Give It Your Best Shot

With all the news around the world, from repression in Nicaragua, military-controlled elections in Pakistan, horrific fires in the West, erratic trade war moves and the question of a possible Russian-controlled “deep state” functioning with links to the Trump administration, it’s pretty easy to miss the seeming little stories that just might kill you.  And it does get me back to the litany of problems caused by a massive failure to apply the Second Amendment as our forefathers intended. After all, when did you last hear a federal court decision on gun issues discuss the importance of the Amendment’s reference to a “well regulated militia,” the entire focus of that provision?

But there have been some recent court cases, federal administrative actions, and some interesting side protests, relating to gun usage in the United States and attempts to subvert some pretty obvious and necessary restrictions.

As we keep shoving immigrants back across our southern border, castigating Latin American governments for failing to do enough to stem the illegal crossings into the U.S., we are cutting back on American funding of local cartel-fighting efforts, doing virtually nothing to stem the demand for illegal narcotics here in the U.S. that is causing all this criminality (and treat drug addiction with the seriousness it deserves) and certainly keeping ready access to assault weapons sold with little or no oversight at so many U.S. gun shows… knowing tens of thousands of such weapons are smuggled south across our border to ensure that the cartels “down there” are almost always better armed than the underpaid police who need cartel bribes just to pay their bills. Gun laissez faire is growing, not shrinking.

Even a three-judge panel from liberal federal 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals, in the recent Young vs. Hawaii ruling (which could be reheard by a full nine judge panel of the 9^th Circuit), suggested that  there were clear Second Amendment rights to getting approved for an “open-carry” gun permit. The July 27^th Journal of the American Bar Association explains: “A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in a 2-1 decision that the Second Amendment protects the right to openly carry a gun for self-defense outside of the home.

“The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case of a Hawaii man, George Young, who was twice denied a license to carry a handgun, report Reuters and a series of tweets by South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman… In an opinion by Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, the 9th Circuit majority said the Second Amendment’s right to bear as well as keep arms ‘implies some level of public carry in case of confrontation… In sum, we reject a cramped reading of the Second Amendment that renders to ‘keep’ and to ‘bear’ unequal guarantees.’ O’Scannlain said.” Wow, that’s a stretch. But wait there’s more!

What seems to be a terrible federal governmental move, when we are completely concerned with guns falling into the wrong hands, particularly violent criminals, mentally unstable individuals, and terrorists, is a recent federal administrative ruling that seems shocking at every level. “After spending years fighting the federal government for the right to do so, a Texas company was given the green light to post blueprints online showing people how to make 3-D printed guns from the comfort of their home.

“Gun safety advocates and some law enforcement officials are appalled, worried that this is exactly what criminals and terrorists want: guns that can’t be flagged by metal detectors, don’t have serial numbers to trace, and don’t require the usual background checks.

“A coalition of gun control groups filed an appeal Thursday in federal court seeking to block a recent Trump administration ruling allowing Cody Wilson and his company, Defense Distributed, to post blueprints online to create a 3-D printed firearm.

“‘There is a market for these guns and it’s not just among enthusiasts and hobbyists,’ said Nick Suplina, managing director for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the three groups that have gone to court. ‘There’s a real desire … in the criminal underworld as well.’

“Wilson, the founder of Defense Distributed, first published downloadable designs for a 3-D printed firearm in 2013. It was downloaded about 100,000 times until the State Department ordered him to cease, contending it violated federal export laws since some of the blueprints were downloaded by people outside the United States.

“But in a reversal that stunned gun control advocates, the State Department in late June settled its case against Wilson and agreed to allow him to resume posting the blueprints at the end of July. Wilson took to Twitter, declaring victory and proclaiming he would start back up on Aug. 1.” Los Angeles Times, July 27^th.

Experts testified that these 3-D guns were not, as a practical basis, much of a threat for quality reasons, noting that “the guns are simply a modern-day equivalent of what already is legal and readily available: the ability to assemble your own firearm using traditional materials and methods at home without serial numbers… They argue that 3-D printed firearms won’t be a draw for criminals since the printers needed to make them are wildly expensive and the firearms themselves aren’t very durable.

“‘It costs thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to acquire a printer and the files and the know-how to do this. They don’t work worth a damn. Criminals can obviously go out and steal guns or even manufacture quote-unquote real guns, not 3-D printed,’ said Larry Keane, executive director of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents gun manufacturers… ‘If you’re a gang banger in L.A., are you going to go out and spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy a printer to print a gun that doesn’t work very well or are you just going to steal one?’

“Unlike traditional firearms that can fire thousands of rounds in their lifetime, experts say the 3-D printed guns normally only last a few rounds before they fall apart. They don’t have magazines that allow the usual nine or 15 rounds to be carried; instead, they usually hold a bullet or two and then must be manually loaded afterward. And they’re not usually very accurate either.

“A video posted of a test by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2013 showed one of the guns produced from Wilson’s design — the Liberator — disintegrating into pieces after a single round was fired. Wilson’s website will also offer blueprints for AR-style long guns besides its first product, the Liberator pistol.” LA Times.

Yeah, well, that kind of assumes that 3-D printing will remain a stagnant technology that does not improve to embrace cheaper printers that can work in metal. We know that cannot be. We also know that terrorists don’t need to have a long-term functioning weapon if they merely wish to carry weapons onto airplanes; they just need to get past the scanners. Waiting for a mass shooting using such weapons or a terrorist take-over of a commercial flight. OMG!

I’m Peter Dekom, and given the number of mass shootings, it is indeed maddening that instead of clamping down on such weapons, our governmental agencies are making this lethal access easier and more ubiquitous.

The Rich Get Richer

In past blogs, I have noted how upward mobility has all but vaporized from the American dream and how increasing percentages on income and wealth are focused on an ever-contracting sliver of billionaires at the top of our food chain. We are now far and away the most economically polarized developed nation on earth as federal policies continue to push an even greater share of income and wealth to the top and most definitely away from the middle and bottom part of our economic ladder. The top one tenth of one percent of our population controls more wealth than the bottom 90% combined!

Even as the Trump administration pretends to have reduced taxes for the middle class – unless you happen to live in a high state income tax blue state where taxes went up – between the contraction of federal support and control of healthcare and a trade war that is causing prices from durables to farm goods to skyrocket, the net economic position for most of us remains “the same or worse” than it was before these touted Trumpian reforms.  Well over 90% of the economic benefits of the Trump tax cuts and virtually all of the major reductions in consumer/ financial/environmental regulations have gone solely to the top earners in the land, creating very few well-paying jobs along the way.

OK, joblessness is down but so is the number of jobs that provide even entry-level middle class pay. They certainly haven’t shown up in that vast blue-collar Trump constituency. And while average pay is wiggling upward, it seems that this phenomenon is due primarily to massive pay increases at the top… not so much for the middle and below. I did say “average,” so if we have nine people making $10,000 a year, and one person making $1 million a year, the “average” among that ten-person group is $109,000/year per person. Get it? The average looks great even if most folks don’t get anywhere near that number.

OK, so let me address this earnings picture from an entirely different perspective to make the same point. All of these governmental incentives – from deregulation to tax cuts – have created clear economic growth in basic gross domestic product numbers.

Over the years, there has been a federal governmental record of the ratio of wages/salaries as a percentage of the overall economy. So as profits soar and the economy hits high notes, workers participate in that upside in a very measurable way. But since the Great Recession, the percentage of our economy accorded to workers has continued to drop, particularly after the “recovery” and even more after Trump’s reforms. Those invested in capital are increasingly making more money than workers, living in a world of accelerating prices, who are making less. The Federal Reserve is concerned.

“The fall in the percentage of economic growth flowing to workers is ‘very troubling,’ a worrisome sign in an otherwise bright American economy, Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell told a Senate panel Tuesday [7/17]… Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, Powell expressed concern that the share of profits going to American labor had fallen ‘precipitously’ for more than a decade and was not reversing course.

“In 2000, wages and salaries for American workers accounted for about 66% of the overall economy. That rate has fallen to about 62%, although the decline has leveled off since the end of the Great Recession, according to statistics compiled by the Brookings Institution and cited at Tuesday’s hearing by Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

“‘We want an economy that works for everyone,’ said Powell, who was appointed by President Trump last fall to oversee the nation’s central bank. ‘In the last five years or so, labor share of profits has been sideways. This is very much akin to the flattening out of median incomes over the last few decades.’

“The strength of the overall economy has been widely expected to eventually translate into higher wages for workers, but pay increases so far have been disappointing. Job growth, at more than 215,000 jobs every month, remains healthy, with the overall unemployment rate continuing to tick down, and the U.S. economy is growing at a healthy clip, powered in part by strong consumer spending and business investment, Powell said… But average hourly wages for most American workers have stalled — and, by at least one measure, fallen when accounting for inflation.” Los Angeles Times, July 18^th.

When such a narrow rich segment at the top of society is so vested in their wealth and obviously in control of the political systems that enable them to generate and keep their wealth, we have a technical name for that system: plutocracy. 70% of working Americans today are literally at the same effective, inflation-correct level (or worse) of discretionary spending ability. It’s pretty clear that the Trump/GOP cabal is the tip of that plutocratic spear. Want a bit more detail on how they play with statistics to make “stagnant” and “bad” appear “positive,” see my July 6^th 3.8% Unemployment – Why Not Me? blog.

What is especially galling is this “loss or stagnation” of lifestyle, the decline a good-paying blue-collar and light white collar jobs, is exactly what gave rise to the populism that got Donald Trump – champion of the mega-rich – elected in the first place. As a master spinner, social media maven and marketing whiz, Donald Trump has managed to put lipstick on a pig and sell porcine beauty to his base! And they buy into this myth every day, blaming foreigners, liberals and immigrants when Donald simply does not deliver (and he lies and tells them he is delivering).

I’m Peter Dekom, and as we ignore upgrading education and infrastructure while cutting research, as we shovel money out of the middle class into the pockets of richest in the land, we are beginning to unravel those essential bonds that hold the United States of America together.

Coal-Hearted Truth

In late 2016, when Donald Trump pledged to save “King Coal,” restoring that most-polluting fossil fuel to its glory days, to reopen coal mines and coal-fired electrical power plants under vastly reduced environmental controls, while restoring thousands of high-paying coal mining jobs, coal accounted for 30% of this nation’s electrical power generation. While a few token mines announced a very few new hires since, mostly in specialized coal used for limited industrial processes, the number of coal miners continued to decline, more coal mines closed, demand for coal exports continued to fall and no one seemed to take up the U.S. government’s proselytizing industry to return to using more coal. The major fossil fuel gaining traction was a much cleaner natural gas.

The U.S. Department of Energy, issuing its Short-Term Energy Outlook as of July 10, 2018 through its U.S. Energy Information Administration website, noted the slippage in coal demand for power-generation: “EIA expects the share of U.S. total utility-scale electricity generation from natural gas-fired power plants to rise from 32% in 2017 to 34% in 2018 and to 35% in 2019. In this outlook, coal's forecast share of electricity generation falls from 30% in 2017 to 28% in 2018 and to 27% in 2019. The nuclear share of generation was 20% in 2017 and is forecast to be slightly less than that share in 2018 and in 2019. Non-hydropower renewables provided slightly less than 10% of electricity generation in 2017 and are expected to provide more than 10% in 2018 and nearly 11% in 2019. The generation share of hydropower was 7% in 2017 and is forecast to be slightly less than that share in 2018 and in 2019.”

A decline in demand for coal despite a very cold winter and a really hot summer – the hottest on record? Yup! And all of this was also factored without any reference to additional negative consequences that are likely under Trump’s misshaped trade war with most of the rest of the high-trade-volume world or what is likely to happen as the United States insists on applying sanctions on companies and nations (including several European powers) continuing to trade with Iran (as of September 1^st) under the very same accord to which the United States was itself a signatory until last May.

One has to wonder how strong denial is when reading or watching the interviews of members of Trump’s base. Those who have rotting and unsold crops that China isn’t buying anymore. Construction workers laid off because steel and aluminum costs have made their projects unaffordable. And the hundreds of thousands of American workers who justifiably fear for their jobs.

Trumpers seem to think all of Trump’s promises will fall in place. They are confident, despite a tsunami of evidence to the contrary, that after a short while Trump’s trading partners will succumb to the Art of the Deal grand master, fixing the balance of trade and negotiating one-on-one as The Donald has predicted. They will cave, they expect, because The Donald is an experienced businessman who knows what he is doing. And they believe with all their hearts that the repeal of environmental regulations will bring their 20^th century jobs back at full pay. While acknowledging the need to accept “short term” sacrifices, they just know Trump will deliver.

They probably aren’t aware of what is happening around them even as U.S. power companies know that the prognosis for coal as a staple fuel is abysmal (its use has been declining for a century), or as nations dig in their heels to resist a very unpopular Trump and scramble to create and support the very multinational trade agreements Trump is trying to blow away in favor of his one-on-one approach… like the one with the UK which will unravel if Britain continues with its soft-Brexit approach. Or like Japan’s flat refusal to negotiate one-on-one with the U.S. and instead announcing this massive new trade agreement (Donald’s nightmare) on July 17^th: “The European Union and Japan have signed a trade deal that promises to eliminate 99 percent of tariffs that cost businesses in the EU and Japan nearly $1.17 billion annually.

“According to the European Commission, the EU-Japan ‘Economic Partnership Agreement’ (EPA) is the largest trade deal ever negotiated by the EU and will create a trade zone covering 600 million people and nearly a third of global GDP.” USA Today, July 17^th. Or “Bromance Partner” Putin’s special relationship with Iran, supporting the latter’s right to sell oil to the world despite U.S. sanctions. Or China’s reassembling a trading coalition that looks a lot like the now-extinct Trans Pacific Partnership that Trump sank… except the new alliance is a work-around that excludes the United States.

What makes this equally unpalatable is a combination of “good economic numbers” (which fall apart on detailed analysis) and the pretty secure bet that when Trump’s promises are obviously unfulfilled, Trump will be able successfully to shift blame for his growing list of failures on somebody else: Obama, immigrants, Congress, liberals, an “enemy of the people fake-news-driven press,” etc. Anybody but the village idiot who dun thunk he was the smartest operative in the world and his revolving-door cabinet backed by a GOP Congress that refuses to confront the President’s obvious mistakes. And his base will buy that, hook, line and sinker.

I’m Peter Dekom, and despite all the passionate belief by all those Trump supporters, neither facts nor time are on their side.