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Great posts, all. 51 million people saw that fiasco, not including our enemies, who are likely to destabilize as much of the world as they can until the U.S. gets a real leader…which doesn’t look likely until 2028.
I’m in the 25% that runs screaming from both candidates. The Repubs are tied to Trump, and it’s because he now has a compelling lead. The most accurate pollster in 2020 (AtlasIntel) has Trump leading Biden by 5.2%.
As you pointed out, shame on both Lady MacBiden and Biden’s staff. But let me point out…the Dems are a party that hasn’t drifted left, so much as rushed pell-mell to the left pole. Biden was the only electable candidate in 2020…none of the Dems could have beaten Trump, certainly not Kamala Harris (btw, it’s interesting that two Repub congressmen are calling on the Dems to invoke the 25th amendment…I suspect they think that five months of President Harris and/or candidate Harris would be a godsend.
Biden was a moderate Democrat. The party itself has been taken over by the Far Left. None of the candidates poll well against Trump. In the absence of death or (actual) incapacity of the two major candidates, I see only two ways we get a decent president:
- Biden steps down, and the Dems get a moderate. A recent article identified Gov. Shapiro of PA. He ran like a moderate, but he’s governing like a Progressive.
- Trump gets a really solid, really strong VP and abandons the boring task of running the government to that VP.
One minor good result…NATO countries are getting their act together. We’ve proven that you can’t count on America, that we’re on a long, downward slide.
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Legally speaking, Trump has an almost comical number of “outs” for his appeal, but that might not matter. The Supreme Court won’t get involved unless there are Constitutional or Federal issues, and there don’t appear to be, which means the New York State Appeals Court will be Trump’s last, best possibility. They’ve been friendly to Trump in the past (civil fraud case), and they do occasionally issue some bizarre rulings (Weinstein conviction overturned).
Strongest areas for appeal:
- Novel use of the state involved, involving untested legal theory, particularly since Feds turned it down. Basically had to conflate a misdemeanor with a felony, so possible errors allowing the DA to use a federal campaign finance law. Probably his best bet. This is the one area that the USSC might get involved.
- Instructions to the jury were bizarre. They required a unanimous verdict, but not the means used to accomplish it. Basically, the judge gave each juror the choice of three crimes, and they could individually choose which one made sense to them.
- Possibility that there might be issues involving Daniels; e.g., testimony by Daniels was unusually lenient and unduly prejudiced the 12 Democrat jurors against Trump.
- Was there enough evidence to convict?
There are other areas; e.g., timing of the trial, publicity,
Harvard law prof Alan Dershowitz had three interesting observations: first, that the jury was supposed to oversee the biased judge and prosecutor, and they didn’t so they got it completely wrong and rendered a verdict consistent with everyone’s political views. He thinks it was a predetermined outcome, claiming that the judge’s rulings and instructions allowed in prejudicial evidence. Said it was the weakest case he’d ever seen. He also noted that noted liar Cohen was the only one who testified to the crucial fact that Trump knew about it.
Second, that Judge Bragg didn’t want to bring this case and was politically pressured to bring it.
Third, that Dershowitz says it won’t be reversed on appeal. It has to go through the New York system and no New York judge will want to be responsible for overturning this decision.
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Ray Dalio thinks democracy will fail, that a strong middle between the polemicists will not emerge. He believes that Rs and Ds have irreconcilable differences, will run to the poles and will threaten the rule of law.
He wrote a book on this topic in 2020 and estimated a civil war’s odds at 1 in 3. Today, he thinks it’s more than 50% and that democracy could fail after the presidential election, no matter who wins.
https://time.com/6991271/civil-war-conflict-ray-dalio/
This is an excellent read, highly recommended. GR, he has an interesting take on class warfare intensifying.
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An French economist, Gabriel Zucman, has proposed a global tax on billionaires’ assets, starting at 2%.
There are 2,781 billionaires in the world. 813 in the USA, 473 in China and Hong Kong, 200 in India, 132 in Germany, 120 in
USSRRussia. Here’s the list. Let’s tax them all:List of countries by number of billionaires – Wikipedia
Janet Yellen says the U. S. won’t support it.
Biden has proposed a minimum income tax on all individual with more than $100 mms. in wealth. Biden’s tax would amount to a 2.8% minimum, as applied.
Three guesses as to which American university hosts Dr. Zucman. Hint: it is slightly West of Stanford.
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My cousin (Stanford, ’92) married the daughter of the man who owns the largest waste management concern in South Bay. I don’t know how rich he is, but he owns 70 automobiles…
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…and now her spokesperson, Francis Zamora, has resigned. When it rains, it pours.
Her former attorney is pulling no punches as to why he quit. Also notable is the fact that other city leaders haven’t stepped up to defend her (e.g., Oakland City Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas). Yeesh…
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The factory created grillbricks out of pumice stone. Pumice is a porous, igneous mineral that is still used as a cleaning material given its light abrasive nature. It was ideal (at the time) for cleaning commercial grills. Dad bought a similar company in San Jose and merged the two.
I think Huntsville is reasonable as well — NASA has a space facility there — I believe my FIL had been there a few times, he had multiple aeronautical engineering degrees from Stanford and was a materials science guru. I am certain that your FIL and other academics weren’t biased.
Again, Dad’s experiences were in the mid 1970s. I visited the South (Atlanta) for the first time in 1992, and I had some very unusual experiences with a racial tinge. But I was only in and out over the course of a long weekend.
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When a long-term McDonald’s shuts its door at your “upscale” shopping mall…not a good sign.
McDonald’s at SF’s Stonestown Galleria closing Sunday after more than 30 years, owner says (msn.com)
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When your attorney quits after the first press conference…not a good sign.
Oakland Mayor Thao’s attorney quits hours after first press conference since FBI raid (msn.com)
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I didn’t say anything was wrong with the Deep South. You know I’m talking about the mid-1970s, right? Can we agree that the typical Southerner might not see eye to eye with hippies/stoners/surfers/progressives?
To your point, northern cities are often segregated. Detroit was a highly segregated city. When Ford and the other automakers started paying high wages to blue collar workers, it started a mass migration from the South, black and white, and they brought prejudices with them, as did many of the Eastern Europeans who moved there. When I lived in midtown Detroit, I could go a week or two without seeing another Caucasian. Here’s proof:
Most to Least Segregated Cities | Othering & Belonging Institute (berkeley.edu)
In 1977, my dad bought a factory in Brentwood, TN; just south of Nashville. Dad was a lifelong Californian, played college basketball on an integrated team, had and has many non-Caucasian friends. We lived in an integrated neighborhood near downtown San Jose.
Dad had never been to the South before. He described the entire experience similar to your description…everyone was unfailingly polite, friendly and respectable, as you describe. He said the underlying current of racism creeped him out. His factory foreman, a Black man, picked him up at the airport and drove him back to his house for dinner. Very polite, very hospitable. Dad said they literally drove over the train tracks and it was clear they were in a different part of the town. Kids playing in the front yards stopped and stared at him with open mouths. Dad asked “what are they staring at?” His foreman said “they don’t see white people in this part of town. Ever.”
All that’s entertaining, but not as entertaining as the good ol’ boy from Huntsville who told me that, as a Catholic, I wasn’t a real Christian.
Good times…
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We’re in the crowding out private investment stage, without the historically high personal savings rates that are culturally engrained into the Japanese. The federal and state governments are looking to tax wealth / any form of savings that isn’t Social Security, looking to increase capital gains taxes, trying to discourage people from Roth IRAs, and basically waging war on private savings. At the same time, they are running up record levels of public debt. This is an economic poison pill, that the American people may be paying for decades.
I remember arguing with my Econ prof about this in 1983. His attitude was as long as we basically owed it to ourselves, it wouldn’t be a problem. He also said that overseas labor competition wouldn’t be a problem for American jobs…heh, heh, heh.
Well, he’s finally turning correct, as America reshores jobs, businesses and industries. Nice to see. Wherever will we get all the labor to populate these companies? Oh right…14 million undocumented immigrants.
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Apparently, the former chief of staff to the Mayor of Oakland is alleging pay-to-play schemes, and has made those allegations for the past 16 months.
Former chief of staff for Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao alleges pay-to-play schemes (msn.com)
They tried to discredit the whistleblower who blames Mayor Thao’s boyfriend as the scheme’s mastermind.
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General rule of thumb for me, is that if someone is screaming at you, they’ve already lost.
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The governor of Texas stated (understandably) that northern cities to which Texas had been transporting undocumented immigrants were having difficulty with an influx less than 5% of what Texas had faced.
The WSJ has an article on what happens when there is a significant influx of undocumented immigrants to suburbs and small towns. Even Utah, where the LDS has historically welcomed illegal aliens, has distributed an alert stating that there’s no shelter available and food banks are at capacity, and undocumented individuals should “consider another state to settle.” Herriman is a suburb of Salt Lake City, population about 60k. Foreign born population has increased ninefold to 5,300.
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/what-happens-when-migrants-arrive-in-americas-suburbs-8605cf6f
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In Moore vs. United States on Thursday, five of the Justices opened the door to a wealth tax.
Congress has created a mandatory repatriation tax (MRT). In 2017 tax reform, shareholders of American-controlled foreign corporations were required to pay a retained earnings tax in proportion to their ownership stake. The Moores were hit with a $14,279 tax bill ,though they derived no income.
The Moores argued that the 16th amendment didn’t authorize Congress to tax unrealized sums. Instead of finding for the Moores, five of the justices ducked the question and ruled that the MRT was constitutional (Roberts., Kavanaugh, Sotomayor, Jackson, Kagan)
In short, the opinion leaves the door open to taxing asset appreciation, including unrealized capital gains. Coney (who wrote the dissenting opinion), Thomas, Gorsuch and Alito expressly didn’t think so, but five justices did. BTW, the Ninth Circuit court stated that “realization of income is not a constitutional requirement (for taxation authorization)”, which the USSC majority opinion stated was erroneous.
Kavanaugh did warn that the due process clause proscribes arbitrary attribution of undistributed income to shareholders and wrote that his opinion doesn’t expressly authorize Congress to tax both an entity and shareholders.
Fine. But Progressives just had the wealth door opened.
Thoughts, GR?
Just in case you don’t have anything to do today, here’s the 83 page USSC opinion:
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