When Will Trump Leave Office?

Donald Trump and the rest of his administration are doing worse than bungle their responsibilities. Each misstep by a Trump appointee emphasizes just how incompetent the president and his appointees are. You can't unring these bells. Once a stupid mistake is made, it sits around on the internet forever, springing into consciousness again and again.

Take Trump's pre-election description of how easy it was for him to sexually assault women because he was a tv star. The statement he made was undoubtedly true but still something you don't want to say when your job depends on the good will of women. Recently, Trump attacked Mika Brzezinski for her personal appearance. This comment immediately brought to mind his previous comments about women and their personal appearance. You can't take back what you said once it has been recorded for posterity.

My point is this: No matter how badly the public views Trump right now, it is bound to get worse, because these issues are additive. One stupid remark is added to another and another and so on. So Trump's reputation for stupidity (or sexism, if you prefer) just keeps on growing. Add to that the other lapses, faux pas, and revelations of ignorance that Trump continues to make and you soon have a snowball that will push Trump from office because he will no longer be able to fulfill the duties of the Presidency, which demand the confidence of the majority of Americans.

Trump clearly doesn't believe in democracy. He has staffed his departments with the wealthy, apparently on the assumption that wealthy people are better at their jobs than ordinary people. The form of government favored by Trump and his supporters is therefore plutocracy, or government by the wealthy, rather than democracy, government by the people. This accounts for some of the odd choices he has made as well as his disdain of scientists. Scientists are not wealthy, so their opinions are less important than those of business executives, he thinks.

So Trump's popularity ratings are still falling and his esteem among the educated classes is non-existent. What does this mean for how long his presidency will last? What will be the tipping point where Republicans recognize that Trump is poisonous to their political careers?

I believe that point is near. Some Republicans have stopped holding meetings with their constituents altogether, while others are holding closed meetings for Republican voters only. No doubt, these politicians believe that Trump will weather the storm and they will come out better in the end if they stick by him. When they begin to understand that Trump is toxic, there will be a mad rush toward the exits.

Look forward to this event sooner rather than later.

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Since the Republicans refuse to act on immigration, Obama will

Obama's proposal, as released, contains several different options, which he is evidently inviting the Republicans to accept. The Republicans, of course, will reject all of them, so immigrants to this country will have the first real breathing room since 1986, when President Reagan granted amnesty to 2.7 million undocumented workers then living--and working--in the US.

Today there are 11 million undocumented workers. Many of them have American children and relatives who would like to join them, like aged parents, but cannot. Major corporations that hire these people would like to keep the system the way it is, because it saves them money.

I know one undocumented worker who works cleaning up operating theaters in a hospital, a dirty, difficult job. She makes $10 an hour from the company the hospital hires to do the job, The hospital also hires people directly to do the same job and pays them $14 an hour, but the hospital requires those direct hires to be validated citizens. So the entire US economy is based on a discriminatory system as unjust as any Jim Crow Laws, where some people can be paid less than others because of the chance of their birth.

There is no chance that corporate-ruled America will expel immigrant laborers from this country. The corporate system uses immigrant labor to pad its bottom line. Our corporate masters make too much money off the current unjust and immoral system for them ever to question it.

The worker of whom I speak has been the sole support for 2 children and works 2 jobs. She is just the sort of person the Republicans are always extolling as exemplary citizens: hard-working, law-abiding, receiving no government benefits. But instead of rewarding her efforts, the Republicans propose to expel her and her child who was born in this country, thus punishing a child for the transgressions of her mother.

There is no excuse for such immorality. The Republican party must be rejected utterly by every thinking, feeling American. Though the Republicans use every conniving trick to stay in power, no one party can stay in power forever. We will remember your excesses whenever evil deeds are mentioned.

Racist Omertá Exposed in Ferguson

The Heritage Foundation recently posted on Google Plus that Mississippi should cut its corporate income tax. I pointed out in a comment that Mississippi ranks 50th among states in education, 50th in health care, and that its failures in these areas were race-based, since the poor who are affected by lack of education and health care are predominantly African American. I don't think there is any doubt about that statement. But one person, I'll call him Jack, commented that Mississippi may have been racist in the 1960s, but not any more.

Southern whites were embarrassed by the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills in the late 1960s. Their response to these exposures of racist government was not to work to end racism, but to conceal it (and in this they are joined by northern Republicans). They have done this through a policy of omertá--a rigid code of silence about racial matters imposed on southern whites. Under the policy of omertá, white southerners pretend that racism is dead, that there is no discrimination against African-Americans, and that what happened in the bad old days just doesn't matter any more.

The 5 conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) recently endorsed this fiction by striking down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because, they claimed, it wasn't needed any more. The Court ruled that the law made sense because of past violations of voters' rights, but is no longer valid because today African-Americans can vote without any problems. SCOTUS thus let themselves be convinced by Southern omertá that everything is fine now and the federal government does not need to keep watching the southern states for potential violations.

Naturally, the first thing that Republicans in state legislatures (not all of them in the South) have done is to enact laws to restrict voting rights--Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arkansas have tried this. One of their favorite techniques is to require state-issued id (generally a driver's license) to be able to vote. This immediately disenfranchised all elderly black voters who no longer drove cars, even if these people could prove they had been on the voting rolls for 50 years--since the voting rights law of 1965 was enacted. Another way African-Americans have been disenfranchised is to gerrymander them all into one district instead of letting them exercise their votes in several districts--Alabama has tried this.

Political commentators, including Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, have bought into the idea that racism is dead. O'Reilly goes so far as to say that those who accuse others of racism are the real problem because they would create a nation of haters.

All of these arguments against racism have been exposed by events in Ferguson. There, in a town that is two-thirds African-American, the white police chief has refused to arrest a police officer on suspicion of homicide after the officer shot times and killed an unarmed youth. The lines between white and black are being clearly drawn by the suppression of demonstrators in Ferguson, a town outside Saint Louis, Missouri. Rather than acceding to the reasonable requests of law-abiding citizens that the officer in question be arrested, the police floated rumors that the boy was high on drugs, or had recently robbed a convenience store, or was attacking the officer when he was shot.

All of the excuses given why the officer should not be arrested and arraigned for murder are irrelevant. They are arguments with which a defense attorney might try to sway a jury, but they are not reasons why a trial should not take place. The rift between black and white in this country is as deep as it ever was, fueled by the toxic flames of racism that have been kept hidden by white southerners for the last 50 years. But no longer. Ferguson has exposed the true state of race relations in this country. Let's all call for something more than silence--omertá--in response.

McCain redefines defeat to equal victory

Senator John McCain recently criticized Obama for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. He asserted that the US won the war in Iraq but now, because of the withdrawal, we have lost. This is a strange opinion. The stated goal of staying in Iraq as long as we did was to give the Iraqis time to train their army to defend the country against threats to their security.

The surge worked, says McCain. But the surge was an offensive by 100,000 American troops that quelled an uprising in the Sunni part of the country. The injection of 100,000 well-armed troops certainly pacified that region for as long as the troops were there. McCain argues that we should have left sufficient forces in Iraq to pacify the whole country.

No doubt McCain believes, as did Bush 43, that armies can be held in the field indefinitely without accounting for them in the budget. The neocon instigators of the Iraq war assured the American people that the war would not cost $100 million--as others maintained--because the Iraqis had enough oil revenue to repay us when the war was over.

The same people who refused to levy taxes on the American people to pay for the Iraq war were proposing to levy taxes on the Iraqi people to pay for it. These people should understand that taxation without representation is tyranny, as colonial patriot James Otis declared back in the years prior to the American Revolution. They should understand it because they continually refuse to raise taxes on any Americans for any reason as a badge of honor.

The stated goal of remaining in Iraq after the defeat of Saddam Hussein was to give the Iraqis the ability to defend their own country. Since it is now clear that the hyper-partisan, Shi'ite regime that the Americans set up in Baghdad cannot defend itself from Sunni attacks, it must also be clear that the US won the war but Iraq is losing the peace.

The US vision of a united Iraq ignored the history of the region, where Iraq was never united as a country until Britain and France drew its borders after WWI. So there never was and never will be an Iraq in the same way there is a France, Britain, or US. A much more reasonable policy would have been to partition the country along partisan lines, with three smaller countries, Kurdistan in the north, a Sunni state in the west and a Shi'ite state in the east. Such a division could have stabilized the region with less bloodshed and less loss of treasure than the current failed solution.

It is astonishing how quickly the news services have labeled the Sunni partisans as al-Qaida or al-Qaida inspired, just as they once labeled Saddam as a supporter of al-Qaida and the instigator of the 9-11 attacks. The Sunni insurrection may be inspired by al-Qaida, but it may also be supplied by Saudi Arabians, who have the oil wealth to finance such a rebellion. A Sunni caliphate, such as the one envisioned by insurgents, would have a natural ally in Riyadh. Neocons are not going to admit that their pals, the Saudi royal family, may be behind the latest violence in Iraq.

US soldiers are naturally disheartened by the present turn of events. They have a right to be. But the neocons who started the war and lied about its possibility of success have no business blaming President Obama for the failure of their grand design, launched by President Bush in 2003. The neocons must accept the blame themselves for what they persuaded the rest of us to do. They should begin by apologizing to the Americans who fought in Iraq and the families of those who died there, because the Republicans are responsible for the idiotic plan that sent American armed forces to Iraq in the first place.

Senator McCain, against all the evidence, urges us to continue the plan we started. It worked, he says.

No, it didn't work. The plan will cost the American taxpayers more than $2 trillion, making it one of the most expensive failures in history.

Cantor's Defeat: Chalk one up for the 99 percent

Paul Krugman writes that Eric Cantor's defeat in his Republican primary signals the end of the Republican party as we know it. For decades, the Republican party has been selling itself to voters as far more radical than it actually is.

For example, Republicans preached against abortion rights since before Goldwater ran for president in 1964. The Moral Majority, founded in the 1970s, supported Republican presidential candidates like Reagan, Bush, and Dole. The Moral Majority campaigned for a ban on abortions and prayers in the schools.

Republican candidates gave lip service to social issues but ignored them once they got into office. This was an entirely practical thing to do, since there was little chance of convincing less fervent believers that these programs should be imposed on the entire population. Instead, the Republicans took the Moral Majority votes and used them to promote their own agenda, which included wars around the world to protect their financial interests and weakened regulations to protect their business interests.

The Tea Party first came to national prominence with the 2008 Presidential election. There was no clear idea of what the Tea Party stood for, primarily because Republican traditionalists quickly tried to grab its leadership. These included the corporatists, people who wanted to give more power to the corporations, and the libertarians, people who wanted to give more power to individuals as opposed to the state.

These two forces are diametrically opposed to each other. corporatists insist on corporations having more power over individuals, through laws that discourage lawsuits against them and Supreme Court rulings that give corporations more influence over elections than individuals. Libertarians want to preserve individual rights, not just from government control, but from corporate domination as well.

These two disparate factions continued to pour money into Republican coffers during 2010 and 2012, resulting in victories for Republicans in congress and in statehouses. But rank and file Republicans saw the results of these elections as reaffirming their worst fears, namely that the Republican establishment in Washington was continuing to buy their votes with empty promises.

Cantor was one of those politicians who pretended to be populist while getting cozy with financial interests. In the area of home mortgages and financial shenanigans, the tea party and the liberal left agree. They hate the one percent. People in rural Virginia, naturally conservative but very definitely not of the one percent, see Cantor as the enemy. That's the main reason he lost his primary.

Chalk up a victory for the 99 percent of us who find ourselves struggling in difficult economic times.

Beyond government by crisis: Fixing the leaks

The United States has a written Constitution that describes how the government works. We also have rules, not included in the Constitution, that affect how the government works. Some of these rules are causing extreme problems with basic governance. The political parties, primarily the Republicans at the moment, use these rules to stop government when it becomes apparent that the routine running of government goes contrary to their policies. These rules should be fixed when there is no crisis so that we can avoid similar crises in the future.

Crisis 1. The government cannot run without a budget

The Constitution states that any revenue bill must originate in the House of Representatives. The Framers apparently did not consider that the House might decide not to pass a budget and thereby bring government to a halt. The Framers believed in negotiated settlements. They did not foresee a group of representatives who would refuse to negotiate until their demands are met.

This predicament is not predetermined by the Constitution itself, however. The solution could be a simple law instead of a Constitutional amendment. This law would be a law that takes effect when certain conditions are met. For example, the order of succession to the presidency is set by law, not by the Constitution, and the selection of a new president is determined by a specific event, namely the death or incapacity of the current president.

The Congress could pass a law that goes into effect when a budget expires without Congress having agreed on a new one. The budget would be replaced, as currently, by a continuing resolution that continues funding a current levels until a new budget is agreed upon.

This automatic continuing resolution could run indefinitely, as seems reasonable, or it could expire after a set period of time. The effect would be the same in both cases, since a new continuing resolution would come into effect as soon as the old one expires, unless a new budget has been passed and signed into law.

Crisis 2. The government cannot continue borrowing money after the current debt limit is reached.

The debt limit is a relic of the nineteenth century when the government raised revenue by selling bonds or other financial instruments. The practice reached its current form in 1939, when all borrowing was consolidated into one package, called the national debt. Since then, the debt limit has periodically been used as a bargaining chip by one party or the other. The repercussions for allowing the U.S. Government to default on its debt are severe, however.

In 1979, during a similar debt ceiling crisis, as reported by the Washington Post, the U.S. Treasury actually defaulted on a small number of loans--about $120 million worth. This relatively small default caused a ripple effect in U.S. government debt because it raised interest rates by 1/2 of one percent, eventually costing the U.S. Treasury billions of dollars. This amount represented money that had to be repaid at higher interest rates as a result of the "micro" default.

The 2011 debt ceiling crisis was even more expensive, even though the Congress acted before any actual default. As reported in a study by the U.S. Treasury Department, this "near miss" led to a number of negative consequences, including a loss of household wealth of $2.4 trillion and a loss in retirement wealth of $800 billion. Although housing prices and the stock market recovered within a year, the losses sustained during that year can never be recovered. This is because the interest on those investments was lost and any interest that could have been compounded was also lost.

The costs of tinkering with the debt ceiling are grave. The U.S. should institute an automatic debt ceiling increase whenever the actual debt nears the official limit. This automatic debt ceiling increase would work like the automatic budget increase described above. The new law would assure that no irresponsible Congress could ever undermine the full faith and credit of the United States.

The automatic debt ceiling increase would not necessarily keep increasing U.S. debt indefinitely. Then, as now, the Congress has complete control over how much it spends and borrows. No law can force the Congress to behave responsibly, or we wouldn't be facing another Congressional extortion right now.

Congressional food stamp experiment goes horribly awry

Donny Ferguson, an aide to Congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX), recently ran an experiment to see whether he could survive on $31.50 worth of food a week. Two problems immediately arise: First, Ferguson is not a scientist and knows nothing about how to run a scientifically valid experiment, and, second, Ferguson is not a nutritionist and knows nothing about how to plan a diet that won't lead to obesity, malnutrition, and disease. But Donny is a Congressional aide, so he thinks he knows everything. That's a third problem right there.

From a scientific viewpoint, this experiment was doomed from the start. The goal was unclear. It's not hard to live on $31.50 for food. You can get free food at food banks and churches to supplement your diet. You can also get food from dumpsters outside restaurants. There is no problem surviving on a limited budget. The problem is getting the proper nutrition to sustain yourself over a long period of time.

The USDA provides plenty of information on nutrition and healthy food choices. Ferguson, even though he works in the Congress, did not read this information. If he had, he would have learned something important and could have educated his boss's constituents.

Ferguson set up his experiment. His objective was to survive for one week eating only the groceries that can be purchased with a single person's allotment of food stamps, $31.50. He planned to buy food at the cheapest possible place, a dollar store near Washington. He considered that this would give him the best chance of getting enough food to live on.

Ferguson methodically listed the foods he bought, but failed to list the nutritional contents of his food. How much fat and sugar were in these foods? How much did the food weigh? Were there sufficient vitamins and minerals to ward off diseases caused by malnutrition? We have no way of knowing this, but we can make a fair guess from the list of items that Ferguson has provided.

Ferguson's Diet
(annotated).

Two boxes of Honeycomb cereal. Around 50% of the calories in Honeycomb cereal come from sugar, the rest from refined carbohydrates. Note that there are no actual weights here, just number of boxes. Ferguson is using none of the precision he would have to use in a real experiment.

Three cans of red beans and rice. This is processed food, high in sodium. One 15oz can will provide 2/3 of your daily requirement of sodium. We could tell how much protein and other nutrients are in this item if we knew the brand and the size of the can.

Jar of peanut butter. Peanut butter is filling but also has plenty of fat. Less than a quarter cup will give you all your daily fat allowance. The protein is incomplete.

Bottle of grape jelly. Again, mostly sugar. The grapes don't contain much nutrition.


Loaf of whole wheat bread. Undoubtedly not whole wheat bread, but white bread with some whole wheat in it.


Two cans of refried beans. Depending on the brand, a good source of protein and fiber.


Box of spaghetti. Another dose of carbohydrates.

Large can of pasta sauce. Has some vitamins, but also sugar and salt, depending on the brand.


Two liters of root beer. Sugar.


Large box of popsicles. Sugar.

24 servings of Wyler’s fruit drink mix. Sugar.

Eight cups of applesauce. Cooking apples removes most of the nutrients. Mostly sugar.

Bag of pinto beans. Incomplete protein.

Bag of rice. Carbohydrates.

Bag of cookies. Sugar and fat.

gallon of milk. Has calcium but also animal fat containing cholesterol.

Box of maple and brown sugar oatmeal. Oatmeal is the only whole grain in the entire purchase, but it is adulterated by adding even more sugar.

It has been suggested that this diet is a recipe for obesity. Ferguson notes that he gained two pounds only halfway through the week, as if this were not a sign of trouble.

The USDA publishes a pamphlet with the following suggestions for a healthy diet. Ferguson did none of these things:

1. Make half your plate fruits and vegetables. False. Ferguson's diet contains no fruits or vegetables except as flavorings in processed foods.
2. Switch to skim milk. Unknown.
3. Make at least half your grains whole. False. Few if any whole grains.
4. Vary your protein food choices. Presumably to avoid saturated fats in meats. Ferguson's diet has no meat, but his proteins are incomplete, so that they will contribute to his load of empty carbohydrates.
5. Choose foods and drinks with little or no added sugars. False. Ferguson filled up on sugar to stave off hunger.
6. Look out for salt in foods you buy. It all adds up. False. Ferguson apparently doesn't realize the amount of sodium that has been added to his processed foods.

Experiment Fails Utterly

Ferguson claims his experiment was successful, but he admits he had to add extra meals outside the allotted 31.50. His excuse is that he had to take a plane trip and could not take his canned food with him.

It does not matter what his excuse may be. Ferguson did not complete his intended test and his results are utterly meaningless. Real scientific experiments require strict controls to assure that the tests can be replicated by other researchers.

Although Ferguson may have been able to survive for one week on this diet, the diet is extremely unhealthy. The large number of empty calories in this diet will lead to obesity, not because Ferguson is overeating, as many believe, but because he is not getting enough nutrition from his food.

Just as Ferguson was obsessed with the cost of his food but not the quality, the Republicans in congress are obsessed with cutting costs without considering the consequences. The result of Ferguson's diet would be obesity, disease, and early death. The results of Republican policies will be deteriorating quality of life for all of us by reducing the money spent on infrastructure, increasing costs of disaster repairs and insurance, deteriorating environment due to air and water pollution, increasing poverty, stagnation due to chronic unemployment, all of which should lead to social unrest.

A bad diet and a bad political policy both lead to predictably bad consequences.