Could Amy Coney Barrett Be Having a "Come to Jesus" Moment?

 

"Since the founding, our Nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms," 

Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority in United States v. Rahimi

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is dedicated to judges’ deploying textual “originalism” in interpreting the Constitution – applying only the historical and cultural reality that existed when the Constitution or its amendments were enacted, eschewing consideration of technological or social change since. This is how “originalist” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia decimated the possibility of meaningful gun control in the 2008 Heller vs DC, applying the historical reality of 1789, when the Second Amendment was enacted. The era of flintlocks and muskets! I’m serious. “Originalists” effectively stagnate the Constitution to obsolete bygone eras that may have little or no relevancy to contemporary matters.

To put it mildly, the Federalist Society is extremely conservative. “Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has chapters at more than 200 law schools and features student, lawyer, and faculty divisions; the lawyers division comprises more than 70,000 practicing attorneys in ninety cities… It is one of the most influential legal organizations in the United States…

“According to Amanda L. Hollis-Brusky [chair of the politics department at Pomona College and an American constitutional law scholar who specializes in the politics of the U.S. Supreme Court,] the Federalist Society ‘has evolved into the de facto gatekeeper for right-of-center lawyers aspiring to government jobs and federal judgeships under Republican presidents.’ It vetted President Donald Trump's list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees; in March 2020, 43 out of 51 of Trump's appellate court nominees were current or former members of the society, [including] Trump's list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees; in March 2020, 43 out of 51 of Trump's appellate court nominees were current or former members of the society.” Wikipedia.

Logic will tell you that there can be no justice if the Supreme Court is allowed to comb through a vast array of history in existence when each provision of the Constitution was enacted… and pick and choose which historical extracts suit their purpose. Only conservatives apply originalism. Thus, the Federalist Society gave high marks to a federal appellate justice, a former law professor at the Jesuit founded University of Notre Dame, a law clerk to Scalia and a seeming adherent to originalism. Her nomination, by Mr. Trump, sailed through Senate approval. Amy Coney Barrett became a justice on the US Supreme Court. When selected, eyes focused on her seeming Catholic disillusionment with Roe v Wade, and when it came to reversing that long-standing precedent, she did not disappoint.

Barrett may have held strong anti-abortion views, but recently, it seems that her adherence to originalism was beginning to hit that logical wall. In an unrelated trademark matter… almost “a year ago, in a case involving the admissibility of confessions by co-conspirators, [she] accused [die-hard originalist Clarence] Thomas of making too much of a very limited historical record… ‘The Court overclaims. That is unfortunate,’ Barrett wrote in a solo concurrence, referring to Thomas’ majority opinion. ‘While history is often important and sometimes dispositive, we should be discriminating in its use. Otherwise, we risk undermining the force of historical arguments when they matter most,’ she declared...

“‘The views of preceding generations can persuade, and, in the realm of stare decisis, even bind,’ Barrett wrote, using the Latin term for the principle that courts should adhere to past rulings. ‘But tradition is not an end in itself — and I fear that the Court uses it that way here… It presents tradition itself as the constitutional argument. … Yet what is the theoretical justification for using tradition that way?’ she wrote.

“Barrett’s next critique amounts to fighting words among legal conservatives: She compared Thomas’ approach to the kind of amorphous, multi-pronged legal tests that conservatives frequently accuse liberal judges of concocting… ‘Relying exclusively on history and tradition may seem like a way of avoiding judge-made tests. But a rule rendering tradition dispositive is itself a judge-made test,’ she asserted…

“And in a speech last year at Catholic University , Barrett reiterated the point. ‘We have to be very, very careful in the way that we use history,’ she said, adding that deploying historical evidence to advance a legal conclusion can be like ‘looking over a crowd and picking out your friends.’” Josh Gerstein, writing for the June 19th Politico.

Why does any of this matter? She’s still a staunch conservative in a court where originalism predominates: the 6 – 3 Trump Supreme Court. But cracks in that Court, perhaps a realization, that their recent decisions have helped kill thousands of Americans, may be sinking in. If originalism is the metric for Second Amendment cases, then the hundreds of mass shootings using semiautomatic weapons will continue unabated (more lethally with the recent, Court-approved addition of a bump stock). How exactly does that square with Barrett’s Catholic faith? Where does “Thou shalt not kill” common sense, supported by centuries of America laws against murder fit? After all, there are no constitutional limits on those laws; murder has always been wrong.

The Supreme Court case that matters is United States v. Rahimi, which addressed laws that take away the right of purported domestic abusers to carry a gun. In an amazing ruling, issued June 21st, only one dissenter, Clarence Thomas, used originalism to justify allowing domestic abusers to have the right to carry guns. While Chief Justice, John Roberts, wrote the majority opinion with a feeble attempt to apply contextual history (see above quote), I think one Trump appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, just may have seen the light (insert: deeply religious shaft of light bathing the moment) that you can have a tight originalist judicial metric in judging constitutional matters or you can have justice… but not both at the same time. Barrett and the swing vote, Chief Justice John Roberts, could begin to end the most inane basis to interpret the Constitution: originalism. Or not. Might other members of the Trump-configured see that light?

I’m Peter Dekom, and if a constitution is to be a platform that is intended to guide a nation through time, especially the US Constitution (which is the most difficult to amend in the entire democratic world), then it must support not just the past… but act as our guide in the present and into the future.

Busted Trust Buster Back?!

Busted Trust Buster Back?!

The Ossification of Pro-Big Business America

Over the last 75 years, Americans’ generational belief, that they would do “better” than their parents, slipped particularly in the last 40 years, from 70% of the population to about third today. Income inequality in this country has never been more pronounced, the worst in the developed world. Yet the metrics of economic success show the United States as doing better than it ever has, a true testament to how unreflective of general economic health and well-being such measurements are. Stock prices? Most Americans do not own many, if any, stocks.

Gross Domestic Product? But the wild growth of mega-m(b)illionaires throws their wealth into the aggregate numbers, sending the average statistic that GDP represents soaring… Even as housing affordability, consumer and student debt and the general cost of living have pushed our misery indices soaring even more. Unemployment statistics show how many folks do not have a job, but they do not reflect those who are woefully underemployed (e.g., the environmental engineer working as a Starbucks barista) or those who have just given up looking.

The vast horde of homeless Americans, worse than any era since the Great Depression, most certainly is not a positive reflection of a healthy economy. While there is a traditional component, the mentally ill now relegated to the streets or prisons ever since the Reagan era’s shutting down mental care institutions plus drug users unable to support themselves, there are many who have jobs or are looking for work who simply cannot afford housing.

Remember the “too big to fail” era in the economic fall in the first decade of the new century? It wasn’t the middle and lower classes who got “bailed out.” It was two of the largest American automakers (GM and Chrysler) and whole host of financial institutions (even the legendary Goldman Sacks) with hundreds (thousands?) of “partners” who pulled down a million or more every year. And while the pandemic saw stimulus checks reaching more people, big business had no problem slorping at the government trough as well

While financial regulations have made it virtually impossible for all but the best endowed businesses to access the general equity markets, those investment banks, private equity funds, and mega-trading financial institutions got so much richer without creating genuine value. What can be said about a nation where mega-billionaires control 99% of the nation’s wealth? We do not tax most wealth (except on death or transfer… except real estate property tax), allowing individuals to accumulate obscene levels of wealth while sidestepping massive tax obligations.

Corporate CEOs earned 50 times the earnings of average workers in the 1950s, rising to over 300 to one in today’s world. Average big company CEOs made $16.7 million a year in 2023, according to Fortune Magazine (June 7th), but Elon Musk is trying to justify an annual compensation package of $15 Billion today. And still, the biggest of the big demand lower taxes, less economic-impacting regulation, with an openly stated quid pro quo that Donald Trump purportedly capitalized on at a May 11th dinner for the oil company elite at Mar-a-Lago: make a $1 billion aggregate contribution to my campaign, and I will lead another mega-tax cut and stop alternative energy initiatives dead in their tracks. BIG OIL is even enlisting the Trump-configured Supreme Court in its efforts to derail the inevitable switch to alternative energy. See my June 7th America is Getting Hosed and Lubricated by BIG OIL… Again blog.

You also may have noticed that those antitrust statutes (e.g., the Sherman Antitrust Act) passed at the end of the 19th century, used effectively thereafter to break up rail, petroleum, entertainment industry, banking, telecom, etc. monopolies until the 1980s seemed to fall into a period of non-enforcement. Clearly anticompetitive mergers and acquisition and predatory “exclusivity” and pricing restrictions were practiced with wonton abandon. The SEC, DOJ and FTC seemed quite content to allow these practices with minimal conditions at best.

In 2021, Biden administration appointed an aggressive FTC Chair, Lina Khan, and restaffed the Department of Justice with a stronger antitrust division. Yet, the Trump campaign – under the guise of killing the deep state, particularly that federal agency that targeted his election interference (as well as Hunter Biden’s tax and gun purchase issues), and cutting taxes under the disproving myth of “incenting the job-creator” – was set to reward his fellow mega-rich cronies with… well… everything they wanted if they played ball with him.

Biden’s trustbusters got to work, for example, in the DOJ’s late May efforts to break up Ticketmaster’s alleged ‘stranglehold’ on the concert venue industry. But how exactly did those big tech and social media companies evade the government’s application to rather obvious antitrust violations for so long. The June 6th Wall Street Journal (Brody Mullins) took a hard look at America’s primary corporate antitrust fixer and major shield. “The law firm of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, based in Silicon Valley, had long defended Google, Qualcomm and other corporate giants from unwanted regulation. [Joshua] Wright was the firm’s secret weapon.

“He was a law professor who became one of the most influential yet little-known figures of the tech era, leveraging positions in academia and government to shield deep-pocket clients. For more than a decade, Wright kept antitrust regulators at bay while America’s top technology companies amassed economic power not seen since Standard Oil, AT&T and other behemoths dominated their industries in the 20th century.

“Along the way, Wright spent two years as a regulator himself, serving on the Federal Trade Commission. Google, Facebook and Qualcomm benefited from his work at the FTC and through his consulting firm. The companies made hefty donations to fund his academic perch at George Mason University, money that kept flowing while he was in and out of government… Wright’s skills earned him more than $2 million a year from Google, Facebook, Walmart and others. Amazon paid Wright $600,000 a year, more than any of its lobbyists. His university pay topped $440,000 a year.

“For years, his business-friendly antitrust view carried weight among Washington officials. Yet he often didn’t reveal funding from Google, Amazon, Qualcomm and other clients in academic papers, blogs, open letters or congressional testimony favorable to the companies, the Journal found, disclosures that might have raised doubts about the objectivity of his research and opinions… [For example, the] FTC launched an investigation of consumer-product company Church & Dwight in June 2009. The government accused the company of leveraging the popularity of its products, including Arm & Hammer detergent, to get prime shelf space at retailer stores for its Trojan-brand condoms. The practice hurt consumers and rivals, the FTC said.

“Wright, working for a Boston-based consulting firm, produced economic reports and statistics-based studies. His research armed lawyers for Church & Dwight with evidence that the company’s actions didn’t harm consumers, either by increasing prices or limiting choice... The FTC lost in court, and Wright found his silver bullet: the claim of irrefutable data and analysis. Few judges or officials had the wherewithal or inclination to try to debunk his work. Antitrust consulting occupied a specialized niche at the intersection of law and commerce, and Wright established himself as a leading expert.”

Indeed, but for an alleged affair between Wright and a former student (later an associate at Wilson Sonsini), Write would have continued his undisclosed conflicted efforts to undermine antitrust prosecutions. “The lie began to crack open the hidden life of a prolific philanderer and exposed how Wright skirted conflict-of-interest standards to serve his amorous and financial pursuits, The Wall Street Journal found.” WSJ. But Wright’s efforts are simply a reflection of how rich and powerful incumbent wealth has generated policies that have killed upward mobility, severely amplified income and wealth inequality and tilted the playing field severely in their favor… just by agreeing to populist demands for conservative social policies that do not take a dime out of the pockets of the richest of the rich… who just want more.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as much as the mega-wealthy complain about “too much government and too many taxes,” that’s only for those programs that impact their pockets; otherwise, big government has been their closest ally.

How a Lack of Universal Healthcare Could Bankrupt the System

How a Lack of Universal Healthcare Could Bankrupt the System

All to Preserve Maximum Profits for Insurance Carriers and Pharmas

It’s been an immutable doctrinaire GOP platform from Ronald Reagan to the present: keep the government out of healthcare… perhaps even ending Medicare… and let the marketplace set the costs. But as patents – with 20-year exclusivity even for medical patents – are invented, some creating lifesaving treatments for millions of Americans, despite some minor price restraints implemented by the Biden administration, medical costs are skyrocketing… again. Patents are a statutory monopoly that, unless otherwise regulated by government, are priced by the inventor.

As the only developed nation on Earth without universal healthcare, millions of Americans are still without medical coverage. Even for those with health insurance, the exclusions, deductibles, co-pays and premium costs are leaving many with looming medical bankruptcy or a simple “I can’t afford this and rising food and housing costs too” reality. This is one good explanation why people are thinking about not voting for or voting against Biden as “ineffective”… even if Trump will slash many remaining benefits as best he can. When it comes to consumer issues, if stuff ain’t right, blame the incumbent president, even if he (so far) can’t do anything about it.

We’ve watched private equity (basically investment funds) play havoc with our healthcare system. These funds exist for one purpose only: to be as profitable as the market will allow. They do not serve a charitable or social purpose, and the success of their founders is driven entirely by their return on investment. When PE funds buy into a hospital or medical facility, it is not about making it better, only more profitable. Same is true when PE funds acquire companies with pharmaceutical patents. How do you make profits? Increase revenues (through volume or higher prices) or cut costs (reducing staff, go to bare bones equipment or necessary medicines, etc.).

As PE funds have rolled up (aggregated) hospitals, clinics and medical facilities, typically the acquired facility(ies) reduce the quality of their patient care. In smaller communities, that reality can be devastating… usually such medical facilities are “the only game for miles and miles.” To be able to extract money for investors, the acquired companies are often layered with massive new debt, paid off by effectively having the acquired entity literally pay their own acquisition cost.

Relying on the capital markets to improve and provide healthcare is such a terrible idea that the United States is the only developed country in the world that employs that technique. Without universal healthcare, on average, Americans pay double or triple what citizens of other developed countries pay for healthcare. And woe to those whose life depends on one of those monopoly-protected patented medications. Even the 2010 Affordable Care Act allowed pharmas to set their own prices for such medications. Profits, you’ll pardon the expression, trump life itself.

If you have to drill down on two of the biggest ailments (cost-wise) in our healthcare system, they are the related issues of diabetes (particularly, late-onset or type two) and obesity. These afflictions are particularly epidemic among elder Americans, many covered by Medicare. New medications (injectables like Ozempic) are exploding in popularity, not just because they are effective against type two diabetes, but because they are the most effective weight loss drugs ever. They are hideously expensive, slamming Medicare costs and pressing private insurance rates, or simply finding rich overweight people convincing doctors to write these as weight loss prescriptions… which just may require lifetime usage to maintain the benefits.

And while President Biden may have been successful in dropping the direct cost of insulin via recent legislation, there’s nothing in the current system to moderate costs for these newest medicines, even as excessive weight is also a marker for heart disease, strokes, many forms of cancer and a whole host of other medical nasties. With the current profit-driven priority in healthcare, there is a very big question of how we will pay for such prohibitively expensive treatments, as Karen Kaplan, writing for the June 3rd Los Angeles Times, explains:

“An April 24 letter from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to the CEO of Novo Nordisk began with heartfelt thanks to the Danish drugmaker for inventing Ozempic and Wegovy, two medications poised to improve the health of tens of millions of Americans with obesity and related diseases… But the senator’s grateful tone faded rapidly… ‘As important as these drugs are, they will not do any good for the millions of patients who cannot afford them,’ Sanders wrote. ‘Further, if the prices for these products are not substantially reduced they also have the potential to bankrupt Medicare, Medicaid, and our entire health care system.’

“It’s a sentiment that comes up regularly among people who are huge fans of the medications and their close relatives, Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound. All of them work by masquerading as a natural hormone called GLP-1 and tricking the body into slowing digestion and reducing blood sugar.

“The medications help patients lose double-digit percentages of their body weight and keep it off — an average of 12.4% in the clinical trial for Wegovy, and an average of 18% at the highest dose in the trial for Zepound. It’s rare for insurance companies to cover GLP-1 drugs for weight loss alone, and Medicare is forbidden by law from doing so. But as the pounds fall, so do the risks of serious problems like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart attacks and strokes, and the medications can be covered to prevent these conditions.

“‘Obesity is a huge public health crisis, and for so long we had no treatments that really made a difference,’ said Dr. Lauren Eberly, a cardiologist and health services researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. ‘These medicines could change the trajectory of your disease and save your life.’.. That makes these drugs extremely valuable. Unfortunately, they’re also extremely expensive.

“The sticker price for Ozempic, which the Food and Drug Administration approved to treat type 2 diabetes, is more than $12,600 per year. Wegovy, a higher-dose version approved for weight loss in people with obesity and as a way for overweight patients with cardiovascular disease to reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke, retails for nearly $17,600 a year… Mounjaro and Zepbound mimic GLP-1 as well as a related hormone called glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide, or GIP. Their list prices add up to roughly $13,900 per year for Mounjaro, which is approved as a diabetes treatment, and about $13,800 per year for Zepbound, the weight-loss version.

“Eberly said those prices are simply too high… ‘We as a public health medical community — and the community at large — really need to advocate for increased affordability,’ she said. ‘I think we’re overdue for a real reckoning on this.’… In the United States, the tab for these GLP-1 drugs is exorbitant almost any way you look at it… In 2022, the prescription drug that accounted for the biggest share of Medicare Part D spending was the blood thinner Eliquis. More than 3.5 million beneficiaries used it that year, at a cost of $15.2 billion, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says.

“That total was more than double the amount spent on the next-costliest drug, the type 2 diabetes medication Trulicity, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS… But $15.2 billion is practically a rounding error compared to the $268-billion price tag if Wegovy were to be provided to all 19.7 million Medicare beneficiaries with obesity, researchers estimated in the New England Journal of Medicine.” Simply put, the profit-driven marketplace is a terrible place to attempt to moderate healthcare costs, and the monopoly that patent law gives medicines only makes a terrible problem intolerable. Logic will tell you that universal healthcare is truly the only answer. But the entire GOP opposes that with unparalleled ferocity.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while “yes we can” make the American healthcare system work for most of us, so you have to ask yourself “why we don’t.”

The Water You Don’t See

 

“Often groundwater is out of sight, out of mind… We don’t measure it, we don’t understand it and we misuse it. And we need to make sure that we are managing groundwater so that it is supporting us, and making sure that we have a sustainable future.” 

Hydrologist Melissa Rohde.

While we mere humans fight over whether water is truly disappearing or, given all the recent atmospheric rivers and flooding, we actually have more than enough fresh water to keep civilization slaked, irrigated and pleasantly moist forever. The trouble with these debates, as is so true with so much of nature, is that people tend to deal with what they can see, dismissing as elitist tripe stuff warn us about through their “scientific” metrics.

If you want an example of how “I hate educated elites” masses respond to dedicated scientists, look at how the inimitable MAGA Congresswoman from Georgia, Majorie Taylor Greene, described GOP-spear-catcher favorite, Doctor Anthony Fauci as he voluntarily testified at a June 3rd House Subcommittee (on the Coronavirus Pandemic): “Mr. Fauci – because you're not 'doctor,' you're Mr. Fauci in my few minutes ... That man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked, and he belongs in prison.” The death threats to Fauci and family just poured in.

And so it is with groundwater, the stuff in wells and aquifers assuming it is still potable and not contaminated with toxins from abuses like fracking and waste runoff. For years in the 19th and early 20th centuries, windmills were used to pump irrigation water over our vast plains states, like the once massive Ogallala (High Plains) Aquifer that ran/runs from the Dakotas south to North Texas, all as pictured above. Aside from the damage from failed crop rotation and other mishaps that gave us the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when the only aquifer pumps were windmills, rainwater seemed enough to replenish this massive water storage from nature. But diesel (later solar) pumps, plus the use of fertilizers to grow more crops on relatively smaller pieces of land, the aquifer’s water levels dropped to bone dry in some areas.

But this isn’t just a warning to Mid-West farmers; the nation’s largest supplier of fruits and vegetables, California, is also struggling with groundwater realities. Much of groundwater control had been determined by agreements from the 19th century. Writing for the May 29th Los Angeles Times, Ian James describes the relevant research: “When Rohde and other scientists examined the local-level plans for parts of the state that fall under regulation, they found only about 9% of groundwater-dependent ecosystems were adequately protected, while the remaining 91% were vulnerable.

“Rohde has been focusing on finding ways to change that, in California and around the world… Often working at home, she has pored over satellite data to spot decreases in vegetation greenness during drought, a telltale sign of die-off caused by declining aquifer levels. And she has analyzed how different types of trees, including willows, cottonwoods and oaks, fare when water levels fall, depending on the depth of their roots…

“Already, California has lost the vast majority of its original wetlands to development, water diversions and agriculture. To avoid losing what remains, Rohde said, the state needs ‘a precautionary and preventative approach that can ensure that these ecosystems can withstand the intensification of droughts in climate change.’

“During a recent visit to Kern County, Rohde and several conservation specialists walked in the shade through a lush forest of cottonwood trees near the south fork of the Kern River, visiting a nature preserve she had previously seen only in satellite images… At the edge of a clearing, she came upon the bare, sunbleached skeletons of dead trees… She said satellite data had revealed that parts of the forest died along this part of the Kern River during the drought between 2012 and 2016… ‘That’s because the groundwater levels rapidly declined,’ Rohde said…

“‘Nature has been getting the short end of the stick. It basically gets whatever is left behind, which oftentimes is not enough,’ Rohde said. ‘How do we ensure that these ecosystems are protected?’… ‘When you play around with keeping groundwater levels too deep to support the habitat, then you could lose species, and then that’s irreversible. The consequences can be severe.’” But everybody in California is losing. We grow most of the nuts consumed in the US, for example, but nut trees use up a multiple of the water needed for smaller crops. Today, water may well be more precious than gold. How precious exactly?

“The former general manager of a San Joaquin Valley water district, accused by federal prosecutors of carrying out one of the most audacious and long-running water heists in California history, pleaded guilty Tuesday [5/28] to a version of the crime far more muted than what prosecutors had laid out in their original indictment.

“As part of a plea agreement negotiated with prosecutors, Dennis Falaschi, 78, former longtime head of the Panoche Water District, appeared in a Fresno federal courtroom and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to steal water from the government and one count of filing a false tax return… The plea deal is a jarring twist in a case that has captivated farmers in the San Joaquin Valley. In 2022, prosecutors accused Falaschi of masterminding the theft of more than $25 million worth of water out of a federal irrigation canal over the course of two decades and selling it to farmers and other water districts. The water grab, as laid out in the indictment, happened cat-burglar-style, siphoned through a secret pipe, often after hours to avoid detection.

“According to the indictment, proceeds that should have gone to the federal government instead were used to benefit Falaschi, his water district and a small group of co-conspirators, much of it funneled into exorbitant salaries and lavish fringe benefits. Jessica Garrison for the May 29th LA Times. But this abuse of water is happening all over the world. And while the inordinate level of flooding does somewhat seep into wells and aquifers, most of it is wasted runoff. One of the greatest drivers of migration happens to occur where wells and aquifers have run dry, and the farmers that once relied on that groundwater were/are no longer able to grow crops. Desperate farmers leave. As land succumbs to desertification, those areas where crops can still be grown become more valuable, and food prices rise accordingly.

I’m Peter Dekom, and what so many people don’t accept or realize is that ignoring the obvious consequences of climate change can kill them… or at least make their lives miserable.

How "My Way or the Highway" Is Destroying Democracy Almost Everywhere

“[Expect possible] U.S. ideological divisions, democratic erosion, and domestic unrest escalate, plunging the country into civil war.” 

Canadian governmental policy report, spring 2014, entitled Disruptions on the Horizon.

“Like, people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness.” 

Secret recording of controversial Supreme Court Justice, Samuel Alito, reported in the June 10th NY Times.

It’s happening everywhere. Populist candidates are increasingly getting elected in traditional democracies, embracing “us” vs “them” racial, ethnic purity, religious or gender values. As the world faces increases de facto civil wars (as in the recent election in Mexico, where gangs and cartels killed candidates who threatened their control) or regional conflicts and as climate change has rendered vast tracts of arable land fallow, there has been a parallel rise in migration globally. Poorer migrants are running from both ultra-violence in their homelands or the loss of even their subsistence existence. They’re mostly not running because each is individually being persecuted, the traditional meaning of an asylum-seeker, but they are running for their lives.

And the richer nations, where such migrants naturally gravitate, are closing their borders, electing rightwing representatives and leaders in record numbers, effectively circling their wagons to “keep them out.” This despite the fact that these richer nations were the economic growth beneficiaries of the pollution belching factories, the appliance-driven households, and the ubiquitous fossil fuel dependent aircraft, shipping and vehicles… that were and continue to be the principal causes of that farm destroying climate change.

We are also battling each other for dwindling resources. The Middle East would not be remotely as concerning if oil and gas were not at stake. If the massive fertile fields of grain and other crops that defined Ukraine for centuries were less productive – traditionally generating a disproportionate level of agricultural exports – I suspect Russia would never have coveted and invaded that nation. China lusts after super productive Taiwan and super-resource-rich regions in and around the South China Sea… with acquisition on her mind.

For some, like Hungary, it’s ethnic and cultural purity. For China, it reaches into ancient history to concoct its entitlement to the above-noted regional assets. I wonder if Greece should use Alexander the Great or Italy should use ancient Rome to expand today? But many nations in Europe are becoming the new homeland for ethnic, racial and religious minorities… lots and lots of them. The UK Brexited from the European Union to stop workers crossing open EU borders to find work in the UK. Populist explosions all across Europe – now including a litany of elections with rapidly rising rightwing results in Hungary, Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, Benelux, Austria and now looking increasingly like France (where President Macron has called a snap election hoping that the population will come to their senses and not elect an isolationist reactionary government).

Yet EU rules favor allowing migration, require granting asylum (also a UN rule), even as elections for EU representatives show a strong rightwing aversion to such statutes and treaties. Everywhere, strongmen are rising, racism and ethnic/religious purity have been legitimized, and the bastions of democracy are fighting for their lives. People are forgetting the lesson of autocracy over the years, the necessary violence and repression needed to keep the people in line once they wake up.

China may have pulled a billion people out of poverty in the post-Mao era, but as soon as the new Mao did away with term limits, purged his opponents, restructured his economy, President Xi Jinping’s centralized control raised repression to a new level, materially altered a once thriving economy to cater to his whims and produced massive unemployment, a serious reduction in factory output, a major real estate collapse and a parallel unraveling of the Chinese banking sector. Has Russia prospered under elected Putin’s iron boot? You tell me.

Centralized power works efficiently, for sure. One of the first elements of democracy – a functioning and powerful independent judicial system – is almost always the first area a rising autocrat takes apart. So that efficiency may continue, but without the checks and balances that a viable and independent represents, the nation and its economy only work if that strongman makes good decisions. As so many societies have learned the hard way, if that strongman makes bad decisions – surrounded with “yes” loyalists – the lack of those checks and balance unravels the entire nation. Look at Israel as Netanyahu attacked his judiciary. That’s first and most important check and balance to go.

That strongmen attacking the very institutions that supply those checks and balances should send a powerful red alert to the entire electorate. Hair-brain schemes, promises that defy reality, and identifying blameless people to blame are part and parcel of that national unraveling. According to some pretty reputable economists (as reported by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria), the United States – with a worker shortage directly related to an under replacement-value population contraction – is losing GDP value at $5 trillion/year with its immigration policy. The UK, without that EU structure and open travel, watched its post-Brexit economy plunge to be one of lowest performing all of Europe, like taking a decade or more to recover.

So now we come to the populist surge in the United States. The Trump years were not the glorious success that Trump claims. In almost every economic category, Biden is vastly more successful. Like most dictators-in-waiting, Trump promises to disassemble the DOJ, its law enforcement arm and take over the courts to impose his will. He enabled existing populist judges – like “2.4 million in gifts from partisan donors” Clarence Thomas and religious fundamentalist Trumper Samuel Alito – to eschew the ethics that are mandatory for every other federal judge and vote for guns and autocratic personal control by adding three more rightwing jurists to the Court.

So, what does that autocratic control, with courts sidelined, look like in a country with more civilian guns than people, with rightwing militia carrying those guns (and lots of AR-15-like firearms) and a military arresting the autocrat’s opponents? You tell me.

I’m Peter Dekom, for those people who knowingly or unknowingly favor a new populist autocracy, prepare to relearn those well-established lesson of history… stand back and stand by.

The Double Death for Those Diagnosed with Cancer

The Double Death for Those Diagnosed with Cancer

More Fallout from the Only Developed Nation on Earth without Universal Healthcare: The United States of America

The MAGA GOP is pledging to retain the massive 2017 Trump-era tax cuts, increasing them significantly from there. As we know, tax cuts generally favor most those who have the greatest taxable income, and we know who those are. Not most of us. The benefit cuts and cost of interest on our deficit we all pay are subsidies for the rich. Those 2017 set of tax cuts generated virtually none of the promised new, high-paying jobs, but have so far added at least $2 trillion to our deficit. This MAGA GOP promise of future extended and additional tax cuts will generate an estimated minimum add to the deficit of $4 trillion. A rising tide continues to float only all yachts, and the budget cuts in their crosshairs are heavily focused on their popular misuse of the word “entitlements.” And that generally means retirees and those needing medical care. A burden for the middle and the lower economic classes, not for well-heeled Americans.

God help you if you or your family members contract one of many of the most lethal forms of cancer… and you don’t have any or, as most of us do, only limited insurance coverage. And God help you even if you do have coverage but lose work or even a job over the related challenges of serious cancer. It’s bad whether it’s you… or a dependent child. Beyond the pain. Beyond the threat of death. A stab to the heart of so many families’ financial survival. The corollary of a medical system driven by profits, like ours, is that everything we use to treat cancer here is vastly more expensive than in countries with universal healthcare. And lots of treatments seem to fall outside the ambit of coverage in so many American insurance policies… assuming you have a policy that covers the treatment at all. Today, more than ever before.

If you have no real savings, your insurance or lack thereof has large co-pays and exclusions and caps, and you fall victim to a virulent form of cancer (or if that fate befalls a child or a spouse), there are challenges ahead. Assuming you even find a treatment path, can you work? Hold a job? Pay rent or maintain a mortgage? Will you losing insurance coverage for lack of an ability to pay premiums? Facing medical bankruptcy? Who takes care of your kids? If you have a car but cannot make car payments… Even if you have/had a good job, life changes with a major negative medical diagnosis and treatment reality. The so-called “rising out of pocket costs” for just about anyone so afflicted can be staggering, rising year after year. Brianna Abbott, writing for the May 28th Wall Street Journal, gathered the numbers, the costs, to bring this reality home to all of us:

“The economic burden of a cancer diagnosis is getting strikingly worse in the U.S., as drug and medical costs soar and more patients live longer with the disease. About 55% of cancer drugs introduced between 2019 and 2023 cost at least $200,000 a year, according to Iqvia’s Institute for Human Data Science. And an increasing number of patients are working-age, a group more likely to report financial hardship after diagnosis compared with older adults...

“Nearly 60% of working-age cancer survivors report facing some financial difficulty. Many patients struggle to afford care and end up taking on debt, with some getting payday loans or running up credit cards. Cancer alone accounts for some 40% of medical campaigns seeking financial help on GoFundMe, research shows… ‘Cutting back on meds. Cutting back on doctor visits. Losing your home. Cutting back on food—these are not things that we want to believe happen to people with cancer in this country,’ said Dr. Reshma Jagsi, a radiation oncologist at Emory University School of Medicine and the Winship Cancer Institute.

“Among common diseases, cancer creates a uniquely difficult financial strain known as financial toxicity. Treatments with expensive medicines start immediately and come with a string of nonmedical costs. Chemotherapy and other treatments can leave patients too weak to work for weeks or months. This can result in a twofold blow, with patients losing income and their employer-sponsored health insurance. The financial fallout can last for years… ‘It can cause this wealth shock that can ripple on,’ said Dr. Fumiko Chino, a radiation oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, whose husband died of cancer over a decade ago. Debt collectors still call her about his unpaid bills.

“The problem starts with costs for medical care and cancer drugs that have either risen above the rate of inflation or have high starting prices. Common cancer drugs have list prices that go well into the six figures: Imbruvica, which treats leukemia, has a list price of more than $213,000 for a full year. The average Medicare patient taking it paid $5,247 out-of-pocket in 2022, federal data show. AbbVie, one of the drug’s co-marketers, declined to comment. Tagrisso, a top-selling lung-cancer drug, has a list price of about $208,000 a year. Its maker, AstraZeneca, said the cost to an individual patient is rarely the list price, and the cost would vary based on a patient’s insurance coverage. The company said it has patient-assistance programs, and is committed to pricing responsibly and making its medicines affordable to patients.

“Many insurers have shifted rising healthcare costs to patients. Some employer-backed plans require patients to pay a percentage of a drug’s cost, which can add up to thousands of dollars. One report found a 15% increase in out-of-pocket costs for privately insured, working-age cancer patients from 2009 to 2016. Patients also foot the bill for transportation, lodging, child care and parking.

“The added costs are only part of the toll, with people’s livelihoods also put at risk. Many patients have to take time off—or actually stop working—after a cancer diagnosis. Patients who get chemotherapy are more likely to stop working within four years than those who don’t... The burden often affects entire families, with relatives pitching in financially or caring for their sick loved ones.” We see arguments from pharma and healthcare providers that the innovation that they claim “creates the finest medical system on earth” just requires expensive and expansive investment. But these staggering costs are accelerated by inane marketing costs and a strong priority for profitability that makes that same “finest system” too expensive to access for the most seriously in need of those most expensive treatments.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in the end, the United States may be the richest nation on Earth, but it has created a cruel healthcare system that subordinates the health and well-being of its residents to a yacht-supporting medical care system that absolutely prioritizes profits over all other values… and we remain the only developed nation with that reversed set of priorities.

The New Alpha Male, Anti-Woke American Role Model

 

Forget “woke” civil rights leaders, former POWs who used to make us proud, American presidents with noble goals and higher aspirations, union leaders who risked life and limb for the little guy, and welcome to the world of machismo-driven MEN who laud those willing to ignore (even hold in disdain) the “tired, the weak and the huddled masses.” These “losers” are the entitled, the beggars, the dregs of a nation that must get back to a world where strength and power reign supreme, and weakness is crushed and purged. All this often under religious cloaks where Christian tolerance, charity and brotherly love are lost in an orgy of worshipped missile blasts, AR-15 killings and the elevation of violence and physical power as the only variables that matter. Gaza? “Finish the job.” Let Nazi quotes and tropes find their way into political campaigns, allowing enough for “wink wink” plausible “he didn’t really mean that” deniability. Hey, Nazis are alpha males for sure, right?

Killing civilians is the new “proof of manhood” badge. ICC-indicted Israeli PM Netanyahu fits the bill. In the United States, “stand your ground” statutes facilitate what would otherwise be called “murder.” Kyle Rittenhouse (above right) was found “not guilty” of murder at a 2020 rally, where he marched in with his AR and shot three men (two died) because he felt intimidated by them. But even those convicted of murder can walk free with an alpha male pardon, as did Army Sargent Daniel Perry following a failed “stand your ground” murder defense in Texas. Announcing Perry’s pardon on May 16th, alpha male and Governor, Greg Abbott (above left), said: “Texas has one of the strongest ‘stand your ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney.” Guess alpha males can overrule juries if they can.

We are watching a new, strange worship of physical prowess, a manly unshaven beard look, and a serious perception downgrade toward educated elites, pure scientists, and medical doctors. There is new trend, perhaps a backlash to the me2# era, where men of “stature” are favorably depicted in droves over women of “stature.” Writing for the May 21st FastCompany.com (“Tech bro podcasts are obsessed with alpha men, and it’s dangerous for the rest of us”), Ainsley Harris observes this new, macho Silicon Valley ethos:

“Jeff Bezos is a busy man. But in December, he found the time—two hours and 11 minutes, to be exact—to talk with Lex Fridman, a computer scientist and host of the Lex Fridman Podcast. Fridman’s podcast is the most popular in the technology category, according to Apple and Spotify. His following on social media—including his own Reddit community, 38,000 strong—extends to more than 8 million people.

“During the past six years, Fridman has recorded more than 400 episodes on topics ranging from alien life to venture investing. His interview subjects have included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, aspiring Middle East dealmaker Jared Kushner, and entrepreneurial YouTube star MrBeast. In July, Fridman interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, for an hour.

“At first glance, Fridman might seem an unlikely influencer. His plodding baritone engages in only the most tentative banter. Episodes are a test of listener endurance, almost invariably running for more than an hour, if not two or three. And then there is Fridman’s monastic focus on his core interest: how to become a Great Man… Yes, man: Not quite 12% of Fridman’s 400-plus guests have been women, and among those, the vast majority have been women scientists who observe the world as it is, unlike his typical guest—alpha-male builders who want to bend the world to their will…

“On YouTube, you can watch documentaries produced by Soylent cofounder turned nicotine entrepreneur John Coogan (400,000 subscribers), who hypes up leaders like Midjourney founder David Holz, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, and Palantir cofounder Alex Karp. (Coogan is also an entrepreneur-in-residence at Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.) On Substack, you can read paid-shill Packy McCormick’s newsletter Not Boring (220,0000 subscribers), which contains fawning company profiles. (McCormick describes his genre as ‘techno-optimistic media.’) And during your commute home, you can revel in the camaraderie of the All-In Podcast (485,000 YouTube subscribers, plus millions of followers on other platforms). Its ego-fueled, trash-talking installments have made unlikely stars of its four hosts, Silicon Valley insiders who rub shoulders with the likes of Elon Musk.

“These content creators and tastemakers are united not just by their posture of admiration but by their Great Men worldview. Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle is credited with having articulated this perspective (informally known as “patriarchy”) in a series of lectures he published in 1841: ‘The History of the world is but the Biography of great men,’ Carlyle wrote. He did not consider Great Men to be perfect angels, but rather leaders who achieve great things in the face of great obstacles.

“Carlyle’s favored Great Men squared off against adversaries such as British royalty (Oliver Cromwell), the Catholic Church (Martin Luther), and Hell (Dante). Today’s Great Men, as anointed by the podcast circuit, are almost invariably visionary business leaders who believe that imminent advances in AI, rocketry, and biotechnology will spur greater human flourishing. And they face their own set of epic adversaries: anti-tech media outlets, woke-ism, HR, and sometimes even one another (see Bezos’s Blue Origin versus Musk’s SpaceX, for starters)… There is a foundational assumption underpinning this theory and its media moment: that the best way to help humans is to cede greater power to a select group of already rich and powerful men. ‘Founder knows best’ is the whisper between the lines, even if examples like Musk’s takeover of Twitter scream to the contrary. As usual, those who most stand to benefit from this narrative are the ones creating and amplifying it.”

As mellifluous music is increasing the ambit of female performers, the glowing gold teeth rap stars, surrounded by their b#$%*hs, exercising their physical dominion and control through violence, exactly what is going on here… and is this the world we want our children to grow up in? I sure hope not, but if we keep worshipping violent idols and electing machismo-uber-alles male politicians, that ethos is redefining society in a very bad way. Mothers (and fathers), don’t let your children grow up to be cowboys… or machismo-is-all men!!! A total “me” focus, power, strength and whatever it takes and whoever must yield or suffer.

I’m Peter Dekom, and take all the lesson of caring for others that I learned growing up, and just add “not.”

Ethics?! We Don’t Want Your Stinking Ethics Rules!!!

Ethics?! We Don’t Want Your Stinking Ethics Rules!!!

With Love and Cavalier Disrespect – Your Friendly Neighborhood US Supreme Court, Powered by MAGA

Without exception, there are zero autocracies on earth with independent law enforcement and a genuine and fully independent judiciary to administer a system of checks and balances (with power) against the other branches of government. And for autocrat wannabes, their first plan of attack, as they move to concentrate their power, is almost always to disable, or render subservient, law enforcement and judicial power. We can see where it has happened in Russia, China, Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela, etc. and where it is currently happening in Israel, India, Mexico and, well, if MAGA has its way, the United States of America.

Given what’s happening here, our Founding Fathers are likely spinning in the graves… at very high speeds. All federal justices, in every court, are nominated for office by the President of the United States, subject to confirmation by majority vote in the US Senate. All federal justices so designated are likewise subject to a stringent cannon of ethics that govern their disclosure obligations, how conflicts of interest must be determined, what neutrality requires, permissible sources of outside income, what decorum they must adhere to, etc, etc… Oh, except for disclosure, one US court is exempted from those ethics… subject to removal from office only by impeachment in the House of Representatives and trial in the US Senate: the justices of the United States Supreme Court.

Given the polarization of just about every branch of government these days, you might surmise that a highly unethical Supreme Court justice who reasonably consistently rules with consistent partisanship isn’t going to be removed from office by a Congress where the favored political party can block that removal. And you would be right. The most egregious Supreme Court recipient of substantial economics values – Associate Justice Clarence Thomas (expensive vacations, a tuition subsidy for a family member to a substantial subsidy of a luxury motor home, a little real estate razzle-dazzle resulting in a sale of property with a right for a family member’s continued rent-free occupancy… all gifted by mega-wealthy GOP supporters led by rightwing real estate developer Harlan Crow). The estimated value of all that: an aggregated at a worth of around $2.4 million. Hints of beneficial deals for Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch have surfaced as well.

As for clear and obvious bias, we have Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife active in urging the Trump White House to pursue vigorous “stop the steal” activities and generally supporting activists (I’m being polite here) being aggressive with their protests. Add to that, clear expression of bias from Samuel Alito, for example, as with an upside-down American flag hanging outside his house – a pretty standard modern use of that gesture as a “stop the steal” statement – and “An Appeal to Heaven” flag outside his beach house – a rather clear white Christian nationalist banner. Alito blames his wife for these expressions even though he walked by them… a lot. Hey, Sam, I thought hiding behind your wife’s skirts was considered radical leftwing “woke.” See also my recent The Supremes? and Replacing the Constitution with White Christian Nationalist Mandates blogs for more details and some visuals.

The notions of inappropriate sexual behavior have also haunted conservative Supreme Court nominations for decades. During confirmation hearings regarding Clarence Thomas’ 1991 nomination to the Court, Anita Hill testified that Thomas had sexually harassed her while she worked with him at the Education Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Hill said Thomas frequently asked her out on dates and described his sexual interests to her. Decades later, in 2018, at confirmation hearings, Christine Blasey Ford, a then a Standford psychology professor, accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were high school students. After Hill’s testimony, the FBI did a cursory investigation producing insufficient evidence to pursue the inquiry. After Ford’s testimony, the FBI refused to interview credible witnesses who supported her claims. Obviously, both nominees were confirmed.

We can also look at the rightwing justices’ tricks of the trade. Exemplified by ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in his “guns are fun for everyone” Heller vs DC (2008) opinion in which he outlined how the constitutional provisions and the amendments must be interpreted only in accordance with the surrounding societal norms at the time. So, Second Amendment cases dealing with semiautomatic assault rifles (like the AR-15) can only apply the then-existing laws for flintlocks and muskets. It’s called originalism, and it turns Supreme Court justices into researching historians, pretty much able to find historical support for almost any decision they want to reach. Scalia’s law clerk, Amy Coney Barrett, is now herself a Supreme Court justice, who also practices originalism. The Roberts Court will most certainly go down in history, way down.

What I am describing above is a rogue Supreme Court making highly biased rightwing partisan decisions, rather clearly laying the path for an autocrat hell-bent on coopting law enforcement and ensuring the Court follows his wishes… free and clear of any ethical guardrails. And when Congress attempts to address the unethical “bribes and biases R Us” trend in Supreme Court justices, guess who is equally hell-bent to keep ethics and the Supreme Court at a safe distance apart? Writing for the May 11th NBC News, Zoë Richards, Sahil Kapur and Frank Thorp V tell us about a failed Democratic Senate effort last July to add the same kinds of ethical requires that other federal judges face to the Supreme Court, which was recently resurrected as the news about further unethical Supreme Court behavior filled the news:

“Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the [Senate] Judiciary Committee, said earlier Tuesday [5/11] that he would make a unanimous consent request to pass Supreme Court ethics legislation that the panel advanced last July… Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, plans to block an effort by Senate Democrats to unanimously pass a Supreme Court ethics bill Wednesday on the Senate floor… ‘I will object,’ Graham, R-S.C., told NBC News… Graham's objection means the bill won't be able to move forward, because any senator can block a request.” Perhaps someday. But at least all those MAGA senators are on record, championing a Court with no ethical restrictions.

Meanwhile, the MAGA House majority is trying to take control of our federal judicial system – a la Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to allow his legislature to override that nation’s highest court – by requiring the US DOJ prosecutors to testify and spill their prosecutorial materials to MAGA members of the House who want vengeance for the cases against Donald Trump. On May 12th, the House of Representatives voted along party lines, 216-207, to hold Attorney Merrick Garland in contempt for withholding the audio recording of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur over his mishandling of classified documents. Garland is now the third attorney general in U.S. history to be held in contempt.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while for most voters who are concerned and focused on the “democracy vs autocracy” battle in the upcoming presidential election, they just might be missing the shock troops within Congress and the Supreme Court who have already begun that Trumpian transition.

Xi Jinping is Not a Taipei Personality

 

           Over 200 PRC Vessels Practice 

              Encircling Taiwan in May

Xi Jinping is Not a Taipei Personality

Intentional Strategic Ambiguity: Constraints and Restraints

There have been a series of China’s (the People’s Republic of China or PRC) clear efforts to ramp up their claim to Taiwan as an inseparable province of the mainland. The rhetoric has risen. The People’s Liberation Army (the entire PRC military) is more modern, larger and clearly has a larger array of nuclear weapons than ever, including a navy that is both huge and sophisticated. And while the PRC has never possessed and ruled Taiwan, it has maintained that Taiwan is legitimately theirs, a claim strongly asserted, since the end of the Korean War. But the world is changing.

In the June 3rd edition of China Talk, writers Jordan Schneider, Nicholas Welch, Jared McKinney, Lily Ottinger and others address the modern challenge of Deterring a Taiwan Invasion. They note that: “In terms of American military power — after the Korean War, we became de facto engaged in the defense of Taiwan from a communist invasion, and then de jure or formally engaged in the defense of Taiwan from a Chinese invasion with the 1954 Mutual Defense Treaty onward. As a result of the de facto and then de jure commitment, we interposed US naval power regularly in the Taiwan Strait in a dedicated unit called the Taiwan Strait Patrol. We station tens of thousands of US soldiers in Taiwan.

“Later on in the Cold War, we actually put tactical nuclear weapons there — a fact that is now declassified. We had a formal commitment. We backed up the commitment. And then there were two crises in which China signaled some aggressive intent in 1954 and 1958. Both times, we threatened nuclear war in response to PRC saber-rattling. Nuclear war was not something China was interested in, especially since China didn’t have nuclear weapons until 1964. Those were some pretty robust deterrents, even if there were some scares in this period.

“Usually, when people talk about preventing war, they discuss deterrence, but we think that it’s actually more useful to think about deterrents… Taiwan’s deterrents played a significant role during this period — for example, Taiwan’s air power… Guess who got the first air-to-air kills in the history of air combat using precision-guided weapons? It wasn’t the United States. It was the Republic of China Air Force in 1958, which fired Sidewinder missiles to shoot down PLA fighters in the strait. They achieved kill ratios of about 30:4.”

In 1972, Richard Nixon opened formal relations with Mao Zedong’s PRC, including replacing Taiwan (the Republic of China) in the United Nations with the PRC. Upon the ascension of Deng Xiaoping to China’s leadership a decade later, the PRC hyper-accelerated into modernity, eventually lifting a billion Chinese out of poverty with an economic machine that soon became our greatest trading partner. Stability reigned, even as the PRC never lifted its claim over Taiwan. But China grew stronger as the United States fell into complacency.

Today, a new “Mao” dictator, Xi Jinping, had solidified his position, ended presidential term limits and ramped up his repression of any opposition within his country. But his mismanagement of the pandemic, the failure of his central economic reforms – facing massive unemployment, especially among younger educated workers, a real estate debacle with an accompanying banking crisis and a fall in manufacturing output – seemed to call for a distraction and a rallying cry to his citizens. Parallel with this reality is/was the severe polarization within its archrival, the United States, and the potential reelection of isolationist candidate, Donald Trump. With Trump’s threats to abrogate military treaties (even perhaps his defense treaty with Taiwan) and possibly withdraw from NATO, the US seemed to be unraveling… to Xi’s delight.

Even as Xi’s natural ally, Vladimir Putin was mired in Russia’s own claims over Ukraine, Xi moved towards reinforcing a Sino-Russian combination to counter the United States and offer Europe an alternative to an unreliable United States. Europe may care about Ukraine, but to most leaders on that continent, Taiwan was expendable. With the recent election of Taiwan’s new president, Lai Ching-te (aka “William Lai”), a champion of Taiwan’s independence, China reacted quickly. Rising up beyond the PRC’s escalating claim over much of the entire region’s waterways, that election elicited a more serious PRC response, even as the Taiwanese continue to believe that the awkward status quo would continue.

“The mood in Taiwan, with a few false invasion warnings aside, seems to be one of the status quo. Sometimes, Taiwanese people will say that Taiwan has been under threat from the PRC since the late 1940s. They think, ‘If we’ve had scares for the past seventy years, why should we be unusually afraid today?’… They understand that the PRC is a threat, but it’s been a threat for a long time…

“Taiwan’s government agencies are battered by 5 million cyberattacks every day. China is holding invasion drills at a replica of Taiwan’s presidential palace in Inner Mongolia. [In late May], the PLA openly rehearsed an encirclement of Taiwan in so-called ‘punishment drills.’… [But after that Taiwan election, what?] In very simple terms, a constraint is something prohibiting you from doing something or limiting your ability to do it — while a restraint is something internal to your own mind, prohibiting or limiting you from doing something… When looking at the interlocking constraints and restraints, it’s very striking how in the twentieth century, the US and Taiwan relied almost exclusively on constraints like US naval dominance, nuclear deterrence, and Taiwanese air superiority.

“Then, at the turn of the century, most of those constraints disappeared, and now we almost exclusively rely on restraints like China’s positive expectations about trade with Taiwan and the US, or Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing capabilities.” China Talk. So where are we? Is a nuclear war on the table? US policymakers are at a crossroads. With internal American dissention, even with her current economic issues, China is asking if this is their time to make that final move to take Taiwan. What should the United States do? Like Israel’s Netanyahu announcing that his war in Gaza will continue at least through the end of the year – conveniently after the US elections – Xi may well wait to see if Donald Trump is reelected… and simply remove any US deterrence from the equation. Stay tuned.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for those who believe that the United States should walk away from its international role and turn inward, the economic catastrophe that would follow might well become an irreversible disaster for America.