It’s proper to note that the Federal Aviation Administration has been in an operational funk for years. Duffy can try to blame Biden, but that’s a smokescreen. During Trump’s first term, when the FAA’s problems were well known, hiring and deployment of air traffic controllers actually shrank from the level during the Obama administration according to the DOT’s inspector general, to the point where staffing ‘could not keep pace with attrition… In the first budget he submitted after taking office in 2017, Trump proposed slashing the DOT budget by 13%. The budget plan called for cutting 30,000 workers from the FAA staff.’”

Can we fix the system? Not if budget cutting and tax cuts are a priority over everything else. Not if we cut federal employees and ask questions later. And if we need to weed our fraud, corruption, waste and incompetence, let’s start at the top of the Trump administration and work our way down. Grift, hotel and resort deals, a big gift that we actually asked for, crypto investments, conflicts of interests…. Let’s face it, Trump appointees do not reflect a meritocracy… more a kleptocracy. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and as long as mythology and conspiracy theories are taken as the truth… and blame is more valuable than fixing the problem, the merger of common sense and earned expertise cannot be expected to fix what needs to be fixed.

Department of Justice Sues Federal Judges to Stop Justice?

Department of Justice Sues Federal Judges to Stop Justice?

She all but admits she is Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, paid for by the government, defying courts left and right. Her constitutional chops and commitments are non-existent, leading to Pamela Jo Bondi’s facing serious ethics charges in her native Florida, where she once presided as that state’s attorney general. Indeed, “[now US] Attorney General Pam Bondi is accused of ‘serious professional misconduct’ in a Florida Bar complaint, the Miami Herald reported Thursday [6/5].

“Bondi’s record as the head of the Justice Department is being slammed by close to 70 law professors, attorneys and former Florida Supreme Court justices via a Florida Bar ethics complaint filed Thursday [6/5], according to the Herald… In the complaint, the group alleges Bondi has breached ethical duties in her current role and that ‘serious professional misconduct that threatens the rule of law and the administration of justice’ has been carried out by the attorney general, the Herald reported.” The Hill, June 5th.

But Bondi’s truthfulness faces additional challenges: “The attorney general, Pam Bondi, professed ignorance of reports of immigration officials hiding their faces with masks during roundups of undocumented people, despite widespread video evidence and reports that they are instilling pervasive fear and panic.

“Challenged at a Wednesday [6/25] Capitol Hill subcommittee hearing by Gary Peters, a Democratic senator for Michigan, Bondi, who as the country’s top law officer has a prominent role in the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy, implied she was unaware of plain-clothed agents concealing their faces while carrying out arrests but suggested it was for self-protection.

“‘I do know they are being doxxed … they’re being threatened,’ she told Peters. ‘Their families are being threatened.’... Bondi’s protestations appeared to strain credibility given the attention the masked raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents have attracted on social media and elsewhere.” Guardian UK, June 25th. How would they be “doxed,” when there is no way to know who they are?! Even if all she watched was Fox News or social media, she would know these agents are frequently masked with no IDs.

It's no secret that Bondi and friends cannot fathom how the judiciary could possibly meet her boss’ deportation targets if the detainee’s due process rights are protected. So, screw the Constitution, and let’s get on with it, a vector that the Supreme Court’s shadow docket is awfully close to allowing. Bondi seems willing to take on the entirety of Maryland’s entire federal district courts… kind of like the government’s suing itself: “The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against federal judges in Maryland over an order that blocks the immediate removal of any detained immigrant who requests a court hearing… The unusual suit filed Tuesday [6/24] in Baltimore against the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Maryland and the court’s other judges underscores the administration’s focus on immigration enforcement and ratchets up its fight with the judiciary.

“At issue is an order signed by Chief Judge George L. Russell III and filed in May blocking the administration from immediately removing from the U.S. any immigrants who file paperwork with the Maryland federal district court seeking a review of their detention. The order blocks the removal until 4 p.m. on the second business day after the habeas corpus petition is filed.

“In its suit, the Trump administration says such an automatic pause on removals violates a Supreme Court ruling and impedes the president’s authority to enforce immigration laws… ‘Defendants’ automatic injunction issues whether or not the alien needs or seeks emergency relief, whether or not the court has jurisdiction over the alien’s claims, and no matter how frivolous the alien’s claims may be,’ the suit says. ‘And it does so in the immigration context, thus intruding on core Executive Branch powers.’… The suit names the U.S. and U.S. Department of Homeland Security as plaintiffs.” Associated Press, June 26th.

And this from the June 26th Los Angeles Times: “Emil Bove, a former criminal defense attorney for the Republican president, forcefully pushed back against suggestions from Democrats that the whistleblower's claims make him unfit to serve on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Bove's nomination [to that federal bench] has come under intense scrutiny after the whistleblower, a fired department lawyer, claimed in a complaint made public Tuesday [6/24] that Bove used an expletive when he said during a meeting that the Trump administration might need to ignore judicial commands.”

Given the twisting and squirming of Homeland Security and Department of Justice officials to avoid or deflect court orders, even at the Supreme Court level, whom do you believe? Bove or the whistleblower? A rogue President, blasting through constitutional guardrails helmed by officials who believe that loyalty to “whatever Trump wants” represents their full compliance with the oath in office to protect the US Constitution.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the only destructive rogues I want to see are pirates in the movies!

It Always Comes Down to Healthcare

It Always Comes Down to Healthcare

We spend an annual average of $17 thousand per American on healthcare, far and away the most expensive medical costs on Earth. We still charge more on average than other developed nations on prescription drugs, and we have an archaic patent program that effectively allows relatively minor, and often merely cosmetic, changes to extend the 20-year patent on way too many drugs. And the reason our costs are so high? We have institutionalized the highest healthcare profits, at every level, in the developed world. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, health insurance carriers, medical mediators and medical malpractice costs have profits built into the program with software that monitors doctors and time spent on patients, especially those associated with any government program or subject to “we deny coverage” standard responses from so many private carriers.

In the name of profits, and under the “obliterating” false moniker of “creeping socialism,” making damn sure that we never get universal healthcare, the issue that teases justifiable populist ire (along with the rest of this nation) is complete and affordable healthcare. For those at the top of the economic food chain, in line to slorp at Trump’s Big Beautiful tax cut for them, healthcare is easily purchased. And I mean a Rolls Royce level of healthcare. Look at the above map of the UCLA Medical Center, one of the best in the nation. Check out the names on the buildings… donations from mega-rich who live in Los Angeles. You will find the same smattering of mega-donors and their programs and buildings, often the same names as above, in major hospitals across the land, but, in addition to Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Silicon Valley, Boston, Cleveland, DC, New York, Seattle, Houston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Raleigh-Durham, etc., etc. also have their main donors on buildings everywhere. Guess what kind of medical care those donors receive when they are in need of that expertise. I can promise you that if you are not one of them, well you don’t get a donor-floor room or chef or the immediate, “whatever it takes” medical care.

Apparently, the GOP no longer cares about the absurd deficit that their tax cut would impose on this nation, further eroding this country’s creditworthiness internationally. And we pay through the nose for that in the form of much higher interest rates we have to pay foreigners to buy the bonds that support that debt. But those spoiled mega-rich folks want that tax cut… and they don’t really want to appear irresponsible when it comes to the national debt. So, the answer has focused on offsetting cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and SNAP (food program). The cosmetic “work for benefits” is a misdirection since most of the Medicaid recipients who can work do work… and still need that program.

So, these MAGA-GOPs fall back on the tried and true, except it’s always false, “fraud and waste” rubric. Yes, we know that most of that fraud and waste is at the top of this administration, but the need to try and shift blame and claim the efficiency high ground is almost atavistic with this consortium of congressional Trump sycophants. As June came to a close, at her weekly press conference and given the GOP’s desire to cut over $800 billion from Medicaid while telling us that there will be no reduction in the program, White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, answered this question from a reporter on the President’s position: "There is a conversation on the hill right now about the Medicaid cuts… I'm curious, if the final bill the president's been talking about comes to him and has Medicaid cuts to it, would he sign it, or would he rather Congress do away with those cuts?"

Without any appearance of her tongue in her cheek, Leavitt responded: “I think our friends in both the Senate and the House know exactly where the president stands on Medicare… He wants to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse and they are working to do that in the Senate right now." But there is no amount of fraud or waste even under the most corrupt nation on the planet that could make even a slight dent in the $800 billion that they want to cut… so the obvious result is that millions of people are going to lose coverage, and lots of children will go hungry when the SNAP food supplement program is slashed.

But Republicans are having more issues dealing with staying within the bounds of a budget reconciliation process, where a simple majority of the Senate is sufficient to pass a qualified bill. Topics outside of that reconciliation effort are subject to a Senate rule that requires a 60-vote majority to bring legislation to a floor vote… and the GOP will never muster that 60-vote requirement, because Democrats hate this entire process. The individual who determines what is or is not part of that reconciliation process is the Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough. On June 26th, she denied the GOP plan to cap states' ability to collect more federal Medicaid funding through health care provider taxes – a controversial provision that would have funded much of the bill's tax cuts. Most of the savings in the bill came from the changes in Medicaid.

With Donald Trump’s dragon breath down GOP congresspeople’s necks getting hotter, these legislators have to face a horrible choice: vote for Trump’s Big Beautiful bill, accepting the unpopular billionaires’ tax cut, and watch vast swaths of their constituents lose healthcare coverage or vote against the bill and incur Trump’s wrath as the midterms approach. Trump 2.0 has inflicted the greatest damage on this nation since our Civil War… but even that war did not erode our Constitution to the degraded concept is has become. Universal healthcare would have been cheaper by far and solved so many of our coverage issues.

I’m Peter Dekom, and who knew that the crack in the Liberty Bell would ultimately be that prescient?!

Why is Trump Treating Immigration Protests as a Literal War between Red and Blue?

 

Why is Trump Treating Immigration Protests as a Literal War between Red and Blue?

There is no question that even beyond his “distractions” – well produced for television with lots of well-edited footage – Donald Trump is satisfying his MAGA Base’s desires. First, to tear down the elusive “deep state” by taking down huge chunks of the federal government to no one’s real advantage. Second, to impose Red cultural values on the Blue states and cities that have repeatedly voted against those values. The notion that the federal government was a cesspool of waste and corruption was clearly not substantiated, as this opinion from a DOGE employee clearly illustrates:

“A former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency says that he found that the federal waste, fraud and abuse that his agency was supposed to uncover were ‘relatively nonexistent’ during his short time embedded within the Department of Veterans Affairs… ‘I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was,’ Sahil Lavingia told NPR's Juana Summers.

“Lavingia was a successful software developer and the founder of Gumroad, a platform for online sales, when he joined DOGE in March. Lavingia said he had previously sought to work for the U.S. Digital Service, the technology unit that was renamed and restructured by the Trump administration. He told NPR that he just wanted to make government websites easier for citizens to use and didn't really care which presidential administration he was working for, despite protests from his friends and family.” NPR, June 5th. The operations of Social Security, Medicare, etc. were also found clear of measurable fraud or waste. Their software was in dire need of updating, but that was not much of a revelation.

If there were anywhere that waste were rampant, it would have to be in the Department of Defense, where a detailed budget had not yet been provided to Congress when the MAGA House passed the Big Beautiful Bill with a significant increase for military expenditures. The DOD is indeed continuing to fund a massive new construction effort that is little more than an expansion of the Cold War military. Big aircraft carriers, new massive stealth jet fighter-bombers plus the cost of the upgraded flotillas needed to protect those massive investments. Did someone miss the massive drone attack (each costing in the hundreds of dollar range) In the span of a few hours on Sunday [5/29], nearly a third of Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet was destroyed or damaged with cheaply made drones sneaked into Russian territory, the latest evolution of asymmetrical warfare? OK, those weapons do look good in naval show-offs and military parades and flyovers, but that’s just not the way wars are fought these days.

And truthfully, we are deploying a whole lot more active military troops these days against our own people in American cities than against foreign powers attacking us. While a lot of what we are seeing in US cities seems to mirror the anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, that outrage was about our involvement in a foreign war. Starting with the relatively small protests in Los Angeles, which were easily handleable by local police, then spreading across the country, Trump was clearly putting the United States on genuine wartime footing. The Red vs Blue war, an intentional fomenting of a civil war.

“The Pentagon is reviewing a Department of Homeland Security request to deploy more than 20,000 additional National Guard troops to aid the Trump administration's widening crackdown on illegal immigration around the United States, according to officials and documents… Keeping 20,000 National Guardsmen on duty for one year would cost $3.6 billion, according to a U.S. official briefed on the potential deployment. However, it's unclear how many Guardsmen are available to fill the request, according to a Defense official.” USA Today, June 10th. Active duty US Marines, purely a combat force, are also being inserted into local protests.

In Los Angeles, those federalized Guardsmen didn’t really have much to do, but they were apparently mostly there to intimidate and instill fear. As the above photograph of those Guardsmen sleeping on concrete floors suggests, they weren’t treated particularly well either. But through all of this brouhaha, journalists were subjected to rubber bullets and detention, members of Congress have been arrested, and the protests went severely national. Inexperienced, ideolog and former Fox News commentator-turned Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, was having the best time playing with toy soldiers… but who were definitely not toys:

“Pete Hegseth’s first congressional hearing as Defense Secretary was supposed to focus on budgetary matters, but the former soldier was not going to miss an opportunity to strike fear into the hearts of America’s enemies — in this case, a few hundred protesters in Los Angeles… In his opening statement to the House Appropriations subcommittee, Hegseth delivered a made-for-Hollywood’ monologue about the U.S. military’s new ‘warrior ethos,’ one that is focused squarely on ‘war fighting’ and ‘lethality.’.. So deadly are the soldiers under his command that the word ‘soldier’ no longer suffices. In Hegseth’s Department of Defense, they are ‘war fighters’ — a term he used repeatedly, implying an army of perpetually deployed and exhausted Rambo figures always searching for targets to shoot.” The Independent, June 10th.

Invoking statutes from a long, long time ago, Trump is reveling in the unclear use of buzz words – like “rebellion,” “insurrection,” and all sorts of national “emergencies” to justify a transfer of Congressional, and even judicial power, to him alone. Trump has become an economic wrecking ball of such economic proportions that according to a “World Bank report, the U.S. economy alone—which is the world's largest—is predicted to grow half as fast in 2025 than it did in 2024, with a drop from 2.8 percent to 1.4 percent… The report directly ties this predicted slowdown to a substantial rise in trade barriers following the Trump administration's sweeping tariff campaign against major trading partners… ‘It isn't theoretical anymore. It's measurable damage. The economy already contracted 0.3 percent in Q1, with Yale's Budget Lab projecting a sustained GDP reduction of 0.6 percent annually,’ Michael Ryan, a finance expert and the founder of MichaelRyanMoney.com, told Newsweek. ‘That translates to $180 billion in lost economic output every year. That's the equivalent of losing an entire state's economic contribution.’" Newsweek, June 10th. So, we have a failing economy and a wave of escalating domestic violence all in favor of an autocrat wannabe with little or no concern for human life.

On May 4, 1970, Four Kent State University students were killed and nine were injured when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War. America and the administration were shocked. But if you listen to the rhetoric today, having our military inflict injury and death on civilian protestors is the apparent goal. Is that OK with you? 

I’m Peter Dekom, and is all this violence and destruction worth ending democracy to instill an angry mob’s effort to anoint Donald John Trump as America’s autocrat for life?