Happy New Year!

Natural Weekends - Snow Day

Like most of the northern tier of the country, we are suffering through an almost two-week long cold snap where temperatures won't rise above freezing. Yesterday, however was a snow day which actually warmed things up a bit into the 20s.

Astronomy Adventure - Crater Gassendi

Crater Gassendi is a large crater that has been mostly inundated by the lunar lava that created Mare Humorum which is the circular, darker, flat area to its lower left and is thought to consist of a thick layer of basalt. The crater's walls and its central peaks now barely crest the surface, rising anywhere from a couple of hundred yards to 1.5 miles. The deeper, smaller crater that breaches Gassendi's upper left rim is officially titled Gassendi A but is also known as Clarkson. Near the lower portion of Mare Humorum you can barley make out the remains of the also inundated Crater Doppelmayer with just part of its walls remaining and its central peaks barely visible.

Democrats Have A Platform For 2018 Elections - They Need To Articulate It

Democratic Representative Jackie Speier was on All In with Chris Hayes Thursday night and Hayes asked her, "Does the party need a platform to run on in 2018?" Speier's reply was the most frustrating answer I could have imagined. Said Speier, "Well we certainly do need a platform to run on in 2018. It cannot be just about opposing the President. And for all the talk, there haven't been that many jobs created. So, if in fact we can do a robust infrastructure bill, one that the Democrats can embrace, that is not just a public/private partnership, then we will be way ahead of where we have been. But I think focusing on jobs is going to be key."

Hayes then followed up, asking, "You mean a bill that you would negotiate with the President, you would vote for, and the President would sign?" Speier responded, "Right. Now if in fact what he wants to do is just give a lot of tax credits to those who are just going to build toll roads, that's not going to cut it for those on the Democratic side."

I really thought Hayes' jaw was going to hit the floor when he heard that response, but he did his best to try and bail Speiers out, saying, "But isn't the sort of lesson of McConnellism, which I think is a brilliant, brilliant insight that he had more than anyone, is that there is no reason to vote for anything ever, unless under duress, for the person who occupies the White House and you are not in his party."

Speier was entirely flummoxed by this, responding, "The...Well that was certainly his whole campaign effort where he said his whole job was to make sure Obama was not re-elected for a second term. But I do think for us, it is going to be important to look for ways to create jobs and make that - we're all about a "Better Deal", better jobs, better wages, better future. And, especially if the President wants to extend his hand and shake on a deal like that, we might be able to move forward."

I don't mean to pick on Speiers, who is usually pretty articulate, but her answers were absolutely cringe-worthy. First of all, talking about making an infrastructure deal with the President, regardless of its merits, will do nothing to win over a single Republican voter. And it does nothing but deflate the intensity of the Democratic base. And then, after Hayes bails her out, Speier finally mentions the actual Democratic platform, a "Better Deal", but only in the most general terms, and finishes it off by once again making a play to work with Trump.

I can't tell you how frustrating this was as a Democrat. Hayes gave Speiers a softball question about the Democratic platform and she spent most of the time talking about trying to make deals with Trump. NO! NO! And NO again! Hayes' question, and those like it, are an opportunity to make a 20 or 30 second campaign speech and too many times Democrats fail to take real advantage of the opportunity. It is the repetitive nature of the message that allows it to resonate with the majority of voters who do not follow politics closely.

Republicans are masters at sticking to a script and that's why they continue to win elections. Democrats are a collection of interests and therefore have more difficult time with a truly cohesive message. But the Democratic party does have a platform for the 2018 election and it is a "Better Deal". You and I may quibble about the details but we should expect our legislators to quickly and briefly articulate it. And way too often they are unable to do so.

Now, personally, I don't believe that Democrats will need much of a message beyond opposing Trump in 2018. The election will really be a referendum on his leadership. But a powerful and cohesive message in 2018 is important in order to set up the Democrats up for the 2020 election when they will actually have a chance to implement these plans, which is far more critical. So here, as a public service, is a brief primer for all Democrats in the House and Senate to recite when they are asked about needing something more than just running against Trump in 2018.

"It's not just opposing Trump in 2018. Republicans have spent the last year pushing two of the most unpopular bills in history and they finally managed to get this horrendous tax bill passed. So it is important to put Democrats in power as a bulwark against Trump and the Republicans who have admitted they are only serving their mega-rich donors and not the American worker or the American people in general. That means protecting and expanding Americans' well-being, including the ACA, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and reducing the cost of prescription drugs.

But beyond that, Democrats want to restore our transportation networks and provide high-speed broadband to those rural and underserved communities with a real infrastructure plan, not another corporate giveaway like the public-private partnerships the Republicans are proposing.

In addition, Democrats will be restoring more economic and political power to workers with a higher minimum wage, stronger antitrust enforcement, and increased support for child care, all of which will put more money in workers' pockets, as opposed to the Republicans' plan to give hundreds of billions to corporations and the already rich, while at the same time lining their own pockets, and hoping that money trickles down to workers.

In general, Democrats will be running to increase the economic and political power of the average American and reduce the power of the plutocrats that the Republican party has openly admitted it serves. That is the Democratic platform for 2018 and you can read more about our 'Better Deal' for working Americans online."

Readers can feel free to make changes, additions, or deletions. Obviously, the answer needs to be short enough to fit in an interview on a show like All In. And talking in general terms about "creating jobs" is not enough. The critical factor is to at least list a few specific, positive programs that Democrats are proposing and denigrate the actions of the Republicans. Articulating your own platform is NOT about making deals with this President or coming up with "bipartisan" solutions. That may get you good press with Fred Hiatt and the editorial page of the Washington Post. But it won't win any votes, either Republican or Democratic.

Natural Weekends - Clouds

Today's Wall Street Criminal - Citibank

In a departure from the usual, Wells Fargo is not the Wall Street firm engaging in more misdeeds this week. Instead, it is Citibank which for some mysterious reason managed to go four years giving stock rating to individual investors that were at odds with the information it was giving its high-paying institutional clients.

According to the NY Times, "Citigroup misrepresented its analysts’ views of more than 1,800 stocks, telling small investors some had 'buy' ratings when in fact they were rated 'sell,' and vice versa. In other cases, individual investors got ratings information for stocks that Citigroup analysts had stopped covering altogether". This "strange situation" somehow began in 2011 and somehow carried on until 2015 despite the fact that Citibank employees had apparently brought the discrepancy to the attention of management.

It certainly appears that Citibank was giving preferential treatment to its institutional clients. In addition, it is quite possible, even probable, that the bank was encouraging individual investors to buy the very same stocks that it was telling its institutional clients to short, thereby creating a windfall for those institutions when those stocks did fall.

FINRA has fined the bank nearly $12 million for this "strange situation". But the most infuriating thing is that neither FINRA nor anyone at the banks seems to want to know how or why this happened. And if we are uninterested in finding out exactly what drove this unique situation, I think we can be sure it will happen again.

GOP Tries To Steal The Election In Virginia To Maintain Their Own Power

I was disappointed to see that this Washington Post piece as well as Chris Hayes and Joy Reid last night really mischaracterized the nature of Shelly Simonds motion to have the Newport News Circuit Court reconsider their decision about a single ballot that would force the control of the Virginia House of Delegates to be decided by a drawing of names.  All three made it seem as though the issue was just about divining the intention of the voter on a single ballot. It is not. It is really just another attempt by the Republican party to get by other means what they could not win at the ballot box.

The ballot in question was originally determined to be an overvote during the recount and, as such, the ballot was not counted. That decision was not challenged by Republican recount observers at the time. It was only the day after the recount determined that Simonds had won by a single vote that a Republican observer decided that perhaps that vote should be challenged after all. As Simonds attorney says, the Circuit Court's decision to override the decision of the recount process and award that ballot to Simonds' opponent "sets the precedent that any party to a recount who is not satisfied with the results can wait until after the recount is complete to embark on a fishing expedition to seek out election officials who can be persuaded to challenge a sufficient number of ballots to change the result. Permitting such late challenges encourages meritless ballot challenges conjured up by recount lawyers and candidates instead of challenges that are properly made by election officials who disagree about or cannot decide how to treat a ballot during the recount."

The ballot in question was never under dispute during the recount process. The Republican recount officials and observers had ample opportunity to challenge this ballot during that process. They did not. It was only after the election that they decided to go fishing for a ballot that they might persuade a court to change in order to win the election that they had lost under the existing rules. And Simonds' lawyer point about precedence is especially powerful. Pushed to its logical conclusion, this decision will eventually force courts to rule on virtually every ballot during a recount. And there is nothing to prevent Simonds from fishing around for a similar ballot if this decision is upheld.

For Republicans these days, the idea of suffrage is purely transactional. Extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression are just part of the tools the GOP uses to pervert the democratic process. From the Brooks Brothers riot to this latest suit in Virginia, Republicans have continually shown they have no commitment to our democracy, only to maintaining their own power.

Trump Just Made Killing Off The Elderly Even Easier

Earlier this year, the Trump administration rolled back an Obama-era provision that prohibited nursing homes from using forced arbitration contracts if they wanted to remain part of Medicare and Medicaid. According to the administration, "arbitration agreements are, in fact, advantageous to both providers and beneficiaries because they allow for the expeditious resolution of claims without the costs and expense of litigation." The fact that arbitration is always advantageous to the nursing home and the removal of any threat of litigation that could result in a costly judgement for the nursing home is clearly  more relevant but obviously not worth mentioning.

But apparently even that action wasn't enough for the nursing home industry. The nursing home lobby, the American Health Care Association, has asked the Trump administration to restrict the use of fines against nursing homes for health and safety violations. And the Trump administration is, of course, willing to comply. According to a Trump administration official, "Rather than spending quality time with their patients, the providers are spending time complying with regulations that get in the way of caring for their patients and doesn’t increase the quality of care they provide." I'm not sure that those patients who have died because they received substandard care or were badly neglected would agree. But, then again, they can't sue anyway now.

According to the NY Times, one of the changes was to reduce the use of daily fines, fines for each day that the violation occurred, even those days before being uncovered by an inspection. Under this new scenario, the nursing home would be fined only $21,000 in the death of patient who died when the nursing home failed to monitor or treat an injury for 28 days. Under the old scenario, the nursing would have been fined over $280,000 which covered all 28 days of the violation.

Most nursing homes are already a disaster when it comes to health and safety violations. A recent Kaiser study found that 74% of all nursing homes had been fined for failures in infection control over a four year period. Even those nursing homes that fall under stricter and continued scrutiny, a process called special focus status, revert back to their old ways when that scrutiny is lifted. An earlier study showed that over half of the nursing homes that were covered by that status harmed or seriously jeopardized patients in a three year period after returning to normal monitoring. We can only imagine how bad things will get now that these homes have even less incentive to provide adequate, not even quality, care. As with most Trump actions these days, people will die needlessly.

Access To High Speed Broadband And Reducing The Urban/Rural Divide

In the post-World War II era, the Eisenhower Interstate System was the envy of the world and a major driver of US economic growth. Authorized in 1956, at a time when the government had only run a surplus in just four years in the past quarter century and just a decade after the debt-to-GDP ratio peaked at over 105%, the massive, nationwide project was completed 35 years later.

Today, the superhighway that drives our economy is the internet and most of this country is as badly underserved by broadband as it was by roads in the 1940s. Today, nearly 40% of rural Americans are not able to access the internet at speeds that meet the FCC minimum of 25mbs/5mbs, no matter how much they are willing to pay. Only 62% of rural Americans even have broadband into their homes. According to the American Library Association, 40% of libraries in the country also do not receive the FCC minimum speeds. Instead, these rural Americans are forced to rely on cellular providers which can throttle their speeds and charge them for overages in the limited number of cellular plans available.

According to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, "Consumers in all regions of the Nation, including low-income consumers and those in rural, insular, and high cost areas, should have access to telecommunications and information services, including interexchange services and advanced telecommunications and information services, that are reasonably comparable to those services provided in urban areas and that are available at rates that are reasonably comparable to rates charged for similar services in urban areas." This has clearly not happened, especially when you take a look at a 2015 map of broadband deployment that meets the minimum FCC standards in the US. Even more disturbing is to look at certain highly urban areas and find that there are pockets in those areas that are also equally underserved.

It's been 20 years and the free market has not been able to provide a broadband solution that serves vast swaths of the country. That is primarily due to the cost and time of installing hard fiber to serve small markets that will provide little return. That situation, of course, is exactly the type of need that government is intended to fill and the most current feasible answer is to promote a fixed wireless internet solution in which connections are made from rooftop receivers to a nearby tower.

But the idea that government has a role in providing telecomm services these days is an anathema to the monopolies that control our networks as well as the Republican party. And these companies will spend millions to get their way. In Kentucky, of all places, the state is spending nearly $325 million to lay 3,000 miles of fiber-optic cable in order to connect all municipal buildings in the state's 120 counties in a project called KentuckyWired. Needless to say, this forward-thinking project was spearheaded by Democratic Governor Steve Beshear, the same man who provided the highly successful Kynect Obamacare program.  The city of Louisville realized that it could piggyback on this effort and provide 100 miles of cable to provide high-speed access for all its citizens, especially the severely underserved communities in West Louisville. The cost of piggybacking on KentuckyWired would be just one-third the cost of Louisville providing this network from scratch.

What seemed like a no-brainer, however, ran into serious opposition from not only the cable monopolies but also another, unusual source, a Koch-funded lobbying group called the Taxpayers' Protection Alliance that claimed that "taxpayer-funded broadband is a waste of money". After an initial party-line vote in which Republicans on the city council voted down the project, but intense local pressure finally convinced the council to go ahead.

In Fort Collins, Colorado, Comcast has spent over $1 million in an attempt to block that city from going forward with its own municipal broadband network. As in Louisville, that attempt was defeated as the city council amended the city charter to allow the municipal network to go forward.

Where the telecomm monopolies and anti-government interest groups can't stop these local networks, they turn to their Republican hired hands in the state legislature to ensure access to broadband is limited. In Tennessee and North Carolina, state legislatures have restricted by law the spread of municipal broadband networks. Missouri is considering a similar law. Incredibly, or perhaps not these days, these legislators are actually voting to prevent their own citizens from being able to access one of the great drivers of economic growth.

One of the defining features of the modern American economy is increasing inequality which is reflected in an increasing urban/rural divide. That feature has also infected our country's politics. One of the most important ways to reduce that urban/rural economic divide is to provide high-speed broadband to every part of this country, in much the same way that the interstate system helped build thriving and productive communities in this country decades ago. Recent history has shown that the telecomm monopolies have no intention of providing that service, despite a mandate to do so. Republicans clearly are going to protect the telecomm monopolies and do not believe in government investment of any kind, except possibly the military. That's why it is important for Democrats to make and keep their promise to provide high-speed internet access to all Americans in order to help move our economy forward in all areas of the country.

Will Democrats Fall Into The GOP's "Bipartisan Trap"?

Mitch McConnell has seemingly had a rough year. His multiple attempts at repealing Obamacare in its entirety utterly failed, even as it consumed most of the legislative year. But, at the last minute, he was able to salvage victory from his failures by passing a massive tax giveaway to his donors and the rich. At the same time, the bill will also force 13 million Americans to lose their health insurance. All the while, however, he was filling federal judgeships that he had blocked Obama from appointing at a record pace. So, all in all, in retrospect, McConnell will probably view 2017 as a modest success.

I continue to believe that Democrats made a tactical error in agreeing to raise the debt ceiling and pass a three month budget extension back in September. In return, Democrats got funding for hurricane relief and what turned out to be a worthless promise on DACA. The three month extension gave Republicans in Congress an opportunity to try to once again kill Obamacare, which failed by a mere one vote. In addition, it provided the opportunity to pass the horrendous tax bill, which also included that flank attack on Obamacare with the repeal of the individual mandate. If the Democrats had forced a government shutdown and extracted real legislative concessions on DREAMers and funding the CSRs in the debt ceiling and the budget agreements, it would not only have been a real win for Democrats. If that efforts eventually failed and Democrats were forced to cave after a month or two, it at least would have pushed the attempts to repeal Obamacare and the pass the tax bill into 2018 and closer to the 2018 election.

Instead, Democrats got a worthless promise from Trump and McConnell on the DREAMers and when push came to shove here in December, Schumer and Pelosi just punted again until January. At least they got a temporary agreement to fund CHIP as well as suspension of the cuts to Medicaid and Medicare that would have been triggered by the tax bill's effect on PAYGO. However, Schumer and other Democratic Senators sadly on record as being worried that Democrats would be blamed for a shutdown, virtually eliminating the maximum leverage they might have.

Rather, Schumer is banking on Republicans in the House as being unwilling to fund another stopgap measure to fund the government. At that point, Democrats can potentially force an agreement with Republicans to fund CHIP and the CSRs and take care of the DREAMers while giving the hawks in the GOP the increased defense spending they are looking for. Under that scenario, Democrats would get some wins without being the ones who forced a government shutdown. But that entire scenario relies on House Republicans bucking Paul Ryan and that is no sure thing.

The closer we get to 2018, the harder it will be for Democrats to actually use their leverage and shut down the government. That's why I continue to believe that Democrats should have made their stand in September. By the time 2018 came around, that would be long forgotten and the Republican attempts to repeal Obamacare and the tax bill would be an even fresher memory.

Paul Ryan and segments in the White House and the Republican party want to finish Ryan's lifelong dream of destroying the New Deal safety nets and transferring wealth continually upward by focusing on welfare reform. On the other hand, McConnell and other sane Republicans will spend 2018 trying to show they can govern effectively by creating what David Atkins calls the "bipartisan trap" for the Democrats. That strategy involves seemingly attempting to work with Democrats on popular legislation but with poison pills that Democrats can not possibly accept and then blame Democrats for the failure. And it specifically designed to peel away support from those red state Democratic Senators up for election in 2018.

Part of that strategy will be to push some sort of infrastructure package. The problem for Democrats is that it will end up being just another corporate giveaway under the guise of public/private partnerships. Another might include some agreement about DREAMers, combined with additional border security. That will also problematic because Trump will probably want his border wall included and large elements of the GOP will be hard-pressed to support anything that smacks of helping immigrants. Again, the perfect solution for the GOP would be to end up with a failed attempt to deal with the DREAMers and be able to blame it on Democratic obstructionism.

Democrats can ignore the trap by simply refusing to play along. As Atkins writes, "They will ask Democrats to dance with them and help cover their tracks. They will hope that Democrats overlook all of this in an effort to be the adult in the room. They assume that voters will be gaslit by their protestations of good faith. They hope that Charlie Brown will try to kick that football just one more time." McConnell himself has consistently negotiated in bad faith throughout the year, even with his Republican colleagues. He has made empty promises to Senators Corker and Collins in order to pass the tax bill. His agreement with Democrats on DREAMers was worthless. Neither McConnell nor Trump can be trusted at this point.

Its time for Democrats to stick to their guns and demand a clean action on DREAMers and full-funding for CHIP and the CSRs as part of any budget agreement. If that requires a government shutdown, so be it. If they succeed, then Democrats should sit on their hands for the rest of the term and not got sucked into the bipartisan trap. If they don't and the government shuts down for two or three months, then Democrats will have at least showed some spine to their motivated base and denied the Republicans valuable time to lay the bipartisan traps McConnell has planned.

White Christmas

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...and that's what we got!. Last night's rain turned to snow early this morning and now the skies have cleared, the sun is out, and the light dusting will be gone in hours. Merry Christmas!!

A Quiet Christmas Eve On The Creek

It's a quiet Christmas Eve on the creek as we wait for Santa to arrive. Here's what it looks like:

Natural Weekends - Sunset

Astronomy Adventure - More Lunar Craters

Here is a photo of the magnificent crater Copernicus with its central peaks in the middle of the frame. Above it is the crater Eratosthenes and below is the crater Rheinhold with its terraced walls. The mountains to the left of Copernicus are the Montes Carpatus, whose highest peak rises about 7,000 feet. The peak at the far left is known as the Promontorium Banat.

Can you spot the "N" in the mountain range?

Technical Info:

Scope: Starblast 4.5; tracking on
Magnification: ~150x
Camera: iPhone6 using NightCap Pro; Low ISO
Photos: 1x1/16 second image

Natural Weekends - Seagulls

Today, we wander just a little ways off the deck for a walk down by the water and say hi to the gulls which are about the only ones about on a cold and windy day.

The eye of the tiger??

Sometimes we all need a scratch.

Putin Has Already Won The New Cold War; China Is The Victor

Despite Donald Trump's campaign speech outlining his and Steven Miller's views on national security, the new National Security Strategy document is the first real sign that the Trump administration is acknowledging the fact that Russia has clearly begun to attack the Western Alliance in a New Cold War. On paper, at least, the strategy declares that Russia, and China, for that matter, present a "challenge to American power, influence and interests" and are "attempting to erode American security and prosperity." It imposes new sanctions on individual Russians and associated henchmen as well as finally providing lethal assistance to Ukraine.

But the truth of the matter is that the US has already lost the New Cold War. Despite what the strategy may say, the President himself seems entirely uninterested in fighting back, either against Russia or China. Today, America is as isolated as it has ever been in the post-war period and our allies are looking elsewhere for leadership.

Russian hacking was not entirely responsible for Trump's shocking election, but it was an important part. Trump's refusal to criticize or confront Putin, his seeming desire to actually lift the crippling sanctions against the Russian oligarchs, and his unwillingness to affirm his commitment to Article V and support NATO immediately sowed distrust among our most important allies in Europe. The Europeans see Putin attempting to regain the lands lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union and additionally make inroads into Western Europe through his support of far-right and separatist movements throughout the Continent. The EU, already damaged politically and economically by the restrictions and distortions created by the single currency, is merely trying to stay intact, fighting threats from within and without. At they same time, they recognize that the US is no longer a reliable ally that will protect them from Russian incursions.

Meanwhile, a similar but not nearly as dire a process is playing out in the Far East. The TPP may have been a flawed agreement that protected interests of a handful of US industries but it was an important agreement to the Asian countries that had committed to it and are currently committed to implementing it without the US. The TPP was designed to create a bulwark against the expanding power and reach of China in South Asia. Without US participation after Trump pulled out of the agreement, it will do little to accomplish that. Trump has even managed to alienate out staunchest ally in the region, Australia, from his very first contact with their government. The issue in Australia today is actually focused on whether China has too much influence on Australian politics and policies. The US is almost an afterthought.

Moreover, Trump's continual escalation of the North Korean crisis means that the US is becoming increasingly reliant on China to police Kim Jung-un, if that is even possible. That reduces the likelihood that the US will confront or restrain China in any meaningful way. In addition, Asian allies see that Trump was easily bought off by President Xi with a few trademarks and an enormous parade. As the threat for other Asian countries increases, so does their understanding that the US is increasingly irrelevant in solving the crisis.

Rex Tillerson's destruction of the State Department has left us with no voice around the world. In fact, American foreign policy is almost indiscernible for many countries. There are the military men, McMaster and Mattis, who seem to be trying to keep America's traditional allies and policies relatively intact. Tillerson is recognized not only as totally ineffective but also as someone who clearly does not speak for the administration. Nikki Haley at the UN seems to have her own mandate that occasionally does not seem to align with the President's. And there is Jared Kushner who seems to believe he can play an international game of power politics almost as a hobby. And, of course, there is the President himself who is constantly going off half-cocked and is consistently unreliable. This isn't good cop, bad cop. It's simply chaos.

If there was every an indication of failure of US foreign policy, it was the decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. In hindsight, it looks like part of this decision was driven by the fact that Trump needed to keep his evangelist base in line when it became clear that the promised repeal of the Johnson Amendment that would allow churches and non-profits to actively engage in politics would not be part of the tax bill. Jerusalem was a bone to throw his base. The reaction, of course, was swift, and yesterday's vote in the UN confirmed just how isolated the US has become. The pathetic total of nine votes supporting the US decision unsurprisingly contained only two countries of note, the US and Israel.

In addition, the threats to cut off US aid to individual nations as well as the UN backfired badly. Canada reportedly was prepared to support the US but ended up abstaining in order to avoid looking like it had caved to US pressure. Other countries, especially important European and Mideast allies openly defied those US threats.

From a geopolitical standpoint, the UN vote is almost meaningless. But the united opposition, especially in the wake of open and direct threats of retribution from the US, shows how far Trump has allowed US leadership to fall. Countries probably believe that Trump is bluffing. But, even if not, they know that the void the US creates by cutting them off will be easily filled by Russia or, more likely, China. Today, Russia is an economic disaster and its ability to project power relies purely on the power of Putin to extract whatever leverage he has. China, on the other hand, can afford to spend freely, expanding its soft power in the same way the US used to in the late 20th century. Its One Belt, One Road policy is expanding its influence in Eurasia and Africa, while also being popular at home. It's already the dominant power in Asia.

Every day, America's isolation grows. The President is not welcome in Britain, our staunchest ally by far. Pence is not welcome in the Mideast and Tillerson is virtually ignored wherever he goes. The useless war in Afghanistan seems well on its way to lasting into a third decade. The UN vote confirms our diplomatic isolation. Domestically, the country is being systematically looted by plutocrats. The ongoing opioid epidemic and the refusal to provide universal health care means that the country is now seeing its second year in a row of falling life expectancy.

Now some might say that this is part of what Trump promised, to withdraw from the world and focus our energies at home. But withdrawing from the world does not necessarily mean becoming totally isolated. And it is clear that Trump still wants to project American power in certain areas. Certainly, his agreement to another surge in Afghanistan shows his willingness to do exactly that. And his insistence that military spending still be increased also flies in the face of a domestic focus. Yes, America is still an enormous military and economic power. But wielding that power unilaterally has always been fraught with difficulty and disaster.

As the US decides to pick up its marbles and go home, it will soon find that the game continued on very well without us. And the void we create by leaving will be willingly filled by others. Around the world, there is an increasing recognition that it will be China that fills the void, creating their own "China's century".

Prosecutorial Misconduct Will Feed Right-Wing Extremism

I've written many times about the prevalence of prosecutorial misconduct and police lying. It is a massive problem that not only puts away innocent people who go to trial but also encourages the innocent accused to actually plead guilty to crimes they did not commit. But you would think that prosecutors in high profile cases would be especially wary of engaging in business as usual, due to the increased scrutiny. That apparently did not occur to those prosecuting Cliven Bundy and his crew involved in the standoff over the government's attempt to round up the cattle that the Bundys had not paid grazing fees for in over two decades.

Yesterday, the judge called a mistrial based on the fact that the prosecution had withheld documents that would have helped the defense in their fight against conspiracy and assault charges. The actions of the prosecution were so egregious that the judge is considering ruling a mistrial with prejudice, meaning the case could not be tried again.

Prosecutors withheld and mischaracterized documents that outlined the use of an FBI surveillance camera and the presence of Bureau of Land Management snipers outside the Bundy compound. One of the elements of the indictment against the Bundys was that they gathered supporters by falsely claiming there were snipers surrounding the ranch. That claim was provably not false and prosecutors knew it. In addition, prosecutors initially denied the existence of the surveillance camera and then described it incidental to the Bundy dispute. That also was provably false and the prosecutors knew it. In addition, other documentation showed that no endangered tortoises had been injured by the Bundy cattle, which was the ostensible reason for the cattle roundup to begin with.

The most distressing part of this case is that this will be the third time that the Bundy crew has escaped justice in clear violations of the law. And it shows the power of essentially a well-armed private militia can actually intimidate federal law enforcement authorities these days. In 2014, federal rangers trying to enforce a court-ordered impoundment of Bundy cattle retreated in the face of a well-armed Bundy group rather than provoke a potentially violent confrontation. The Bundys subsequently went on to federal land and illegally seized the Malheur wildlife refuge. The resulting standoff resulted in the death of one of the Bundy supporters and a surprising acquittal for the Bundy clan. This mistrial results in the third failure to bring the Bundys to account.

As two protesters opposed to the Bundys worried, there is now a concern that this result will provide a further boost to "militant participation in a broader move to seize public lands and hand them over to states." In actuality, the hand-over will be to private interests and not really the state.

Two endemic features of our society have led us to this place - prosecutorial misconduct and the gun culture. The right wing will use this case as yet another example of the bias of the FBI in their attempt to shut down the Mueller investigation. And right wing militias will be encouraged that a well-armed group can literally fend off the federal government for years. A sad case all around.

Companies' Announcements In Wake Of Tax Bill Passage Is Just More Sucking Up To Trump

I was sad to see that many people, including apparently Maddow, were duped by the announcements of some companies, firms that have important business before this administration, were "raising" wages and paying bonuses in the wake of this tax bill.

There were at least five companies that I noticed had made announcements yesterday - ATT, Boeing,Wells Fargo, Fifth Third Bancorp, and Comcast. Kevin Drum has the scoop on ATT's announcement that it would be paying a $1,000 bonus to every employee. As part of a contract renewal agreement with the Communication Workers of America in mid-December, ATT promised a $1,000 sweetener to every member of the union if the contract was approved by mid-January, 2018. Drum rightly surmises that ATT planned to extend that bonus beyond just the union employees of ATT but to every worker and the passage of the tax plan simply allowed them to score points with Trump by making the announcement yesterday. ATT, of course, is in the middle of having their merger with Time Warner reviewed by Trump's Justice Department.

Boeing actually isn't giving any extra money to its workers. Instead, it announced that it would spend $300 million on "employee-related and charitable investments" because of the passage of the tax bill. In actuality, this is simply part of a decision Boeing made last summer to refocus its charitable giving on three specific areas it defines as Tomorrow's Innovators, Veterans and their Families, and Dynamic Communities. Again, the charitable commitment it announced today was probably long in the works before the passage of the tax bill. Boeing has been desperately working to stay on Trump's good side after his criticism of the cost of the Air Force One planes and currently is in the midst of a dispute with Canadian company Bombadier over illegal subsidies, a case in which the Commerce Department coincidentally decided to side with Boeing just yesterday.

Wells Fargo's announcement is even more of a joke. The company said it was raising its minimum wage to $15 in the wake of the tax bill's passage. But in January of 2017, Wells Fargo raised its per hour minimum wage scale to a range of $13.50 to $17.00. So the announcement yesterday actually set a minimum wage below its current median minimum wage. My guess would be that the number of workers this actually effects is trivial. Fifth Third Bancorp's announcement was in a similar vain. Fifth Third was always one of the worst paying banks but its announcement about the $15 minimum wage was also inside its existing range of pay for entry-level employees, which is still at the low-end in the banking industry. It should also be noted that a Goldman Sachs' analysis estimates that banks will see their bottom line grown by 14% on average because of this tax bill and, in the case of Wells Fargo specifically, that number will be 18%. Wells Fargo is currently being investigated for an over decade-long massive fraud that involved clear violations of the law by opening accounts and credit cards in the name of customers without permission simply to generate fees and profits for the bank.

Comcast announced a $1,000 bonus for every one of its 100,000 employees. Some as cynical as myself might think that $100 million payout was merely payback to the Trump administration for its ruling gutting net neutrality earlier this month. In fact, the announcement of these bonuses helped overshadow the earlier announcement that the company was raising its fees from $1 to $5 for its TV services. Fees for premium services will increase by over 10% as will the fees for set-top boxes. Earlier, the FCC struck down an Obama-era ruling on bringing competition to those set-top boxes, restoring the monopoly that cable companies like Comcast has on that hardware.

In summary, of the five companies that made a splash with their announcements supposedly in the wake of the passage of the tax bill, four had existing plans already in the works long before passage and the fifth was a recipient of greatly enhanced monopoly power only a week ago. This is exactly similar to all the "investments" that companies had already decided to make before Trump even became President being re-announced as something that Trump's election caused.

The disgusting, but not unusual, display of the Republican members of Congress and the administration standing at the White House and offering praise of their "dear leader" has more than a whiff of authoritarianism. And the CEOs who continue to pander in the same way to Trump are just as guilty of sycophancy and complicity in destroying our democracy, even if they rationalize their actions as merely benefitting their shareholders. And every single one of those CEOs is directly and massively benefitting from the legislation.

The GOP Tax Scam Is Just The Opening Battle Over Real Tax Reform

So this enormous tax giveaway to the rich has just now become law. But I think the massive problems with the law, as well as history, tells us that this will is just the first round in so-called "tax reform".

Republicans have been harping on the meme that the tax code hasn't been changed since 1986. Of course, that claim is patently false. George H. W. Bush supposedly lost the election in 1992 because he broke his vow of "read my lips, no new taxes".  Bill Clinton raised taxes in higher incomes during his first term and George W. Bush passed another enormous tax cut in 2002. There were also tax changes in 2009 under Obama as part of ARRA, the stimulus package. In an ultimate irony, the tax cuts in ARRA for the bottom 40% of taxpayers were significantly larger than the tax breaks in the current bill which will expire in seven years.

But if Republicans want to keep harping on 1986, then let's talk about it. Because the tax reform of 1986 was actually precipitated by Reagan's 1981 tax cut that has some remarkable similarities to today, despite being slightly less extreme. That bill resulted in an across-the-board 25% reduction in rates to be phased in over three years. It included a huge gift to the rich by reducing the top rate by 20%, from 70% to 50%. Those at the bottom only saw the rate decline from 14% to 11%. It include a huge cut in the corporate rate as well, amounting to $150 billion over a five year window. That is the equivalent of $400 billion in today's dollars. It allowed for accelerated depreciation. The capital gains rate dropped from 28% to 20%. In essence, the 1981 tax bill was a gift to corporations and the rich just like the current tax bill, although, unlike the current bill, there was also some decent tax relief for lower and middle income earners.

One of the great propaganda efforts of all time was the creation of the myth of the "Reagan miracle". That myth still haunts us to this day. In actuality, the 1981 tax cut was supposed to be offset by spending reductions, reductions that, of course, never came. In a similar manner, Republicans today are already preparing the groundwork for entitlement reductions in Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Whether that effort has the same fate as it did in the 1980s remains to be seen. But the fact of the matter is that, without those cuts, the national debt rapidly increased and the country entered a double-dip recession. Interest rates skyrocketed from 12% to 20%. And by 1982, Congress had rescinded the tax cuts that were to phased in over the next two years. Reagan, who had entered office decrying the size of the national debt, ended up tripling it from around $900 billion to $2.6 trillion by the time he left office.

The tax reform of 1986 was largely driven by the total failure of the 1981 plan. The bill closed a number of tax loopholes, generating around $60 billion and, because of that broadening of the base, was able to cut tax rates across-the-board even further.The depreciation elements of the 1981 plan were curtailed, a corporate alternative minimum tax (AMT) was introduced, generating around another $25 billion, and the existing AMT was strengthened. That allowed the personal deduction, the standard deduction, and the earned income tax credit to all be increased, essentially allowing more than six million poor Americans to not owe any income taxes at all.

The model for this tax bill is exactly what Art Laffer recommended for Kansas and Governor Sam Brownback enthusiastically adopted. It was a total disaster. Tax receipts cratered, exacerbated by massive tax avoidance using pass-through entities, and state services in transportation and education were forced to shrivel. Some counties reverted back to dirt roads because of the lack of transportation funding. Schools were forced to close months early because the budget had been exhausted.

Unlike Kansas, however, the federal government is not required to have a balanced budget, although Republicans consistently push for that. So interstates won't turn into dirt roads quite yet. Instead, the deficit will skyrocket and interest rates will rise, just as they did in 1981. And God forbid there is an economic slowdown. Recognition of certain massive tax avoidance schemes will create a push to revisit certain sections of the law. In addition, there are already provisions that clearly violate international trade rules and tax treaties that we have with other countries. Those will also have to be addressed.

So, just like in the 1980s, there will be a reckoning for this bill. It may be in two years or it may be in five. But changes, and probably drastic ones, will have to be made. For Democrats, the key is to make sure they are in power when that time comes. If they are, they will have a chance to enact real tax reform that will force corporations and the rich to pay their fair share, eliminate loopholes, and broaden the base just as in 1986.

The Looting Has Already Begun

One of the many enormous lies that Republicans tell about this horrific tax bill is that companies will pass on some of the enormous savings to their workers in the form of higher wages. But judging by the CEOs' show of hands when Gary Cohn wanted to know how many of them would immediately expand their business with their windfall, the bill is unlikely to spur much investment or competition for labor that would put upward pressure on wages.

Tim Sloan, the CEO of the scandal-plagued bank Wells Fargo, was surprisingly candid (especially considering the lies the bank has peddled about the massive criminality it has engaged in over the last 15 years) when asked what he would do the bank's enormous windfall from this bill. Said Sloan, "Is it our goal to increase return to our shareholders and do we have an excess amount of capital? The answer to both is, yes. So our expectation should be that we will continue to increase our dividend and our share buybacks next year and the year after that and the year after that." It should be noted that Wells Fargo is estimated to be one of the biggest winners from this GOP gift, with a nearly 18% increase in annual earnings. Wells' 2016 net income was nearly $22 billion and Sloan's compensation for the few months of the year that he was CEO was nearly $13 million. Does that look like a company that is struggling financially to survive and really needs a tax cut?

Sloan has admitted what virtually all CEOs will do with the tax windfall they receive and that is to distribute it back to shareholders in the form of higher stock prices from share buybacks or increased dividends. There is absolutely no intention of passing any of this money on to workers. And you can see this process happening already. Kevin Drum highlights the average daily volume of stock buybacks over the last two years:

As you can see, once it became apparent that the GOP tax bill was actually going to pass, there was at least a five-fold increase in the volume stock buybacks. And buybacks and dividends are where virtually all of the benefits of this massive corporate tax cut will go.

Let's be clear, there are no economic benefits to a stock buyback. All it does is reduce the number of shares outstanding and juice the price of the stock. In the ten years from 2005 to 2015, Walmart, one of the most successful companies of that decade, actually spent an incredible 47% of its profits on stock buybacks. If that money had actually been spent on its 1.4 million workers, it would have come to a yearly raise of over $4,500 for every single one of them. Moreover, the availability of stock buybacks as a tool for supporting a stock price simply adds to the pressures of short term, quarterly thinking that CEOs are currently driven by and thereby reduces the long-term stability and competitiveness of our economy as a whole. In addition, the obsession with buybacks has contributed enormously to the financialization of our economy, something that mainly just benefits the big banks like Wells Fargo and helped contribute to the Great Recession.

In fact, stock buybacks were always considered an illegal market manipulation and banned from use until that rule was reversed in 1982 under Reagan (of course).  Reinstating this rule should be one of the pillars of the new Democratic economic platform as well as returning to the pre-Reagan views on antitrust issues where mergers were viewed holistically for their impact on employment, wages, and regional concerns as opposed to the current single-minded focus on benefits to customers. Combine those two proposals with a reduction or even elimination of the preference for passive income over wage income and Democrats have a strong base for renewing our American economy.

Wells Fargo, Uber Reflect The Rot In Our Business And Our Politics

I see that my two favorite ongoing criminal enterprises are making news once again and once again engaging in such egregious behavior you wonder how the companies manage to stay in business and the executives stay out of jail. The latest stories don't add to what we already knew about Uber and Wells Fargo, but they do add some more detail about the disgusting lengths these companies went to in enacting their illegal behavior.

Let's start off with Wells Fargo. We already know that Wells targeted Social Security offices and non-English speaking customers in its fraudulent account opening scheme. That targeting also appears to include Native Americans. The Navajo Nation has sued Wells Fargo for predatory and unlawful banking practices. The suit alleges "since at least 2009 and continuing through 2016, Wells Fargo employees at branches on the Navajo Nation routinely opened unauthorized savings and credit accounts, misled customers into opening unnecessary accounts, obtained debit cards without customers' consent, and enrolled customers in online banking without proper consent." Wells Fargo salespeople targeted Navajo basketball games and flea markets in order to open "accounts for underage Navajo citizens, going so far as to falsify birthdates to avoid obtaining necessary parental consent." Just when you think they couldn't go lower, Wells manages to surprise by using minors to line their own pockets.

The latest story regarding Uber concerned the fact the company was apparently caught withholding evidence in its legal fight with Waymo over intellectual property allegedly stolen by Uber. The key piece of withheld evidence was a 37 page letter from Uber's head of security that outlined a whole litany of unethical and illegal behavior at Uber. That letter is now online (h/t to reader CDW) and the breadth of Uber's criminal activity is simply stunning. I will do my best to summarize what's in the letter but it is certainly worth reading in its entirety to see just how pervasive the criminal mentality was within the organization.

Uber had a department called Threat Operations (ThreatOps) that was broken down essentially along the lines of something resembling the CIA. ThreatOps had six different divisions - Global Intelligence (Intel), Strategic Services Group (SSG), Investigations, Law Enforcement Outreach, Marketplace Analytics (MA), and Counter Intelligence. The entire ThreatOps structure was specifically designed to evade federal law by ensuring its activities would not leave a paper trail. That entailed using the "almost exclusive use of ephemeral and encrypted communications software". Memos that were actually required to be written were titled "draft" and asked for some kind of legal opinion at the start which was totally unrelated to the contents of the memo, but the combination of a draft and a legal opinion allowed the document to be protected under attorney-client privilege. Members of the ThreatOps group were required to attend "legal training" which was specifically designed to show how the attorney-client privilege could be used to impede the legal discovery process.

The MA group was tasked with obtaining trade secrets from Uber's competitors on a global scale. To that end, it "fraudulently impersonated riders and drivers on competitor platforms, hacks into competitor networks, and conducts unlawful wiretapping". Using distributed hardware and software that was not traceable back to Uber, the group was able "to make millions of data calls against competitor and government servers without causing a signature that would alert competitors to the theft. For instance, a sophisticated competitor would set thresholds when they see devices attempting to request rides by the hundreds or thousands in a short period of time. However, if the data calls are diversified across what appear to be multiple devices and a broader time period, filters would not detect the anomaly." Using these methods, Uber was able to identify and recruit competitor drivers, disrupt competitor service, and obtains trade secrets from their competitors. Uber at one point managed to steal the identities of 35,000 drivers from a competitor in order to target and poach them for Uber.

The SSG group hired former CIA operatives in order to illegally impersonate people on social media, including joining groups that were protesting Uber's policies. Those operatives also illegally wiretapped conversations among competitor executives, by infiltrating that company's private events. That same group also developed "a 'new technical capability' to conduct collections of mobile-phone call records and mobile phone link analysis on opposition figures, politicians, and government regulators". The letter implies that Uber used information collected by phone hacking to further its business overseas, saying Uber engaged "in targeted business practices aimed at gaining the support of government officials in foreign countries. Many of these efforts involved similar surveillance conduct to that discussed above and likely involve violations of foreign government civil and criminal laws." This amounted to essentially spying on foreign politicians, individuals, and groups opposed to Uber's ride-sharing business. On one occasion, the group managed to bug the meeting of a foreign country's transport regulators. In addition, there are clear indications that Uber was paying bribes to foreign officials in order to expand its business overseas.

But perhaps the most remarkable thing about this letter is that all this illegal activity was observed by one person in the span of the short 11 months of his employment. I encourage you to read the whole document and ask yourself how and why this company is still in business.

What's even more distressing, however, is that Uber and Wells Fargo are probably not unique. They may have pushed things to the extreme but I have no doubt that every Wall Street firm has engaged in knowingly fleecing clients, that every tech firm engages in spying on their competitors and trying to obtain trade secrets, that all firms practice some kind of discovery avoidance processes. Sometimes it's legal, sometimes it's not. But, ever since the Arthur Andersen/Enron debacle, it has been clear that the government is not really interested in pursuing the illegal acts of companies. And that has led companies to become increasingly tolerant of illegal behavior over the last decade and a half, especially when the financial crisis put enormous pressure on the bottom line. We see it in the financial industry, we see it in the health care sector, and now in the tech business. Combine that with increasing monopoly power and you have a toxic combination.

One of the lawyers who is suing Wells Fargo described the evolution of the culture within that company, saying, "Anecdotally, the feeling is that everyone knew [the massive fraud that was being perpetrated]. The better they did at sales, the more they advanced, so it got spread across the company. An entire generation of managers thrived in the culture, got rewarded for it, and are now in positions of power." You see this kind of easy sense of entitlement, the feeling of being above the law, throughout the business community. I'm reading the New Yorker article about Jim Simons, the co-founder of Renaissance Technology along with Robert Mercer. He made billions building that business but most of that money has never been taxed, having been shipped offshore. He sat down for his interview and chain-smoked throughout, in violation of fire safety codes and rules about a smoke free environment. But, as the article notes, Simons was unconcerned because "he pointed out that, whatever the potential fine for doing so is, he can pay it." You look at him and think what kind of citizen is he? Sure he enjoyed the legal protections that this country provides in order to build a thriving business while at the same time engaging in massive tax avoidance and minor law-breaking, all with the knowledge he will never be called to account, and even if he was, he could buy his way out of it.

It is that type of arrogance that is truly exemplified by Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues in Congress. The blatant bribery that Republicans have used to not only buy votes but line their own pockets reflects the corruption and greed that permeates our business and political systems. As Matt Yglesias writes about the horrific tax bill, "Unchecked by norms or political prudence, it’s smash-and-grab time for the GOP...Across the board, it’s about letting whoever’s powerful now squeeze as much out as they can without worrying too much about the consequences."

Every day, with each new revelation, with each new outrage, it becomes more and more clear that our entire electoral and economic system needs to be reformed root and branch. And I'm pretty sure that even the Trump voters, who largely feel the same way, are disgusted by what they see.

Tax Bill Kickbacks Show How Deep GOP Corruption Goes

The Congressional self-dealing, especially in the Senate, in this Republican tax bill illustrates just how rotten to the core our political system has become.  The news that Bob Corker suddenly changed his vote after Orrin Hatch slipped in a last-minute provision that specifically benefits real estate partnerships, of which Corker and, remarkably, Donald Trump will be major beneficiaries, shows how blatant the looting of the Treasury by and for Republican legislators has become.

At the high end, the benefits of this tax bill could add close to $1.2 million to Corker's bank balance. But apparently Corker is not the only Republican Senator who would benefit from this change. The International Business Times reports thirteen other GOP Senators also stand to gain from their substantial holdings in these kinds of passive real estate investment LLCs.

This follows on another obscure provision on pipeline companies inserted by John Cornyn that also specifically benefited Ted Cruz and the top two members of the Texas delegation in the House as well as another 11 Republicans.

The focus on what shortly became known as the "Corker Kickback" created even more fallout for Corker and the Republicans. First, John Cornyn stated that certain provisions were inserted into the bill specifically to win certain members' votes. Considering there were not that many Republican votes that still needed winning and Corker's was on of those, the assumption that this real estate provision was targeted at Corker seemed entirely reasonable.

Corker's initial defense was that he had not read the bill and was therefore unaware of this provision. That excuse seems somewhat at odds with his duty as a representative of the state of Tennessee and calls into question his decision to switch his vote without really knowing what he was voting for.

Even worse, the focus on Corker's investment in these real estate LLCs and the resulting inquiries from the press seem to have also provoked Corker to go back and restate millions of missing dollars in income from real estate, hedge funds, and other investments on his personal financial disclosure form. Corker's misstatements of income go back a decade and potentially understated his income by up to $15 million. In fact, it appears that Corker's disclosures were rife with errors not only in reporting but in calculations of income and, in one case, actually overreported his income.

Of course, according to the Journal, "There are no penalties for filing amendments, in part because Congress doesn’t want to punish lawmakers for fixing prior mistake." Unfortunately, that also provides no incentive for members to actually report their income accurately, as Corker clearly demonstrates.

With the election of Trump, the Republican party has become quite open about its racism and exactly who its masters really are. As multiple members of Congress have readily admitted, this tax bill is primarily a kickback to their deep-pocketed donors. And, apparently, the kickbacks must also be openly paid to the party's own members in order to purchase their votes. Tell me how this is different from a banana republic.