Takers, Givers, and a National Divorce

  Do Democrat or Republican States Receive More 

       Funding from the Federal Government?

    From MoneyGeek.com, 2/27/22

There’s no question that the biggest bluest states with the biggest bluest urban centers generate GDPs that mirror large independent nations… each! While Florida and Texas have their share of successful urban job centers, those are mostly their own blue cities with Democratic mayors. So, in response to rising call from extremists on both the rights and the left, those who believe that a national “divorce” is necessary, you have to ask yourself whether blue or red America would fare better in such a separation. Which states rely most heavily on net revenue from the federal government? The above chart gives you a big hint, but more on this later. Yet, is anyone seriously suggesting the nation would be better off hived in two?

The loudest cries for a national red/blue partition – breaking the United States apart – come from elected politicians from the MAGA right. None more clearly enunciate that goal louder than Republican Speaker McCarthy’s seeming new favorite Congressperson, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, Georgia). On President’s Day, Greene tweeted the idea for a "national divorce" for people sick of Democrats' "traitorous" policies. Many in her Party believe that Abraham Lincoln’s willingness to fight the Civil War to keep our nation united was the biggest mistake in our history. That he was a Republican is not usually mentioned in such tirades. 

The notion of a White Christian nationalist state bordering rich blue America (mostly the coastal United States including some in the Great Lakes area) may not be the most comforting reality for those in smaller, crowded blue cities. And while Texas and Florida offer major economic strength plus large harbors to transoceanic passageways, much of red state America relies heavily on the New York financial markets and the California technology centers – and more than a few agricultural mainstays. With Canada as a major oil and gas producer (in addition to California), not to mention a huge producer of grain, West Coast America would lack for very little. 

The Upper Midwest would benefit from the Great Lakes and perhaps the St Lawrence seaway for its oceanic corridor. But clearly, there would be disenchanted pockets of MAGA constituents stuck in red states and vice versa. Would Blue America be a single nation or more of a European Union aggregation? I suspect Red America would seriously be linked in one nation, but bluish states like New Mexico would probably hope that Arizona flips blue permanently. The economics and military realities of separation would be almost impossible to determine. Who gets the military facilities and manpower? Nuclear weapons? How is the national debt divided?

Assuming that these issues were to be resolved – unlikely without a civil war – who gets hurt the most by this unraveling? Red or blue? The November 27th MoneyGeek.com just may have the definitive answer. Visit the article to see a state-by-state breakdown. “To put states' financial health — and the potential impact on residents of those states — into context, MoneyGeek analyzed and ranked states according to their dependence on the federal government. Rankings account for political affiliation, net benefits individuals and organizations in the state receive, state government revenue from federal sources and GDP per capita.

• 7 of the 10 states most dependent on the federal government were Republican-voting, with the average red state receiving $1.05 per dollar spent.
• Twenty-nine states sent more to the federal government than they received, compared to just nine states in 2021.
• Of the states that sent more than they received, 52% were Democrat-voting and 48% were Republican-voting.
• New Mexico had the highest return on federal spending of any state ($3.69), and Delaware had the lowest ($0.32).” Organizational symbols added. 

But the headline, well expressed in the above graphic (based on percentage of state reliance on federal tax dollar benefits), is that overall, red states rely much more on receiving that federal contribution at a vastly higher rate than do blue states. In other words, blue states as a whole are seriously subsidizing red states as a whole. On a simple basis, blue states would generate the greatest economic benefit from a blue/red partition, leaving the much poorer red state aggregation with a lot less governmental money… absent major new taxes or a restructuring whereby rich red states, like Texas and Florida, pick up the slack. Hmmm.

Senator Mitt Romney (R. Utah), often referred as a RINO by the MAGA GOP majority, shot back at “crazy” Marjorie Taylor Green, telling The Salt Lake Tribune on February 21st: “I think Abraham Lincoln dealt with that kind of insanity. We're not going to divide the country. It's united we stand and divided we fall.” 

As Lincoln noted when he faced the same crisis well over a century and a half ago, there is no provision in the US Constitution even for a voluntary partition. And while a national referendum taken today, if that were possible, might support Greene’s cherished partition, the constitutional reality suggests that we must just learn to get along. It might take the new generations of rising voters to make that happen, but partition would either be truly a self-inflicted economic blow to us all… or require a truly violent resolution/revolution that would be even worse. Debt ceiling anyone? 

And just remember that, as several recent polls reflect, large numbers of MAGA Second Amendment advocates very much believe that using their guns to reinforce their political position is fully justified. The same “patriotic” Americans who believe, as the GOP official description denotes, that the January 6, 2021 Capitol invaders were “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” A few deaths and serious injuries, destruction of government property, carrying undisguised weapons and insurrectionist rhetoric should never get in the way of that perception.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as long as false hopes are being raised by underinformed politicians, false “facts” are pushed on us by political extremists and false blame on minorities of all kinds is the new normal, we are going to twist in the wind for a nasty while.

Fee Nix Envy

“Look, junk fees may not matter to the very wealthy, but they matter to most other folks in homes like the one I grew up in. I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and gets away with it.” 

 President Joe Biden, State of the Union address, February 7th.

How many hidden fees can I charge, let me count the ways? Baggage fees, seating fees, transfer and cancelation fees, COVID fees, resort fees, handling fees, venue fees, fuel price fees, etc., etc., etc. Hey, so what? As Calvin Coolidge once said, “The business of America is business.” And businesses have been accorded privileges the rest of us can only dream of. With some recent “inflation Reduction Act” floors, US corporations pay taxes as a vastly reduced rate than virtually all of us. Fund managers get a pretend “investment” benefit (without having to make one) under an archaic “carried interest” exception in our tax code. Some corporate practices, like fracking, avoid several major environmental rules. Depreciation and amortization deductions, specialized tax credits, etc. often subsidize US companies in ways individuals could never equal.

In my world of film, television and digital media, talent and right holders who used to generate a piece of the upside from their very successful contribution are relegated to an impenetrable jungle of fixed fees and arcane bonuses, representing a small fraction of pre-streaming upside practices. Effectively, these creatives are paying for the business errors of those running these streaming companies under models that simply do not work.

All of this comes down to a battle between “what we can get away with” and “transparency.” How many of us, including lawyers, really read the pages of “privacy policies” and “terms of use” that we get when we wish to access a Website? And if we do not like these little forays into the absurd, how can we object? Oh, we can’t?

In President Biden’s State of the Union speech, he took on this increasing proclivity of American companies, particularly in the travel and transportation industry, to charge a complex array of consumer “sneaky fees,” noting hotels that were not resorts charging “resort fees.” You can also see these ubiquitous fees in car rentals, internet transactions, concert fees, and “but wait, there’s more” television sales. How many of us, in a distracted and time-impaired world, ever stop to understand what these charges really are, and even if we do spot them, what we can do about them?

Biden noted that federal legislation eliminated the practice of hospitals charging “surprise fees” for patients accessing emergency services. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 contains many provisions to help protect consumers from surprise medical bills, including the No Surprises Act. Biden’s goals include imposing a similar ban on these consumer “sneaky fees.” David Leonhardt, writing for the February 9th New York Times takes this nasty, consumer-as-sucker practice on: “Sneaky fees have become a big part of America’s consumer economy.

“Hertz charges almost $6 a day simply for using a toll transponder in a rental car. Marriott and Hilton add nightly “resort fees” to the bill even at hotels that nobody would consider to be resorts. American, Delta and United list one airfare when you first search for a seat — and then add charges for basic features like the ability to sit next to your spouse.

“Ticketmaster is especially aggressive about imposing fees, as I experienced recently while buying two tickets to a football game. When I initially selected my seats on Ticketmaster’s online stadium map, they cost $48. The bill at checkout was more than one-third higher — $64.40…

“The market solution to sneaky fees seems straightforward. When Marriott starts charging $50 nightly “resort fees,” Hilton can call out its competitor and try to steal Marriott customers. And some companies do take this approach: Southwest Airlines advertises a “Bags Fly Free” policy, an obvious swipe at rivals.

But the mushrooming number of fees has made clear that competition does not usually eliminate the practice. Why not? Academic research has suggested that there are two main reasons… First, human beings are not the efficiently rational machines that economic theory pretends they are. An entire branch of the field, behavioral economics, has sprung up in recent decades to make sense of our limited attention spans.

“If you are familiar with the best-selling book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow,’ by Daniel Kahneman, you will recognize these ideas. We lead busy lives that keep us from analyzing every purchase, and we get distracted by salient but misleading information (like a low list price). Big companies, with the resources at their disposal, have learned to take advantage of these limitations. The economist Richard Thaler refers to practices like these as “sludge,” the evil counterpart to nudges that use behavioral economics to improve life.

“True, one company could call out another for using sludge. But doing so often requires a complex marketing message that tries to persuade people to overcome their psychological instincts (like the appeal of a low list price). For that reason, Hilton can probably make more money by charging its own sneaky resort fees than by criticizing Marriott’s…

“The second major reason is monopoly power. In some markets, consumers don’t have much choice. Ticketmaster’s fees outrage many people. But I didn’t have any choice when I bought those football tickets. There was no rival service selling them.

“In recent decades, many American industries have become more concentrated, partly because Washington became more lax about enforcing antitrust laws. Thomas Philippon, an N.Y.U. economist, has estimated that increased corporate concentration costs the typical American household more than $5,000 a year.” We hate it, but individuals do not have the clout to change these practices. The Republican mantra is to cut away anything that is attempting to curtail the pursuit of business profits. Regulation is their sworn enemy.

The Trump administration disemboweled federal consumer protection agencies by defunding them and appointing pro-business agency heads. The Environmental Protection Agency was defunded to the bone in anticipation of closing it altogether. American corporations got a federal tax cut from 35% to 21%, resulting in massive federal deficits for a program that promised to pay for itself… but never did. The GOP is fighting hard to eliminate that IRS budget increase of $80 billion, passed by Congress last year under the Inflation Reduction Act, which would be used to target particularly expensive and time-consuming audits of the mega-wealthy and big corporations. The GOP would rather let an understaffed IRS keep squeezing the easy-to-squeeze little guys… leaving the big boys alone.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time that the “We the People” needs to be resurrected… as our Found Fathers intended.

Climate Change, Das Gift that Keeps on Giving – Tinder

In German, simply, beware of Gift-giving locals. “Das Gift,” in Germany and as used above, means “poison.” The toxicity that so many of us overlook is the devastation of climate change on our forests, before they burn away in the acceleration of wildfires around the world. A recent census in California can be multiplied in virtually every country with vast forests. From Eastern Europe to Australia to Brazil and the United States. Today’s blog will focus on the Western United States, particularly California. The rise in average temperatures everywhere not only deprives trees and other necessary vegetation of the water they need to survive, but weakened trees become vulnerable to migrating insects, and plant-driven diseases and predators. While people and even animals can migrate, trees cannot. They have to stand and take it… or die.

The West is uneasy about water and trees. California is the big water hog, and Arizona is the state with the second largest city in the West. And they are both parties to a water allocation accord that was first negotiated over a century ago. But dried out forests are happening in every Western state, and wildfires are our common signature, event-driven mega-disaster. Drought, better classified as desertification or aridification (permanent), is one of the big causes of such “events.”

But trees, those bastions of turning CO2 into oxygen, erosion prevention, shade, housing (for people and critters alike) and magnificent beauty (“I think that I shall never see….”) are dying… and humanity is killing them for more than their lumber value and paper creation. And while much of the world looks at California in terms of big cities, our magnificent forests used to be the envy of the world, from giant redwoods and sequoias to endless varieties of pine and deciduous forests. The numbers are saddening. Notwithstanding recent rains.

“Roughly 36.3 million dead trees were counted across California in 2022, a dramatic increase from previous years that experts are blaming on drought, insects and disease, according to a report by the U.S. Forest Service.

“The same survey for 2021 counted 9.5 million dead trees in the state. The effects of last year’s dramatic die-off are more severe and spread across a wider range, according to the report released Tuesday [7/7]… The aerial report paints a bleak picture of a state ravaged by drought, disease and insects that feed and nest in thirsty trees.

“From mid-July to early October, researchers surveyed nearly 40 million acres, including federal, state and private land. They found dead trees spread across 2.6 million acres… Douglas firs showed the biggest mortality rate increase. There were 3 million dead, an increase of 1,650%, counted across 190,000 acres, primarily in the central Sierra Nevada.

“There were 12 million dead white fir trees, an increase of 691%, across 1.5 million acres, and 15 million dead red firs, an increase of 242%, across 890,000 acres. The dead trees were grouped mainly around the Northern California city of Redding, including in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest and surrounding areas.” Nathan Solis, writing for February 8th Los Angeles Times.

You’ll notice that the photograph above is not of a fire-decimated forest… or one where all the trees are gone. It is a picture of a not-as-slow-as-you-think dying forest, thirsty and desperate, with the silent chomping of billions of little insects, bark beetles, etc. and a whole host of plant infectious diseases. It ain’t good, and it’s getting worse. The non-predatory fauna and flora that depend on those trees are not having a good time either. Think of them as our perpetual litany of canaries in our own existential coal mine.

Indeed, as crowded forests access dwindling water supplies, the trees themselves become competitors for that precious life force. Dense forests look great, but look what happens when there is enough water for say, only 10,000 trees in a forest with 30,000. “The primary cause of mortality is drought. Roughly 80% of the state experienced severe drought conditions at the start of the year, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Thanks to a series of winter rain storms, the figure has dropped to 32%... But forest officials say that the increase in dead trees will continue to be a problem for years to come as rain levels in general remain low.

“Forest management will play a key role in how the state responds to tree mortality. The Forest Service’s 10-year plan to tackle the problem will include removing dead and dying trees in areas where they pose the most risk to surrounding communities… As residential development has moved closer to forests, wildfires fueled by dead and dying trees have destroyed more homes and structures.

“Over the last 11 years, there has been a nearly 250% increase in the number of homes and other structures that have burned in the Western U.S. as wildfires have become significantly more destructive, according to a study published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science-Nexus.” Indeed, Joyce Kilmer’s poem does not read: “I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a dead tree.” Are we next? Sooner than you might hope. Slowly.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I love the list of corporate interests that would face massive costs and profit declines, purportedly cutting jobs and taxes along the way, if indeed climate change were to be addressed as it really should!

Hey, Why Not? The Environment? Meh!

While Europe is still struggling, the United States weathered the first bout of oil and gas increases, got slammed in December/January on natural gas heating costs, which seemed to double and triple overnight. Prices at the pump came down on this side of the Atlantic but seem to be creeping up again slowly. As Vladimir Putin amps up his no-win war against Ukraine. So, you might ask yourself who exactly makes all the money when those price hit the roof. Duh. Energy extractors everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. Here are just two examples, reflective of the rest, sanctions and price caps notwithstanding. Shell reported profits of $39.9bn in 2022, the highest in its 115-year history. BP generated profits of $27.7bn in the same year, more than double what they generated in 2021.

It is so gratifying to make money on the suffering of others, but for the oil and gas industry, it is a cherished tradition. Reports that Exxon/Mobil was fully aware – better versed with scientific facts than the US government in the 1970s – that burning of fossil fuels was causing climate change, which was going to accelerate if not stopped. Very much including gasoline, kerosine and diesel-powered vehicles, ships and aircraft. They kept the information to themselves, spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars challenging all the government and academic research that later established the connection between fossil fuels and climate change. The truth was revealed recently when Exxon/Mobil’s internal research was discovered and released to the public. See also my February 7th Case Study: Why Industry Self-Regulation Almost Never Works blog for more details.

The February 2nd BBC.com noted that Shell Oil was symptomatic of oil company greed: “The price of Brent crude oil reached nearly $128 a barrel following the invasion, but has since fallen back to about $83. Gas prices also spiked but have come down from their highs… It has led to bumper profits for energy companies, but also fueled a rise in energy bills for households and businesses.

“Last year, the UK government introduced a windfall tax - called the Energy Profits Levy - on the ‘extraordinary’ earnings of firms to help fund its scheme to lower gas and electricity bills… Despite the move, Shell had said it did not expect to pay any UK tax this year as it is allowed to offset decommissioning costs and investments in UK projects against any UK profits.” Parallel windfall taxes have been proposed in various states and by the federal government. Naturally, despite the suffering of Americans forced to fund these unholy increases in profits, Republicans have no issue with the privileged or accelerated write-offs for the oil and gas industry, but they do not want to take these behemoths to pay their fair share of taxes on the windfall.

It is equally clear that BIG OIL (and gas) have put all environmental concerns on a back burner to maximize their extraction of these fossil fuels at a time when people are being forced to pay the most. Any accommodation to greenhouse emissions and pollution limits are now a matter of pledges for future years! The February 7th BBC.com looks at BP specifically, but this is the actual response of all the major oil and gas extraction mega-companies: “BP boss Bernard Looney said the British company was ‘helping provide the energy the world needs’ while investing the transition to green energy… But it came as the firm scaled back plans to cut carbon emissions by reducing its oil and gas output.

“The company - which was one of the first oil and gas giants to announce an ambition to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 - had previously promised that emissions would be 35-40% lower by the end of this decade… However, on Tuesday [2/7] it said it was now targeting a 20-30% cut, saying it needed to keep investing in oil and gas to meet current demands.

“Climate campaign group Greenpeace, whose voice the BBC has included because of the impact of oil and gas production on the environment, said BP's new strategy ‘seems to have been strongly undermined by pressure from investors and governments to make even more dirty money out of oil and gas’… Energy prices had begun to climb following the end of Covid lockdowns but rose sharply in March last year after Russia invaded Ukraine, sparking concerns about global supplies.”

I guess their fingers were crossed behind their backs when they made the pledge. Nature does not care if there is more money to be made by ignoring physical realities. BIG OIL has always known what they were doing was causing massive changes to our daily lives. Long before governments came to that conclusion. But when BIG MONEY is to be made by BIG OIL, anything that stands in their way has got to go. At the very least, the governments that are saddled with responding to the disasters climate change has already caused should be entitled to impose massive windfall taxes on the perpetrators.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder where the BIG OIL executives will be after the next spate of cyclones and hurricanes, raging wildfires, killer crop failures, intolerable heat waves, unprecedented flooding elsewhere and coastal erosion that will redefine all nations with major urban areas on or near an ocean.

Tales from the Crypto

“There’s no there there, and we have plenty of history to prove it.” 

 Lee Reiners, a crypto expert at Duke University and former regulatory Federal Reserve Bank official, testifying on Capitol Hill on February 14th

Cryptocurrencies have become the preferred transactional vehicle for sophisticated criminals the world over. Hard to trace and protected by a decentralized coding system (blockchain), what’s not to like for nefarious trades, drug money and fraudulent gains? But exactly what is the underlying value that justifies the value of a cryptocurrency? Blind faith seems like a good answer. Oh sure, there are exceptions, but most of the activity is on private exchanges with proprietary currencies. However, see my January 8th Yuan to Go Digital? blog about how the People’s Republic of China, having banned private cryptocurrencies, is creating a new government-issued crypto-platform to circumvent American-dominated financial systems and trade sanctions.

For sovereign nations, the ability to work-around monetary and fiscal policies and regulations via a parallel unregulated currency-equivalent is indeed a challenge. El Salvador took a shot at officially recognizing crypto with nasty consequences, and certain states (e.g., Florida) have bent over backwards to invite crypto traders to build their networks under their protection. Perhaps because these crypto models are relatively young and unfathomable to most of us, they were attractive as news stories about instant billionaires dominated the headlines for a long time. Fraudsters were also having a good time creating instant wealth, often siphoned off for “other purposes,” from political campaigns to funding the promoter’s private equity investment fund.

Federal regulatory agencies struggled with which, if any, federal laws applied to crypto or its “collector’s” cousin, so-called "non-fungible tokens” (NFTs). Did the “Howey Rule” (earning passive money from the efforts of others) apply, making these “securities” under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission? Perhaps they should be regulated as commodities or even under our banking laws? One group of anti-regulatory Republicans actually was proposing bills aimed at keeping crypto unregulated. That effort is fading fast, although there are diehards on the wrong side of statistics and common sense:

“At Tuesday’s [2/14 Senate] hearing, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a venture capitalist in his outside life, asked ‘how people would have described the internet in the 1970s and 1980s. ... If we had taken an overbearing approach then, we might have destroyed a lot of the upside that has come over the last three decades.’ He asked how to regulate crypto now ‘in a way that protects the upsides of the technology right now’… The flaws in this argument should be instantly apparent. One is that the virtues of any given innovation don’t validate any other claimed innovations.” Michael Hiltzik writing for the February 19th Los Angeles Times. Congress continues to hold hearings on the subject, but I doubt most in Congress have a clue what a cryptocurrency really is and how it really works. Without much digging, Crypto sure smacks of a Ponzi scheme with no tangible underlying asset base.

It took a mega-billion-dollar collapse to wake that legislative body – Congress – which is used to dealing with issues a decade or more after the technology has been implemented into common use. “The immediate trigger for the change of heart in Washington was plainly the November implosion of FTX, a crypto firm whose founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, had been a prominent advocate for looser regulations on crypto firms. Bankman-Fried is free on bail while awaiting trial on criminal charges.

“Yet FTX’s bankruptcy was only one of a string of crypto firm failures during 2022, and the precursor of further bankruptcies. Perhaps more important, many of the operational shortcomings allegedly found in FTX’s operations are common in the field, including inadequate record keeping and security arrangements, and commingling of customers’ and firms’ assets.

“Consumer interest in crypto was probably destined to wane even without the FTX collapse. Last year’s Super Bowl telecast brimmed with high-priced commercials from crypto firms featuring celebrities such as Matt Damon and Larry David. Supernovas like 2022-vintage crypto are always destined to fade to some extent; this year’s Super Bowl was crypto-free .

“In recent weeks and months, however, U.S. regulators have taken strong steps to inoculate the larger banking and financial system against contamination by crypto firm failures.” Hiltzik. Lawsuits against celebrity endorsements are rising almost as fast as crypto is falling. Yet the losses to those who joined the crypto scam late in the game or who continue to hold crypto are staggering. Many still lumber under the belief that, despite “momentary” declines in value, crypto would continue its rise as a sustainable and reliable currency. They just may have been those children who continued their belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny late into their elementary school years… or those who “know” that conspiracy theories are “true.”

“The capitalization of the crypto market, which peaked at more than $3 trillion in late 2021, is now estimated at $800 billion, implying enormous losses for late-stage investors. (Some cryptocurrencies have rallied, but the benchmark bitcoin is still down by more than 60% from its peak in November 2021.)… To critics of crypto, these developments reflect the influence of gravity on a marketplace characterized by ‘frequent instances of operational failures, market manipulation, frauds, thefts and scams, as the U.S. Treasury put it in a consumer advisory issued last September.’…

“At the hearing, committee member Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) mentioned ‘international drug traffickers who raked in over a billion dollars through crypto ... North Korean hackers, who stole $1.7 billion and funneled that money into their nuclear program ... and ransomware attackers who took in almost $500 million.’” Hiltzik. Can crypto survive amidst a global regulatory effort? This old adage seems to apply: what seems to be too good to be true usually is.

I’m Peter Dekom, a big Los Angeles sports fan, and I wonder how long our downtown venue for professional basketball and hockey will continue to carry the name “Crypto.com Arena.”

What Exactly Does Being a Republican Mean Today?

There is little doubt that the current power of elected Republicans has veered heavily towards White Christian nationalism. The efforts toward smaller government, deregulation and lower taxes – the fundamental values of the Reagan GOP – have increasingly become secondary. In fact, listening to Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ official GOP rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union speech suggests that it all about the “culture wars.” And those culture wars lean heavily in favor of White Christian supremacy – that in fact that the United States should declare itself to be a Christian nation – and against anyone or anything that deviates from that norm. Easy targets include Muslims and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Immigrants and people of color are next in that negative line. Owning guns has become the necessary hovering enforcement tool. 

As the Democrats themselves splinter between progressives and moderates, the GOP is fractured by deeper ideological chasms. The feelings within the GOP White nationalists, however, include a vastly more open embrace of political violence and authoritarianism as well as an interpretation of the First Amendment that does not preclude a national religion. They seem to have found growing support within a very conservative Supreme Court. 

While these extreme religious beliefs do not reflect the views of a majority of Americans, they have become an essential core to anyone seeking a nomination for virtually any potential GOP office. It seems to be a moral mandate from God, a holy war… an evangelical jihad. And God has always trumped “country.” To get any former GOP economic goal – that Reagan perspective – voters have to accept the religious zeal that now is ineluctably part of the Republican Party. 

The problem with religious passion is that messages “from God” cannot be subject to political compromise. There is only one perspective, and those who cannot abide by that belief system cannot be the “loyal opposition;” they are heretical apostates to be dealt with accordingly. In short, democracy cannot exist where there is only one “true path” within an unyielding religious mandate from God. Theocracy must prevail. As the Bible tells us: “No one can serve two masters.” How embedded are such extreme views in the American body politic? Writing for the Los Angeles Times (via the Associated Press), on President’s day, David Lauter looks at recent polls and what they tell us about the stability of our country:

“Democrats, whose partisans have moved sharply to the left over the last decade, seem likely to defer their debate until after the election, with President Biden on track to claim the party’s nomination without serious challenge.

“On the Republican side, by contrast, the struggles are increasingly out in the open as the party, long defined by a Reagan-era ideology of low taxes, small government and strong defense, tries to figure out what it now stands for… Many of the party’s wealthy donors favor a libertarian ideology of low taxes and small government. Other GOP activists dream of a a multiracial, multiethnic blue-collar party, hoping to peel a larger share of Black and Latino voters away from Democrats… But one of the most powerful strands within the party is Christian nationalism, the belief that the U.S. is properly a Christian nation that should be governed by followers of traditional Christian beliefs.

“Two big, new studies over the last couple of weeks shed fresh light on those internal debates. One, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for the Associated Press, examined how much confidence each party’s voters have in their leaders. The other, by the Washington, D.C.-based Public Religion Research Institute, offers a comprehensive look at Christian nationalism… Both parties suffer from a lack of leadership, the AP/NORC survey found.

“Among Democrats, just 41% cited Biden when asked whom they see as the leader of their party. Asked whom they would like to have as their party leader, only about 1 in 8 named Biden — a low number for a sitting president. But no one else was mentioned by more than 5%.

“Republicans were even more split. Just under 1 in 5 named former President Trump as their party’s leader, about 1 in 10 cited House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Nearly 4 in 10 had no answer. Asked who should lead their party, Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis each were named by about 1 in 5 Republicans, reflecting their current positions as early front-runners for the party’s presidential nomination.

“Asked if their party’s leaders share their values, about 4 in 10 Democrats said they were very or extremely confident; a slightly smaller group said they were only somewhat confident… Republicans had less confidence: Only about 2 in 10 said they were very or extremely confident that their leaders share their values, and more than half said they were somewhat confident.

“The chief reason Republicans show less confidence is that many of the party’s college-educated voters and moderates see a gap between their values and those of the party’s leaders. By contrast, those who identify as “very conservative” were the most likely to express a high level of confidence that their values are in sync with those of the party leadership… And what values do those conservative voters espouse? For many, Christian nationalism provides their ideological framework.

“To determine how many Americans share a Christian nationalist outlook, PRRI, which has done extensive work surveying Americans about their values, began by asking five questions of more than 6,000 Americans… The queries included whether ‘the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation,’ and whether ‘God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society’ as well as whether ‘U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.’.. ‘The questions we picked are pretty clear,’ said Robert Jones, the group’s president. ‘They’re not soft. They’re not easy questions to identify with.’

“Almost 70% of Americans answered no to all or most of those statements. About 10% were in very strong agreement — a group that PRRI dubbed Christian nationalism adherents. Another 19% were sympathizers — agreeing with the statements, but not always strongly agreeing… Among Republicans, the picture was very different: More than half qualified as adherents (21%) or sympathizers (33%).

“The strength of Christian nationalist sentiment can be clearly seen in a wide range of issues that Republican elected officials have stressed, including efforts to curtail the rights and visibility of transgender people, but also some less obvious topics, such as immigration… As the PRRI study found, Christian nationalist beliefs correlate strongly with anti-Muslim, anti-Black, antisemitic and anti-immigrant views.” 

Add guns, a built-in bias within our own Constitution favoring rural, more evangelical voters (resulting in heavily populated California and sparsely populated Wyoming having exactly the same representation in the Senate), and the White Christian wave has its finger on the election scale. While rising voters express more tolerance for diversity, they clearly do not have much influence within the GOP. Can such political differences exist side by side?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder why the majority of Americans continue to believe that our governance is simply the same old/same old struggle between traditional Democrats and Republicans.

The Worst Greenhouse Emitter on Earth: The US Military

The United States has the strongest and most modern military on earth. It is revered by most Americans, given high priority when it comes to federal budget decisions, and it usually exempt from the kinds of scrutiny applied to “the rest of us.” What’s more, even as Donald Trump was attempting to dissolve the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. military officially recognized that climate change is and was an “existential” threat to national security, spurring conflict and mass migration. Starving people chasing dwindling resources has been an impetus to global instability. Wars between well-armed factions, involving missile strikes, artillery, mass use of military vehicles and bombs are bad enough, but the rising smoke and toxic emissions from the smoldering targets is now a new normal.

The war in Ukraine is no exception. “The war has led directly to emissions of 33 million tons of greenhouse gases that warm the Earth's atmosphere, claimed Ruslan Strilets, Ukraine's environmental protection minister… ‘ Russia has turned our natural reserves into a military base. Russia is doing everything to shorten our and your horizons. Because of the war, we will have to do even more to overcome the climate crisis,’ he said… The amount is the equivalent of adding nearly 16 million cars to the UK's roads for two years.” BBC.com, November14th.

This disruption has forced the European Union to cut its reliance on Russian natural gas imports. As a result, the United States has become the largest net exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG) on earth. At a cost. “The United States is experiencing a liquefied natural gas export boom. Though it only started to export the fuel in 2016, the U.S. became the world’s leading exporter in 2022, amid the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine and its disruptions to global energy supplies… Today, the U.S. has seven LNG export terminals in operation, with plans for 20 more.

“These terminals, where natural gas is cooled into a liquid and loaded onto barges, could emit more than 90 million tons of greenhouse gases a year—as much pollution as about 18 million combustion-engine cars a year—according to the Environmental Integrity Project.” FastCompany.com, February 2nd. But as the Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrates, the United States’ existence just may rely on our military. But having a large military has a hidden cost.

Military deployment is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emission in general. Even before the Ukraine war, “The world’s militaries [were] responsible for about 6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR). The U.S. military, with a $760 billion budget for 2022, [led] the pack in emissions. The Costs of War Project estimated it emitted 51 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2020—more than the emissions of most countries. The bulk of those emissions come from fuel use and maintaining more than half a million buildings.

“Those figures are just an estimate based on publicly available data from the Department of Energy and bulk fuel purchase records. They indicate the largest shares of military emissions come from fuel and powering facilities, according to [a study from Brown University]. (SGR’s analysis, which it presented in Glasgow last week, extrapolated from UK data and included indirect ‘value-chain’ emissions, putting that figure significantly higher, at 205 million tons.)

“The Defense Department does not regularly report its contributions to climate change, although that may change. [Federal budgeting has] called for the Pentagon to report on the past ten years of greenhouse gas emissions. The agency missed its July [2021] deadline.

‘In a democracy, we should have information with which to make informed decisions,’ said Neta Crawford, a political scientist at Boston University and author of the Costs of War report. ‘It is the practice of holding an institution to account and making it possible for public policymakers and interested individuals to come up with ideas which could feed into a better outcome.’… She said the military, which has reduced emissions over the last 17 years, could make further cuts by continuing to wean off coal, closing underutilized facilities, and rethinking some US operations. … ‘​​Look at the central command—do we need an aircraft carrier there 24/7, 12 months a year?’ she said. ‘You could go through the commands and their exercises and ask yourself, ‘what can be reduced or eliminated entirely and still be secure?’ ’

“In remarks at Wayne State University in Detroit [in mid-November of 2021], Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said the White House set a goal for the DoD to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and that the Pentagon was developing a sustainability plan that would reduce emissions and focus on developing ‘a zero-emissions, non-tactical vehicle fleet.’ She added, ‘We also know that we need to optimize energy use in our tactical vehicles.’” Nexus Media News, 11/23/21. Is it a balancing act, or can we achieve environmental stability and continue to have a powerful military to protect our nation? Perhaps we must… or there may be nothing left to protect.

I’m Peter Dekom, and just making environmental concerns in military procurement one of our highest priorities would be a good start, and an impetus to new technology advancements that would benefit us in so many other ways.

Socially Transmitted

 

To understand the underlying passion of MAGA adherents, with claims of stolen elections and an orchestrated deep state conspiracy dedicated to their replacement, it is worth taking a step backwards to examine how and why this happens. It is hardly new. The Economist (February 4th) takes on this topic:

“Most people like to think that conspiracy theories are confined to the margins of society, but they have never been merely peripheral. They are expressions of something important about the cultures from which they emerge. From the Manchester United superfan who believes that covid-19 was engineered by global elites to the 4chan-dwelling adherents of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory, the people who invent and spread conspiracy theories are channeling the preoccupations of the societies in which they live. Three centuries ago Jonathan Swift wrote that ‘falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it; so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect.’ No-one will ever put an end to such theories—but as our coverage explains, by looking closely at them, and the reasons why some people are so keen to share them, something useful may be learned about real-world anxieties.”

A modern view of this perspective is well summarized in this 1920s book: “The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy, by Lothrop Stoddard… about racialism and geopolitics, which describes the collapse of white supremacy and colonialism because of the population growth among ‘people of color’, rising nationalism in colonized nations, and industrialization in China and Japan.” Wikipedia.

The Economist tells us: “Stoddard was admired by Adolf Hitler. He argued that the ‘Nordic race that he held responsible for all world progress was being outbred by darker-skinned, supposedly inferior types. In Fitzgerald’s novel [The Great Gatsby], [Tom] Buchanan’s support for Goddard is a sign that he is a stupid, dislikeable man.” The notion of White superiority was the notion behind colonialism, a justification for the exploitation of wealth and natural resources from indigenous people all over the earth. Noblesse obliges – bringing true faith and culture to inferior peoples – drove the missionary zeal that empowered European conquests of distant lands for centuries. But when those colonial conquests showed signs of rising independence, it was very often seen as a direct attack on that axiom of White supremacy that fueled global expansion and European mega-wealth.”

In the United States, this notion the rise of these “inferior peoples” – reflected in Stoddard’s book – has come the modern backbone of “replacement theory,” where people of color push their White masters out and take over the earth. In the summer of 2017, the chants of the Charlotteville torch bearers (above) – “fine people” according to our then President – were repeated: “They shall not replace us.”

“Almost a century [after Stoddard’s book], the shooting of 13 people, 11 of them black, at a supermarket in Buffalo, a city in upstate New York on May 14th, points to the continuing popularity of such racist ideas. The suspect, Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old who streamed his massacre on Twitch, a gaming website, had apparently published a 180-page document online explaining his motivations. Much of it was copied directly from a similar ‘manifesto’ written by the man who went on a killing spree in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. In essence, it argued that there is an international Jewish conspiracy to engineer the migration of non-white people to historically white countries in an attempt to ‘replace’ whites with a more pliant, racially inferior population. This is known as the ‘Great Replacement’ theory.’…

“Such ideas are spreading beyond extremist websites like 4chani to the broadcast media and mainstream politics. Tucker Carlson, a powerful Fox News host, has argued that Joe Biden and other Democratic politicians want to replace Americans with ‘more obedient voters from the third world’. [Yale-educated] J.D. Vance, a [successful] Republican candidate for the Senate in Ohio, has claimed that Mr Biden is ‘intentional’ in encouraging Mexican traffickers to bring fentanyl, a powerful opiate, to America in order to kill Donald Trump’s voters. In France Eric Zemmour, a failed presidential candidate, said that ‘an Islamic civilisation is replacing a people from a Christian, Greco-Roman civilisation’. These ideas are nonsense. But as their persistence shows, they are powerful. And in America, the people who believe them all too often have access to guns.” The Economist.

Indeed, to generate such a mass following within the motivation of a conspiracy theory, author/ philosopher Eric Hoffman (in his book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements) explains that there must already be seeds of discontent spready widely throughout society before such theories can take root. He believes that these angry movements begin with a growing "desire for change" from discontented people who believe that they have lost power and position and who also have no confidence in existing culture or traditions.

Feeling their lives are “irredeemably spoiled" and believing there is no hope for advancement or satisfaction as an individual, true believers seek "self-renunciation" (letting go of their own wishes, desires, or ambitions) to find hope within a wider movement. These formerly empowered incumbents who believe they have been left behind are the most likely source of converts for “replacement theory” movements, for they recall their former wealth with resentment and blame others for their current misfortune. This is the roadmap for rising autocrats. They reinforce to a massive group that they have been left behind, place the blame on an easily identifiable slice of society, hammer home the “truth” of the resulting conspiracy theory and attack any effort to substitute reality for the conspiracy theory. The culture war against any opposing thought becomes an essential part of their effort.

This US effort lifted from a generic feeling of amorphous discontent into mainstream thought with Donald Trump’s presidency, was exacerbated by his 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton’s reference to the Trump’s followers as “deplorables,” and accelerated through his de facto presidential legitimization of White supremacy and toxic immigration by people of color. But this MAGA platform has now shifted to Ron DeSantis, clearly evidenced by the Florida Governor’s “Stop Woke Act.” He has successfully led a large red state charge to ban teaching at all levels of education (from elementary school well into college) of any historical facts that would diminish the power of the underlying conspiracy theories and White supremacy.

As we watch the reconfigured Republican Party become nothing more than a vessel for such MAGA beliefs, we are watching a dangerous and exceptionally well-armed faction of deeply discontented White Americans, who truly believe they are being left behind.

I’m Peter Dekom, and those zealots that F Scott Fitzgerald once described as “stupid” and “dislikeable” are exceptionally angry and even more exceptionally well-armed.

Still Very Much on the GOP Table – Cutting Medicare and Social Security

They’ve gotten a tad more savvy about how they label their deep aversion to these purportedly vested federal investment programs. They call them “entitlements” still, as if no one contributed a dime of their lifetime earnings to these “giveaway” programs. Even as seniors are a mainstay of GOP support, Republicans still refer to “fiscal responsibility,” “shoring up the financial structures behind Social Security and Medicare,” having all federal statutes subject to automatic “sunset provisions” that end statutes unless renewed by Congress every five years, the superiority of private investment over federal control, etc. They do not speak of the chaos that would result from the five-year review, that these programs were passed decades ago when American birth rates far exceeded the “replacement” numbers, what the recent stock market collapse would have done to a mandated private investment plan without any Social “Security,” and how their votes have been the primary eroders of the stability of the programs.

According to a government post: “On August 14, 1935, the Social Security Act established a system of old-age benefits for workers, benefits for victims of industrial accidents, unemployment insurance, and aid for dependent mothers and children, persons who are blind, and persons with disabilities.” The system was predicated on an assumed flow of babies, so that the taxes on working Americans would easily support the oldest segment of the population.

According to Statista.com, the dip in WWII birth rates due to soldiers at war, “changed quite dramatically in the aftermath of the Second World War, rising sharply to over 3.5 children per woman in 1960 (children born between 1946 and 1964 are nowadays known as the 'Baby Boomer' generation, and they make up roughly twenty percent of today’s US population). Due to the end of the baby boom and increased access to contraception, fertility reached its lowest point in the US in 1980, where it was just 1.77. It did however rise to over two children per woman between 1995 and 2010, although it [did] drop again by 2020, to just 1.78.” The “replacement rate” is 2.1 live births per couple, so without immigration – fiercely opposed by the GOP – as with most developed countries in the world, the US population is contracting. That also means that the assumptions that accompanied the passage of Social Security and Medicare have not been valid for a while. Yes, these programs need fixing. But why not ask the mega-rich for the necessary funding for an updated program that reflects 2023 demographic realities, not outdated statistics.

Aside from the fact that GOP immigration policies and failure to understand simple demographic statistics are the major contributors to any underlying instability of underlying financing of these programs, the GOP prefers to find backdoor excuses to defund these programs… slowly if they cannot simply wipe them away. Every GOP proposal to cut these programs has met with severe resistance from seniors, and the only concession that Republicans have been able to extract when they were in complete control of the presidency and Congress has been to push retirement age back from its original 65 age trigger. But as President Joe Biden correctly pointed out in his State of the Union message, despite jeers from GOP Congresspeople, they’re baccccck! Actually, they never left.

The problem with the GOP denial that Social Security and Medicare are in the crosshairs of their budget-cutting axe: there is so much concrete evidence of their actual goals to make that denial truly “fake news.” For example, as noted, they refer to these programs as “entitlements,” so when they say they will cut “entitlements,” substitute the words “Social Security and Medicare” and reread their pronouncements. The real “entitlements” probably came in the form of a massive 2017 corporate tax rate cut from 35% to 21% that added trillions to the deficit. And when they say that Social Security should continue but be “privatized,” they are both cutting that out of the budget and turning the word “Security” into a joke. By the way, that’s the George W Bush plan that infuriated seniors and a current plank of undeclared presidential candidate Mike Pence.

Writing an OpEd for the February 15th, Michael Hiltzik adds more evidence to the fire, starting with those Republicans gathered and forced to listen to the State of the Union message who pretended they never wanted to touch these sacred programs: “Not so, they say. Never happened. Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) were even caught on camera during the speech wearing ‘Who, me?’ expressions of injured innocence… Unfortunately for them, we have the evidence, as does Biden. Cutting Social Security along with Medicare has been part of the Republican platform for decades… As I’ve reported before, they often hide their intentions behind a scrim of impenetrable jargon, plainly hoping that Americans won’t do the necessary math to penetrate their subterfuge…

“They know they’re on thin ice with the public when they talk about benefit cuts, which is why Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) once recommended discussing their ideas only ‘behind closed doors.’…Now we can turn to the specifics of Lee’s and Scott’s plans. In widely circulated videos from Lee’s first successful Senate campaign in 2010 he can be seen and heard stating as follows: ‘It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it out by the roots.’ He said that was why he was running for the Senate, and added, ‘Medicare and Medicaid are of the same sort. They need to be pulled up.’

“As for Scott, his 12-point ‘Rescue America’ plan, issued last year, included a proposal to sunset all federal legislation after five years. ‘If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.’ The implications for Social Security and Medicare, which were created by federal legislation, were unmistakable — so much so that the proposal made Republican officeholders’ skin crawl… McConnell disavowed the proposal on the spot and has continued to do so, telling a home-state radio host after the Biden speech that the sunset provision is ‘not a Republican plan. That was the Rick Scott plan.’…. The GOP can’t easily wriggle away from its intentions. Let’s examine the fiscal 2023 budget proposal issued by the Republican Study Committee, a key policy body, last June under the title ‘Blueprint to Save America.’

“This plan would increase the Social Security full retirement age, which today is 66 or 67 (depending on one’s year of birth), to 70 by 2040. According to Kathleen Romig, the Social Security expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, this would translate into a 20% cut in lifetime benefits compared with current law.

“As I’ve reported before, raising the full retirement age is a Trojan horse that would affect all retirees across the board, but harm Black workers, lower-income workers and those in physically demanding jobs the most… It would create particular hardships for those choosing to retire early and collect their benefits prior to their full retirement age.” Ja sure, the GOP has no plans to touch Social Security and Medicare. And I am the Easter Bunny. On February 17th, under pressure, Rick Scott deleted the potential of removing these programs from his rescue plan… but trust me, it will come back… with different wording. If the GOP were to win control of Congress and the presidency…

I’m Peter Dekom, and the number of people in our workforce with zero private retirement savings (including employer pension plans) is 25%... and rising.

When a Nation State Completely Fails

 

         

Jimmy Cherizier, leader of Fòs Revolisyonè G9 an fanmi e alye

When a Nation State Completely Fails

Ukraine was attacked from the outside; Haiti is being attacked from within.

The flying distance from Miami to Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, is 709 miles. But if you take the trip and see what’s there, it seems as if you have traveled to another, ultra-violent planet. Haiti may have been the first country to ban slavery (in 1804), but it continued to make reparations to its former colonial master, France, for those lost slaves until 1947. And yes, the United States supported France. Wracked by hurricanes and earthquakes, rattled by political assassinations and effectively without a viable and functioning government, super-impoverished Haiti (the poorest in the Western hemisphere), particularly Port-au-Prince, may just be the closest to hell on earth imaginable. Despite the stiff competition from Yemen, Ukraine, and the Sudan.

The Haitian government, devoid of leadership, has long since lost control of most of the country. Gangs rule violently over their well-defended turf. Food, medicine and tolerable housing are a distant memory for most residents. But gang leadership just may be the closest force capable of a semblance of government. Slaughter is a way of life (death?) for gang members and those remaining Haitian forces and police left. Since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, the nation has unraveled into unparallel violence and chaos.

As Associated Press journalists, writing on February 2nd, Megan Janetsky and Pierre Richard Luxama single out one particular Port-au-Prince shot-caller: “Jimmy Cherizier [pictured above] zips through Haiti’s capital on the back of a motorcycle, flanked by young men wielding black and leopard print masks and automatic weapons… As the pack of bikes flies by graffiti reading ‘Mafia boss’ in Creole, street vendors selling vegetables, meats and old clothes on the curb cast their eyes to the ground or peer curiously.

“Cherizier, best known by his childhood nickname Barbecue, has become the most recognized name in Haiti… And here in his territory, surrounded by the tin-roofed homes and bustling streets of the informal settlement La Saline, he is the law… Internationally, he’s known as Haiti’s most powerful and feared gang leader, sanctioned by the United Nations for ‘serious human rights abuses,’ and the man behind a fuel blockade that brought the Caribbean nation to its knees late last year.

“But if you ask the former police officer with gun tattoos running up his arm, he’s a ‘revolutionary’ advocating against a corrupt government that has left a nation of 12 million people in the dust… ‘I’m not a thief. I’m not involved in kidnapping. I’m not a rapist. I’m just carrying out a social fight,’ Cherizier, leader of the ‘G9 Family and Allies’ [in French above] federation of nine gangs, told the Associated Press while sitting in a chair in the middle of an empty road near a home with windows shattered by bullets. ‘I’m a threat to the system.’…”

The litany of extreme poverty, the legacy of voodoo and torture from the Duvalier regime that was overthrown in 1986, the enormous government corruption, the horrific January 2010, October 2018 and August of 2021 earthquakes, interspersed and followed by massive hurricanes, a cholera epidemic plus the COVID pandemic and the 2021 Moise assassination have created a massively failed state on our doorstep. A quarter of all Haitians live in the capital city, and “In December, the U.N. estimated that gangs controlled 60% of Haiti’s capital, but nowadays most on the streets of Port-au-Prince say that number is closer to 100%.

“‘There is, democratically speaking, little to no legitimacy’ for Haiti’s government, said Jeremy McDermott, a head of InSight Crime, a research center focused on organized crime. ‘This gives the gangs a stronger political voice and more justification to their claims to be the true representatives of the communities.’… It’s something that conflict victims, politicians, analysts, aid organizations, security forces and international observers fear will only get worse. Civilians, they worry, will bear the brunt of the consequences…

“What is clear, said McDermott… is that gangs are reaping rewards from the political chaos… InSight Crime estimates that before the killing of the president, Cherizier’s federation of gangs, G9, got half of its money from the government, 30% from kidnappings and 20% from extortions. After the killing, government funding dipped significantly, according to the organization… Yet his gangs have significantly grown in power after the group blocked the distribution of fuel from Port-au-Prince’s key fuel terminal for two months late last year… The blockade paralyzed the country in the midst of a cholera outbreak and gave other gangs footholds to expand. Cherizier claimed the blockade was in protest of rising inflation, government corruption and deepening inequality in Haiti…

“In October, the U.N. imposed sanctions against Cherizier, which included an arms embargo, an asset freeze and a travel ban… The world body accused him of carrying out a bloody massacre in La Saline, economically paralyzing the country and using armed violence and rape to threaten ‘the peace, security and stability of Haiti.’…

“At the same time, despite not being elected into power and his mandate timing out, [Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who “took over” after Moise’s assassination], whose administration declined a request for comment, has continued at the helm of a skeleton government. He has pledged for a year and a half to hold general elections but has failed to do so… In early January, the country lost its final democratically elected institution when the 10 senators symbolically holding office ended their terms… It has turned Haiti into a de facto ‘dictatorship,’ said Patrice Dumont, one of the senators… He said even if the current government was willing to hold elections, he doesn’t know whether it would be possible due to gangs’ firm grip on the city.” AP.

Is there a possible “fix” that rest of the world can support? The scope of the failure and devastation is so massive that any reasonable form of international focus and support seems exceptionally unlikely. As the world focuses on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Haiti and her people are relegated to occasional stories in the back pages of international news reports.

I’m Peter Dekom, and impoverished Haiti is getting poorer, dangerous Haiti is getting much more dangerous, devasted Haiti is falling further apart, and hope has left the country.