As the Western World Hits Pause on Climate Change, China Takes Over

As the Western World Hits Pause on Climate Change, China Takes Over

“This ‘climate change,’ it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion… All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.” 

Donald Trump addressing the UN General Assembly, September 23rd

“These are projects that Congress already approved and funded — projects that create jobs, lower electricity costs, and move our country forward. Instead of working to help our families and communities, the Trump Administration is tearing these projects down, driving up energy bills for families, and putting hardworking people in New Mexico and across the country out of work.” 

New Mexico Senator (a Democrat) Martin Heinrich, after an Energy Department press release stating the 321 green energy infrastructure awards which would have gone to the 223 projects were being canceled after a “thorough, individualized financial review.”

As alternative energy has supplanted coal at the world’s largest source of electrical power, as floods, fires, mega-storms and super-heated droughts proliferate, technologically advanced nations are backing off of their climate change commitments, citing affordability and growing popular disappointment (wink, wink: keeping oil giants powerful and profitable)… with one key exception: China. Indeed as rich nations from the US, UK and Canada to much of the European Union lower or eliminate their climate change initiatives and pull back on their financial investments in this sector, developing nations have made one very startling discovery: they are no longer at the mercy of big oil, as fossil fuels have drained their economies, because the cost of green energy is now vastly cheaper… and can be installed anywhere. Guess who makes their equipment? Not us!!!

China now accounts for 74% of the global investment in the manufacture of green energy technology: wind, solar and batteries. As the United States literally has surrendered this tech sector to the Peoples’ Republic of China, the rising profitability and resulting job creation fosters a world that does not care a rat’s behind what powerful incumbent governments want. Money talks and old-world power generation industries are being replaced at a rapid pace, no matter the disinformation these embedded, increasingly obsolete fossil fuel behemoths may disseminate. Even they are not building or upgrading their refineries to maximize their market efficiencies. “Drill baby, drill” seems more appropriate in a dentist’s office these days.

Canada’s carbon-capture efforts and France’s commitments to its own Paris Accords are being stalled or reversed. Nothing quite as bad as Trump’s luddite blindness. “Global corporations from Ford to J.P. Morgan Chase are all rolling back their commitments to climate change, which is all deeply intertwined… That’s because, as Bloomberg reported… profits will always come before net zero commitments. According to a report out of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), an industry group that includes banks and financiers like BlackRock Inc., Goldman Sachs Group, and UBS Group AG, there are some misunderstandings about the role that finance has in decelerating the rate of climate change. ‘Instead of indicating that the money required to green the economy is ready to flow, industry leaders now say their first priority is delivering financial returns for clients—and that means energy-transition investments will only be undertaken if they’re considered profitable,’ Bloomberg wrote. The bankers are pointing their fingers at the politicians and governments, who have been largely unwilling to make significant headway in fighting climate change globally.” Abigail Basset writing for the October 7, 2024, Climatebase.com

“New Stanford-led research in PLOS One reveals a growing constellation of think tanks, research institutes, trade associations, foundations, and other groups actively working to oppose climate science and policy. The number of countries with at least one such “counter climate change organization” has more than doubled over the past 35 years.

“According to the Jan. 22 study, the two factors most closely linked to the formation of at least one counter climate change organization are the strength of a country’s commitment to protecting the natural environment and the level of formal organization in its social sector… ‘We found that counter climate change organizations tend to emerge after pro-environmental policies are institutionalized in government,’ said senior study author Patricia Bromley, associate professor of environmental social sciences in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and of education at Stanford Graduate School of Education.” Chris Binns in a January 25th report from the Stanford University School of Sustainability. But China is taking over.

Writing for the September 2nd Electrek.com, Michele Lewis, explains: “China is leading this surge by a wide margin. In the first half of 2025, the country installed more than twice as much solar capacity as the rest of the world combined, accounting for 67% of global additions. That’s up from 54% in the same period last year. Developers rushed to complete projects before new wind and solar compensation rules took effect in June, fueling the spike. While that may lead to a slowdown in the second half of the year, new clean power procurement requirements for industry and bullish forecasts from China’s solar PV association (CPIA) suggest that 2025 will still surpass 2024’s record high.

“Other countries are adding solar at a healthy clip, too. Together, they installed an estimated 124 GW in the first half of 2025, a 15% year-over-year increase. India came in second with 24 GW, up 49% from last year’s 16 GW. The US ranked third with 21 GW, a 4% gain year-over-year despite recent moves by the Trump administration to suppress clean power deployment. Germany and Brazil saw slight dips, while the rest of the world added 65 GW, a 22% rise over 2024.” Tesla cannot compete against China’s global domination of the EV marketplace (see the BYD vehicles pictured above). Slashing at our finest Universities seems colossally stupid as well. I’ll end this blog with a chart presented by Ms Lewis:

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am tired of America’s leadership and its legacy-protecting corporate dinosaurs pushing our great nation into a second-rate, also-ran status.

Perhaps, It’s Failing Basic Skills Help Autocrats Get Public Support?

Perhaps, It’s Failing Basic Skills that Helps Autocrats Get Public Support?

Rising autocrats need “whatever I say” followers. For those who blindly outsource their opinions and perception to politicians promising just about anything, describing their nation as falling apart and demonizing helpless minorities that are all-too-conveniently visible, they lose the ability to understand increasingly complex economic and political realities when they cannot read or research and are thus fact/numbers averse. If your most cherished leaders repeat that the sky is turning red, a beautiful sunset is nothing more than proof that the sky is indeed turning red.

And when South Korea asks the US government why it cannot protect its investment in a US-based automotive factory, unable to find enough qualified US applicants, by beginning with 300 out of 500 employees being trained Koreans… as the US unceremoniously deports those 300 workers for overstaying their visas… as funding for education at every level (state and federal) has become an expendable luxury. Increasing H1-B visas application fees to $100,000 just might force US companies with high-level STEM requirements to locate in countries with no such barriers.

What’s worse is the proclivity of political parties to provide simple, seemingly logical “solutions” that sound good but never really work. Like “incent the job creators” and a “rising tide floats all boats.” It’s just an excuse to lower taxes for the rich, under that “Laffer curve” above, which falsely projects if tax rates get too high, that causes the economy to shrink for everybody. So cut taxes to expand the economy. There is a slight problem with that, at least in all of US experience: when the rich get tax cuts, they do not rush out and hire lots of people for good jobs… they keep the extra money and buyback shares, give themselves dividends, buy companies and layoff workers to make their acquisitions more profitable, simply buy another vacation home… or replace the old luxury yacht with a bigger, better one.

I repeat it has never worked here. NEVER. Using catchy slogans implementing this “trickle down/supply side economics” is a mythological failure that just will not go away, because even moderate Republicans believe it just sounds so good. “When Ronald Reagan attained the Presidency, he did indeed pursue an aggressive program of tax reduction — however, the required corresponding budget discipline was ignored as he went on a military borrowing and spending spree to fight the commies in the Cold War.” Wikipedia. And when Kansas Governor Sam Brownback implemented similar state tax cuts in 2012, the state budget for public education had to be slashed into oblivion, the projected growth just did not happen, and the tax cuts were eventually reversed by a Republican-controlled legislature as a failure… overriding a Brownback veto.

Our students are too willing to let Google or an AI search govern, often leading them to conspiracy theories embraced by people they trust who are themselves the product of a failed educational system. Or simply outsourcing their beliefs to leaders who are completely wrong. Here’s another example: the proclivity of politicians to ignore one of economics’ most basic rules. If you are waging a serious major war or profoundly extended conflict, you have to pay for this usually massive cost with concomitant sacrifice. Think WWII, war bonds, rationing and asking people to cut back consumption… and we still borrowed.

But as Republicans committed to the Laffer Curve tax cuts, during the Vietnam War, our once tamed federal deficits exploded. The theory – guns OR butter – became guns AND butter. Wrong! And even as the Clinton presidency finally turned a budget surplus, the post-9/11/01 wars in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, were accompanied by Bush (W) era tax cuts… and the deficit has been soaring ever since. Trump’s “big beautiful” tax cuts are sending the deficit to untenable places, threatening Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education and the survivability of the American economy itself. DOGE cuts appear to be self-amputations, impairing our ability to function as a nation, domestically and overseas.

You only have to look at year-over-year standardized test scores, especially in math, to see how we are preparing America’s youth for their and our future; as the above graphic illustrates, we are decreasingly globally competitive. Emma Gallegos, writing for the September 23rd Los Angeles Times, tells us: “American students are experiencing a math crisis marked by a decline in scores that began over a decade ago and rapidly accelerated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report shows... Almost 4 in 10 eighth-graders scored below basic in math on the Nation’s Report Card, leading to the lowest scores since the test began in the early 2000s. The gap between high- and low-performing students is higher than ever. Students who saw strong gains in math since the early 2000s — girls , low-income students, Black and Latino students, students with disabilities and English learners — have seen their progress erased.

“‘A plan and a vision for solutions is not clearly happening,’ said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research institute based at Arizona State University, who called the problem ‘alarming.’… But math is an important subject that provides students with the foundation they need to be globally competitive for ‘jobs of the future,’ Lake said, and also just to function in the modern world.”

Meanwhile, to fund his tax cuts for the rich, Trump is shutting down the Department Education (which has administered programs that fund so many state programs for public instruction), sending delinquent student loans out for collection where graduates are facing a contracting college-level job market caused by Trump policies, and attacking those universities that have contributed most to our technological dominance and our job-creating scientific research, using the lame and mostly fabricated excuse of correcting antisemitism. The nation as a whole will suffer for decades from Trump’s priorities, whether we remain a democracy or a Trumpian autocracy… and no one, especially not Trump, can fix this for a very, very long time.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as Trump claims he has “made America great again,” the numbers and our declining global competitiveness tell us that we are struggling to maintain our position as the greatest power in the world and losing… as China rises by doing pretty much the opposite of Trump educational priorities… how’s your Mandarin?

America’s Primary Check and Balance is Gone – The Judiciary

America’s Primary Check and Balance is Gone – The Judiciary

Governing By Egotistical Whim vs Sustainable Strategy

Donald Trump is on a tear. Just after his Phase One victory – freeing the Israeli hostages, sending supplies into Gaza – and his never-ending deployment of federal or federalized troops into blue cities, the budgetary shutdown has given him an opportunity to blue pencil and retroactively veto passed Congressional approvals for government agencies (if they seem to be leaning to woke Democratic Party allocations) and, simply by fabricating a label – for a non-existent group (“Antifa”) – he can justify steam-rolling over his opponents (even the entire Democratic Party) just by applying that label to anyone he dislikes. He is building a superhighway to one party rule.

In international matters, his tariff regime is an utter failure; US prices are rising rapidly now as most of the world resents his efforts at global financial control. His Big Beautiful Bill is doing wonders for the richest in the nation, but his cuts to the ACA subsidies and Medicaid/SNAP funding are massively driving up healthcare premiums, deductibles and co-pays… while our federal deficit is reaching unjustifiably high levels at a time when the interest costs have not been this high for decades.

To understand the “bully whim” Trump style of “diplomacy,” you have to know it only works when those you are bullying have no alternative. With the exception of Iran and its surrogates, most of the rest of the Middle East is addicted to US weapon systems, and no individual country in that sphere of influence is a superpower. The primary superpower blocs are the China-Russia-North Korea cabal (with Iran drawing its military supplies from that bloc), the Western bloc (UK, EU, Japan, Canada and Australasia), India and the United States. Just as Donald Trump has been able to use his sway with Middle East leaders to force all the parties there to his Phase One triumph, he had little success with superpowers who have been carefully planning their responses to expected Trump moves, based on what they learned about the President in his 1.0 administration.

India denied that Trump had anything to do with the peace agreement with Pakistan, and when India refused (despite false statements from Trump to the contrary) to give up buying oil from Russia, the United States continued to assess a 100% new tariff against India. Prime Minister Modi quickly showed up at Chinese celebrations and functions, even though China had once been India’s worst enemy. As Trump rolled out additional tariffs against a resisting China, Beijing refused to buy US soybeans, instantly replenishing its stocks from Argentine sources – which led American farmers to declare Trump’s efforts as Farmageddon, exacerbated by Trump’s shoring the Argentinian currency with tens of billions of US dollars because he liked the local autocrat. Then China placed a serious export limitation on rare earths (China controls 70% of that supply), needed for every sort of sophisticated electronics and avionics app, impacting the US and Europe.

Phase Two of the Gaza peace plan is already unraveling – Israel continues to insist there can never be a Palestinian state, and Hamas continues to refuse to disarm – so Trump is focusing his rebuild of lost political capital in next wave of blue city invasions, as he builds his case to invoke the Insurrection Act. But the only way he can do that is if the Supreme Court continues to allow Trump’s statements of peril to substitute for lower federal counts’ findings of no evidence of the insurrection and rebellion (no, Chicago is not a “war zone,” and Portland is not “burning to the ground”). San Francisco is next… and grants to blue states and cities are now contingent on accepting Trump’s dictator orders.

Writing for the October 10th Los Angeles Times, Jason M. Blazakis , professor of practice at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and director of the State Department’s Counterterrorism Finance and Designations Office in the Bureau of Counterterrorism from 2008 to 2018, tells it as it is: “President Trump’s executive order designating antifa as a ‘domestic terrorist organization’ was never really about antifa. It was about building a template for repression. Now, with his latest order on ‘Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,’ the blueprint is clear: free expression, political dissent and municipal autonomy are in the crosshairs.

“I’ve argued in the past that the antifa order was legally flimsy and practically unnecessary. Antifa is not a structured organization. It’s more an idea than an entity; a loose coalition of individuals dedicated to countering fascism. And while some have crossed the line from peaceful protesters to violent agitators, violence already has ample legal remedies under state and federal law. The danger of the order is in its symbolism, as the administration begins to stress-test just how far it could go in labeling domestic opponents as enemies of the state.

“This new executive order goes much further. Cloaked in the language of protecting Americans from terrorism, it opens the door to weaponizing federal law enforcement against the right’s political rivals. The Justice Department is now directed to treat broad swaths of dissent in Democratic-led cities, from Los Angeles to Portland, Ore., to Chicago, as ‘organized political violence.’ In practice, this could mean turning Joint Terrorism Task Forces — entities designed to track designated foreign terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State — inward on Americans, investigating protest organizers, city officials, charities and journalists whose views run counter to the administration’s agenda… That should alarm every American. The task forces bring the full investigative powers of the FBI, Homeland Security and state and local law enforcement together under one umbrella. Using those tools to surveil political opponents would chill lawful protest and erode civil liberties.”

Look at reality. “Six months into Donald Trump’s second term, his administration is at war with the federal judiciary, evading court orders blocking its agenda, suing judges for alleged misconduct, and veering toward what multiple current and former federal judges say could be a constitutional crisis.

“The administration this summer sued the entire federal district court in Maryland after its chief judge temporarily blocked immigration removals. It also filed a judicial misconduct complaint recently against the chief judge of the powerful DC District Court, James ‘Jeb’ Boasberg, over comments he reportedly made in private to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in March.

“The standoff is unlikely to end anytime soon. [Recently], an appeals court ruled that Boasberg cannot move ahead in his effort to hold Trump administration officials in contempt for misleading him in a fast-moving case in which migrant detainees were handed over to a Salvadoran prison… As Trump-appointed judges across the country continue to deliver the administration wins, the federal judiciary’s ability to be a check on the executive branch has slowly been diminished.

“‘They are trying to intimidate, threaten and just run over the courts in ways that we have never seen,’ said one retired federal judge, who, like about a half-dozen other former and current judges, spoke to CNN anonymously given the climate of harassment the Trump administration has created and the tradition of jurists not to comment publicly on politics and ongoing disputes.” Katelyn Polantz, writing for CNN, August 10th. Freedom has sadly left the building, limping badly.

I’m Peter Dekom, and notwithstanding the largest protests in American history (“No Kings’), Trump and his minions are convinced that they can rig future elections, impose their will on the American public without judicial or congressional restraint, and outwit the global masters of sustained strategic planning merely from the force of Donald Trump’s megalomaniacal personality.

Trumpianism – In a World Where Accountability Fights Blame, Blame Always Wins

Trumpianism – In a World Where Accountability Fights Blame, Blame Always Wins

October 18 is when the protest gets here. This will be a Soros paid-for protest for his professional protesters. The agitators show up. We'll have to get the National Guard out. Hopefully it will be peaceful. I doubt it." 

Sen. Roger Marshall (R/KS)

"The Democrat Party's main constituency is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals." 

 White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on X, October 16th.

Sadly, in the make-believe world where we assume our elections are or should be fair, where we think individuals can achieve what their inherent skills and drive can produce and where no one is above the law, none of these assumptions is valid. In the real world where the US Constitution has become unamendable – more inflexible than any other such foundational governmental document in the developed world – all it takes to usurp our status as a nation of laws is for those governmental governing bodies, charged with establishing and maintaining the guardrails, to cede those powers into what is leaning severely into one party rule under the dictates on of a single autocrat.

Indeed, where we have a one party dominated Congress and that same single-vision Supreme Court, you only have to examine new, unrestrained patterns of governance, patterns which have never been embraced in such a manipulative, non-constitutional level, to see the problem. As the stalemate that keeps our nation paralyzed lingers, where the budget extension bill was created by one party with the expressed intention of ignoring the other party, blame rises hard. Healthcare is expendable… and a promise to consider extending ACA support someday is toothless

The Supreme Court has simply erased any evidence of judicial neutrality, finding that their decisions can effectively amend the Constitution by decisions “on the merits” (e.g., the presidential immunity decision which has no constitutional basis) or simply unsigned docket delays lacking any explanation, that postpone the merit decision to sometime in the future, while in the meantime issuing a “whatever Trump wants” holding. With triple the number of such shadow docket opinionless decisions of any other presidential administration, Trump’s position has failed only twice in his emergency application to the Court.

A growing number of federal judges are deeply disturbed by this trend. “Dozens of federal judges responding to a survey by the New York Times are expressing concern about the U.S. Supreme Court’s emergency docket decisions in cases related to President Donald Trump since his second term in office… Only 12 out of 65 judges responding to the newspaper’s survey said the U.S. Supreme Court has made appropriate use of its emergency docket, and only 12 said lower-court judges are getting sufficient guidance on how to apply emergency docket orders… And only two of 54 judges who answered the question said the emergency docket had improved the public’s perception of the judiciary.

“Some judges were critical in interviews with the New York Times, calling the emergency docket orders ‘mystical,’ ‘overly blunt,’ ‘incredibly demoralizing’ and ‘a slap in the face to the district courts.’ One viewed their district’s relationship with the Supreme Court as a ‘war zone,’ and another thought that courts were in a ‘judicial crisis.’ The judges spoke on the condition of anonymity.” Debra Cassens Weiss, writing for the October 14th Journal of the American Bar Assn.

This pervasive effort at instilling one-party rule echoes across every level of the Trump administration. Constitutional provisions are ignored, statues violated, and Trump’s appointees make decisions solely looking to “whatever Trump wants” as their governing lodestone. For example, in blatant violation of the Hatch Act – which forbids using government to foster a singular partisan perspective – the same Kristi “puppy killer” Noem – posted a video in the TSA lines at airports blaming the Democratic Party for the shutdown. See above. Yes, that same Kristi Noem who testified before Congress that the writ of habeas corpus, a statutory procedure to challenge the bona fides of incarceration, was a law that literally gave the President the power to arrest people, without a constitutionally mandated warrant, if he believes them to be an unacceptable threat to his perception of the law.

The No Kings protests in June and October represent the greatest protest rallies in American history. Yet the uniform voice of top GOP officials, from Senator Marshall above to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Speaker Mike Johnson and the President continue to repeat that the protestors are paid professional “agitators” who hate America and do not represent the real Americans who support Donald Trump. You can see how when Trump openly demonizes a political foe and signals to the DOJ that they should be prosecuted… that is exactly what happens. See above White House quote. It’s no secret that Senior Presidential Advisor, Stephen Miller, and Trump himself intend to shift the nation to one party rule, as Trump is demanding that GOP legislators, gerrymander the Democratic Party out of existence. It appears as if they have the wholehearted support of the supermajority in the Supreme Court.

Trump and his minions have gone out of their way to create a pretend group of American terrorists, well-funded and well-organized, as a rising all-powerful internal enemy that justifies the invocation of the Insurrection Act to root out and be destroyed. There’s just one problem: the named group is an ideology that does not exist as a tangible embodied form. Sorry, Donnie. There is no building, no funding, no formal membership, no Antifa. But your followers paste that label on anyone who does not agree with you, demanding that they be rooted out, arrested or just shot on site.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I find it difficult to hold those who despise and disrespect the Constitution are “lovers of America,” and those who do support that founding document are the “haters.”

Abusing Our Generals and Top NCOs, Not Our Privates

Hegseth/Trump addressing  Military Leadership in Quantico, Virginia, September 30th       

One of many Chinese military parades

Abusing Our Generals and Top NCOs, Not Our Privates

“It’s better just to keep your head down.” 

Anonymous senior defense official.

"I'm going to be meeting with generals and admirals and with leaders, and if I don't like somebody, I'm going to fire them, right on the spot." 

Trump remarked immediately before his Quantico, post-Hegseth speech.

If you were a superpower facing the US, would you fear a military led by an alcoholic, megalomaniacal, Army reservist major, an avowed white Christian nationalist? Would you think more or less of him as a Fox “News” host who has fired some of this nation’s most experienced and successful admirals and generals, placing physical appearance and unquestioning loyalty to the President above all other criteria? A man who sees the Constitution and enabling statutes as “woke” barriers to military discipline as defined by him and the all-powerful President, who believes that his military is fully justified in occupying cities that vote mostly Democratic… taking down those who oppose the President’s policies, ignoring the elected governors and mayors of those jurisdictions? Think our troops enjoy marching in conquest into US cities?

The unambiguous take in China, Russia and North Korea – each a nuclear power with substantial delivery capacity – is that without firing a shot, the United States will continue to self-destruct, and the alliance among these and other declared enemies of the United States will continue to rise, ultimately displacing us at the sole military and economic superpower on Earth. As a passionate American, with deep respect for our military and the men and women who have worked decades to achieve flag or top NCO rank, I think the current Trump and little man Hegseth’s track has profoundly weakened our military, sapping the morale of that leadership and given deep comfort to that anti-American alliance, particularly the nation that leads this cabal, the Peoples’ Republic of China.

Post-Quantico, Hegseth continues to cull experience and competence from the ranks of our military leaders in search of his ideological purity. As Paul McLeary and Daniel Lippman, writing for the October 9th Politico observe, Hegseth is mounting another purge of our military excellence, replacing confidence with fear: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s latest firing of a top Navy official injected a fresh wave of fear into the Pentagon over the cost of speaking up and who might be next.

“The Pentagon chief, in less than a year, has purged a handful of the military’s most senior officials, terminated some of his closest advisers and last week warned a gathering of generals and admirals that many of them could face a similar fate.

“The sudden dismissal last week of Jon Harrison, the Navy chief of staff, has only added to concerns about Hegseth’s objectives, according to five current and former defense officials. Most of his moves have come without public explanation, and led to a deepening sense of uncertainty throughout the department — one that risks silencing pushback on critical decisions that affect how the U.S. military interacts with the world.

“There is an emerging ‘culture of fear; there’s a culture of intimidation and retaliation,’ said a senior defense official. ‘It’s better just to keep your head down and not necessarily try to do anything to the advantage of the organization, because it’s very much run from the top down.’…

“‘President Trump has full confidence in Secretary Hegseth and his ability to ensure individuals across the Department of War are aligned with the president’s mission to Make America Strong Again,’ said Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, referring to the administration’s rebranded term for the Defense Department… The rapid fire turnover is a classic Hegseth move, starting with the surprise Friday night announcement in February that ousted Joint Chiefs Chair C.Q. Brown and other senior leaders.”

That the United States sees the “enemy within” as the greatest threat to our national security is a massive perversion of the clearest values of our founding fathers. The mere vision of US troops being deployed against the wishes of the relevant state and city leaders to take control of otherwise peaceful urban areas, provoking the very antagonistic resistance they were purported sent to reverse, is horribly disturbing. Indeed, as Jackie Calmes writing for the October 9th Los Angeles Times posits: “Washington must be spinning in his grave… George Washington, who set long-followed precedents by voluntarily giving up first military and then civilian power, and who built the foundation of the nation’s wall between its military and partisan politics, would by all historical evidence be appalled by successor Donald Trump’s escalating efforts to tear down that wall in his drive for unprecedented dominion. But Washington likely wouldn’t be surprised. In fact, he warned America about the likes of Trump.

”In his farewell address, Washington cautioned against political parties lest ‘cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men’ subvert them to their individual ends. ‘Sooner or later,’ he predicted, ‘the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.’… Later is now.

“More than two centuries on, the checks and balances that Washington’s fellow founders wrote into the Constitution to guard against a monarchical president with a standing army at his command — they’d just thrown off a king, after all — are proving inadequate to the charge. But like Washington, those founders probably wouldn’t be shocked by Trump and his power grabs… Tom Nichols, a former Republican who taught for 25 years at the Naval War College, presciently wrote in the Atlantic in late 2023 that among the ‘highest priorities’ for a reelected Trump would be an ‘attempt to turn the men and women of the United States armed forces into praetorians loyal not to the Constitution, but only to him.’” As too many Americans worry more about the rising inflation rate than the loss of democracy, they are about to discover that even if the cost of living is their only concern, they ain’t seen nuffin’ yet. Autocracy is seldom good for any economy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it seems that since Americans have not experienced autocracy in a quarter of a millennium, they have no understanding of its dangers, most of which will not be reversible, if at all, in their lifetimes if not checked and reversed immediately.

Are Billionaire Tech Bros Really Forever Trumpers?

 

Tech Bros at Trump Inauguration

At White House Dinner 

Argentine Pres Javier Milei

Elom Musk imitating 

Are Billionaire Tech Bros Really Forever Trumpers?

Two harsh realities for Mr Trump’s political support from his own mega-billionaires: none of these corporations is necessarily linked to maintain their major operations in the US, and virtually all their seeming pro-Trump support goes way beyond lower taxes. Tariff imports? If the “technology” creations can be held in a secure drop box, that the serious value-creation (R&D) is moving to academic research-friendly venues overseas as Trump decimates and attacks the greatest value-creators in world history, our exceptional, state-of-the-art universities and their non-US graduates, how exactly does he tariff those values? As he drains federal agencies of money for medical and scientific research, a slack being picked in Canada, Europe and, most of all, China?

MAGA Americans are gloating at this Tech Bros alliance, looking at big companies as if they were political machines, nations, so to speak. They’re not. But in a world of mergers and acquisitions, always subject to government scrutiny and approval, where the federal government actively attacks companies that defy Trump’s wishes, where exemptions from tariffs and many federal regulations are and can be granted by Trump alone, follow the money.

Tech Bros (and many other) CEOs have only one stakeholder they must service under US law: the shareholders. If that CEO fiduciary duty is betrayed by a CEO, who is not also the primary shareholder, they face shareholder derivative lawsuits if their political activities hurt stock prices. If Musk didn’t have the technical acumen to advance Tesla to dominate EV sales (slipping these days) and the political connections to enable Starlink and SpaceX to win billions of dollars of federal funding, he’d otherwise be gone. And if a Democrat had Trump’s power, Tech Bros would be all over that President. For those who sneer at corruption in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, they probably haven’t seen those presidents touting consumer goods so openly. Their bribes and skimming are at least more subtle. But make no mistake, the United States has never been so corrupt. We live in a nation where old world patronage is now the rule.

Too many Americans misread the American economic reality. Under 2% of Americans work directly in agriculture, 8% of our economy is engaged in manufacturing consumer durables and the rest is attributable to government workers, finance and technology. Want to reshore more American manufacturing? The world is dominated by robotic automation. Robots replace workers easily. China has manufactured nine times the number of robots than have we. And as efficient and productive as American farmers have been for a very long time – thanks to farming technology and research – they are still clearly expendable.

A recent example stabs US farmers in the heart. Sharing the stage with Elon Musk at a conservative CPAC event in February, Argentine Pres Javier Milei, waiving a government-cutting chainsaw, was the new darling of the MAGA right. Unfortunately, Milei‘s rightwing efforts have led Argentina into the ground, undermining his currency and economy big time. But as a Trump-lover, on September 21st, Milei received a gift from his hero: a $20 billion Trump bailout, which really pissed off American farmers, particularly our very efficient and productive soybean farmers. Ever since Trump layered serious tariffs on China, that country has shifted its agriculture imports to “more reliable” countries like Brazil and Argentina. China is making long-term output deals with other countries, showing it is hardly reliant on US farm exports.

Based on data from the US Department of Agriculture, in the last five years, China had accounted for around 52% of US soybean exports. But so far this year, China has not purchased any soybeans from the U.S. for the 2025-26 marketing year. On the other hand, Argentina has replaced those US soybean orders: “Chinese buyers booked at least 10 cargoes of Argentine soybeans after Buenos Aires scrapped grain export taxes, three traders said on Tuesday [9/21], dealing another setback to U.S. farmers already shut out of their top market and hit by low prices.” Agriculture.com, September 23rd.

“The frustration is overwhelming,” American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland posted to X, “U.S. soybean prices are falling, harvest is underway, and farmers read headlines not about securing a trade agreement with China, but that the U.S. is extending $20 billion in economic support to Argentina.” American farm bankruptcies are soaring (up 55% over last year according to CBS News), particularly since Trump’s inane and economically ignorant tariff policies.

According the CNN (October 4th), “Surging costs and foreign retaliation from tariffs have hurt the US agriculture industry — as have immigration-related labor shortages and plummeting commodity prices. Farm production expenses are estimated to reach $467.4 billion in 2025, according to the Agriculture Department, up $12 billion from last year.” Trump’s earlier $28 billion farmer bailout inn 2018/19, also due to his failed trade policies, has prompted Trump to suggest “at least $10 billion” bailout for soybean farmers this time around… again for his failed policies.

The world has turned against the United States, as Donald Trump’s arrogance, his willingness to insult the world even before the United Nations General Assembly, incents the world to find workarounds to shunt their dependence on the United States. For those who must deal with the US federal government, while a very few are MAGA believers, the majority must swallow hard and pretend. Think Apple CEO, Tim Cook, and major Microsoft shareholder Bill Gates really embrace Donald Trump? Seriously? The day the Congress is willing to confront Trump, whose approval level (Gallup poll) is now under 30%, that might signal another bailout: the Tech Bros.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am getting sick and tired of Trump’s de facto “China First” policy reality.

Autocracy 101: The Purge Before the Surge

 

Trump’s self-posting on Truth Social

Autocracy 101: The Purge Before the Surge

Eliminate the “Enemy from Within”

“I know nothing about Project 2025… I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.” 

 Donald Trump on the campaign trail in July 2024.

Simple logic will tell you that if you want to institute a complete takeover of a country, if it is remotely possible to eliminate the defenders who might oppose you before you mount that final major effort, that is the most obvious track to take. The process “from within” is almost always begins with a combination of demonization of some obvious identifiable group (usually based on religion, cultural hallmarks like clothing identifiers, skin tone, delineated neighborhoods or community gathering places or linguistic differences) and then marginalizing, prosecuting, arresting and isolating any legitimate leaders in any potential opposition movement. Then the takeover is quick, organic and avoids the optics of armed soldiers and tanks rolling down the streets shooting any protesters along the way. A military coup d’etat. If you did it right, the opposition is pretty much helpless. It is a relatively bloodless coup.

Those bloody coups we have seen in Germany, Italy, Afghanistan, Iran, all over Latin America, increasingly in small Asian nations… well that’s yesterday’s news in modern democracies choosing autocracy as their replacement. It took years for NATO allies Hungary and Turkey to replace their democracies with autocracies run by dictators who repealed term limits, took over the press and arrested or otherwise disposed of opposition leaders. Once situated, oppressive violence keeps the new regime in power. Blogger Jack Hopkins summarizes the slow approach we have seen in Russia and NATO allies like Hungary and Turkey:

Why Do Authoritarians Purge Before the Storm?

Purges aren’t about efficiency. They’re about control. Look at the logic:

• The first people you remove are the watchdogs. The prosecutors…the generals… the inspectors…the ones who might raise the alarm when the walls are breached. If they’re gone…the alarms stay silent.
• The next goal is fear. Fire one…silence a hundred. Everyone left knows: keep your head down…do what you’re told…or you’ll be next.
• Then you fill the vacuum with loyalists. Not experts. Not professionals. But people who answer only to you.
• Finally, with loyalty secured and expertise gutted…you have the freedom to make moves that would’ve been blocked…slashing budgets…ignoring intelligence warnings…rewriting defense protocols.

That’s why you purge before the storm:

To leave the house unguarded…weaken its defenses, and ensure no one dares to stop you when the real blow lands.

This Isn’t an Isolated Event…It’s a Cascade

But whether it is product of President Trump’s seeming acceleration of dementia or raw arrogance, perhaps desperation as his approvals continue to plunge, he has recently become impatient with the progress of imposing autocracy. That 900 page Project 2025 that he knew nothing about is now his road map, looking for excuses (like provoking a government shutdown) to justify massive changes his rich oligarchs want to keep their taxes low by cutting congressional allocations of benefit to middle and lower classes while directly punishing Democratic constituencies by shutting off their infrastructure, government workers and social benefits. Yes, targeting Democrats as directly and unambiguously as he can. Trump chosen incarnation above is as the Grim Reaper coming for anything that looks blue.

In early October, as Blackhawk helicopters hovered above an apartment building on Chicago’s South Shore Drive, federal agents in military fatigues descended by ropes, while others broke into the building and “smashed through doors with flash-bangs, dragged residents into the street in zip ties (some of them naked), and left families outside for hours while apartments were trashed. Eyewitnesses say children were zip-tied together. One agent reportedly laughed and said, ‘f*** them kids.’

“DHS offered no evidence for its sweeping claims [that this building was a hub for that mysterious Tren de Aragua cartel from Venezuela that was ‘invading’ the US]. Some of those detained are U.S. citizens… This is not ‘law and order.’ It is collective punishment. It is an assault on a neighborhood by our own government.” Steve Schmidt, Save America, October 3rd. Pretty good training for assault troops… using Americans as their victims-in-training. Just as little man Pete and Donald Trump promised in their Quantico harangue to the highest ranked officers and NCOs of our military. Even the “fat” ones…as Trump’s belly didn’t exactly set the model body for generals.

Well, that Grim Reaper, “President Trump is openly embracing the conservative blueprint he desperately tried to distance himself from during the 2024 campaign, as one of its architects works to use the government shutdown to accelerate his goals of slashing the size of the federal workforce and punishing Democratic states… In a post on his Truth Social site Thursday morning, Trump announced he would be meeting with his budget chief, ‘[OMB director] Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.’

“The comments represented an about-face for Trump, who spent much of last year denouncing Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s massive proposed overhaul of the federal government, which was drafted by many of his longtime allies and current and former administration officials….” Jill Colvin for the October 4th Associated Press.

But there is some good news in all this. Had Trump been a tad more patient to let complacent voters simply ignore what he was doing and remain the pliable mass they were becoming, he might have succeeded. But he couldn’t wait, and even his gerrymandering demands of red states just might not be able to overcome his and his MAGA clowns’ unpopularity to assure GOP victory over both houses of Congress in the midterms.

The shutdown was just the “perfect emergency” to allow him and his incompetent minions to impose those controls he so desperately wanted. Except Trump is not mentally able to run this effort, and his minions have redefined toxic incompetence. This is the moment for all those who are truly aghast at Trump and his colossal mismanagement of the country to raise their voices, take to the streets and scream “No Kings.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and there really is time to stop this madman and his demented vision for America.

Trump’s America First Strategy: Mega-Rich Celebrate, Majority Rewarded with Self-Sacrificing Suffering

Trump’s America First Strategy: Mega-Rich Celebrate, Majority Rewarded with Self-Sacrificing Suffering

"Yeah, that’s her, with the gold. I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. I just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab them by the pussy... You can do anything." 

Donald Trump about a failed effort with a married woman, on a hot mic to Billy Bush of Access Hollywood, after visiting the set of Days of Our Lives in 2005."This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course—not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended." 

Trump, days later.

"I've known Jeff [Epstein] for 15 years. Terrific guy… He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life."

 Trump 2002 interview in New York magazine.

If the character of a presidential candidate is the principal determinant of a qualification to serve, long before the 2016 election and the “need to spin” that accompanies presidential campaigns in general, Trump defined his own chåaracter very well. His policy stand in the 2024 election is equally clearly spelled out. It’s all there in the 900-page Project 2025 manifesto, which despite Trump’s initial statements of denial, has been the sequence of step-by-step Trump 2.0 implementation supervised and architected by self-admitted white Christian nationalist, White House Senior advisor, Stephen Miller, Trumps’ Rasputin-equivalent for Russian history buffs. And despite the optics, this is not a “red assault on blue” backdoor civil war. As Americans are slowly discovering, the major victims of this assault on the American economy are its most vulnerable residents, often Trump’s MAGA followers.

Average red state Americans, particularly in largely rural districts, are being “rewarded” by Trump with losing medical coverage (while watching their closest medical facilities close), many also losing access to SNAP food support (not to mention the farmers who will lose the business of supplying that food), no longer able to count on FEMA disaster relief as the number and intensity of climate-change related disasters mount, are watching the slip-sliding quality of the schools their children attend deteriorate into among the worst in the developed world, US life expectancy still falling and prices for just about everything trending upward… fast!

Let’s make one searing fact about Trump 2.0: It is controlled by one man seeking total control of our nation. Not Congress, where the controlling GOP “whatever you want Mr President” votes are locked into a morbid fear of losing MAGA support (Trump’s powerful base of believers). And not the Trump reconfigured US Supreme Court. As of August 19, 2025, the court had issued 19 emergency orders in cases related to the second Trump administration, with two emergency applications pending and one withdrawn. The Trump administration filed 22 of the emergency applications, and two applications were filed by the other litigant. Trump enjoyed these results.

As the President has invited red state National Guard troops to assist in the reduction of “violent crime” in the nation’s capital, there’s a glimmer of the Union capital willingly requesting Confederate soldiers to enter and police its streets against criminal activity. That invitation did not include the White House, however. Was this the “test phase” of what a civil war would look like if launched in earnest? Remember that more Americans died in that mid-19th-century Civil War than died in every other war this country ever fought... combined. With absolutely no serious evidence in support, Trump even bragged about Washingtonians now going out to dinner without fear… notwithstanding an OpenTable (online reservations app) report showing a 27% reduction in DC dinner reservations.

Trump was careful to slow-walk any mandates against his administration generated by any court, and many would say that such efforts reeked of pure refusal to comply or twisted logic as to why the government did not have to comply. When it came to forecasting trends, Trump made it clear that any federal employee reporting anything but Trump-favorable statistics, stared probable termination in the eyes. When faced with numbers that suggested failed economic results – like nasty unemployment figures – Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for properly summarizing the aggregate results.

As numbers reflecting the reduction of all criminal activity (a 26% reduction in violent crime) even immediately before Trump’s 2.0 inauguration in DC, Trump carelessly suggested to members of the press that those positive numbers were way off base, rigged somehow, and suggested that the press speak to some of the victims… An old Trump standard: when statistics are bad and fabricating good numbers would be too easily challenged, always cite anecdotal evidence. It would seem safe to assume that no victim would suggest that crime in his or her area were falling. And no politician would come out as “pro-crime.”

Tariffs with many US trading partners are beginning to lock in. The TACO truck seems to have backed-up as inflation is beginning to climb. Prices are rising, as measured by key commodities (gasoline, coffee, bananas, appliances, cars, electrical power, homebuilding components, etc.) Consumer confidence is slipping, and Trump’s assertion that states that rely on green alternative energy sources have seen the greatest increases in energy … is precisely the opposite. According to the August 19th Mediate, “President Donald Trump blasted renewable energy on Truth Social Wednesday [8/19] morning, declaring wind and solar power ‘THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY’ and accusing states that rely on them of facing ‘RECORD BREAKING INCREASES IN ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY COSTS.’

“It’s a familiar refrain from the president, who has long treated wind turbines as both an aesthetic blight and a political punching bag. But when it comes to hard numbers, the evidence doesn’t support his sweeping claim… According to a recent analysis by Energy Innovation, states that have leaned heavily into wind and solar — like Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico — have actually seen slower electricity price growth compared to the national average. Iowa, which now gets nearly 60% of its electricity from wind, saw its rates increase more slowly than 42 other states over the past decade.” As US carmakers are caught between an international rise in demand for EV vehicles (with global demand for gasoline and diesel powered cars falling) and federal policy in their home country putting the kibosh on EV cars instead pushing old world fossil fuels, they have to face the reality that for every four cars Chinese automotive companies sell internationally, US companies only sell one. Layoffs across so many US manufacturing sectors are soaring.

Just to understand how desperate Trump is to erase the underlying truth to so many policy choices, just take this August 13th report from CNN to heart: “NASA is planning to decommission premier satellite missions that gather information on planet-warming pollution and other climate vital signs beginning as soon as October, sources inside and outside of the agency told CNN.

“The destruction of the satellites — which will be abandoned and allowed to eventually burn up in a fiery descent into Earth’s atmosphere — marks the latest step by the Trump administration to scale back federal climate science… President Donald Trump’s budget proposal takes a hatchet to NASA’s Earth science spending for fiscal year 2026, which begins in October… The greenhouse gas monitoring missions, known collectively as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, are some of the many Earth science casualties in the proposal.” Trump’s logic in hiding the salami, widely reported accurately everywhere else, is impeccable: If the voters do not know about the extent of the problem, perhaps they will just dry up and blow away… leaving the nation to the one-man authoritarian path has chosen for the nation.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you believe even half of this Trump prop.