Robert Reich's Explanation Of The Banking Debacle; Silicon Valley Bank, etc.

Click here for Robert Reich's article, "The real story behind the Silicon Valley Bank debacle.

The surface story of the Silicon Valley Bank debacle is straightforward. During the pandemic, startups and technology companies enjoyed heady profits, some of which they deposited in the Silicon Valley Bank. Flush with their cash,T the bank did what banks do: It kept a fraction on hand and invested the rest — putting a large share into long-dated Treasury bonds that promised good returns when interest rates were low.

But then, starting a little more than a year ago, the Fed raised interest rates from near zero to over 4.5 percent. As a result, two things happened. The value of the Silicon Valley Bank’s holdings of Treasury bonds plummeted because newer bonds paid more interest. And, as interest rates rose, the gusher of venture capital funding to startup and tech companies slowed, because venture funds had to pay more to borrow money. As a result, these startup and tech companies had to withdraw more of their money from the bank to meet their payrolls and other expenses.

But the bank didn’t have enough money on hand. 

The Roosevelt administration in the 1930s brought in banking regulations that ushered in an era of financial stability that lasted until the 1980s:

when Wall Street financiers, seeing the potential for big money, pushed to dismantle these laws and regulations — culminating in 1999, when Bill Clinton and Congress repealed what remained of Glass-Steagall.

Then, of course, came the 2008 financial crisis, the worst collapse since 1929. It was the direct result of financial deregulation. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, called it “a once-in-a-century credit tsunami,” but pressed by critics, Greenspan acknowledged that the crisis had forced him to rethink his free market ideology. “I have found a flaw,” he told a congressional committee. “I made a mistake … I was shocked.”

Shocked? Really?

The banking industry became a giant casino, with rapacious bankers reaping enormous profits, until the house of cards came crashing down in 2008, the worst financial crisis since 1929.

In the end, the Obama administration rescued Wall Street, but at enormous cost to taxpayers and the economy. Estimates of the true cost of the bailout vary from half a trillion dollars to several trillion. The Federal Reserve also provided huge subsidies to the big banks in the form of virtually free loans. But homeowners, whose homes were suddenly worth less than the mortgages they owed on them, were left hanging in the wind. Many lost their homes.

Obama thereby shifted the costs of the bankers’ speculative binge onto ordinary Americans, deepening mistrust of a political system increasingly viewed as rigged in favor of the rich and powerful.

Regulations were put into place, but they didn't go far enough and then were further weakened:

A package of regulations put in place after the financial crisis (called Dodd-Frank) was not nearly as strict as the banking laws and regulations of the 1930s. It required that the banks submit to stress tests by the Fed and hold a certain minimum amount of cash on their balance sheets to protect against shocks, but it didn’t prohibit banks from gambling with their investors’ money. Why not? Because Wall Street lobbyists, backed with generous campaign donations from the Street, wouldn’t have it.

Which brings us to Friday’s failure of the Silicon Valley Bank. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that when the Fed raised interest rates as much and as fast as it did, the financial cushions behind some banks that had invested in Treasury bonds would shrink. Why didn’t regulators move in?

Because even the milquetoast protections of Dodd-Frank were rolled back by Donald Trump, who in 2018 signed a bill that reduced scrutiny over many regional banks and removed the requirement that banks with assets under $250 billion submit to stress testing and reduced the amount of cash they had to keep on their balance sheets to protect against shock. This freed smaller banks — such as Silicon Valley Bank (and Signature Bank) — to invest more of their deposits and make more money for their shareholders (and for their CEOs, whose pay is linked to profits).

Reich lists what he calls Four lessons from this debacle":

1. The Fed should hold off raising interest rates again until it has done a thorough appraisal of the consequences for smaller banks.

2. When the Fed rapidly raises interest rates, it must better monitor banks that have invested heavily in Treasury bonds.

3. The Trump regulatory rollbacks of financial regulations are dangerous. Small banks can get into huge trouble, setting off potential contagion to other banks. The Dodd-Frank rules must be fully reinstated.

4. More broadly, not even Dodd-Frank is adequate. To make banking boring again, instead of one of the most profitable parts of the economy, Glass-Steagall must be reenacted, separating commercial from investment banking. There’s no good reason banks should be investing their depositors’ money for profit.

 

 

 

 

Windows Keyboard Shortcuts

Click here for an article by Bob Rankin entitled "How Many Windows Keyboard Shortcuts Have You Tried?" It's a good, useful list.

Cage Diving With Great White Sharks - Gansbaai, South Africa

Here's a video entitled "Shark Cage Diving in South Africa." It takes place at Gansbaai -- that could even be the boat I was on!

Robert Reich On Stock Buy-Backs

 Click here for an article by Robert Reich (Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor, leftie economist) entitled "Why Warren Buffet is wrong and Joe Biden is right about stock buybacks."

Buffet says (in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders):

“When you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive).”

Reich replies:

But the Oracle of Omaha is dead wrong about buybacks being good for the country. They merely enrich people who own shares of stock (the richest 10 percent of Americans own 92 percent of the stock market) rather than add to the productive capacity of America.

Reich trashes the Norfolk Southern Railway (villain of the recent hazardous-waste train wreck in Ohio), which cut 10,000 jobs -- a third of its work force -- while boosting stockholder payouts by 4,500 percent over the last 20 years.

Last year, Norfolk Southern  spent $4.7 billion on stock buybacks -- while running fewer, longer trains (despite warnings it was worsening safety risks), failing to invest in safety equipment, and denying its workers sick leave.

Great for stockholders -- and Reich points out that "While railroads spent more on stock buybacks than rail safety, Warren Buffett’s wealth increased by $42 billion."

Robert Reich - National Debt

Click here for an article by Robert Reich entitled "Yikes! More drivel over the national debt!" Subtitle:

"How the hell can we expect Americans to understand what the national debt means if the media doesn't report it accurately?"

Robert Reich was Labor Secretary for Bill Clinton, and he writes a daily article from a leftist position. He criticizes The New York Times for scaremongering with its lead story:  

The Congressional Budget Office’s report that the U.S. is on track to add nearly $19 trillion to the national debt over the next decade — $3 trillion more than previously forecast.

The NYT then offers context for that line:

“To put those numbers in context,” intoned the Times, “the total amount of debt held by the public will equal the total annual output of the U.S. economy in 2024, rising to 118 percent of the economy in 2033.”

If the Times believes this gives its readers context, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d love to sell the Gray Lady.

Reich says there are three reasons why the national debt is going to rise as a percentage of the total overall economy:

1.  The Federal Reserve is busily slowing the economy and causing interest rates to rise.

2.  The giant baby-boom generation will soon collect Social Security and Medicare (or has already started to). 

3. Republicans have slashed taxes on the wealthy, resulting in less federal revenue.  

 To remedy the situation, Reich proposes that the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy be restored (they're temporary because they sunset, but Republicans are trying to make them permanent). They also want to repeal funding increases for the IRS. They say jackbooted IRS thugs will be kicking down the doors of single mothers who have made a mistake on their tax return; Biden's administration insists hiring new agents will result in better auditing of the wealthy, who will cheat if they're not properly policed.

He finishes his criticism of the Times article:

Economic illiteracy is dangerous for a democracy, especially when exacerbated by mainstream media that should know better.

Leadership! (and eloquence)

(The original tweet says: "This will never stop being funny."

This is how I’ve always seen Trump. He has the vocabulary of a 3rd grader. https://t.co/qK00MJWtPq

— MJ (@mj_effect) February 16, 2023

Morons. I've got morons on my team!

That's a line by Strother Martin in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Butch and Sundance have taken an honest job, signed on as guards for Percy, who is going down the mountain to collect a mining payroll. On the way down the mountain from the mine, Butch and Sundance are being hypervigilant, surveilling the rocks and bushes, looking for an ambush. Percy says:

Morons. I've got morons on my team! Nobody is going to rob us going down the mountain. We have got no money going down the mountain.

Here's a tweet from the Moron in Chief, Donald Trump, after the Super Bowl:

Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs on a great game, and a fantastic comeback, under immense pressure. You represented the Great State of Kansas and, in fact, the entire USA, so very well. Our Country is PROUD OF YOU!

Nice, right? No twisted bitterness,no pumped-up braggadocio, no expressions of hatred for Democrats, no juvenile nicknames or name-calling.

Once again, though, he has shown his profound ignorance about the country he professes to love so much:  The Kansas City Chiefs are not located in Kansas, and they do not play their games in Kansas. The Chiefs are from Kansas City, Missouri.

Dummy.

 

Jokes

 A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

How many people here have telekenetic powers? Raise my hand.

I got some new underwear the other day. Well, new to me.

My schoolmates would make love to anything that moved, but I never saw any reason to limit myself.

When I was ten, my family moved to Downers Grove, Illinois. When I was twelve, I found them.

I ran three miles the other day. Finally I said, “Lady, keep your purse."

John Maynard Keynes

 Click here for a Substack article by Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's labor minister and leftist economist, entitled "Why America forgot about economic power," subtitled "We adopted Kenesianism -- which worked for a time."

Several of you have asked me why America went so quietly from democratic capitalism — the economic organization that dominated American life from 1933 through the late 1970s — to the corporate capitalism that has dominated it since the Reagan administration and that Joe Biden is starting to reverse.

The answer has a lot to do with Keynesianism. It removed the issue of economic power from American politics, along with the struggle between capital and labor.

Click here for a Google search of "expat communites in Mexico."

 (from Quora): WOULD YOU LIVE IN MEXICO, AND WHY?

Not only would I live in Mexico, I do live in Mexico; and I love it here. Some of the reasons are:

• The cost of living in Mexico is way lower than the U.S. A monthly income that would barely be subsistence wages in the U.S. affords an upper middle-class lifestyle in Mexico.
• The weather is fantastic, at least in most parts of the country. There are places where it can get really cold and there are other places where it can be brutally hot. But, for a large part of the country, the combination of tropical latitude and high altitude make for Spring like weather all year round.
• The food is incredible. Actual Mexican food that you find in Mexico is not the same as the Tex-Mex variety served in most “Mexican” food restaurants in the U.S. There are no yellow cheeses, very little use of ground beef, and refried beans and rice are not the only side dishes. What you will find here are dishes prepared with incredibly fresh ingredients, very balanced seasonings and a wide variety of salsas.
• The people are some of the kindest, most polite and most generous people you will ever meet. This may be the absolute best thing about living in Mexico; how welcoming the people are. Virtually everyone I have met since moving here has made an effort to make me feel welcome. It almost makes me ashamed to think how these same people would be treated if they visited my birth country.
• The culture and history of Mexico is truly amazing. There are so many incredible archaeological sites, museums, and cultural events and activities that one could spend a lifetime and never see them all. But, there is never a reason to be bored here. There is always something interesting to see or do.
• The beaches and beach resorts are truly world-class. Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, Playa del Carmen, Cozumal, Mazatlan, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta; and these are just the best known. And if you live in Mexico, most of these are easy to get to via plane, car or even bus.

Those are just a few of the reasons why I love living in Mexico. I know I have advantages here that most people don’t. My wife is a Mexican citizen and that helps a great deal. Also, I work on-line for a U.S. company so I did not need to find a job here in Mexico. But, I know both U.S. and Canadian expats here who don’t have the advantages I have and they love living in Mexico as much as I do.

I think people often make judgments about a place based on things they have heard without any first-hand experience. Or, in the case of Mexico, they look at the areas along the U.S. border and judge the whole country based on the border towns. I would encourage any and everyone in the U.S. and elsewhere to spend some time in the real Mexico and experience this country for yourself before you make any judgments about it.

Overturning Roe v. Wade Was Just The Beginning

Click here for an article at Slate.com By Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern entitled "Dobbs was Always just the Beginning," subtitled "A single judge could outlaw the abortion pill nationwide."

Judge-shopping -- the practice of searching for a district where you stand a good chance of having a friendly radical judge who will hear your case -- has led plaintiffs -- anti-abortion medical associations joined by anti-abortion doctors -- to bring a case in the Amarillo Division of the Northern District of Texas, where they will be guaranteed to be heard by a federal judge named Matthew Kacsmaryk, appointed by Donald Trump in 2019.

Over the past 50 years, reproductive health care has undergone a dramatic shift: A majority of American patients now terminate their pregnancies with pills rather than by undergoing a procedure at a clinic. This makes good sense, as medication abortions are 18 times safer than childbirth, very reliable, and easy to access. In the 23 years since the FDA first approved the “abortion pill,” the agency has slowly loosened restrictions on prescriptions (though regulations remain irrationally stringent for the minimal risks of these pills). Meanwhile, a booming gray market for the medication has sprung up online following the end of Roe. Today, virtually anyone anywhere in the United States can order pills to their door, legally or otherwise. This infuriates anti-abortion activists who wanted to see this issue settled with the clinic closures and vigilante laws that followed S.B. 8 and Dobbs.

A two-drug abortion protocol was approved by the FDA in 2000.  The lawsuit seeks to roll back FDA approval of one of the two drugs, called mifeprostone. Many legal experts consider the case to be extremely weak, but that doesn't matter if the decision is made by a partisan judge determined to end abortion.

Lower courts have gone rogue in the past, but the likelihood of approval by SCOTUS has always been slim -- until the present 6-3 conservative court. Now there is no guarantee that an antiabortion case will be tossed by the Supremes, no matter how weak the case.

That brings us to the biggest problem of all. We will see more and more of these scandalously frivolous claims succeed precisely because the Supreme Court has changed so much, so quickly. Lower courts are racing to push the limits of law and daring the conservative justices to stop them. It is now obvious to all that five justices will gladly rewrite precedent without any warning or justification in a way that will upend long-settled expectations. That opens the door to a kind of nihilistic and perverse ingenuity that used to be scorned by the third branch.

The very weakness of this litigation—the lack of real standing, the blunderbuss attack on federal agencies, the extraordinary scope of the relief sought—are the seeds that have been planted by this newly constituted Supreme Court supermajority coming to fruition. The conservative justices have already brushed away standing requirements in order to weaken civil rights laws; severely weakened the EPA and the CDC; and let rogue judges seize power from the Biden administration. This conservative supermajority has used the shockwaves of recent reversal of precedent and dismantling of existing tests to lay the tracks for the next shocker.

Overturning Roe was not the terminal point in the decades-long journey to limit reproductive rights; it’s barely even the start. Maybe this is the moment in which we ask ourselves why so many of us are still surprised; why we are still caught off guard when a court arms alleged domestic abusers, or limits access to birth control, or—stay tuned—criminalizes medication abortion everywhere. The crisis here is not just that a federal judge could imminently ban an abortion drug that’s been used safely for 23 years. It’s that the chaos wrought by Dobbs means anything is possible, and no one—not even in the deepest blue states—can go to bed with any certainty that they will wake up with their rights intact. That is the legacy of today’s Supreme Court: No one can ever really know what new nightmares tomorrow will bring.

Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell have  poisoned the American judicial system for decades to come.

Grapes of Wrath 2.0

 Click here for an article by Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997, entitled "What to do about America's 'labor shortage'? Easy. Pay people more."

Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, says the United States has a “structural labor shortage” that’s unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims there are over 10 million job openings in the U.S. for which employers can’t find workers.

Here’s the truth: There is no labor shortage.

There is, however, a shortage of jobs paying sufficient wages to attract workers to fill job openings.

He goes on to say:

For most Americans, real (inflation-adjusted) wages continue to drop. Wages have increased about 5 percent over the past year while prices have increased about 7 percent, a net loss for most workers of about 2 percentage points.

Those price increases include the costs of childcare, eldercare, and transportation (cars, used cars, and gas), which are big expenses for many working people.

Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage continues to plummet. It hasn’t been raised in thirteen years – the longest period without a raise in its history. Adjusted for inflation, its real value is the lowest it's been in 66 years.

And:

Economists offered similar warnings of a “labor shortage” after the financial crisis and recession of 2008-09. But when the economy strengthened and wages rose, the so-called “labor shortage” magically disappeared.

So what should be done about the difficulty employers are having finding workers?Simple. If employers want more workers, they should pay them more.

Jerome Powell and the Fed don’t want to hear this. They’re aiming to deal with the “labor shortage” by slowing the economy so much that employers can find all the workers they need without raising wages.

Here's where Reich says Jerome Powell and the Fed are taking the U.S. economy into "Grapes of Wrath" territory:

 But this is cruel. Slowing the economy will cause millions of people to lose their jobs — disproportionately low-wage workers, women, and people of color.

Republicans and some corporate economists, meanwhile, are blaming the “labor shortage” on overly-generous jobless benefits. They say the way to get more people into jobs is to make their lives outside jobs less tolerable.

A recent “study” by Casey Mulligan and E.J. Antoni claims that “it pays not to work in Biden’s America,” because unemployment and Affordable Care Act benefits are so generous that “many businesses can’t get workers back on the job almost three years after COVID-19 hit these shores.”

Baloney. Apart from the non-working wealthy and their heirs, most unemployed people are hard up.

 Reich concludes:

Taken to its logical extreme, the corporate Republican argument might be correct. Eliminate all safety nets and at some point people without jobs will hurt so much they’ll have to take any available job, at any wage, whatever the job demands.

But do this, and we end up with an economy that’s even crueler than today’s.

The reason people aren’t working is that work doesn’t pay them enough, given declining wages and the increasing costs of childcare, eldercare, and transportation.

Both the Fed’s solution (slow the economy so employers can find the workers they need without raising wages) and the Republican corporate solution (slash safety nets so people are so desperate they have to take any job available) are cruel. They would impose huge burdens on many of the most vulnerable people in our society.

If we want more people to take jobs and we wish to live in a decent society, the answer is to pay people more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bravo, Marc Elias!

Paste this into your address bar and play the video -- it's 1 minute, 4 seconds.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1608178388157566976

The Republicans hate Marc Elias not because he's done anything wrong, but because he's such an effective lawyer. It drives Bannon crazy (a short trip) that the GOP don't have anyone comparable on their side. 

In reply to this mashup of Republican denunciations, Elias posts a quote from FDR: "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made."

January 6 Committee: A Concise Summary of the Final Report

Click here for an article by Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale, entitled "January 6: The Facts." Laurence Tribe describes it as "a very concise summary of the Select Committee's Final Report."

Here is my very brief summary of the factual part of the report, in fifteen quick points. I am deliberately understating here; the evidence, in the Final Report itself, permits much broader conclusions:

1.  Trump knew that he was likely to lose the 3 November 2020 election, and planned in advance to declare victory (to tell a Big Lie) if he lost.

2.  On 3 November 2020, Trump knew that he was very unlikely to have won the election of that day, and declared victory anyway.  In the days following, aware that he had lost, he continued to declare victory.

3.  Over and over again in November, December, and January, Trump publicized specific claims of electoral fraud shortly after being informed that they were false.  

4.  Aware that his advisors, campaign officials, and cabinet knew his claims of fraud to be false, Trump promoted people, such as Rudolph Giuliani, who would lie for him in public.

5.  In the full knowledge that he had lost the election and that his claims of fraud were false, Trump made several deliberate efforts to overturn the election results and thus American democracy.

6.  In states he had lost, Trump personally pressured state officials to fraudulently and illegally alter the electoral outcome.

7.  Informed that the Department of Justice had investigated and found no evidence of fraud, Trump nevertheless sought to use its powers, via Jeffrey Clark, to intimidate state officials to change electoral outcomes.

8.  Knowing that he had lost the electoral college vote, Trump oversaw an effort to create fake slates of electors.  These entirely bogus documents were then sent to the vice-president (who refused them).

9.  Though aware that it was the vice-president's role only to count the electoral votes, Trump pressured the vice-president not to do so, on the theory that the vice-president could, in effect, choose the president.

10.  Even the person who devised the plan regarding the vice-president, John Eastman, knew it to be illegal.

11.  Knowing by January 6th that all that remained was the formality of certifying Biden's victory, Trump encouraged supporters he knew to be armed and angry to halt this procedure and violently overthrow our form of government.

12.  Trump's call to violence was successful because enough of his supporters believed his lies and understood what he wanted them to do: prevent a peaceful transition of power.

13.  At a time when the Capitol was under attack, the vice-president was in flight, and the members of the vice-president's security detail feared for their lives, Trump urged his supporters on to further violence.

14.  After the failed coup attempt, a number of Republican legislators sought presidential pardons, thereby acknowledging their fears that they had acted illegally.

15.  Even had Trump believed that he had won the 2020 election, which he did not, his coup attempt would remain a coup attempt, and his crimes would remain crimes.

 

"The Corruption & Redemption Of Cassidy Hutchinson"

 Click here for a post by Keith "Retired lawyer & Army vet in The Villages of Florida. Lifelong: Republican (pre-Trump), Constitution buff, science nerd & dog lover," which details events culminating in the testimony we've all seen before the January 6 Committee.

 "Trump world," as the people referred to themselves, put a lot of pressure on Hutchinson to lie to the Committee -- and she initially did. I read in another article quoting her as saying she needed to pass "the mirror test," and she went through a personal moral crisis before ditching her "Trump world" lawyer, who had been urging her to lie, promising her a great job if she came through, and telling the truth in her bombshell televised interview.

She testified with poise and dignity and was obviously telling the truth: I hope she comes out of this okay -- even though at one point she said to her mother, "I’m fucked . . . I am completely indebted to these people. And they will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything that they don’t want me to do.”

The Santee Rebellion, 1862, And The Concept Of War Crimes

 Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's daily article, today describing the rebellion of the Santee Sioux native tribe, and the December 26, 1862, hanging of 38 Santee men in the largest mass execution in American history.

The struggle did not involve all of the Santees, but rather those driven to war in August 1862 after the U.S. government, financially strapped by the Civil War, did not appropriate the money necessary to pay for the food promised to the Santees by treaty. Nine years before, in 1851, settlers had poured into the territory demanding land to farm, and the government had forced the Santees onto a reservation too small to feed their people. The government promised the Santees provisions to make up for the loss of their economic base not as a one-time payment but as a fifty-year contract. Then, when Minnesota became a state in 1858, its leaders took even more Santee land.

But by summer 1862, the Civil War had drained the Treasury, and so-called Indian appropriations fell behind.

Starving and unable to provide for themselves on the small reservation onto which they had been corralled, some Santees demanded the provisions for which they had exchanged their lands. At least one of the agents who had contracted to provide that food had some on hand but refused to hand it over until he had been paid. Furious, young Santee men considered their agreement broken and attacked the settlers who had built homes on the land the Santees had ceded.

On August 17, four young Santee men killed five settlers, and violence escalated. By September, both Minnesota militia and U.S. Army regiments were battling the Santees, and the struggles would leave more than 600 settlers, at least 100 to 300 Santees, and more than a hundred soldiers dead before the last of the Santee warriors surrendered to the military at the end of the month. Another 300 Santees—at least—would die from conditions of their imprisonment after the war or from exposure as they fled the state.

HCR further explains:

Over the course of five weeks in the fall of 1862, a military commission tried 393 Santees for their part in the conflict. The prisoners did not have lawyers, and many of them did not speak English. Those who did understand the questions put to them did not understand the legal process that permitted them to avoid self-incrimination; they told the truth about their part in the fighting and thus cemented their convictions. Many of the trials took fewer than ten minutes before the judges reached a guilty verdict: in one two-day span, 82 men were tried.

In early November the commission convicted 303 Indians of murder or rape and sentenced them to death. Minnesota governor Alexander Ramsey wrote to President Abraham Lincoln, expressing his hope that “the execution of every Sioux Indian condemned by the military court will be at once ordered.” But by law, the president had to sign off on executions, and Lincoln refused. 

Repelled by the idea of mass executions, Lincoln examined the facts and found that 265 of the Santee were behaving as soldiers in battle, and refused to sign their death warrants, effectively pardoning them. But 38 had apparently committed murder or rape against civilians, and those men were hanged on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota.

In the aftermath of the hangings, the Lincoln administration continued to develop the concept of war crimes. On April 24, 1863, the administration issued what became known as the Lieber Code after its author, legal philosopher Francis Lieber. It tried to establish rules for wartime, prohibiting the execution of prisoners of war, for example, and outlawing rape and torture. The Lieber Code helped to make up the international Hague Conventions of the turn of the century, which set out to establish rules of war. 

On December 28, HCR posted another diary entry concerning the slaughter of about 250 men, women, and children of the Lacota, or Teton Sioux, tribe on December 29, 1890, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota -- another massacre airbrushed from American history. Click here.

Corrupt Trump-Appointed IRS Commissioner

Click here for an article in The American Prospect, by Hannah Story Brown and Glenna Lee, entitled "It's Past Time to Replace IRS Chief Charles Rettig.

Surprise, surprise. Hand-picked and appointed by Trump in 2018, Rettig is a walking conflict of interest. Like the "disastrous USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy," Rettig was retained by Joe Biden, who chose not to dump either of the two wildly inappropriate office-holders, apparently to avoid controversy and criticism from Republicans.

Rettig has been entangled in Trump’s affairs since well before he became IRS commissioner. During his confirmation process back in 2018, Rettig initially failed to disclose that he co-owned two Trump-branded rentals in Hawaii, from which he’d made as much as $1 million in income since his purchase in 2006. Trump likely made a profit from Rettig’s purchase. That’s not all: In 2016, over a year before Trump chose Rettig as commissioner, Rettig publicly defended Trump’s refusal to publicly disclose his taxes in a Forbes piece.

Before his IRS appointment, Rettig had worked for almost 40 years at "a Beverly Hills law firm specializing in tax avoidance." The article says, "The very nature of Rettig’s pre-government career is antagonistic to his responsibilities as commissioner."

Rettig has been entangled in Trump’s affairs since well before he became IRS commissioner. During his confirmation process back in 2018, Rettig initially failed to disclose that he co-owned two Trump-branded rentals in Hawaii, from which he’d made as much as $1 million in income since his purchase in 2006. Trump likely made a profit from Rettig’s purchase. That’s not all: In 2016, over a year before Trump chose Rettig as commissioner, Rettig publicly defended Trump’s refusal to publicly disclose his taxes in a Forbes piece.

Rettig's term ended on November 12, 2022, and he was replaced by Acting Commissioner Douglas O'Donnell; Biden has nominated  Danny Werfel — a former budget official and private sector leader — to become the next IRS commissioner.

 

 

Gold Mine - Essays of Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Wikipedia says that "Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an American historian and cultural critic. She is a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders. Ben-Ghiat is professor of history and Italian studies at New York University."

She has some excellent essays, particularly on Italian politics (she's an expert on fascism), but also on fascism and politics in the U.S. and worldwide (she's U.S.-born to an Israeli father).

Click here for an essay entitled "The GOP might have a new neo-fascist fave," subtitled "Italy is ending an era of male monopoly of authoritarian governance."

The "new neo-fascist fave" is Giorgia Meloni, recently elected prime minister of Italy.

Now Italy is the country to have the first female-led far-right government, ending an era of male monopoly of authoritarian governance. What can we expect from Meloni? For starters, Italy will become more enmeshed in far-right networks that stretch from Vladimir Putin's Russia to Viktor Orban's Hungary to Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil to Republican America.

The connection to the Republicans? Ben-Ghiat says:

If this sounds like Fox News's Tucker Carlson or other Republican figures, there's a reason. As Meloni told The Washington Post, her party feels a kinship with the GOP, and she is in frequent dialogue with Steve Bannon and Republican politicians. "We have networks connecting us, our think tanks work with the International Republican Institute, with the Heritage Foundation, we do cultural exchanges, and many of their fights are about things we have talked about."

As a result of her fascism in Italy (the country where fascism was born):

That is a lesson Americans can pay attention to as Republicans bring their own extremists into government, supporting the campaigns of election deniers, Oath Keepers and participants in the Jan. 6 coup attempt. Republicans have continued to cultivate Orban as a mentor in all things autocratic. Meloni's fascist credentials will likely make her another GOP favorite as Republican America creates its own new political reality to support its dream of illiberal rule.

Renoir's Women

Sorry, I don't know how to embed a Facebook post. This is titled "Renoir's Women," a slideshow with accompanying music, posted by Barry Cyr.

  https://www.facebook.com/ArtsEmotions/videos/691177489313129

Evolution Of The NRA Since Reagan

 Heather Cox Richardson hits it ot of the park again. Click here for her diary entry for December 14. 

Senator Joe Manchin (Democrat, West Virginia) shot a hole in a climate bill in 2010 -- simultaneously proving his machismo, his hatred of environmental regulation, and his support for the Second Amendment, I guess -- but no Democrat has used a gun in an ad since then. In 2020, there were 100 Republican ads which featured a gun.

The national free-for-all in which we have 120 guns for every 100 people—the next closest country is Yemen, with about 52 per one hundred people—is deeply tied to the political ideology of today’s Republican Party. It comes from the rise of Movement Conservatism under Ronald Reagan. 

Movement Conservatism was a political movement that rose to combat the business regulations and social welfare programs that both Democrats and Republicans embraced after World War II. Movement Conservatives embraced the myth of the American cowboy as a white man standing against the “socialism” of the federal government as it sought to level the social and economic playing field between Black Americans and their white neighbors.

Since its formation after the Civil War, the NRA had been a basically nonpolitical association, promoting marksmanship and gun safety. But that all changed in the mid-'70s -- and Ronald Reagan became the pro-gun candidate for president in 1980.

In the past, NRA officers insisted on the right of citizens to own rifles and handguns but worked hard to distinguish between law-abiding citizens who should have access to guns for hunting and target shooting and protection, and criminals and mentally ill people, who should not. Until the mid-1970s, the NRA backed federal legislation to limit concealed weapons; prevent possession by criminals, the mentally ill and children; to require all dealers to be licensed; and to require background checks.

But in the mid-1970s, a faction in the NRA forced the organization away from sports and toward opposing “gun control.” It formed a political action committee (PAC) in 1975, and two years later it elected an organization president who abandoned sporting culture and focused instead on “gun rights.”

Until 1959, every single legal article on the Second Amendment concluded that it was not intended to guarantee individuals the right to own a gun. But in the 1970s, legal scholars funded by the NRA began to argue that the Second Amendment did exactly that.

The PAC formed in 1975 became a financial and political powerhouse:

Now a player in national politics, the NRA PAC was awash in money from gun and ammunition manufacturers, 99% of it going to Republican candidates. By 2000 it was one of the three most powerful lobbies in Washington. It spent more than $40 million on the 2008 election, and in that year, the landmark Supreme Court decision of District of Columbia v. Heller struck down gun regulations and declared for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.

Ten years ago, 20 children aged six and seven and six adult staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, were murdered by a deranged gunman. People thought the NRA would be chastened, but the opposite was true: They came out, guns blazing (forgive the metaphor), proclaiming their unwavering support for "the right to keep and bear arms." Even after that horrific massacre, a modest gun control bill proposed by Obama's Democratic House of Representatives was thwarted by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

If the atrocity at Sandy Hook could not curb the NRA and Republican blood lust, what can? In 2021, Richardson says, there were 692 mass shootings in the U.S. (a mass shooting being defined as four people shot, not including the shooter). 

Merry Christmas.