In case you've been off the grid for a few days and somehow missed it,
everyone is reeling over these remarks by
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick:
“Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month.
My mother-in-law — who's 94 — she wouldn't call and complain.
She just wouldn’t.
She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month.
A fraudsteralways makes the loudest noise — screaming, yelling and complaining.”
Watch it on video if you don't believe me.
What's a lost month here or there between friends?
It didn't surprise me to find that someone who would suggest
it was good sport
to withhold Social Security payments just to see what happened is a billionaire.
According to
The Street,
Lutnick's net worth is between $2 billion and $4 billion.
The very fact that we can be so imprecise
and assume it doesn't matter whether it's $2B or $4B is a big part of the problem, by the way.
“A billion here,
a billion there,
and pretty soon
you're talking real money.”
At the heart of this—if there can be said to be any heart in this situation at all—is the
sad truth that for regular people, people just struggling to get by day to day and month to month,
every dollar matters and no such
lack of precision could possibly do anyone justice.
The Public Trust, or lack thereof
If you're so insulated from poverty that
you start to either forget or just plain not care how hard it is for others of less means,
you have no absolutely business being in any position of public trust.
It might not occur to you, dude,
even if it's incredibly obvious to ordinary people hearing your remark,
but your mother-in-law is probably able to be so cool because
either social security is not her only source of money, or else
she knows her daughter is married to someone who is mega-rich, so if she runs a little short,
she has an obvious person she can call. We're not all so lucky, as it turns out.
Back in the real world
If I don't pay my credit card, does my bank shrug and say, “hey, maybe next month”?
If the bank screams at me right away, is that proof it's defrauding me?
What are you smoking, Mr. Lutnick?
Such willfully reckless incompetence should be literally criminal.
Folks on fixed income have monthly payments due now, not just “eventually.”
Any payment urgency is not about the character of any senior on Social Security,
who typically has paid a lifetime to earn
barely enough to survive on the tiny retirement income Social Security grudgingly
affords them.
It's all
about the character of those they rent from and buy groceries from,
and what they, these wealthy rent-takers,
will do to society's most fragile members if they
are not paid on time.
Last I checked, if I miss a single payment on my credit card, I don't even just get a penalty.
They almost double my interest rate going forward.
Shame on you for suggesting there is no good reason for someone
to insist their promised payment from the government actually be paid at the time promised.
Are you trying to wreck the US Government's reputation for paying all its obligations.
Social Security is not a gift. It is one of our society's most fundamental social contracts.
Turning the tables
If withholding what's due is your game, Mr. Oblivious Rich Guy,
how about let's make it a serious felony to be unkind to or exploit
folks who rely on the full faith and credit of the US government.
Let's imprison bankers, landlords, and vendors who are
ready to foreclose, add penalties, or raise costs or interest for the vulnerable.
Or, maybe…
Let's, you know, tentatively — just to see who cries foul or who says “hey,
maybe next month” — deprive billionaires of all assets for a month or two, leaving them out in the world
we live in with only the
iffy hope of Social Security,
just to see if they're comfortable with policies they seem to think so fair.
I bet the billionaires who cry loudest really are frauds.
Author's Notes:
If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.
Also, if you enjoyed this piece, you might also find these posts by me to be of interest:
This essay grew from a thread I wrote on BlueSky.
I have expanded and adjusted it to fit in this publication medium, where more space and better formatting is available.
The black & white image was produced by making 2 images in abacus.ai using Claude-Sonnet 3.7 and FLUX 1.1 [pro] Ultra,
then post-processing to merge parts of each that I liked in Gimp.
I could go on, but just read some of these other questions and answers.
They should make it plain why Harris
is the only safe, sane, and moral choice.
Q.
OK, so he's pretty evil. But I'm willing to put on my blinders because he's quite a business man, am I right?
He'll make our economy successful, right?
Q.
But hasn't Biden just weaponized the Justice Department?
Those aren't real charges are they? Surely they're partisan fictions.
A.
No.
Biden hasn't done any such thing.
In fact, it's the other way around. We're finding more and more evidence that weaponizing
the Department of Justice (DOJ) is
something Trump sought to do as President.
He was held back by others in the government who told him he couldn't.
Such restraint is unlikely to happen again because he'll pick
yes men to advise him
this time around.
Also,
Trump is promising to prosecute his political rivals.
That isn't how we've traditionally
done politics in the US. The whole point of “free speech” is the free exchange
of ideas. He wants to end that. He doesn't like dissent. It could get very ugly.
Q.
Trump says he'll protect American business by adding big tariffs other countries have to pay. Isn't that good?
A.
In a word? No. Trump can't make other countries pay anything.
He can make you pay to receive things from other countries.
Economists estimate
this will cost the average household an extra $4000 a year.
Harris is calling it a Trump “sales tax,”
which is what it will feel like.
A.
Oh, just stop.
I know you didn't even get all the way through your question, but, please, just stop.
No. He will not.
Neither will Vance.
The Washington Post
counted his false and misleading statements over a four-year period.
They tallied 30,573. You can't trust his promises. He knows they are not legally binding.
And if you haven't read
Margaret Atwood's
1985 novel
The Handmaid's Tale,
might I suggest you do? It just might turn out to be a useful reference.
Q.
My husband tells me I should vote like he does. Is that true?
A.No. We vote privately in the US.
At least we do now, under democracy. Who knows what will happen if Trump gains control.
He'll probably appoint still more Supreme Court justices.
The ones he already appointed have
suggested they may want to roll back women's right to vote.
Q.
I hate all of this. What if I just “send a message” by staying home?
A.
Sitting it out does not send the message “I want another choice.”
It sends the message “I'm equally happy with either of these choices.”
Read the rest of this FAQ and then get yourself to the polls. You'll be glad you did.
Q.
I'm mad about Harris's Climate policies. Can I “send a message” by voting for Jill Stein?
Voting for Stein does not send the message “I want another choice,”
but instead sends the message “I'm equally happy with either of these choices.”
There are better times and ways to protest Climate policy.
The world will be very different under these two candidates. If you care about those differences, you need to vote.
Q.
But what about the
Gaza genocide?
Biden and Harris are still sending munitions.
A.
This is a real concern, but boycotting the election is the wrong way to solve it.
Whatever you think of Biden and Harris on Gaza policy,
Trump is much worse.
He wants to be best friends with Netanyahu, in part because
both of them see it important to stay in power to avoid prison.
My advice? Find another way to protest. But believe me, you want to be protesting
under Harris, who thinks that's a normal thing to do.
Trump wanted to shoot at protesters.
He does not like dissent, and especially when it's by or about people of color.
Q.
But, but—the border. And all those migrants.
A.
The border issue is a real issue, but very complicated.
In collaboration with the Biden/Harris administration,
Republican conservatives drafted a somewhat harsh policy
that nevertheless had bipartisan support and by all accounts would have passed.
But
Trump asked Republicans to kill it
because it doesn't matter to him to have that problem solved. He just wanted something to whine about,
and to blame on Biden.
Republicans did kill it, and Trump's the one that deserves the blame, not Biden.
Q.
But shouldn't I worry that Trump often says Harris is “low IQ”?
Project 2025 has
its own web page.
It's very detailed. 900+ pages. It's highly specific about the speed and scope of what it plans.
The goals it sets are scary enough, but the
highly undemocratic ways in which it proposes achieving those goals is scary in its own right.
Q.
This FAQ by
Kent Pitman
was kind of fun. Is there more stuff by Kent that I can read?
A.
So glad you enjoyed it. Yes, here are some election-related writings by Kent:
Numerous stories have suggested that his aids are hiding him.
Such a story in The Wrap quotes political commentator Tara Setmayer from an appearance on MSNBC's The ReidOut as saying,
“The more he’s out there, the more people are repelled by him,
and his advisers are smart enough to know that.”
The Mental Decline Scenario
Let's consider, just for a moment, the mental decline hypothesis.
We have two reasons to take this seriously.
One is that he accused Biden of it, and
he's long been accused of projection.
But the other is that there's a lot of evidence that his campaign
rallies are getting weirder and weirder,
to the point where Harris is straight out suggesting that people
watch
or attend
her opponent's rallies, just to see it for themselves.
Consider, for example, the recent town hall that
he turned into a “musical fest” playing
his Spotify favorites list
after declaring
“Let's not do any more questions, let's just listen to music. … Who the hell
wants to hear questions, right?“ Yeah, at a town hall. Why would anyone expect
questions there? Surely they just came to hear
Pavarotti sing Ave Maria.
Around the same time as this musical incident, a story ran on CBS News
saying that
“More than 230 doctors, nurses and health care professionals, most of whom are backing Vice President Kamala Harris, are calling on former President Donald Trump to release his medical records, arguing that he should be transparent about his health ’given his advancing age.’”
Of course, some will point to these being Harris supporters.
But if you were a doctor alarmed about the mental health of one of the candidates,
would you be still voting for him? So it's not clear that this statistic disqualifies those people.
And it's not helpful that there isn't transparency of his medical records,
which we've asked of other candidates and Presidents.
Prison Looms
But Trump is pending sentencing on the hush money case. And there are several other trials pending as well.
It doesn't reliably work his favor to drop out of his candicacy. And it really doesn't help Vance either,
because the GOP made the argument that if Biden dropped out, that invalidated the ticket.
They suggested Kamala had never won a Presidential primary. Vance has never won a Presidential primary either.
Both have been Senators.
But Kamala has been on a winning ticket in the general election, and Vance has not.
Would that sway GOP voters? Maybe not. OK, almost certainly not. But it's a bad look.
It might influence some independents.
It's pretty clear that Trump's path to steering clear of jail is to get elected, turn the US into a dicatorship,
and cancel anything that looks like a prosecution. And it's pretty clear that anyone else claiming to be a
GOP leader is really just a sycophant. They want the power of a Republican presidency at all costs, and this
is as close to “all costs” as one could really imagine.
It may cost us the survival of democracy, and perhaps the survival of the human species on planet earth.
But they want power that badly, so they're on board with what they hope is the Trump juggernaut.
After Election
If elected, he might serve 4 years and then gracefully step down.
The Constitution would not permit him to run again.
What are the chances he wouldn't try to overcome that?
He might live that long, but he's old enough that he could die of poor health during that time.
I wouldn't bet money on it, but I also wouldn't bet money against it. Who ever knows?
Reporters often mention that, behind the scenes, Republicans don't like or respect Trump.
It seeems they just won't go on the record about it.
Mitt Romney comments on this in his book.
In a recent biography of Mitch McConnell,
the book's author says the same of McConnell.
The common theme seems to be that they recognize Trump as their ticket to power.
A Second Trump Presidency
It's no secret I'm hoping sanity prevails and that Harris is elected.
But let's consider the case that Trump is.
Do the Republicans still need him?
My guess is that even they would see strong grounds to remove him, sooner or later.
Probably sooner, given that he toys with the idea of
dispensing with the Constitution.
After all, both the Impeachment Power
and the 25th Amendment
need the
Constitution to still be in play.
Here's the thing, though. There is no procedure for becoming a temporary dictator.
If he can pronounce himself a dictator on Day One, and get away with it, he can do it any day.
At that point we'd just be relying on him to use self-control on all other days.
Is that really something we can expect of him?
So let's take a moment to assess where we are, shall we?
It's day one. The President wants to be a dicator.
The same guy whose staff didn't think they could show him in public during the end of the election
for fear people would see he was, perhaps, faltering mentally.
At this point, the Constitution has a 25th Amendment.
But he's planning strong-arm tactics to make the Constitution
less effective.
Republicans want to have power, but is that even meaningful in what's to come in this scenario?
A few may imagine they'll have posts in a coming dictatorship, but I think
most haven't thought that far ahead. The power most of them seek
still relies on the Constitution.
After Trump's Presidency
But whether on Day One or some day soon after, I think its sufficiently possible that
the 25th
will get used that we dare not overlook that fact in considering the political consequences
of this election.
In plain terms, the ordinarily-rare issue that a Vice President might take over seem unusually possible.
In even plainer terms, we had better be seriously contemplating the significance of a President Vance.
For example, if Vance becomes Acting or Actual President, would the world return to normal?
I think not. I think it will just trade one source of dangers for another.
If you're thinking otherwise, perhaps you have missed a recent episode of
The Rachel Maddow Show (TRMS)
on MSNBC.
Lately she's only doing it Monday nights, but it's really essential viewing.
Set your DVR.
In this case, I'm referring to an episode where she said this of JD Vance
(and offered video to back up her claims):
«JD Vance says not only do conservatives need to, in his words,
“wake up” but what they need to wake up to
is the fact that most of American life and culture should be, in his words,
“ripped out like a tumor.”»
—Rachel Maddow
on The Rachel Maddow Show (Sep 30, 2024)
«When JD Vance says stuff like “we're in a late Republican period,”
which is something he says all the time,
he doesn't mean anything about the Republican Party,
he means we're at the time right before the Roman Republic collapsed.
And what happened after the Roman Republic collapsed?
Well—whoo!—a dictator, Caesar, came in—and wasn't that better?»
—Rachel Maddow
on The Rachel Maddow Show (Sep 30, 2024)
The piece makes a decent case that he's not only comfortable with,
but excited about, the idea of America having a dictator.
Watch it in its entirety. Outtakes here cannot do it justice.
It's well-researched and compellingly told. Typical Maddow.
«Mr. Vance … has connections to Project 2025 and its authors.
Vance wrote the foreword for a book by Kevin Roberts, who oversaw Project 2025.
“In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon,”
Mr. Vance wrote in the foreword for “Dawn’s Early Light,”
a forthcoming book by Kevin D. Roberts, the leader of the Heritage Foundation
and the man who oversaw Project 2025.
The book was set for publication in September,
but after Project 2025 drew national scrutiny,
that was postponed until after Election Day.»
It may also be worth a look at Timothy Snyder's book
On Tyranny.
This long nightmare has seemed to be about Trump.
With him lately ailing, maybe you thought it was over.
But if Vance takes over, and that seems likely if the election goes
“Trump's way,” this could just be
the start of something even worse.
My point here is that you can't say you didn't know.
You've been given Vance notice.
Author's Notes:
If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.
If you'd like to read or listen to this warning in Seuss-style poetry form, check out my recent epic poem
The Fraud Who Stole Freedom.
Also, although I count myself a political independent, not a Democrat,
while democracy is hanging in the balance, I'm voting all-blue. If
you're a US Citizen able to vote, I'm recommending the same for you.
Please not sit it out. Please do not vote for a third party.
Such actions leave the outcome to chance, which could
have dire consequences this time around. This is not a normal election.
For the sake of Democracy,
please vote Democrat in 2024.
![[Image of Senator JD Vance's official Senate photo overlaid onto a background containing some text excerpted from the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJJc630Xhx00k6mHkXOwd1qD-GcrbH31ON-zVFblM5ecjTHlE-l5x7imd6v8vRKAJiKC76EyLjeNSOUN-WFzKu6_2cFHT9BD9Lk2xX-S7LMryITiE9wd9bnB8O7wOlOt1h8n-911JxibwIqPk8rl3F9snobAgCDRcxx2v9U1N7bCYn3b2QvDMV_H-TvAM/s200/Vance25b-enhanced.jpg)
![[Image of Senator JD Vance's official Senate photo overlaid onto a background containing some text excerpted from the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJJc630Xhx00k6mHkXOwd1qD-GcrbH31ON-zVFblM5ecjTHlE-l5x7imd6v8vRKAJiKC76EyLjeNSOUN-WFzKu6_2cFHT9BD9Lk2xX-S7LMryITiE9wd9bnB8O7wOlOt1h8n-911JxibwIqPk8rl3F9snobAgCDRcxx2v9U1N7bCYn3b2QvDMV_H-TvAM/s600/Vance25b-enhanced.jpg)
