What’s Trump Doing? Is It Statist Capitalism, Maoist Socialism, or Mafia Style Extortion?
President Trump has gone rogue, defying GOP orthodoxy, leaving conservatives wondering what they have wrought. Where is this coming from?
taking a cutYou didn't get to build in New York City or New Jersey without dealing with the Mafia back in the years when Donald Trump started out by rehabbing the Commodore Hotel next to Grand Central and going on to build gambling casinos in Atlantic City. The amounts of money he is forcibly extracting from law firms, higher education, and now corporations, says that he learned a lot in those days.
The difference between then and now is scale. In his second term, Trump realized straightaway that, as capo dei capi sitting at the pinnacle of power in the White House, the numbers could be huge — far beyond what he saw change hands in the real estate world of decades ago.
As soon as he decided to run for the presidency ten years ago, the media was savvy enough to see Trump as transactional. You do something for me, I'll do something for you (maybe). You do something against me, I’ll do something to you (for certain).
He first went after law firms whose attorneys had been involved in investigating him or had represented clients in lawsuits against him. "Those law firms did bad things. They went after me for years".
In retaliation, Trump's executive orders stripped the security clearance of lawyers at such firms, denied entry to federal buildings, and barred government employees from having contact with the firms. As example, because Andrew Weissmann had been at Jenner & Block years before becoming lead prosecutor on the Mueller Russia probe, the whole firm was denied access to the U.S. government.
Fearful of losing clients who need access, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a major New York… Read More »
The Gerrymander War and Our Disintegrating Democracy
The redistricting battle started by Texas and countered by California threatens to become a contagion that will result in the most severely extreme gerrymandering in our history.
Despite the Democratic Party suffering the lowest approval ratings in its history and with Democratic voter registration seriously lagging, President Trump, fearing a loss in the 2026 mid-term elections, goaded Texas into starting this war with no concern that it's yet another step in the dissolution of democracy.
It doesn't stop with Texas. Redistricting is a stratagem to rig the 2026 mid-term elections, so Trump is now pressing Indiana to do as Texas has done. J.D. Vance was sent there to meet with state legislative leaders, and a delegation was invited to the White House for some arm-twisting this past Tuesday. There was pushback from some legislators fearful of future Democratic retaliation in kind, but they will be easily overcome. Political publication The Hill called even that mild resistance "a rare exception to most other GOP-led states much more enthusiastic about redistricting", such as Florida, Ohio, Missouri.
The race is on.
There's nothing new about this. Gerrymandering has been with us since the early 1800s, 
The original gerrymander, from the
Boston Gazette of 26 March 1812,
named after Governor Elbridge Gerry
for signing a bill that redistricted
Massachusetts to benefit his Democratic
party. It was thought to look
like a salamander. Hence, Gerrymander.
is manifestly undemocratic, the Supreme Court avoids dealing with it, and Congress leaves it to the states. For Trump, the grail is to obliterate the Democratic Party's representation in Congress.
It doesn't have to be this way. We could easily have a pure democracy if it weren't for the political parties' lust for power. We'll explain later.
illiberal artElection maps are drawn by state legislatures with the party in power deciding where the lines are drawn. Thus they exploit a self-serving process that… Read More »
Mike Luckovich - Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Comment?
Trump Says Give Him Numbers He Likes or You’re Out
A reporter asked President Trump, “Why did you fire the head of the bureau of labor statistics?” He answered, “Because I think her numbers were wrong”.
If you didn’t know already, now you know that the America you once knew is gone. It is now a dictatorship where the man we still call “president” must be served only with data that conforms to his vision that we are living in his “Golden Age”.
Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Dr. Erika McEntarfer was Senate-confirmed and is under a four-year contract. That is no impediment for a dictator.
expected job decline arrivesFriday’s jobs report dropped from preceding months to only 73,000 net new jobs created in July. Daniel Koh, who was chief of staff at the Labor Department during President Biden’s tenure, knows how labor statistics come to be:
”There are thousands of people who put together this report every month from hundreds of thousands of input data."
But Trump, utterly ignorant of the ebb and flow of millions of jobs across the nation, thinks the data are wrong because they don’t fit his imaginary reality. He tweeted:
”In my opinion, today's job numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.“
Business and government need reliable data to make decisions. The monthly job number, eagerly awaited by the financial markets on the first Friday of every month, is one of the key economic indicators tracked by government agencies. Because the job numbers from… Read More »
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the founding
Our Constitution In Tatters
Those who think the Constitution is the bedrock of our democracy were aghast when this week the Supreme Court decided there is nothing wrong with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents practicing racial profiling, seizing anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job, and detaining them for deportation.
It is yet another instance of either government or the Court chipping away at the grand old document, so we thought to take a look at some of the other provisions that have been ignored or transgressed, beginning with this week's:
Racial profiling has been the practice from the beginning of Stephen Miller's demand that ICE round up 3,000 people a day in a campaign that discards any claim that the Trump administration is only going after "the worst of the worst". The agency has shown profiling in Los Angeles by targeting businesses where Latins find jobs — hair salons, lawn care, car washes; at Home Depot parking lots where they gather mornings to find day labor jobs; and most cynically snatching at courthouses people who had come to fulfill their legal obligation to attend immigration proceedings. The Supreme Court seems not to have…
Read More »
Those who think the Constitution is the bedrock of our democracy were aghast when this week the Supreme Court decided there is nothing wrong with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents practicing racial profiling, seizing anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job, and detaining them for deportation.
It is yet another instance of either government or the Court chipping away at the grand old document, so we thought to take a look at some of the other provisions that have been ignored or transgressed, beginning with this week's:
Racial profiling has been the practice from the beginning of Stephen Miller's demand that ICE round up 3,000 people a day in a campaign that discards any claim that the Trump administration is only going after "the worst of the worst". The agency has shown profiling in Los Angeles by targeting businesses where Latins find jobs — hair salons, lawn care, car washes; at Home Depot parking lots where they gather mornings to find day labor jobs; and most cynically snatching at courthouses people who had come to fulfill their legal obligation to attend immigration proceedings. The Supreme Court seems not to have… Read More »
technology
A.I.’s Believers Don’t Want to Know About Trouble Ahead
Is A.I. hallucinating about its future?
Artificial intelligence promises to diagnose baffling illnesses, design new drugs, solve mathematical conundra, and unravel a long list of puzzlements that have proven difficult for humans to fathom.
The savants of Silicon Valley take these promises a good deal further. They speak of bringing humanity into a new age of enlightenment, seeming to revel in their god-like intentions to create a superintelligence destined to make humans obsolete. 
Formerly a cornfield, Amazon's data center for A.I. at New Carlisle, Indiana.
not hiringSam Altman, the most prominent voice of the A.I. universe and CEO of OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, has written that a next step, artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., will usher in “massive prosperity”.
But Altman also writes that the superintelligence that "humanity is close to building” will lead to "whole classes of jobs going away". Silicon Valley barges ahead nonetheless, making A.I. ever more powerful, unconcerned that their endeavors are likely to put millions out of work.
A.I. is already killing the entry-level job. "The unemployment rate for degree holders ages 22 to 27 hit 5.8% this spring", reports Bloomberg Businessweek. For computer engineering majors, the unemployment rate is now 7.5%. Companies are “going to need less and less people at the bottom”, said one CEO, a grim outlook for new college graduates. One said, possibly not kidding, it's harder "to land an entry-level role at one of the big banks than it is to get into Harvard University". One tech company completely stopped hiring any engineers below a mid-level position "because lower-level tasks could now be done by A.I." Newly graduated economists, normally enjoying 100% job prospects, are now having trouble finding positions as A.I. affects the market for even…
Read More »
Artificial intelligence promises to diagnose baffling illnesses, design new drugs, solve mathematical conundra, and unravel a long list of puzzlements that have proven difficult for humans to fathom.
The savants of Silicon Valley take these promises a good deal further. They speak of bringing humanity into a new age of enlightenment, seeming to revel in their god-like intentions to create a superintelligence destined to make humans obsolete.
Formerly a cornfield, Amazon's data center for A.I. at New Carlisle, Indiana.
not hiringSam Altman, the most prominent voice of the A.I. universe and CEO of OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, has written that a next step, artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., will usher in “massive prosperity”.
But Altman also writes that the superintelligence that "humanity is close to building” will lead to "whole classes of jobs going away". Silicon Valley barges ahead nonetheless, making A.I. ever more powerful, unconcerned that their endeavors are likely to put millions out of work.
A.I. is already killing the entry-level job. "The unemployment rate for degree holders ages 22 to 27 hit 5.8% this spring", reports Bloomberg Businessweek. For computer engineering majors, the unemployment rate is now 7.5%. Companies are “going to need less and less people at the bottom”, said one CEO, a grim outlook for new college graduates. One said, possibly not kidding, it's harder "to land an entry-level role at one of the big banks than it is to get into Harvard University". One tech company completely stopped hiring any engineers below a mid-level position "because lower-level tasks could now be done by A.I." Newly graduated economists, normally enjoying 100% job prospects, are now having trouble finding positions as A.I. affects the market for even… Read More »
the economy
Will Trump Have to Refund the Tariffs?
His tariffs have settled in against 90 countries, the latest inflation report shows only a modest uptick, he insists, but a looming appellate court case nonetheless has President Trump throwing fits.
In May, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade (USCIT) in New York unanimously ruled that Trump went beyond his authority by implementing his vast menu of imposts. Tariffs are the prerogative of Congress is their point, and this special court is the expert on trade law. (The three judges were appointed by Reagan, Obama, and Trump.)
Qingdao, China.
As he has done repeatedly, such as justifying sending U.S. troops into Los Angeles, Trump declared an emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to gave himself the right to set tariffs in place of Congress. But the trade court said tariffs are dissociated from halting the emergency of fentanyl entering the country. The court wrote,
"A tax deals with a budget deficit by raising revenue. A dam deals with flooding by holding back a river. But there is no such association between the act of imposing a tariff and the ‘unusual and extraordinary threat[s]’ that the Trafficking Orders purport to combat."
What if the appeals court also decides that the tariffs are illegal? Wouldn’t the Trump administration be required to refund all the tariffs collected to date?
The federal appeals court set dates in early June to hear from attorneys on both sides, but Trump’s lawyers have just sent a letter to the court which shows that a desperate loonyness has taken hold:
”If the United States were forced to pay back the trillions of dollars committed to us, America could go from strength to…
Read More »
His tariffs have settled in against 90 countries, the latest inflation report shows only a modest uptick, he insists, but a looming appellate court case nonetheless has President Trump throwing fits.
In May, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade (USCIT) in New York unanimously ruled that Trump went beyond his authority by implementing his vast menu of imposts. Tariffs are the prerogative of Congress is their point, and this special court is the expert on trade law. (The three judges were appointed by Reagan, Obama, and Trump.)
Qingdao, China.
As he has done repeatedly, such as justifying sending U.S. troops into Los Angeles, Trump declared an emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to gave himself the right to set tariffs in place of Congress. But the trade court said tariffs are dissociated from halting the emergency of fentanyl entering the country. The court wrote,
"A tax deals with a budget deficit by raising revenue. A dam deals with flooding by holding back a river. But there is no such association between the act of imposing a tariff and the ‘unusual and extraordinary threat[s]’ that the Trafficking Orders purport to combat."
What if the appeals court also decides that the tariffs are illegal? Wouldn’t the Trump administration be required to refund all the tariffs collected to date?
The federal appeals court set dates in early June to hear from attorneys on both sides, but Trump’s lawyers have just sent a letter to the court which shows that a desperate loonyness has taken hold:
”If the United States were forced to pay back the trillions of dollars committed to us, America could go from strength to… Read More »