China, So Much Stronger… but So Much Weaker in the End

“China’s President for life begins his third term with a ruthless grip on power that imperils the global economy.”

Time Magazine, Nov 15-16

“We have ensured that the party will never change its nature, its conviction or its character…

The rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is now on an irreversible historical course.”

President Xi Jinping, October 16th from the Great Hall of the People.

The legacy of Xi Jinping is one of bringing China back to a more rigid, authoritarian nation, more committed to the state as the source of all meaningful power, no matter the consequences. On October 16th, the leadership of the People’s Republic began their annual congress in the Grand Hall of the People in Beijing. Everything inside was perfect. All attendees were in alignment with Xi’s guiding principles as he unabashedly sought to ratify his virtually total autocratic authority. Successfully! There were no protests, the agenda was clear. At least inside the gathering. As the Economist stated (October 13th), the direction for China was unswerving:

“The Communist Party has always been obsessed with control, but under President Xi Jinping that obsession has deepened. Such control-freakery has wider implications for China and the world. At home Mr Xi makes all the big calls, and a fierce machinery of repression enforces his will. Abroad, he seeks to fashion a global order more congenial for autocrats.

“Rightly, the West finds this alarming. No despotic regime in history has had resources to match modern China’s. This is why Western governments now treat Chinese innovation as a national-security issue. Many are boosting subsidies for industries such as chipmaking. Perhaps, though, they have it wrong. Mr Xi’s obsession with control may make the Communist Party stronger, but it also makes China weaker than it would otherwise be.” China has clamped down on the billionaires, those helming some of the biggest companies on earth. Some CEOs just disappeared, a few coming back later, severely humbled and perhaps separated from their companies. But President Xi, having changed the PRC constitution, was on his way to an unprecedented third term.

The new way forward was required and manifest fealty to the state, more particularly to Xi’s vision of the state. Hong Kong was crushed and marginalized, today a far cry from the promised retention of British freedoms and policies… well before 2047 when China would have otherwise had the treaty-granted right to change the system. Uighurs were still being arrested and placed in “reeducation camps,” crushing both their language and their culture under what many have described as concentration camp brutality.

Taiwan’s independence was and is a massive thorn in Xi’s side. China upped its claims to the island nation, now of increased strategic importance as the major sophisticated computer chipmaker on earth. Xi’s military is now modern (further modernizing) and still huge; China flashed its military strength, countering the US naval presence in the area, with a rolling litany of military aircraft and vessels flying or nearing low and close (sometimes over) Taiwan. At the annual Congress, Xi stressed that Beijing seeks peaceful reunification with Taiwan. However, he also emphasized that Beijing reserves the right to take any measures, including the use of force, and cautioned "foreign forces" against meddling.

Was an invasion imminent or was China held back by the failings of Russia in their effort to take Ukraine? China had just announced an accord, implemented directly between Putin and Xi before the Ukraine invasion, bringing a new “partnership” between these two autocratic nations. While China slightly distanced herself from Russia after the invasion, partially from global sentiments and partially, was this because Putin was obviously embarrassed by his military missteps? The massive negative global reaction?

But China itself was reeling from its own self-inflicted mistakes. Side by side with Russia, China was named the greatest threat to US national security. Their economy, even by the PRC’s own optimistic presentation, was slammed by COVID, but given the PRC’s “Zero COVID” policy, people were/are often confined to their homes, fired from companies when they cannot get to work, and prevented from moving around, often resulting in entire factories and shipping being totally shut down. The October 7th BBC.com: “[in the first week of October], rail services out of Xinjiang were suspended and many parts of the western region including its capital Urumqi were under lockdown as officials admitted they had failed to stop the virus spreading.

“China's stricter lockdowns have seen widespread reports of people unable to source food and medicine - but zero-Covid is affecting people's daily lives in myriad other ways too… Three years into the crisis, this is exhausting the population… On the outskirts of Beijing, workers on modest incomes live in an area called Yanjiao because the rent is cheaper. It is on the other side of a river, just inside neighbouring Hebei province… In normal times, this wouldn't matter but in the pandemic it can mean having to run the gauntlet of roadblocks to travel from where you live to where you work.

“In June this year, a cluster of cases saw people living in Yanjiao prevented from entering the capital, leading to clashes between police who were enforcing the border closure and employees trying to get to work… Since then, locals have been seen paddling across the water in inflatable craft to sneak into the city… At the time of writing, the border is open but everyone entering Beijing must show their IDs which are linked to health code apps… Every morning in Yanjiao, buses can be seen lined up, stopping before they cross over, so police can board and check that everyone has a clean bill of health… The delays have made the commuters of Yanjiao seem unreliable in the eyes of employers.” This “zero tolerance” has slammed the PRC economy big time. Any sign of COVID and the government shuts it down. Anywhere. Everywhere.

Well after the pandemic has fallen within manageable levels, as the US GDP was rising fast, “Signs of Chinese economic weakness dominate recent news reports. Youth unemployment was nearly 20% in July 2022. The purchasing managers index fell in the latest report, Home sales declined 40% from a year ago. GDP rose by just 0.4% over the past four quarters, compared to the national target of 5.5% growth.” Forbes, September 1st. This from a nation that routinely posted 7-9% GDP growth and today expects a modest (for China) 5.5% growth level.

But even as Party leaders met to rubberstamp Xi’s reelection, his hardline approach was clearly unpopular: “Frustration has been mounting in the capital before the congress… There has been an outpouring of anger online at strict security measures and the Covid restrictions put in place… Authorities have tightened access to the city, shutting out many travellers, returning residents and deliveries. Others had their movement restricted or were forced to quarantine.

“The images and footage of the protest that have been circulating showed two large banners unfurled on a bridge in Beijing's Haidian district. [Pictured above]… One read: ‘No Covid test, we want to eat. No restrictions, we want freedom. No lies, we want dignity. No Cultural Revolution, we want reform. No leaders, we want votes. By not being slaves, we can be citizens.’… The other called on residents to ‘go on strike at school and work, remove dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping.’” BBC.com, October 13th.

“While state media have remained silent, photos and videos of Thursday's [10/13] event have circulated widely online, prompting a swift crackdown by censors on social media platforms and the WeChat app used by most Chinese.” BBC.com, October 14th. Scholars believe that there is an unwritten covenant between China’s leaders and her people: you give us total political power, and we will give you economic prosperity and stability. That accord has been breached… so beyond popular expectations that PRC citizens are willing opening to protest. But there is no successor being groomed, no leaders rising. Right now, it’s all Xi… and for the foreseeable future.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while there is no reason to expect an overthrow of President Xi, the nascent stages of popular discord are clearly planted and growing in China; still, his official power has only increased.

World War III – Here, Now, or Soon?

  A Tactical Nuclear Explosion

The list of nations directly involved in Putin’s war against Ukraine gets longer all the time. On the Russian side, Belarus is supplying launching sites and safe harbors to Putin’s military, Syria is sending volunteer forces and now it seems pretty clear that Iran has become a supplier of deadly suicide drones: “‘The whole night [17th of October], and the whole morning, the enemy terrorizes the civilian population,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a social media post. ‘Kamikaze drones and missiles are attacking all of Ukraine.’…

“Zelensky, citing Ukrainian intelligence services, alleges Russia ordered 2,400 drones from Iran. Russia has rebranded them as Geran-2 drones — ‘geranium’ in Russian. A photo of debris from one of Monday’s strikes [10/17], posted by Klitschko, showed ‘Geran-2’ marked on a mangled tail fin… Iran has previously denied providing Russia with weapons, although its Revolutionary Guard chief has boasted of providing arms to the world’s top powers, without elaborating… The drones pack an explosive charge and can linger over targets before nosediving into them.” Associated Press, October 18th.

On Ukraine’s side, all thirty NATO nations, from Albania to the United States, are providing military and other support to Kyiv. Formerly non-aligned Sweden and Finland have applied for NATO membership, and their admission is all but certain. While a handful of nations in the United Nations General Assembly voted against censoring Russia, and a larger number abstained from the vote, the overwhelming majority of General Assembly countries voted against Russia. Still, Russia is still able actively to sell its fossil fuels to several major nations, including India and China, generating significant cashflow to fund Putin’s war. Atrocities are multiplying.

As Russia is now targeting its missiles to debilitate Ukraine’s electrical power generating capacity, which so far has taken out almost a third of the latter’s electricity, as winter approaches, the Russians want to impose a frigid misery on Ukrainians, hoping to crush their resistance to Putin’s ambitions. Those nasty Iranian drones seem to be focused on seemingly random attacks on mostly civilian targets, spreading even more fear among ordinary Ukrainians. But local Ukrainian resistance seems only to stiffen notwithstanding the Russian escalation.

There is little question that Putin’s war has impacted people far beyond the theater of conflict. Aside from the obvious dramatic global increase in the cost of fossil fuels, now a huge campaign issue in our own mid-term elections, the removal of major grain production from Ukraine has reduced supplies, significantly increased prices, to some of the most vulnerable people on earth, particularly in the most impoverished regions in the world.

As the pain of Russia’s naked territorial ambitions spreads itself all over the globe, many political scientists and economists are beginning to ask whether we already are or are about to be enmeshed in one more autocrat-caused world war. A Hitler redux. One that very much carries with it the threat of nuclear weapons, even total destruction. Still, simmering international violence is not relegated to great powers battling over Ukrainian independence.

In a recent interview in Yahoo!finance (October 17th), “[New York University business professor and] economist Nouriel Roubini says a nuclear escalation of that nearly eight-month conflict could mark just the start of a global battle… The world could also see nuclear conflict in Iran and, most worrying for the U.S., around China's fight for Taiwan, says Roubini, who was dubbed ‘Dr. Doom’ after the realization of his dire predictions including the 2008 housing crisis that sparked the Great Recession.

“[Roubani] contends a cold war already exists between the U.S. and China, and that it could escalate into a ‘hot war’ as President Xi Jinping aims to unite China and Taiwan… ‘In some sense, World War III has already started,’ Roubini said. ‘It started in Ukraine because this conflict has broader implications that go well beyond Russia and Ukraine. It’s the beginning of something else.’…

“Speaking to Yahoo Finance's editor-in-chief on Monday [10/17], Roubini highlighted geopolitical threats and what he calls a new cold war that has emerged between the U.S. and China as well as between the West and ‘revisionist’ powers including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan… ‘They're essentially challenging the economic, social, and geopolitical order that the U.S., and Europe, and the West created after World War II,’ Roubini said, explaining this crisis could ensnare the U.S.

“In addition to Ukraine, another flash point could also be Iran, Roubini says… ‘The negotiations between the U.S. and Iran on the new nuclear deal are not going anywhere, and Israel is saying if [Iran is] going to become nuclear — and they're one step away from it — we're going to attack them,’ Roubini said.

“At the same time, the U.S. and China are on a collision course as the two countries continue to uncouple on fronts from trade to the movement of labor to technology… ‘I believe the next 5-10 years is going to be the time where there’s going to be a confrontation between the U.S. and China on the issue of Taiwan and that could be a trigger of this cold war becoming a hot war,’ he said. ‘That’s how we get to World War III… In some sense, World War III has already started'” Indeed, as further supported in my recent China, So Much Stronger… but So Much Weaker in the End blog, China has mounted a new super-aggressive posture vis-à-vis its global relationships, it has advanced a new willingness to use its newly upgraded military to risk confronting major US air and sea power and it has made its intentions to take Taiwan, one way or the other, a clear near-term probability.

In the end, there are so many flashpoints, too many weapons controlled by insecure but egotistical autocrats and too many divergent points of view blending and feeding on each other to make us believe that we will just settle down after a little fighting and return to a more peaceful time. And then we have climate change, with resultant natural disasters and food/water shortages, that mankind simply is unwilling to deal with sufficiently.

I’m Peter Dekom, and probably the only thing we can probably say with certainty is: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

Do Earnings Goals Foment Greenhouse Gasses & Pollution?

 

The answer is pretty obvious. Without enforced governmental regulations, most companies are unlikely to incur serious extra costs to push forward environmental goals. Simply, they do not want to be placed at a disadvantage against competitors. If environmental costs make their products more expensive, unless they are on a level playing field where their competitors are equally challenged, very senior managers are unlikely voluntarily to pay for environmental upgrades if their share price falls. Large, heavily polluting companies, particularly in the world of fossil fuels, are more likely to spend money on flashy but ineffective environmental programs with glitzy “green” public relations campaigns than they are at repenting and fixing their sins.

For example, Chevron’s public statements show a full commitment to reducing their carbon footprint, embracing the policies set out in the Paris climate accords, and stating underlying goals to implement its program. But some – like AwakeCanada.org (Robert Kennedy writing on 4/13/21) – are basically telling us that Chevron is simply “greenwashing” its behavior without truly making inroads towards its stated environmental goals: “According to an analysis by Richard Heede published by The Guardian in 2019, Chevron is responsible for more carbon emissions since 1965 than any other investor-owned fossil fuel company… In early March [2021], Chevron announced new climate goals and published a new climate report, which said Chevron intends to reduce its global warming emissions by about 5% over the next seven years. Underwhelming to say the least.

“No wonder my colleague Nicole Pinko says Chevron is in a fight for second-to-last place with ExxonMobil on climate action… And in its new Net Zero Company Benchmark, the investor-led Climate Action 100+ initiative found that Chevron met none of the criteria related to net-zero ambition by 2050 or short-, medium-, and long-term emissions reduction targets toward that aim.

“While Chevron’s climate actions are decidedly understated, its climate ads are dangerously overstated. That’s why Earthworks, Global Witness, and Greenpeace USA, represented by Richman Law and Policy, filed a greenwashing complaint to the Federal Trade Commission against Chevron.

“The complaint argues that Chevron’s ads are unlawfully deceptive because they overstate the company’s investment in renewable energy and its commitment to reducing fossil fuel pollution. The groups are asking the commission to require Chevron to remove the ads, refrain from placing similar ads in the future and face relevant penalties.” But while Big Oil is an obvious target for those seeking to stem climate change, what might not be so apparent is that even companies founded with a genuine “green mandate” also succumb to pulling back environmental processes under pressure to report profits, even if that means accepting the very pollution-elimination mandate upon which they were built.

Yale School of Management Accounting/Finance Professors Jacob Thomas and X. Frank Zhang, noted in the October 5th Yale Insights, discovered some surprising practices: “The short-term pressure on companies to hit quarterly and annual earnings targets can drive their leaders to acts of desperate accounting. It’s called real earnings management, or REM—companies might cut prices to increase sales, slash advertising or research and development budgets, or attempt various other financial maneuvers in an effort to meet or beat their targets.

“The factors fueling this desperation are no mystery. Companies receive swift and harsh market punishment when they report a miss. In April, Amazon announced a first-quarter revenue figure that narrowly missed consensus analyst estimates, and its stock price promptly dropped by 10%.

“A growing body of research suggests this short-term-fixated accounting can be harmful for firm stakeholders, like investors and employees. [Zhang and Thomas] suspected that the detrimental impacts of real earnings management might extend all the way into the physical environment… In a new paper, Zhang, Thomas, and their co-authors—Wentao Yao of Xiamen University and Wei Zhu of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign—investigate whether the short-term threat of missed earnings targets can override companies’ long-term efforts to reduce their pollution.

“The researchers’ analysis of records from the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory database revealed that, indeed, firms significantly increased toxic chemical pollution in the years when they just barely hit annual earnings targets, suggesting that they cut back on pollution-abatement measures as part of a larger effort to shunt funds from the costs column to the earnings column in close-call years.

“But in a twist that surprised even the researchers, it turned out that the companies most likely to increase pollution when faced with a possible missed earnings target were those companies rated most environmentally responsible overall. In other words, companies with a recognized long-term focus on their own environmental sustainability were especially likely to cut corners to serve their short-term financial goals… ‘Many hope that this type of long-term focus would curb managerial short-termism, and our paper shows that it’s not going to help,’ says Zhang. ‘When companies want to meet or beat short-term earnings targets, they will pollute more to do that.’” It can be pricey to implement emissions containment, retooling and recycling.

Yes, it’s unfair to narrow-focus the climate crisis-blame on Big Oil, even if they are an obviously large and appropriate target. But as we are witnessing during the soaring cost at the pump promulgated by factors like Putin’s war, the resulting sanctions against Russian oil and gas production and the OPEC reduction of 2 million barrels of oil output a day, governments facing political pressure are quite willing to look the other way to increase oil and gas output, even as greenhouse gasses necessarily increase. The problem is that voters are focused on here-and-now-bread-and-butter issues even as the costs of leaving climate change uncontained is massively destructive. Hurricane Ian was just one more in a litany of mega-disasters caused or exacerbated directly by climate change.

Yet as traditional polluters are enjoying double and triple increases in their annual profits because of these temporary anomalies, taxing those companies’ windfall profits – and using that money in lieu of gasoline/diesel taxes, even on a temporary basis – would seem obviously more effective in easing inflation without sacrificing environmental regulations. Emissions are now existential threats to humanity itself. We have run out of excuses to implement the rich-job-creation opportunities in alternative energy… and those politicians who still marginalize or deny climate change need to be shoved out of the way.

I’m Peter Dekom, and GOP lockstep votes against serious climate change containment and easing our emissions restrictions when it become expensive or inconvenient, are a recipe for more mega-“natural” disasters that will cost us all so much more in the immediate future.

Baraye

For dancing in the streets

For our fear when kissing loved ones

For my sister, your sister, our sisters

For the changing of rotted minds

For embarrassment due to being penniless

For yearning for an ordinary life

For the child laborer and his dreams

For this dictatorial economy

For this polluted air

For the dogs, innocent but banned

For all these never-ending tears

For never experiencing this moment again

For the smiling faces

For the students, for the future

For the feeling of peace

For the sunrise after long dark nights

For the stress and insomnia pills

For man, motherland, prosperity

For the girl who wished she was born a boy

For woman, life, freedom

“Baraye” means “because of” in Farsi (Persian). This song has become the anthem of the protests all over Iran. Even as Tehran’s leadership tries to blame the United States for spawning and fomenting these protests, this time we know it comes from the hearts, minds and fears of ordinary Iranians, especially young women. The explosion of mass protests was born of the threat to every woman in Iran, ordinary women just living their lives, of being arrested, tortured and killed by the morality police, given more power recently with the “election” of harder line politicians sanctioned by the Ayatollah Khamenei.

Writing for the October 12th Los Angeles, Times, Omid Khazani and Sarah Parvini explain where it began and how this anthem, receiving over 40 million views within a single day after being posted on social media on September 28th, became the rallying cry to Iranians everywhere: “Iran’s widespread protests were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her arrest and brutal handling by Iran’s morality police for allegedly failing to cover hair properly and wearing pants that were too tight. But the cry for the rights of women and girls quickly morphed into something much bigger…

“As crowds poured through the streets of Iran last month to demonstrate against the government, an up-and-coming 25-year-old singer named Shervin Hajipour began working on a new song… For the lyrics, he drew on tweets by his fellow Iranians explaining their reasons for joining the rapidly expanding protests. There were many… The government responded by arresting Hajipour, and soon the song was removed from his Instagram page.

“But it was too late to suppress it. The protest movement, led by women and young people, had unified a discontented nation across socioeconomic lines, geographic regions and ethnicities. ‘Baraye’ was now its anthem…. Videos posted online show young schoolgirls dancing in a circle and singing the anthem in protest. It blasts from inside apartments and from cars driving past women walking without hijab in quiet defiance. [Hajipour was released on bail a few days later.]

“The singer wrote that he loved Iran and that he wanted to stay there ‘for my country, my flag and my people’ and continue singing… But in a sentence that led fans to speculate that he was being coerced by Iranian authorities, Hajipour also suggested that his song had been co-opted and used in a way that he never intended: ‘I’m saddened that those outside the boundaries of Iran, with which I have no relationship, misused my song after its release for political reasons.’...

“‘I got goosebumps,’ said a 26-year-old woman in Tehran, describing her experience of listening to the song. ‘All around me, people were listening to it, feeling misery and pity.’… Like others, she gave only her first name, Armita, for fear of retaliation by the government. People around her — teachers, mothers, young girls — play the song constantly… In Karaj, near Tehran, protesters played the song and chanted ‘Death to the dictator!’ and ‘Woman, life, freedom!’ In an Iranian classroom, students wrote the lyrics to ‘Baraye’ on the wall.”

There have been protests in Iran before, over living conditions, economic disarray caused by Western sanctions, repression, etc., etc… but this one is different. It is continuing. It is forceful. All across the land, women are cutting their hair in protest, tearing down not only the ubiquitous pictures of their Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, but desecrating the even more prevalent pictures of the theocracy’s founder, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Protestors have been shot, arrested, as injuries and deaths mount. Almost 200 are known to have died, including at least 19 children.

Will this seething protest bring down the regime? Or will brutality prevail? We need more oil to counter price-gouging shortages imposed by Putin’s war and the recent OPEC+ cutback, but while Iran is one of the few significant alternative sources, are we willing to release our oil embargo (and some of the bigger sanctions) to get that oil out (and inflation down)… and fund that repressive regime? Have ordinary Iranians, most of whom are weary of their repressive theocracy, suffered enough as their leaders live well? See also my October 5th Loud Angry Women, Speaking Truth blog. Is repression by severe autocrats, even in the United States, our inevitable future… or are the protests in Iran a bigger sign of a bigger desire of people to be free to government themselves and live their lives their way? Ukraine! Iran! And in growing pockets everywhere.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is a growing social media effort to nominate “Baraye” for an American Grammy in the Recording Academy’s newest special award category, which honors a song promoting social change.

The New High-Paying Job Machines

 

"Do not – let me repeat – do not use this as an excuse to raise gasoline prices or gouge the American people." 

 Joe Biden in a speech at the White House as Hurricane Ian’s damage was being assessed.

Even before Hurricane Ian gave Big Oil another excuse to increase prices, magnify profits and slorp at the trough of making money from the pain of others, Putin’s war had already tilted the playing field towards Big Oil: “As fossil fuel giants… reported record profits for the second quarter, an [early August survey] highlighted how eight oil companies have raked in nearly $52 billion over the past three months ‘while Americans continue to struggle at the pump.’

“The review by the watchdog group Accountable.US revealed that from April through June, Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Hess Corp, Phillips 66, Shell, and TechnipFMC ‘saw their profits skyrocket from the same time period last year, with income shooting up 235%.’… The analysis also pointed out that leaders at Equinor, Halliburton, Hess Corp, and TechnipFMC have boasted ‘about excellent quarters while dismissing high prices for consumers.’” NationofChange.org, August 1st.

Isn’t it ironic that the industry that one of the principal causes of the intensity of Hurricane Ian could be a major beneficiary of even more windfall profits? Yet any attempt to regulate such price gouging is met with Republican cries of “socialism.” Look up the word, folks, and finally understand what it means: Government, not private ownership of land, wealth and the means of production. That is not happening anywhere in the United States.

In fact, the old-world fossil fuel industry, that amplifier of climate change misery, pretends to be environmentally friendly while spending millions to influence elected officials to slow down the implementation of alternative energy and to expand the use of fossil fuels. In fact, it is Russia’s abundance of oil and gas that hang over major parts of Europe as winter approaches, giving Vladimir Putin leverage he should never have. Job loss? In fact, fossil fuel supporters claim that shifting to alternative energy will cost the nation of millions of jobs, while the precisely opposite is true: For every fossil fuel industry job lost, expect two to three new jobs to be created.

Tanya Kaushal, writing for the September 27th Yahoo!news, has researched the underlying opportunity numbers for this transition from fossil to alternative, renewable sources of energy: “In 2021, 18 million people worked in the energy sector globally, an industry that is projected to grow to 26 million by 2050. Although 9.5 million jobs could potentially be lost in the transition to greener energy, the process won’t create mass unemployment, according to a study published in the One Earth journal. Instead, it will create an additional 17.4 million jobs in renewable energy.

“The biggest increase we see is in manufacturing renewables equipment like wind turbines, solar PV panels, etc., and installation and maintenance of these technologies,” Dr. Johannes Emmerling, a scientist at the European Institute on Economics and the Environment, told Yahoo Finance. (He was co-author of the study.)… The main reason why is due to the ‘much more granular technology’ that will require large quantities of materials, space, and maintenance ‘per GW [gigawatt] of capacity installed,’ he said, adding that those jobs could outnumber those lost by a factor of 2-3…

“As of 2021, jobs in net-zero emissions-aligned areas made up approximately 40% of total energy jobs, the Department of Energy stated in an annual report. And these areas are expected to grow even more rapidly in the coming decades… According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wind turbine service technicians make up the second-fastest growing occupation in the U.S. behind nurse practitioners with a 44% growth rate projected in the next decade.

“Wind turbine technicians earned a median salary of $56,260 in 2021, and the typical job required a certificate but no college degree. The states with the highest employment of wind turbine technicians are Texas, California, and Oklahoma… Solar photovoltaic installers were also cited as one of the fastest-growing jobs in America. This job typically requires a high school diploma and pays $47,670 a year. California, Texas, and Arizona are the states with the most solar PV installers.” Kaushal.

In response to Putin’s war, there has been some backsliding. “Texas [for example] added approximately 4,000 oil field service jobs in April, but throughout the country employment around the oil sector remains below pre-pandemic levels.” Kaushal. Coal is already experiencing a steep decline in global demand. Most nations know that this is the single largest polluter and that there really is no such thing as commercially viable “clean coal.” Gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles are next on the chopping block as electric vehicles are increasingin range, dropping in cost and more rapid charging stations are built. But we still have a long way to go.

“Despite a potential job boom on the horizon, the energy transition is still in the early stages… About 81% of the primary energy sources in the U.S. are fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas — and America relies heavily on them. After China, the U.S. consumes the most fossil fuels annually… The U.S. is also the top producer of fossil fuel-based energy production overall, accounting for 20% of the world's total energy production from hydrocarbons… According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), just 24% of the national electricity generation in the first half of this year came from renewable sources.

“Yet, the fossil fuel industry has been on the decline since 2014. For instance, jobs in the mining industry fell at an annual rate of 3.5% from 2011 to 2021, and it is projected that the annual growth rate will only increase by 1.2% by 2031.” Kaushal. If you look at the recent firestorm and hurricane damage just here in the United States, you know we need to do a lot more much faster. To the extent that big corporate interests and the politicians they have bought try to deny or marginalize the issue, they need to be pushed out of the way so the rest of us can survive!

I’m Peter Dekom, and anytime you hear a politician decry those pushing the United States away from its addiction to oil as leftist plotters, guess who is making big dollar campaign contributions to that candidate?

What is the Weakest Link?

Putin is watching the shifting political winds around him very carefully. Will the U.S. mid-terms elect a pro-Trump Congress? Trump and Putin hit it off, and Russian ministries have excelled at using American social media to spread mis- and disinformation targeting gullible, conspiracy theory-driven voters, putting stuff up as quickly as it is taken down. They definitely prefer MAGA candidates as both destabilizers and the most likely to pull support from Ukraine. Could it be Italy with its recently isolationist neofascist government? How about Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, a White Christian nationalist with close ties to Vladimir Putin? He’s not a champion of the sanctions NATO has applied against Russia. Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan has presented himself as a potential mediator in the Ukraine war. Despite Turkey’s membership in NATO, Erdoğan has never been fully on board with the open hostility with Russia.

Most Russia experts believe Putin will not immediately launch a tactical nuclear strike against Ukraine, hoping that his new deployment of mobilized forces will give him a better hand. But most also agree that if Putin faces defeat and humiliation, such a limited nuclear attack is very much on the table. NATO’s response is not clear, but a nuke will definitely escalate the conflict, perhaps to the breaking point. These experts expect Putin to wait out the winter before making up his mind. Why wait until winter passes?

While Europeans say they will steel themselves against the approaching hardships, a fiercely cold winter may turn the tide. Already facing average cost increases north of 10%, Europeans were reminded of their vulnerabilities when mysterious explosions under the natural gas pipelines from Russia to Germany shut down that resource. Naturally, Europeans believe it was Russian malevolence that sent that message.

Indeed, it is that German dependence on Russian natural gas, the impact of cost increases on Europe’s most vital economy, that Putin is particularly interested in. Having served in East Germany as a senior KGB officer during the Cold War, Putin is totally fluent in German and reads their press voraciously. He is aware that Germany, probably more than any other nation on earth, is obsessed with the danger of hyperinflation, which was the major force that propelled the rise of the Nazi Party in the 1920s.

And the weather is getting colder in Germany. Still clinging to their anti-war beliefs after the horrors of Hitler’s WWII experience, Germans have mixed feelings about the war. While Putin is the most Hitler-like leader to appear in Europe, invading neighboring countries in a Hitler-like lust for lebensraum, believing that he just might be able to reunite the old Soviet empire, containing him requires Germans to reinvolve themselves in a European war. At severe cost. Germans facing power bills that are multiples of what they paid just a few months ago, watching the cost of food skyrocket, are already spending less where they can. Those in the middle- and lower-income brackets are cutting back on shopping, going out or traveling, and many are literally turning off the lights and heating in their homes to be able to afford life.

For too many Germans, the anxiety borders on intolerable. Writing for the October 4th Los Angeles Times, Erik Kirschbaum, explains further: “[This inflation realities are] exacerbating the anxiety of a dark, cold and possibly even hunger-filled winter ahead have been the ominous saber-rattling from Russian President Vladimir Putin about possibly turning to nuclear weapons against Ukraine and the West. The mystery-shrouded explosions at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, damaging natural gas pipelines that had not long ago delivered nearly half of Germany’s supplies, have unsettled the country even more.

“‘No one will freeze or starve to death this winter — can the German government really back up that promise?’ was the entirely earnest episode title of a popular prime-time talk show called ‘Anne Will’ on the ARD public broadcasting network recently.

“On Thursday [9/29], the German government announced a $200-billion relief package designed to help Germans pay heating and electricity bills that for many have already doubled or, in some cases, tripled. Germans have been urged to conserve energy, turn down their thermostats and take cold or shorter showers, while authorities have shut off the lights and turned the heat down in public buildings… Putin is probably aware of opinion polls showing Germans to be more wary than others about the war and haunted about inflation, energy scarcity and warfare spreading to their peace-obsessed land.

“A recent survey for ARD by the respected Infratest Dimap institute found support for the German government and the tough sanctions regime against Russia sliding from a 66% approval rating in March to 53% in September. When asked what their views would be if sanctions disrupted energy supplies, approval dropped from 68% in March to 54% in September… The institute also found in an April poll that 80% of Germans were worried the war in Ukraine would cause lasting damage to Germany’s economy, 76% were afraid that Germany would suffer energy shortages, and 64% worried that the war would spread from Ukraine across Europe.”

Germany’s support in supplying hardware to Ukraine has been lukewarm at best. This hesitancy is evidenced by Germany’s pathetic offer, immediately preceding the Russian invasion, to send 5,000 helmets to Ukraine. “Germany has been accused of dragging its feet on supporting Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself — at first refusing to send any weapons over fears it could antagonize Putin and lead to a wider war, and then coming up with a litany of changing reasons for withholding its highly regarded armored vehicles, tanks and air defense systems.

“‘Germany’s reputation as a reliable partner in Europe is taking a nosedive,’ said Jaeger, pointing to a survey last week by the German Marshall Fund that found perceptions of Germany’s reliability have plummeted by more than 10 percentage points this year in Poland, Turkey, the United States and Spain.” LA Times. While the United States is much more supportive Ukraine’s defense, “inflation” caused by this war is being pinned on Democrats… and even here, a reversal in our support of Kyiv is not guaranteed given our highly polarized electorate. And we are an ocean away from any part of Europe.

I’m Peter Dekom, and even as most Americans do not believe that Putin has a chance of prevailing against surprisingly powerful Ukrainian resistance… he just might… and would not be the first international pariah to survive failure.

Reagan’s Disdain for Mental Hospitals, With Us Still Decades Later

    

California’s Camarillo State Mental Hospital Became Cal State Channel Islands   

                                Homeless in LA

It’s not as if California had a magnificent set of governmental mental hospitals (under the “Department of Mental Hygiene”) when Ronald Reagan became governor in 1967. According to a KQED report, the number of patients had fallen to 22 thousand, so the austerity-driven Reagan administration promptly cut 2,600 jobs and 10 percent of the budget despite reports showing that hospitals were already below recommended staffing levels.

Shortly, thereafter, under the pretense of creating a mental patient’s bill of rights, Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act to end the practice of institutionalizing patients against their will for indefinite amounts of time, absent a trial with due process. The law also made it easier to shift care into private hospitals, which it turns out, were woefully unprepared to handle the change. State hospitals accordingly began a slow phasing out, as the above photos illustrate.

The new law did not work out as planned. According to KQED, for example, the year after the law went into effect, a study shows the number of mentally ill people entering San Mateo's criminal justice system doubled. Over time, the public care and “treatment” of the mentally ill, as they were removed from society for indigency or more serious criminal acts, shifted almost entirely to the California criminal justice system.

Prior to leaving the presidency, President Jimmy Carter signed the Mental Health Systems Act to support better care for the mentally ill in furtherance of John F. Kennedy’s dream for a kinder America. According to KQED, early in Reagan’s term as President (1981), his administration led the repeal of Carter’s legislation with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. This pushed the responsibility of mentally ill patients back to the states. The legislation created block grants for the states, but federal spending on mental illness declined.

As waves of austerity swept the states, cutting back infrastructure repair and educational support as well, public funding for specialized mental treatment facilities faded even more. This was also the beginning of the shift of post-secondary education costs from states to students and their families, the inflection point where tuition costs began to pass inflation by a rising multiple.

Up to the present day, not much has changed. Student loans are now staggering. And, for those not in jails or prisons, a whole lot of mentally insufficient or ill people find themselves among the hordes of the homeless, now a huge new political issue, particularly in sunny California. Meanwhile, those with serious mental illness often languish as inmates under horrific conditions with no meaningful treatment, even for those unconvicted but still jailed. “Liberal” California is a particularly egregious offender. Writing for the September 14th Los Angeles Times, Kevin Rector, explains that “Despite court orders, thousands found unfit to stand trial languish in state lockups…

“It was 2020, and he thought his downstairs neighbor was spying on him. They exchanged words, and she called the cops. He was arrested on suspicion of making a verbal threat and booked into a Kern County jail… Haasjes has a developmental delay and schizoaffective disorder. The 58-year-old Tehachapi man has been in and out of mental health facilities most of his life. But he had never been convicted of a crime, and he said he didn’t really understand the felony charge against him.

“Authorities soon acknowledged the same. In March 2021, Haasjes was declared ‘incompetent to stand trial.’… The legal designation meant Haasjes could not understand the court process for determining his guilt or innocence. It meant he was entitled to mental health treatment before he could stand trial. It also should have meant his prompt transfer to a state hospital or treatment program to receive care — but it did not.

“Like thousands of other mentally ill detainees incarcerated across California in recent years, Haasjes instead languished in jail, where he was denied trial or proper treatment from the Department of State Hospitals for more than a year. He was only transferred to a hospital in February, after his cousin, a retired social worker, testified about his lack of care before state lawmakers, and his case was suddenly fast-tracked.

“Others have fared much worse… According to a decade of legal filings reviewed by The Times and interviews with mental health advocates, public defenders, family members of the mentally ill and former detainees, Haasjes’ experience fits within a much larger pattern of neglect involving some of the most vulnerable people in state custody.

“At the heart of the problem is a persistent failure by state officials to sufficiently expand state hospitals or other community-based care options despite surging numbers of incompetent criminal detainees and a string of court orders mandating the state transfer such defendants out of jails faster.”

Simply put, there really are severely limited public treatment facilities to send these hapless individuals to. State ballot initiatives and competing agendas among and between political candidates seeking office, mostly focused on homelessness, have failed to produce solutions. It’s still easier to buy an AR-15 than to find viable treatment facilities for criminals or homeless individuals with severe mental illnesses or addiction issues. Does California Governor Gavin Newsom’s new “Care Court Bill” provide a possible alternative for some of the homeless and hapless?

“An estimated 7,000 to 12,000 of California’s most vulnerable residents are expected to qualify for CARE Court, the ones at greatest risk of death or deterioration due to their conditions… To initiate a CARE plan, family members, first responders, medical professionals and behavioral health providers, among others, can first petition a judge to order an evaluation of an adult with a diagnosed psychotic disorder who is in severe need of treatment and, often, housing.

“If the person meets the criteria, the judge would order a series of hearings and evaluations to begin drafting an individualized CARE plan, which could include medication, social services and treatment for stabilization, along with housing specific to their needs.” LA Times, September 15th. Is this the answer? There’s $1.5 billion in the offing. Let’s hope this at least makes a dent. But will the process reach those who need it most? Time will tell… but the problem is much bigger than this law.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is amazing how expensive so many unthinking austerity programs turn out!

Democrats' Achilles Heel: Immigration!

“When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” 

 From Donald Trump’s successful first Presidential campaign.

The issue was the dominating rationale behind Brexit. It defines Victor Orbán’s Hungary’s demand for ethnic purity, it brought the first fascist government to power to Italy, underlines the significant gains in the French accorded to right-wing Marie Le Pen’s in recent parliamentary elections which denied President Macron from the majority he needed, and has even taken traditionally liberal and open Sweden to a new level of limiting immigration. Unlike the United States, which is effectively a nation of immigrants, Europe’s underlying demographic vectors are primarily long-standing ethnic, cultural and religious. But for waves of immigrants fleeing wars, starvation and climate change, their desperate move into European nations runs counter to these country’s historical past.

While the United States includes 13.7% of its citizenry as foreign born, Sweden is now reaching past 20%, based on the greatest per capita acceptance of refugees in Europe. Fear of losing their culture plus having to absorb masses of people whose language, education and cultural background make them clear outsiders, is now plaguing Swedes. After a clear shift to the right in Sweden’s September elections, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, now that nation’s the largest party, are about to shepherd in a new body of immigration laws, moving away from an open door to a more restrictive short-term residency for asylum seekers, extended only based a set of qualifying parameters.

Make no mistake, if there is a hot-button American issue where Democrats can be unseated, it is also immigration. This notwithstanding that the current immigration nightmare was ripped into massive dysfunction by the Trump administration – slamming the immigration courts, cutting funding, engaging in clearly unlawful policies and restrictions that only brought massive waves of undocumented aliens to our borders (some, legitimate asylum seekers; 675,000 cases have yet to be heard)… many of whom were pushed back to wait in horrid camps in Mexico, wasted funding on a border wall that could never solve the problem, preferring litigation to problem-solving. The Biden administration has not done much better, but now the Republican Party is blaming the Democrats for all things wrong with undocumented and asylum-seeking aliens, no matter who caused it.

This posture is particularly galling given that a right-wing Republic congressional bloc has opposed every immigration reform measure introduced by any president since Reagan (who presided over the last meaningful immigration reform… in the mid-1980s). Even Republican presidents seeking reform were rebuffed by that bloc. But Republicans, searching for an issue, have discovered that a whole lot of Americans do not care about humanitarian concerns, that US demand for narcotics and a willingness to “allow” (wink-wink) American made guns to bolster the cartel violence that drives that migration simply does not matter, and that our need for educated STEM workers (needed to stay competitive) does not move the needle.

These desperate immigrants (and even thoroughly qualified migrants, if they are not White Christians), many asylum seekers and even economic migrants, are cast as taking away our jobs (not remotely a sustainable position given our profound worker shortage), or are labeled as criminals as noted in the excerpt from a Trump campaign speech. We need them to harvest our crops, to take jobs that American workers will not accept at any price and to support our economic stability. We need an expanded guest-worker plan, a clearer path to permanent residence (with as many logical restrictions as necessary), and a properly funded immigration service.

But despite the Republican culpability in creating the immigration nightmare we face, ambitious president-wannabes like governors Ron DeSantis (Florida) and Gregg Abbott (Texas) are happy to ignore the truth, fabricate what they think voters want to hear, engage in stupid and even illegal usurpation of federal jurisdiction, for grandstanding and self-help. GOP governors send “troops to defend our border” or create dramatic photo ops by lying to asylum seekers to lure them into bus rides or flights where they are promised non-existent jobs and residency in blue states. Forget that blue California already receives the largest segment of these migrants.

While Democrats plot the response to GOP grandstanding, from possible criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits, and no matter how immoral and wrong such GOP efforts are, ignoring this rising tide of emotion could tank Democratic chances during the mid-terms and the 2024 presidential race. It remains the single biggest issue that plagues the Dems, even beyond inflation and the culture wars.

So, what should the Democrats do? First, admit there is a big problem that is now a Democratic Party priority to solve. They need to tag those Republicans for their mistaken efforts in the past and demand that the public elect Democrats in sufficient numbers to implement a desperately needed statutory reform legislation. They need to acknowledge that we cannot allow a flawed system to pump more immigration-seekers into the United States without a mechanism to reduce those admitted and fix the system for a modern era. “We need Congress to give us the tools to deal with this massive immigration quagmire!” should be the rallying cry. No more roadblocks from Republicans in Congress who have stopped every attempt at immigration reform for over three decades! Or they can limp along with the same failed system that Donald Trump handed them.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes the obvious seems elusive to those politicians who simply want their way…. or chaos.

Mythology, Nukes, Oil, and Fear

“We proceed from the fact that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed, and we stand for equal and indivisible security for all members of the world community.” 

Vladimir Putin, August 1, 2022

“Russia has announced that not only mobilization capabilities, but also any Russian weapons, including strategic nuclear weapons and weapons based on new principles, could be used for such protection.” 

 Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian President & current Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, explaining Putin’s statement on September 21st, that he would use “all available means” to protect Russia’s “territorial integrity,” including newly annexed territory.

In theory, the notion of “mutually assured destruction” should cause nations possessing nukes to follow Putin’s first quote above. There are a lot of nukes in the world. Russia has 5,977 nuclear warheads, the U.S. has 5,428, China has 350, France has 290 and the United Kingdom has 225, according to the Federation of American Scientists. North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel are also nuclear weapons nations. But recently, the thought that using tactical nuclear warheads might be acceptable on the battlefield has surfaced more than once, particularly as noted in the Medvedev quote above. While less powerful than a strategic nuclear armed missile, a tactical nuclear weapon can still be stronger than the bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki… just more narrowly targeted.

Addressing the variables in the viability of Russia’s using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war, in an interview on Fareed Zakaria’s Global Public Square telecast (CNN, October 10th), US Army Gen. Wesley Clark, a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, asserted that instilling fear was Putin’s primary threat in his nuclear saber-rattling. However, he also noted that NATO had run myriad computer simulations on the use of a more limited tactical strike(s) as part of a realistic road to victory. Clark found that while casualties were monstrous and radiation poisoning remained in and around targeted areas, there were no scenarios where using such tactical nuclear weapons produced victory.

As Donald Trump is now mentioning in all of his recent rallies, he would end the Ukraine war if he were president (by forcing Ukraine to accept peace by pulling back US aid)… and take the world out from under Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons. First, there is little doubt that Ukraine would not stop fighting under any circumstances, or that our new NATO allies (Sweden and Finland), as well as the Baltic Republics, would be exposed to Russian expansionism under the same “threat.” Putin would then know that his threat could be used repeatedly to advance his territorial ambitions. The threat is real.

At any level, using nuclear weapons is a “no-win” effort. But that may not stop a cornered despot, with no checks or balances in his political system, from exploding like a cornered tiger, lashing out without regard to the consequences. Putin faces Ukraine’s successful pushback in territories he thought he had annexed… plus an embarrassing bomb on a critical Russian bridge. His fierce retaliation against Ukraine changed nothing, perhaps even amplifying Ukrainian resolve. His inexperienced, newly mobilized and demoralized troops are unlikely to make a difference.

Reality does not stop the world from financing Putin’s war, sanctions notwithstanding. Aside from the approximately $1 billion/month that the United States spends on Russian imports – see my September 4th Wanna Buy a Yacht… or Some Plywood? blog – Russia is a powerful beneficiary of the soaring price of oil and gas resulting from those sanctions. $1 billion/day in sales.

To compound this essential financial system that very much funds Putin’s war against Ukraine, Saudi-led OPEC+ (which includes Russia) just announced a 2 billion barrel a day curtailment in oil output, citing falling prices that are hurting their profit margins. But the bigger, hidden issue behind this move is the threat by Western nations to place a statutory cap on the price of oil they do import, and although Russia is the target, all oil producers would suffer. A non-starter to our Saudi “ally” and other OPECers. Just as Biden is seeking wider support for Democrats in the mid-terms, this little price hike/supply contraction slam is most inopportune.

Indeed, there are two sources of oil that could make a difference: Iran and Venezuela. But Iran just might be in the middle of a revolution. Our allowing them to export freely to solve our oil price problem just might be the kind of support that repressive government needs to stay in power. While Venezuela now has an unrestricted right and ability to export as much oil as they want, their failed leftist government has allowed the necessary extraction and refining infrastructure to decay so badly that it would take massive investments and several years to get that country “fixed” enough to make a dent in global oil supplies. What about us?

Do we really want to tap our national reserve even more than we have already to lower the price… as significant risk as the Russia war rolls on? For those idiots who say that the government should take all restrictions off of American oil production, Big American Oil (and gas) staunchly maintains that they are producing as much as they physically can. Climate change deniers are instead using price disruption from Putin’s war as an excuse to kill as much support for alternative energy power generation as they can. There no near-term ability to produce more US oil.

Indeed, as the above chart illustrates, as a result of recent government releases of oil into the marketplace to reduce prices at the pump, our US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has not been this low for decades. Created as a reaction to the 1973 oil embargo, “[o]ver time the U.S. government began to fill the reserve. At its high point in 2010, the level reach 726.6 million barrels. Since December 1984, the level has never been lower than 450 million barrels — until now… On March 31, 2022 — in an attempt to fight higher oil and gasoline prices — President Biden announced the release of one million barrels of crude oil a day for six months from the SPR.

“[According to Forbes Senior Correspondent, Robert Rapier:] I remember when I first heard about it, I thought ‘Wow. That’s a lot.’ In fact, I noted in interviews at the time that this level of release would likely help stem oil prices — at the risk of depleting our insurance policy in case of a supply disruption… Consider that with the U.S. producing 12 million BPD [barrels per day], an extra one million BPD pushes total U.S. ‘supply’ (which isn’t sustainable, because it relies on depleting the SPR) back up to the all-time pre-Covid high of 13 million BPD.” Forbes, September 7th. This latest “price shock absorber” release from the SPR has totaled about 200 million barrels; but the risk of releasing more into the marketplace carries significant national security risks. An easier solution, if legislatures and Congress can be persuaded, would be to levy a windfall profits tax on Big Oil. After all, their profits from this nasty price rise have almost tripled. Brace, brace, brace!

I’m Peter Dekom, and war always causes pain and disruption… but when global tyrants are not confronted and contained, the longer-term pain can be so much worse.

The Ultimate Challenge - Empaneling an Impartial Jury for a Trump Criminal Trial

“The rule of law means that the law treats each of us alike: There is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless; a rule for the rich, another for the poor.” 

 U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, September 17th.

For almost any other criminal defendant in the nation, the tsunami of evidence that has been presented against Donald John Trump – including violation of a litany of election statutes, tax evasion, fraudulent bank applications, conspiracy, sedition, lying to a federal officer, obstruction of justice, violation of various federal records acts, etc., etc. – would at the least have led to one or more major indictments and probably a plea bargain given the apparent exceptionally high probability of conviction. But where delay and polarization are the defendant’s pattern and strongest of the strong suits, where pervasive divisiveness defines the entirety of American society today, Donald Trump has one massive ace up his sleeve: finding a federal or state jury sufficiently unbiased to reach a verdict and survive an appellate challenge, borders on impossible. Just one stubborn holdout juror can result in a mistrial.

To make matters worse, the violence prone MAGA backers and militia, have issued detailed and credible threats against police and FBI officers, judges and magistrates and prosecutors virtually every time a new criminal investigation, action or ruling is made that does not favor Trump. Will that threat list include grand jurors as well as any trial jurors in any Trump criminal trial? Pro-Trump conspiracy theorists, knowing the triggering buzzwords to evoke protests (or violent protests), scan every Trump social media post, every interview, the entirety of Trump’s rally speeches and even the words of Trump’s closest associates, looking for instructions from their leader. Anyone accorded a pejorative label by the ex-president is in jeopardy.

Will courts where any such trial may take place be forced to become armed camps, surrounded by cadres of well-armed officers (even military) wearing body armor behind specially erected barriers? Think about how many more government officers the January 6th Capitol siege defenders needed… but never secured. Look at the horror of that occupation, the death and injury toll, and the number of armed attackers waiting in the wings for specific order from the then-president. Will potential jurors live in fear? The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires such trials to take place in the district where the criminal act purportedly took place, although courts have changed venues to maximize impartiality.

Which brings me back to the simple issue posited by the title of this blog: empaneling a truly “impartial jury” (per the Sixth Amendment) to be the trier of facts in any Trump criminal trial. In a world of passionate biases and an abundance of individuals within the Trump orbit with a proclivity to lie, how exactly can an individual juror’s biases be revealed in customary jury questioning (voir dire)? An impossible task, one that may in significant part explain the dearth of indictments against the ex-president. The Department of Justice (and parallel state agencies) clearly appreciate that challenge… one that just might allow an obvious felon to walk.

You might surmise that prosecuting and defending attorneys just might want to explore that personal bias by looking at a potential juror’s texts and social media posts in search of misconduct and bias. But if that were a general rule, the entire jury selection process would be next to impossible to conduct with any realistic efficiency. Sure, if a juror lies about that bias during voir dire, that is the crime of perjury, but if the truth ever does come out, you still get a mistrial.

But in political trials, those biases become important, and with a trial of the ex-president of the United States, perhaps even critical. So can a court take voir dire to another level and order inspections of such postings and exchanges, most of which are on the individual juror’s personal digital devices? While judges often bring jurors into chambers for private questioning when a defendant has reason suspect a bias – under Remmer v. United States, a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision – can a court delve into the juror’s individual digital media? Can that be prompted by the prosecutor?

Until the U.S. Supreme Court rules – remembering the deeply conservative bias reflected in that court – that is an open question… except in the Sixth Circuit. The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (which has six Trump and two Biden appointees) covers Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. The case (In Re Alexander Sittenfeld) involved a political crime, as Debra Cassens Weiss, writing for the September 27th Journal of the American Bar Association, explains. On September 23rd, the appellate court addressed “an appeal by Alexander ‘P.G.’ Sittenfeld, a former Cincinnati City Council member who was convicted of bribery and attempted extortion under color of official right.

“Sittenfeld had sought a forensic examination of the electronic devices of ‘Juror X’ after learning that she had discussed another juror in a Facebook post, and that commenters on her Facebook posts had mentioned the trial… Juror X’s posts could be viewed only by her Facebook friends, one of whom was a court employee who told the trial judge about the posts. Juror X didn’t include facts about the case, didn’t name the defendant and didn’t discuss the proceedings.

“But Juror X wrote that another juror ‘shouldn’t be on the jury because [she] hates anyone that shares the same profession as our person on trial. Not cool!!!’… One commenter identified Sittenfeld by name, spurring Juror X to hide the comment. Another linked to an article about the case published before trial. And another commenter posted their thoughts on jury nullification and jurors’ right to return a not guilty verdict if the law is unfair…

“[The resulting ruling:] a district court has no power to order an examination of a juror’s electronic devices to determine whether an outside influence affected the verdict.” While the opinions among the deciding judges expressed the possibility that the ruling was overbroad, the implications of that order are deeply disturbing in any potential criminal trial of Donald Trump. Could this ruling, if sustained, be the Trump’s real “Get of Jail” card? It certainly makes finding that impartial jury next to impossible.

I’m Peter Dekom, and this march towards finding criminal responsibility for an ex-president tests our judicial system like no other… is there a separate system of justice for the rich and well connected; are there certain people who are truly above the law?