Games Billionaires Play

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 fraudster always 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.”

  —Everett Dirksen

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.

 

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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:

• Credit Cards: A Tax on “Being Poor”
  Why credit cards are a “private tax,” and thus double-taxation.
• Enough
  Why rich people have no business talking about the pain of taxation.
• Losing the War in a Quiet Room
  History and comparison of shareholder and stakeholder capitalism.

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.

Election 2024 FAQ

Q. Who should I vote for?

A. Kamala Harris.

Q. But what about Trump?

A. The guy with 34 felony convictions and several court cases pending?

The guy who says he'll be a dictator on day one? He says only day one. Give some thought to how much you trust his impulse control.

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?

A. Rachel Maddow spent a segment calling his bluff on all of this. This shouldn't be a great surprise. Trump was convicted in of fraud in New York civil court, and ordered to pay $355 million dollars. It is not a stretch to think he might commit fraud in other situations. Trump's niece, Mary Trump, has a lot to say about his lying.

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.

Also, it's been widely reported that businesses are readying to raise prices in anticipation of Trump's tariffs.

Q. But isn't Trump a business guy? He says he'll hire “only the best people”.

A. Many of those same people warn strongly against electing him.

Q. This is upsetting. If that's true, what about his January 6 “lovefest”? Surely you're not saying that was a fiction.

A. Several people lost their lives at Trump's so-called “lovefest” that day. Pence barely made it to safety as crowds chanted “Hang Mike Pence”. The House investigated and confirmed the seriousness of these actions, calling Republican witnesses, many of them Trump staffers, to build their case.

Q. Trump says he'll be a protector of women—

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.

But he also appointed Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and bragged about it. During the 2016 campaign period, MSNBC's Chris Matthews got Trump to say “there has to be some form of punishment” for a woman getting an abortion.

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?

A. Only Trump or Harris will be elected. Stein doesn't have any hope at all of being elected. So the message you send will be at a steep price because Harris has by far a more Climate-friendly record and platform than Trump. Trump does not think that “science knows” if Climate Change is real. (Spoiler Warning: Science knows.)

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.

There is good reason to think that protest votes for Jill Stein may have tipped the 2016 election to Trump. If you care about Climate and would be otherwise voting for Harris, there are other ways to protest than to throw the election to Trump.

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”?

A. I'm going to bite my tongue and not ask if you seriously think Trump is “high IQ.” Let's instead just jump straight to the heart of the matter: Calling someone “low IQ” is just a pattern behavior he has for how to talk about people who are black or female. He obviously hopes that, through force of repetition, you'll eventually associate certain attributes with certain people or certain demographics. Of course, he offers no evidence. And anyway, polls suggest she unambiguously beat him at the debate.

Q. It's only for four years, though, right?

A. That's how it used to be. But staying in office keeps him out of prison.. Liz Cheney has credibly suggested that if Trump is given power again, he will not yield it voluntarily.

Q. Maybe Vance will take over. That will fix things, right? He seems more sane.

A. Vance seems comfortable with the US following Rome's pattern, turning from a Republic to an Empire (in effect, giving up our democracy for a dictatorship). He appears to see Project 2025 as the implementation mechanism.

Q. Is there a place I can learn more about Project 2025? Are you sure it's associated with Trump?

A. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 because he knows it's a source of concern. However, many connections between Trump, Vance and Project 2025 have been documented.

There are several places you might want to consider to find out about Project 2025:

• Democracy Forward has created a user-friendly way to browse its serious dangers: The People's Guide to Project 2025.

• A band of graphic artists—some named, some anonymous—has brilliantly put the issue into graphic novel (comic book) form. This is a “must see.”

• The Center for American Progress (CAP) offers a useful explainer piece, The Dangers of Project 2025: Global Lessons in Authoritarianism, that puts Project 2025 into perpective by showing how it will “threaten American democracy by mirroring authoritarian tactics seen in Hungary, Turkey, and beyond.”
• The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has an article, Project 2025, Explained, that summarizes what they see as key dangers in Project 2025, and what Trump's connection is to it.

• 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:

• Common Ground on Reproductive Health (on Liz Cheney's fresh outlook)
• Emperor's Wardrobe Day (about those who've been silent)
• The Fraud Who Stole Freedom (an epic poem, with audio)
• Vance Notice (about the danger Vance poses)
• Political Terraforming (why they're limiting rights)
• A to-do list for repairing US democracy (some helpful suggestions)
• American Dictatorship (thoughts on a possible loss of democracy)
• The Pace of Political Evil (what we come to see is normal)
• Conspiring to Contest Key Elections (it won't just be about votes)
• Stayers and Steppers (my advice to Biden to step back, let Harris run)
• Supreme Challenge (urging Biden to use power SCOTUS gave him)

Don't forget to check for other posts that may follow the post you're reading.

Capitalism's Dominion

I've seen a lot of news reports explaining why even though the Dominion law suit was settled out of court, we in the public should still see this as a victory.

I just want to say this is bunk.

The problem here is one of reductionism, by which I mean taking a hard problem that's hard to think about and reducing it to some other proxy problem that appears to represent the original problem so that the problem is easier to think about. This is a common and sometimes defensible practice, but one must always double-check when solutions start to arise in the proxy space that the original problem is being solved.

Just as an example, we hear proposals to address carbon in the atmosphere by taxation. This is because people think that taxation will create economic pressure to spend in ways that will fix the problem. But if you look at how the rich do their taxes, they mostly do not in fact spend in ways taxation is trying to make them. Rather, they invest in accountants who find loopholes, or they invest in regulatory capture to create loopholes. And then they smugly claim they did their part on the original problem, when they didn't.

Too often in recent years, media has gotten to the place where we have serious societal problems for which they have on-hand experts they can call in when something happens. When something happens for the first time, sometimes it's good to call in an expert to hear how they think about it. But finding a way to understand technical detail is not always a substitute for good journalism. If one becomes too practiced at calling up an expert on speed dial, one stops asking the question "What really happened?" and "What does the public need to know?"

Because here's the thing: What the Dominion settlement really exposes is the stranglehold capitalism exerts on society by insisting on reducing civil disputes to money. While clearly Dominion suffered enumerable economic harm, just as clearly the real damage was non-monetary, to our democracy, our society, and civilization. And none of the news outlets are saying that. They're so focused on how we have experts in law that they aren't focused on the question of whether our system of law is serving us at all in this case. It simply is not. It may serve Dominion. They may take home quite a payday. But that is not why this was a big story. And the big media places have lost this point.

We as a society have no standing to sue. We hoped in vain this would proxy for us, yielding results as non-monetary as the damage. Of course that was fantasy. But it explains the crushing sadness many of us feel. Pundits too practiced with procedural expertise keep missing this.

We as a public are sad, but this sadness is not a failure to understand process, so stop trying to tell us what a historic win this is. The public understands acutely that even a historic win is not helping them. This was not a success for society no matter what career policy wonks say. Ordinary folk know.

What we as a society need is a recognition that there is both process due and none to be had. We need to be allowed to express our pain. That pain needs to be acknowledged. If you want to call in experts, call in grief counsellors or experts in how to change government because from where we sit, the problem is that only the rich can change government, and that's why we are in collective pain.

Not only will it be busines as usual for Fox, but they will write off a big piece of their payment as a tax deduction (meaning the public will pay for some of this), and the rest will be passed along as costs to subscribers (which means viewers will pay more). Some will tell us that increased costs to viewers will hurt Fox and that this will ultimately do well. But meanwhile they will go on lying and issuing propaganda in exactly the way they did, and the real, non-monetary damages will continue to mount without recourse.

Prosecuting Political Fraud

There are lots of things democracy can't survive, not all of them enumerated as illegal. Some used to be protected by just shame. But Donald Trump has shown evil politicians everywhere that shame can be shrugged off, and this has emboldened a new crop of worse evil.

That George Santos could lie freely and still be elected is a direct consequence of the shift Trump created. It cannot be allowed to stand, to be normal.

Democracy requires more than just voting. It requires information. If you have a right to vote, but you don't have a right to know what's true, then you won't be voting in ways that react to the past and plan for the future. You'll just be playing Russian roulette.

So what's to be done? Do we have a law against politicians lying? No, not exactly. But these guys are selling their services to us. And let's just say it. It's not pretty, but it's true. Politics is a business. People profit from it. I wish it were not so, but let's at least apply the laws that apply to commerce.

George Santos profited by selling the public something that wasn't what it seemed. It'd be nice if we had a law against politicians lying to us to get into office, but let's just charge him with commercial fraud.

And let's not hear that this is a radical proposal. I'm tired of hearing radical thrown in to dampen common sense action. What's radical is that he did what he did. The response I'm proposing is “merely proportionate.”

I see prosecutors delaying where I think no delay should be needed. I guess they want to make sure they've gotten all their ducks in a row, but taking more than just a few minutes to do that sends the message that this is somehow more complicated than it is, that there are hidden factors that might excuse him. There are no such factors.

It is simply bad when someone lies to get into office. (The Supreme Court would tell us this if more than one of them had not lied to get appointed. Alas.)

Santos sold voters snake oil to get a job he didn't merit. If left to stand, it makes a mockery of democratic process. We must address this and soon before it becomes the norm.

Every bit of delay suggests there is some other rational point of view, in which he should be allowed to lie to get into office, in which we should have no recourse if someone successfully tricks us into letting them into office on false pretenses.

We must not accept that. It must not be the case that someone can lie to get into office. It must not be the case that if someone is found to have lied to get in, we no longer have recourse.

This is not complicated. He cheated. There is law that makes sense to apply.
Prosecute him. Now.

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Author‘s Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “share” it.