Trump and the Foreign Agents Registration Act

Why is Manafort and the Trump campaign in trouble? Let’s go back to the basics. The law in question is the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1966. It bans foreign nationals from providing “anything of value… in connection with” an election. And it makes soliciting or accepting such contributions a crime. Below is the FEC page on the act. A lot of people are arguing that since we are just talking about...

Why Trump is still in office

Why is Trump still in office? Tax cuts. “The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that almost 80 percent of the Trump tax cut would go to people with incomes over $1 million; these people would get an average cut of around $230,000 a year.” And who has been buying politicians for decades with the express aim of winning majorities in order to cut taxes? People with incomes over $1 million. And why the hurry to...

The GOP and the Next Recession

So here’s an angle to policy that I’m not hearing discussed much. Pretty much everything Republicans are pushing as far as domestic policy will make the next recession a lot worse. How? While there are a lot of moving parts, the basic principle is simple. When the economy goes bad, a lot of people lose their jobs. What happens next either makes even more people lose their jobs, or not. If the jobless have access...

What has Trump worried

What appears to be freaking Trump out is not so much the election investigation (quite possibly the only thing he has at stake there is ego). The Republicans as a party have a lot more to lose there. It is the money laundering investigation that has Trump worried. All the available evidence seems to suggest that Trump really doesn’t want to have his personal finances scrutinized. And not just because it would show he...

The Papadopoulos indictment

“Manafort might be a bigger fish, but Papadopoulos is a bigger story,” said Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor. “To me, this is the kind of plea deal that puts the c-word—collusion—back on the table.” He pointed to parts of the Papadopoulos indictment that indicated he knew about stolen Clinton campaign emails before Wikileaks began releasing them. Barrett said the indictment also sends a message to the...

The Clinton Uranium Deal

What’s up with the “Clinton Uranium Deal”? Well, the facts as we know them as of today… A Russian company bought a Canadian mining company with US assets that specializes in uranium. To do this required a permit. From the NY Times: “For starters, there seems to be a suspicion on the right that American uranium is going to Russia, while in fact there’s no export license—so the uranium stays in...

Ryan on Congress

Interesting observation of the week: “We basically run a coalition government without the efficiency of a parliamentary system.” Speaker Ryan on the US Congress.

Trump the Unprecedented

Historian Julian Zelizer explains in the Atlantic what is actually unprecedented about Trump, and what is frequently called unprecedented, but actually has lots of precedent. The short version: Two things are unprecedented: 1. Unfiltered spur-of-the-moment communications from POTUS (Twitter, rambling interviews) including spontaneous constant attacks on friends and enemies alike. 2. Trumps’s financial conflicts of...

The cost of mass shootings

Mass shootings in the US have cost the victims over $750 million in medical expenses over the past 25 years. Just another form of wealth transfer built into the system; gun company investors get rich selling 200 million firearms into the population. Medical industry profits from ER (seriously, have you seen what a trip to ER for dehydration costs?). Ordinary people pay to fix their own damage when they get hit with a bullet....

Intellectually honest headline of the day

Intellectually honest headline of the day: “CERN Scientists Conclude that the Universe Should Not Exist”.

GOP Tax Plan III

The race is on: Can Republicans pass huge billionaire tax cuts before the average voter figures out how much they will have to pay to cover it? Today the House narrowly passed a budget blueprint that transfers huge amounts of wealth to the super-rich on the backs of the upper-middle and middle class. Will the Senate go along? Can they get Trump to sign it and thus please the major donors before the reaction builds to levels...

Social media as operant conditioning

Insight of the day: Social media is a massively distributed operant conditioning machine that rewards people into conformity. Conformity to what? Here’s the novel wrinkle: anything. The owners of social media really don’t care where the bandwagon you jump on is going, as long as a lot of people jump on; people whom they will be able to sell. Social media networks alter society through the intrusion of information...