Tag: donald-trump

America’s New National Security Strategy:  Let the War Dogs Loose.

Welcome to the New Year, I guess . . . . .

During New Year’s Day lunch with family the topic of predictions for 2026 arose.  Predictions ranged from Democrats winning the mid-terms, to Trump being removed from office for health reasons, to Ukraine falling to Russia.  I posited it will be a year of war, pointing to our country’s new national security strategy, particularly the part about the Western Hemisphere.

Little did we know two days later the United States would attack Venezuela, seize its President and his wife and transport them to Brooklyn, New York, to face drug trafficking charges (juxtapose that with Trump’s pardon of Honduras’s ex- president for drug trafficking) and declaring that America would “run” Venezuela, with a focus on its oil resources.  

Expect more such military strikes and attacks in the months leading up to the mid-terms.  This attack was predictable and conforms to the new national security strategy published this past November.  It is a roadmap to war in the Western Hemisphere, even global war.

In a section of the strategy paper invoking the Monroe Doctrine, — which coined a new term “The Trump Corollary” —  two new strategic dogmas for dominating the Western Hemisphere, ‘Enlist’ and ‘Expand,’  were fleshed out.  Our national security policy strategy is clear in the Western Hemisphere:  America will use force to seize and control assets it deems vital and strategic to America’s national interest …… if countries don’t kindly ‘enlist’ in our cause.  

Pointedly, the new strategy targets the very things we, America, paradoxically created through our own past racist policies of empire and exploitation.  America’s new hemispheric strategy of domination and control contains a measure of stick and carrot, ostensibly calling for willing partners, but like most domestic abusers, ready with a big stick or worse.  

It says, in part, “After years of neglect the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.  We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.  The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”  This includes further down the paper, “establishing or expanding access in strategically important locations,” as one of four pillars of this new robust Monroe Doctrine version 2.0.  

The call to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, a relic of late 18th century and early 19th century empire, says much about the mindset of the Trump administration.  A strategy stuck in an anachronistic mentality of empire, great powers, and white supremacy.  It does not bode well for America.  

This ostensibly back to the future strategy fails to recognize the complexities of today’s world.  Much less acknowledge that the days of empire and colonialism died in the early to mid-20th century, first in the fields of Flanders and then in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.   It is a mindboggling strategy that will be ruinous.

Are we really going to return to the days of a Darwinian global nation-state race to empire and war?  

One can read “control strategically vital assets” as Venezuelan oil reserves, Panama’s canal, and the minerals in Greenland or the arctic.  I think Greenland and the Panama Canal are Trump’s next military objectives, followed by Cuba, and then eventually seizing parts of the Arctic under Canadian sovereignty.    

Seizing Greenland, an autonomous region under Danish sovereignty, would provoke a broader war. Denmark is a member of NATO, and an attack on Denmark would be an attack on all members of NATO.  No doubt Denmark would invoke Article 5 of the treaty, which would oblige all 31 members (really 32 if you include the US), to come to Denmark’s aid militarily. Ditto if Trump attempts to seize parts of Canada that he deems of strategic, vital interest.  The potential is a catastrophic war with Europe and Canada, global isolation, the loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and devastating collapse of US exports to the world.

Strangely, for a purportedly modern, 21st century security strategy, the strategy paper reads, in part, like a white Christian nationalist cultural manifesto.  Akin to the “white man’s burden” of late 19th century empire.  In a section titled ‘What America Wants,’ it calls for the “restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health, without which long-term security is impossible. We want an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes, and that looks forward to a new golden age.” It laments Europe losing its whiteness and thereby, its culture.  The Right wing’s racist conspiracy ‘Replacement Theory’ has become a corner stone of our national security strategy.

This new security strategy is a dangerous call to return American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, as part of a broader division of the world into global ‘spheres of influence,’ presumably he big three being China, Russia, and the United States.  Yes, Russia because Russia is, for Trump, a fellow traveler, an archetype of white male Christian patriarchy and nationalism.  

The past age of empire ended with two world wars.  The historical impacts of these European colonial empires are the root causes of today’s wars, tensions, and conflicts in the Middle East, South Asia between Pakistan and India, Sudan’s civil war, and other places too numerous to list.  Mass migrations to Europe are a result of these colonial conditions that persist to this day. 

America’s empire building and meddling in the Americas contributes directly to mass migration to our southern border.  Decades of America’s heavy hand, coups, regime change, looting and expropriation of natural resources by American corporations, encouragement of assassinations and death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s resulted in weak, corrupt states, an absence of civil society, the strangling of the rule of law, oligarchy, endemic  poverty, and the rise of the Narco-state.  

Haiti was a particular country of scorn and hate by America (and France) over generations as the result of its successful slave revolt that the rid the country of French rule.  The South’s slave society feared the example set by black Haitians fight for freedom would spread to their slaves.  Haiti would be punished and looted for well over a century by both France and the United States.  Haiti’s failed state status is on us, yet Trump and the right vilify them as pet eaters, as savages.  Who’s the real ‘savage’ in this story?  

Pointedly, the new strategy targets the very things we, America, created through our racist policies of empire and exploitation.  America’s new hemispheric strategy of domination and control contains a measure of stick and carrot, ostensibly calling for willing partners, but like most domestic abusers, ready with a big stick or worse.  

Not only will this new national security strategy destabilize the Western Hemisphere, but it will also provoke land grabs by China and Russia, promote authoritarian rule, engender economic chaos, fracture long standing alliances beneficial to America, and reduce America to a pariah state.  Trump has unleashed war as his domestic policies flounder.

For a president that promised America first, an end to forever wars, an end to military adventures in regime change and nation building, we seem to be heading in the opposite direction.  He is letting loose the war dogs, not caging them. Americans will suffer and die along with those we murder in the name of Trump. Rise up America before it is too late.

Usufruct

No, not a misspelling, and no, it has nothing to do with high fructose corn syrup or inedible holiday Fruit Cake.  I came across this word almost three decades ago when reading Peter Onuff’s Jeffersonian Legacies, an edited compilation of essays following a scholarly conference celebrating Thomas Jefferson’s 250th birthday.  

Herbert Sloan’s essay “The Earth Belongs in Usufruct to the Living,” deconstructs Jefferson’s September 1789 letter to James Madison.  Usufruct, basically as Jefferson knew the word, was the right to use something during one’s lifetime, like land or other property, but not destroy the value of the property through misuse, or, in in some instances, generating debts that are worth more than the property.  

He expresses his concerns in the letter whether one generation can “bind” the next generation to its debts. He thinks this issue has not been thoroughly thought through as the new Constitution comes into effect, at least metaphysically. Jefferson wrote, “[T]he earth belongs in usufruct to the living, that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.  The portion occupied by an individual cease to be his when himself ceases to be. & reverts the society.”  That is, when a generation dies off, so too should its debts. Those debts are more than pecuniary, he implied.

He expands on this theme throughout the letter, thinking aloud, and through his own arithmetic of averages of life expectancies, argued to Madison that a constitution, and laws the emanate from it, should expire after 19 years.  An average, he surmised when one generation succeeds another.   Every generation, he argued should be able to make its own laws and government, and I would surmise, even remake the social contract.  Basically, new generations should not be bound or governed by outdated laws or drown in the debts contracted by a generation long dead.  He was particularly concerned with debt.  Yet ironically, he died a debtor.

He gave one example of how the new Constitution, ratified and placed into effect in 1789, addressed this issue of government debt.   The Constitution gave congress the enumerated right to wage war, vice the chief executive:  “We have already given in example one effectual check to the Dog of war, by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body, from those who are to spend to those who are to pay.”  

We, as a nation, squandered that gift of restricting a King — or a President — from declaring or making war.  Congress handed back the ability to wage war beyond our borders to the President with the War Powers Resolution Act of 1973 (ironically an act designed to limit executive powers).  This limited power to wage war by the Executive was dramatically expanded in 2001, after Congress gave the President power to wage war against terrorism, in the so-called global war on terrorism.  But I don’t want to write about Trump’s march to war against Venezuela using those 2001 powers, or his new Monroe Doctrine of imperialism to dominate the Western Hemisphere through force of arms, but to a real existential threat to our country: anthropogenic climate change.

For generations, fiscal conservatives have used a version of Jefferson’s usufruct principle to argue against a growing national debt.  They contended that future generations should not be burdened by huge debts, which sap economic growth and weight workers with heavy taxes.  At least that was their argument, until it wasn’t.  When it comes to saddling the next generations with huge climate debts that must be paid as mother nature demands it, conservatives are not only mute about this principle of usufruct, but chant along with Trump, “drill baby drill.’  

This Administration’s policy of increasing fossil fuel consumption, destroying renewable energy initiatives, undermining electric vehicles, and hobbling renewable energy manufacturing and infrastructure — so that Trump and wealthy elites can profit and live in splendor — at the expense of unborn generations, is astounding.  It is immoral and criminal to condemn unborn children to a dystopian world of climate disaster by a bunch of fat old white men who will be soon moldering in their own graves.   

Jefferson was right.  A generation — our’s in particular — has an obligation to be good stewards of America’s natural resources and bounty so that future generations are not bound by destructive practices that degrade and pollute our water, our air, our food, and our climate out of greed and ignorance. 

The baby boomers had a chance after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, but like the war powers fiasco, we squandered our chances long ago to do right by Mother Nature and future generations.  Shame, shame on us.  The next generations have no obligation to forgive us, nor should they.  Sorry Gen Z and the Millennials, we royally screwed you by binding you to a no-win situation regarding climate change.  Mother Nature is not as forgiving as an accountant in the Congressional Budget Office.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Yes, even in these trying times one must have hope. I will be taking a break over the holidays so see you in the new year. Thanks.

   

AP News Release: Christmas Close to Cancellation

Yes, Virginia, Christmas could be cancelled this year.  

The AP, that is the Arctic Press News Service, is reporting that Santa Claus may have to cancel Christmas in America this year. According to elf sources within Santa’s North Pole secretive Headquarters, the office responsible for obtaining all of Santa’s travel visas to enter countries around the world has yet to obtain a U.S. entry Visa. 

Delays mount as Mr. Claus, according to one elfian source, must submit decades worth of social media posts. Santa’s repeated travels to such shit hole countries such as Somalia, Nigeria, and South Africa have also raised suspicions by terrorism experts Moe, Larry, and Curly at Homeland Security’s Office of North Pole Counter Terrorism (ONPCT) along with his use of multiple aliases, according to the same source.  

Although, the Department of State’s press office said if Santa was travelling to see Afrikaners in South Africa, that was acceptable.  They also denied Trump demanded Santa buy $10 million in Trump family bitcoin memes before being issued a visa.  

Those familiar with negotiations between Santa and the Department of State, report that the Secretary is demanding that only American children receive gifts, and children born to non-U.S. parents must not receive presents; that Santa must provide a list of the immigration status of all children that receive presents as proof. Santa continues to refuse these demands, it is said.

Moreover, The Secretary apparently ordered his staff to check Santa’s social media posts twice, and said, it is reported, that he won’t let a ‘woke’ Santa Claus travel to the United States or its territories.

Further mudding Santa’s travel plans to America; the Secretary of Homeland Security is reported to have formed an anti-Santa ICE task force group in what has been dubbed ‘Operation Clear and Present Danger,’ according to transcripts of a leaked cabinet meeting video.   The Secretary adding, that ‘if that red suited red baiting groomer of young children lands’ in America he’s going to end up being deported to an El Salvadoran prison.  “No Habeas Corpus for that woke Mother F*#@r.’

Additionally, the Secretary of War, per a leaked Signal Chat, declared during a situation room meeting after ordering new death squad strikes on more Venezuelans, that ‘if that Tre de Aragua terrorist Santa crossed into Venezuelan airspace he will be ‘swimming with the fishes’ and any surviving reindeer ‘would be hit with a second strike.’  A short video attached to the leaked Signal chat appeared to show a ‘Franklin the Turtle’ coloring book next to the Secretary, who doodled with crayons while an admiral briefed in the background.

Furthermore, in a deleted segment of a recent 60-minutes interview obtained by the AP, Trump is reported to have said that he isn’t on Santa’s List, and that he never knew Santa or travelled to the North Pole on his sleigh or engaged in inappropriate relationships with underage elf.  

Trump even indicated his desire to annex the North Pole, saying, ‘they love me there, they really do.’  ‘I am really popular among the Elves,’ adding, ‘I would have been elected Santa Clause but the election was stolen by dirty, sleepy, fatso Kris Kringle.’  ‘His wife’s nice,’ he continued, ‘but not my type.’ ‘Once she said I was a sore loser, it told her quiet, quiet piggy.’  He even teased renaming the North Pole, Trumplandia and changing Christmas to Trumpmas.

To complicate things even more, Trump secretly imposed a 2000 percent tariff on all presents brought into America manufactured in North Pole workshops, per a leaked confidential White House decision paper last spring.  Santa’s Office of Legal Counsel — the Office of Legal Clause — filed suit – in a rare writ of dies natalis Christi — challenging what it termed punitive and ‘illegal tariffs’ in June, but the Supreme Court, in a shadow docket ruling issued at three this morning sided with Trump, overturning an appeals court ruling to stay the tariffs until December 26.

Merry Christmas America.

“I Believe Him”

Today, America’s national security policy, as it pertains to international relationships, is more akin to looking for a gas leak with lighted matches than serious deliberations.  That makes the world a more dangerous place and Americans less safe.

The Washington Post in a recent article claimed that Secretary of Defense Hegseth ordered a second strike on a destroyed boat to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage.  The extra judicial murder of alleged drug smugglers is a crime in its own right; the murder of two survivors is particularly heinous.

These murders threatens our intelligence network as key partner allies back away from sharing intelligence.. Hegseth denies giving such orders and now claims an Admiral directed the second strike.  Trump says, “I believe him.”  This is a Trump pattern.

Trump, and therefore America, has an “I believe him” problem.

Trump brags about killing alleged drug smugglers one minute and then post on social media that he will pardon the ex-president of Honduras, who is serving 45 years in a federal prison for, well, drug smuggling, claiming he got a bad deal. Another example of I believe him syndrome.

 The ex-Honduran president during his term turned Honduras into a narco-state, one step worse than the kleptocracy it has been for decades. Following his term in office in 2022, Hernandez was indicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges, following a long investigation by Trump’s Justice Department during his first term.  

Honduras is a major drug transshipment country, accounting, with some estimates, for between 75 and 90 percent of all cocaine that reaches the U.S.  Less than 2 or 3 percent of all US bound drugs come through Venezuela, yet 10 percent of our entire Navy is in the Caribbean murdering alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers. That means more drugs in America not less.

In his first term Trump famously threw the whole of American intelligence under the bus, when he stated at a joint press conference with Putin in Finland, that he believed Putin’s denials of interfering in the 2016 election over the national intelligence assessment that he did. 

A few weeks ago, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto head of state for Saudi Arabia, was feted with a State Dinner at the White House.  The Crown Prince was persona not grata since 2018 after the murder of American permanent resident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi.  If you don’t recall, Kashoggi was lured to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, where he was drugged, murdered, and dismembered by a Saudi government hit team in the Consulate.  His body disappeared.  Our intelligence service determined that the murder was orchestrated by the Crown Prince. 

At a White House press event earlier in the day, the Crown Prince was asked about the Kashoggi murder by an reported from ABC.  After calling ABC fake news, Trump responded that ‘a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman [Kashoggi] ‘’, adding, “whether you like him or not, things happen.’  Trump followed up by defending the Crown Prince, stating that the Crown Prince denies any involvement in the killing, and “we can leave it at that.”  Another ‘I believe the man’ moment.  Trump also denied profiting personally from his Saudi connections. A $63 billion real estate deal with a firm connected to the Royal family says otherwise.

Never in my three decades experience in the foreign service arena has American national security and foreign policy been so chaotic, disjointed, lawless, undisciplined, and shortsighted.  From illegal tariffs, extrajudicial killings, interfering in elections, defending murders of dissidents, propping up authoritarian regimes, destabilizing alliances, breaking treaties and agreements, suspect travel bans, and massive curtailment of humanitarian aid, this administration has made America a pariah. Hero to zero in 200 days.

This all makes Americans less safe, domestically and abroad.  It also impacts Americans in other facets of our daily lives: American exports become less attractive; Americans pay higher prices and import taxes; more illegal drugs not less, America’s rural health care deteriorates further as foreign born and trained doctors and nurses, who make up a large share rural American health care provider, stay away;  America loses the talent wars as scientists and researchers shun work in America and head to other countries. These are not America first policies, but America last policies.  And when Trump says, “I believe him,” don’t. Look for the grift and the greed.

The Piggly Wiggly Presidency

Ever wonder what it would be like to live in one of those moments in history when an emperor or monarch or sultan goes stark raving mad.  It usually doesn’t end well.  Now we know what it’s like, I suppose.

I shortly expect our Emperor, Sir Piggly Wiggly to turn up at an Air Force One press availability naked, babbling incoherently about conspiracies, God, McDonald’s fish sandwiches, and nominating a horse as Secretary of War.

Yes, I think our dear leader is nuts.  He is not well and has the nuclear codes.  His erratic and terrible-twos behavior is alarming.  

Calling for the execution of lawmakers who called on our military leaders to not obey illegal orders is abnormal.  As is the ordering of extrajudicial murders of alleged drug smugglers.  

His outbursts are more frequent. This includes dressing down and berating reporters, calling one female reporter on Air Force One ‘piggy’ as he told her to shut up. His explosive and inappropriate responses raise questions about his emotional state, or more precisely his emotional dysfunction.  Meanwhile, and ironically, his Transportation Secretary issues a retro themed public service announcement asking passengers to act civilly on air planes.

His gold mania is another example of his increasingly repugnant and eccentric behavior, especially since our economy has tanked since he took office.  He lives, eats, and sleeps in another world, a world of fairy tales and illusions.  Many Americans are unable to either pay rent or make monthly car payments, but he parties on like he is Louis XIV.  

His poll numbers continue to tank to historic lows.

Car loan delinquencies are up, as are Americans’ credit card bills.  Americans are drowning in debt as wages shrink, inflation grows, and good jobs get ever scarcer.  Yet Sir Piggly Wiggly throws an Epstein-inspired Great Gatsby bash at his private resort in Florida, complete with scantily clad young women in oversized martini glasses and 1920s-era short, skirted girls doing the Charleston.  

Furthermore, without warning, he levels the historic East Wing to build in its place a $300 million gold clad ballroom. Osama bin Ladin wanted to flatten the East Wing as well.  He acts like the White House is his, like it is one of his personal resorts, and not our house, the people’s house.  He thinks, acts, and behaves like a tyrant, a crazy tyrant at that.

It all makes for great late night TV comedy, but it is also a tragedy.  Every day the world outside our borders shakes its’ collective head, wondering what the fuck is happing to America.  Worse, every day the world becomes more dangerous, not because of a rising China, or a petulant Putin, or a new terrorist group, because we, the most powerful nation in the world, have an unstable president that is emotionally, spiritually, and cognitively crippled.  Every day he gets more madder than a hatter.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Trump Clause

I am damned angry.  The democrats once again appear prepared to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory on promises of talks later. Coming off great results in Virginia and New Jersey and California in last week’s elections with national consequences, it did not take long for the Democrats to deflate like a pricked ballon once again at the national level.

My first thoughts on hearing a number of Democrats defecting on the shutdown showdown:  Mother Fuckers!  (not really, it was longer and more expressive) Why, after 40 days of standing up to, and resisting Trump and his autocratic agenda, did Democrats cave on their supposed principles?  Why?  Senator Kaine, what were you thinking?

You claimed to stand fast with American workers who were going to get slammed with extreme health insurance premium increases because subsidies were cut by Trump’s big, beautiful bill.  You lobbed the health insurance ball firmly into the Republicans court — who control the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court — in order to extend the subsidies, hoping to provoke a compromise.  They held fast.  

In this standoff, the only power left to the Democrats was solidarity and the senate filibuster to force negotiations.  But no, you give up that last bastion of protecting minority rights in Congress to force negotiations and compromise.  So, after 40 days you have nothing to show if you cave in.

You gave up the two hallmarks of democracy with a half assed fight. Can you be trusted to fight Trump’s trespasses when he invokes the insurrection act or martial law or challenges the results of the 2026 mid-terms; to fight for the working and middle classes?  I think you will be halfway to the hills with your tail between your legs, that’s what I think, leaving state and local democrats holding the proverbial bag of shit.

No wonder Democrats in national polls  aren’t trusted to do the right thing at the national level.  The public, given the asymmetric power relationship in Congress, blamed the Republicans for the shutdown and associated pain. I think virtually overnight that blame will shift to you. 

I supported the principled stand on health care subsidies, but I also thought it was about resisting Trump’s autocratic gains, protecting the rule of law, and our constitutional system of checks and balances.  Apparently not.   You now own the shutdown. For taking a stand, you were essentially unwilling and incapable of following through on.  

Come on man, get some balls, some chutzpa, some spine.  Why all the pain and suffering and angst endured by millions when you collapse like a mud hut in a rainstorm?  All for promises of future talks in December, exchanging your principles for a bag of magical beans.  The Republicans have chutzpa at least. They lie to the Supreme Court that they don’t have the cash to pay out full SNAP benefits yet a day or two later, after the Court agrees with Trump, Trump announces taxpayers will get $2000 each from a so called tariff divided. What don’t you get about them? Did you not read the fine print under the Trump Clause?

Trump Clause:  Any and all agreements made with Donald Trump are conditional, subject to change, lies, misrepresentations, and omissions.  You take his word at your own peril and risk.

I don’t know whether this round of spending bills will pass the hurdles before it, but I do predict that should the spending bills pass to reopen the government, that promise to have December talks to extend the ACA subsidies will vanish like a cheese burger on Trump’s lips.  The House and Senate will adjourn without passing the subsidy bill, and you know it.  The Republicans have stolen Christmas from millions of Americans and you are his accessory after the fact if you give in. 

In Congress, July 4, 1776

It is good now and then to read some of our founding documents. The Declaration of Independence is a good place to start as any. It basically is two documents. The first part is a declarative statement that both King and Parliament have, and continued to, violate the the fundamental and inalienable rights bequeathed to Englishmen since time immemorial. Such trespasses forced the colonists, so they wrote, to form a new government to secure their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The second part is a jeremiad of those violations. Of the 27 listed grievances, our president has also committed many of these same trespasses. These include, (1) obstructing the administration of justice; (2) he has attempted to make judges dependent upon him; (3) deployed members of our “standing army” among us in times of peace; (4) he is attempting to render the military independent of and superior to Congress; (5) he has threatened to send Americans overseas to serve time in foreign jails for pretended offenses; (6) for cutting off our trade with the world with illegal tariffs; (7) of imposing taxes on us without our consent (illegal tariffs); (8) depriving many inhabitants of due process virtually suspending habeas corpus; (9) and threatens weekly, if not daily, to declare certain cities out of his protection and insinuate waging war against them.

About 30 percent of the fundamental rights listed by our revolutionary founders they claimed the King and Parliament violated are the same inalienable rights Trump is violating, attempting to violate, or wants to violate. To this list of violations, we can add end birthright citizenship; shutdown the government; hijacking the enumerated rights of Congress; the president not subject to criminal jurisdiction (a King).

What is at stake is not just our Constitution — our written framework of our government and how it should function to protect our inalienable rights — but to the unwritten fundamental rights and laws that make up our social compact with our government. These rights go back to not only the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights, but to the traditions, customs, and common law of England. They predate our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and other constitutional amendments. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights don’t grant us these rights, they are an acknowledgment of the collective rights we inalienable have had since time immemorial. Trump has no right to deny or suppress them and he must be resisted.

The Declaration of Independence

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

The Strange Death of Liberal Congress (Small l)

 Elected assemblies were no stranger to colonial Americans before the Revolution.  Virginia’s General Assembly first meet in 1619.  The American colonies’ long experiences with representative assemblies informed the debate on the creation of our national government as expressed in our Constitution.

The Constitution created three separate and equal branches:  Executive, Judicial, and Legislative.  The legislative branch was divided into two.  A House of Representatives, directly elected by the people every two years, and a Senate.  The Senators were not elected by the folks of their states but picked by state legislators.  This changed in 1913 — in an age of reform after Gilded Age excesses when ‘robber barons’ (proto-tech bros) bought and sold senators – when the 17th Amendment was adopted.  This amendment made senators directly elected and accountable to the people of their various states. 

As the drafters of the Constitution debated structure of the national legislature, it is clear many mistrusted rule by the masses.  The solution was another level of checks and balances:  A divided Congress.   The House was meant to represent the hot and passionate voice of the people, hence the two-year election cycle.  The Senate was meant to temper and cool the passions of the people, hence the six-year terms.  A ying-yang type of thing. 

In its time, it was a liberal creation (small l).  A directly elected national assembly rare.  Although one must add a huge asterisk to that claim as suffrage was primarily reserved for men who owned property, and in many instances in the early republic to white men only.  Eventually the franchise did expand, with women being the last added. As a side note, I should comment that white immigrant men could and did vote in national elections as voting rights were not tied to citizenship until well into to the 19th century.   Many states permitted immigrants the right to vote into the early 20th century.  The nationalism of the post-world war I era ended that practice.

The enumerated duties of Congress were listed in the Constitution, but, it’s primary duty was a check on the power of President (king) — in the liberal tradition of Great Britian since the Glorious Revolution of 1689.  As such, the list of congressional powers was long and gave congress the power to declare war, the power of the purse, the regulation of the militia and Army, the power to regulate domestic and foreign trade, to list a few.  For the Senate, the power to ratify treaties and confirm presidential nominees to high office was added.  

This system basically worked for close to 236 years, until it didn’t.  It’s not the structure.  Our political party system is fatally broken.  You need two parties, not one party and one cult lead by a messianic Daddy Trump.

Congress is dead.  Long live Trump.  

A postmortem would reveal the cause of death as neglect followed by blunt force trauma.  The manner of death?  Democracide.

 Et Tu, Johnson and Thune?  Speaker Mike Johnson and senate majority leader John Thune have murdered Congress, finishing the job started by Mitch McConnell.   Johnson won’t even call the House back into session and Thune has attached himself to Trump’s scrotum like a sucker fish attaches itself to a shark. This week Sec Def Hegseth severely constrained congressional oversight by severing most routine formal and informal discourse between congress and the Defense Department and one trillion dollars in spending.  

Trump literally shits on the people in his AI generated fantasies and Congress defends him. He frequently moves money without congressional official approval and routinely uses rescission to ignore legislative funding bills.  In short, Congress ceded most of its enumerated powers to Trump.  Even the act of declaring war has been ceded, permitting Trump to order extra judicial killings on the high seas.  In the old days we called that piracy.  Congress is dead in name. 

The Supreme Court is the undertaker.

I have no concluding paragraph.  What is there left to say any more?  The phrases “that’s illegal” or “that’s unconstitutional” are deader than a door nail in a post law and order America. Might as well stop using them as they are as useless as Congress and a spittoon full of spit.

15 Minutes Past Midnight: Virginia Votes

Many of us recall the doomsday clock during the Cold War.  It was always minutes before midnight:  Nuclear Armageddon.   Today there is another clock ticking away as our democracy ebbs.  If midnight was the hour when democracy ends, the clock today would read 15 minutes past midnight.  Yes, we have crossed that line into the shadow of autocracy.  We can, however, reset that clock, but we must do it quickly and the first step is to vote.  

Election day is upon us here in Virginia and we have an opportunity to reset that clock.  It will be a consequential election with generational impacts for Virginians.  Think of the world your child, or grandchild, or great grandchild will be born into if Trump has his way. 

First and foremost, your vote will help keep Virginia from following several Republican states down the rabbit hole of one-party authoritarian rule.  Texas is the architype of such a state: Texasistan.

 A neo-theocratic state where women are surveilled and reduced to second class citizen.  A state where race equates to citizenship; a state where people of Latino ancestry are subject to constant local, state and federal police stops and detentions for simply having a certain physical appearance, speak Spanish, and work in low wage jobs.  Guilty!  

Texas is a state that happily offers to deploy its national guard soldiers to occupy cities in Democratic lead states as Trump’s armed enforcers.  A state where Christianity is foisted on folks’ children in public schools who worship differently or choose not to believe.  Ones relationship to your god is between you and your creator and the state has no place in that relationship.  We don’t want to be that kind of state, Winsome Earle-Sears does.

Second, Sears wants to turn the clock back to the 19th century regarding women’s rights.  She spent her whole campaign using trans kids as political fodder, ostensible as a women’s rights issue.  Meanwhile, she voted ‘no’ on a tie-breaking vote as Lt. Governor on a bill that would have given Virginia women reproductive choice rights, in particular access to contraception.   

She claims to protect your daughter from supposed predators while whole heartily supporting a president found by a civil jury to have sexually assaulted a woman in a department store dressing room.  And then Sears has the temerity to tell a woman that she has no right to reproductive choices or contraception, the right to choose when and how to have a family.    

Third, a medical and insurance crisis is in the offing after the passage of the Republican’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which Sears endorsed.  Many Virginians will lose Medicaid coverage starting in 2027 as part of the bill’s multibillion dollar cuts to Medicaid.  Three rural health clinics have already closed or plan to close because of the bills impacts.

Approximately 400k Virginians get medical insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Given the lapse in ACA insurance subsidies under the bill’s provisions, many of these Virginians will have to give up medical insurance given that premiums will double and even quadruple as subsidies for low-income folks lapse under the bill by the end of this year.  Health care insurance will once again become unaffordable to average Virginians.  

Spanberger has a plan.  According to the Virginia Mercury, Spanberger said, “It’s essential that we be able to strengthen access to health care, improve affordability, and recognize that for so many Virginians, they’re one medical event away from really substantial ruin,” Spanberger adding. “But for so many, (health care cost) is just one more worry that keeps them up at night.”  Sears on the other hand has no plan, except to support the big, beautiful bill.

Fourth, Spanberger will return our schools back to the people, and rid us of the Youngkin and Sears Orwellian thought police.  Remember Governor Youngkin’s attempt to turn our schools in to Stasi-like institutions where teachers and students were under constant surveillance for utterances that contradict sacrosanct Republican notions of history.  Youngkin even started an informant hotline one could call or email to report thought transgressors.  Is that how we raise our children? Turning them into government snitches. 

Youngkin’s education policy was a flop at best.  Under his administration, standardized test scores that remained essentially the same after four years of his administration, and well below pre-pandemic scores.  In short, a failure to achieve one of his top priority goals. Winsome Earle-Sears won’t do much better, I suspect, since she is an advocate for reducing public school funding in favor of private charter schools.

Fifth, Spanberger will be a voice for Virginia’s farmers who are hard hit by Trump’s self-inflicted tariff wars (see last week’s post).  Virginia farmers are losing overseas markets, losing income, and being weighed down by unsustainable debt.  Bail outs aren’t an answer, the preferred Republican solution.  It’s the coward’s way out of not confronting Trump head on.  If you are a afraid to criticize Trump, you already live in your own mental dictatorship.  

Spanberger will speak truth to power, I believe. Nor cower before Trump like so many Republicans in Congress and state governments.

Sixth, Spanberger will fight for Virginian’s serving in not only our military, but our civil and foreign services as well.  Our foreign and civil service Virginians are patriots and deserve much better than mass illegal firings, the constant dehumanization and criminalization, the threats and intimidation.  

They, along with the men and women who serve in our armed forces, are the frontline against Trump’s extra-judicial and unconstitutional attempts to turn America into a police state, an autocracy.  Congress is AWOL, the lower courts are fighting a brave rearguard action, only to be undermined repeatedly by the Supreme Court in yet another opinionless shadow docket ruling.  

States are the bulwark against a tyrannical central government.  It’s how our founders envisioned our federal alliance in 1787.  States need to stand up to Trump and his federal maladministration. Virginia needs to be one of those states.

Things will get worse for America and Virginia under Trump in the next few weeks, months, and years.  We need a strong democratic coalition in Virginia to weather the coming constitutional tempest and damage that may prove fatal to the rule of law.  We must fight, and fight to win.  A Spanberger win in November will set the tone for 2026 and beyond.

Let’s keep Virginia democratic and its people free: Vote.

Virginia Farmers: A Case to Vote Democratic

This past Saturday at the Fall Fiber Festival and Montpelier Sheep Dog Trials near Orange, Virginia, something remarkable happened.  During the afternoon sheep shearing demonstration, the 70 something farmer from Louisa, teared up when describing how he came to raising sheep and learning how to shear them.  He paused, wiping tears from his eyes, sheepishly apologized.  He had heart surgery last year, he said.  The crowd in the tent was silent, . . . .then a booming gruff, male voice, said, ‘No apology necessary.’  He paused, ‘in fact more people in this country need heart surgery.’  Applause erupted in the crowded tent.

I don’t know the politics of the farmer shearing the sheep, I don’t know the politics of the man comforting the farmer, I don’t know the politics of the crowd, and I certainly don’t know the politics of the sheep.  It was a moment of vulnerability, and the response was compassion, a common humanity.  

The man with the gruff voice called out the heartlessness of our partisan divide, the hate mongers, the primal chest pounding in some quarters.  The farmer then got a 50-pound sheep out of the pen, rassled him into position, and started to shear her with traditional shears.  Impressive for anyone, much less a 70-something farmer who recently had heart surgery.   

Farming is not for the faint of heart.  My wife’s side of the family were Kansas wheat farmers starting in the 1920s.  Her mom was one of 12 kids, the first one arriving at 16, the last at 46.  Her mom remembers the dust, the jack rabbits, and the wheat.  She left when she could.   They worked hard, took second jobs to make ends meet. Alas, the farm was sold in the 2003.

Let me snatch your mind back from the precipice of agrarian nostalgia and sentimentality and bring you back to reality.

Americans have long been fascinated by the imagery of a yeoman farmer clearing the fields and tilling the soil.  Hard work, independence, self-sufficiency were the supposed hallmarks of America’s rural farmers.  American Historian Richard Hofstadter called it the “agrarian myth,” arguing that the “more commercial” America became, “the more reason it found to cling in imagination to the noncommercial agrarian values.”  Adding, that “the American mind was raised upon a sentimental attachment to rural living….  The agrarian myth represents a kind of homage that Americans have paid to the fancied innocence of their origins.”  Farmers, Hofstadter wrote, are businessmen, first and foremost.

During several past national election seasons, “Farmers For Trump” road signs dotted Louisa County.  I always thought the imagery of the word “farmer” was meant to evoke the ‘agrarian myth’ of good honest living, hard work, self-sufficiency, independence and somehow attaching it to a man who has never had a callous from working with his hands, never used a shovel, much less an axe.  Who has probably spent more cash on manicures than many farmers have paid for their tractors.

Trump’s policies hurt farmers, to include those in Louisa County.  His tariff war, especially his war on Beijing, is bankrupting farmers across the country.

Here are the ground truths.  

Virginia’s top agricultural export countries in 2022 were China, Canada, Venezuela (go figure), and Taiwan in that order.  Virginia farmers did close to $1.5 billion business with China.  Canada came in at a distant second with $370 million.  Exports are crashing to these countries because of Trumps policies. 

China buys 60 percent of the global supply of soybeans.  This year, however, they have bought ZERO soybeans from American farmers.  So, 60 percent of the potential Virginia’s and Louisa County’s soybean sales, gone, evaporated, zilch, in the flick of a social media post.

Because of Trump’s tariff war with China, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil are now China’s biggest suppliers of soybeans. According to the latest figures I have, Virginia harvested 21.6 million bushels of soybeans in 2023 and that jumped in 2024 to 26.4 million bushels, most destined for export markets, primarily China. This years harvest is at risk of being unsold.

Louisa in 2022 had 8058 acres of soybeans under cultivation.  At 44 bushels per acre, that amounts to 354,552 bushels.  Assuming that the same number of approximate acres are being grown today, at today’s market value that come out to about $3.6 million.  A potential loss of $3.6 million to Louisa farmers if it is left unsold. Net cash income for Virginia and Louisa farmers is dropping because of Trump’s policies.

Crashing commodity prices and massive loss of export buyers is why Trump is promising a farmer bailout.   More free cash handouts to loyal farmers.  This worked during his first term when Trump bailed out farmers to the tune of billions of dollars because of failed tariff wars.  They voted for him again in droves. Why?  I don’t know. Makes no sense.

The White House recently proposed a $38 to $50 billion bailout for America’s farmers.  That’s about $16k per farmer.  I know it won’t be disbursed equally across the board, but it is a bailout for the row crop farmers who are losing export business because of Trump’s shortsighted and counterproductive policies.  

In a supreme act of irony, Trump wants to use tariff dollars – basically a consumption tax Americans like you and I pay — to fund the famer bailout.  Picking my pocket to give free cash to his farmer voting base.  Problem is, Trump can’t just reach into the Treasury and take the money, like a personal piggy bank.  He needs Congress to authorize the funds.

Farmers voted for Trump for a variety of reasons, one being they thought he is a good businessman.  Well, you got screwed…. again.  Time to get beyond the culture wars, hate mongering, and bullshit rhetoric of who is and who is not a real American.  

 According to government stats analyzed for a 2024 Politico article titled Did Trump or Biden deliver more for farmers?  The answer may surprise you,  “Biden has been better for farmers than Trump.  Net farming income has actually gone up since the Democrat entered the White House.  On average, net farm income has totaled $165 billion between 2021 and 2023, compared to $94 billion between 2017 and 2019.  Farm income reached a record high of nearly $189 billion in 2022.”

The 2022 Census of Agriculture Louisa County Profile, a U.S. Department of Agriculture publication, supports Politico’s analysis.  According to the profile, net cash farm income in Louisa County increased 2269 percent (yes, 2269) between 2017 and 2022.  The market value of products sold increased 143 percent over the same period.  Mostly, Louisa’s 452 farmers did well under Biden, but many threw away these Biden gains made after Trump’s first term mistakes, exacerbated by Trump’s thoroughly horrible mismanagement of the pandemic response, by helping to elect Trump to a second term.  100 days into his second term Trump later needs to bailout farmers once again. Enough, no?

I think I made a good economic case that voting for Trump is bad for business. Like sheep, he is herding farmers in order to fleece them. He isn’t much better in most measures regarding democracy and rule of law as well. Please vote for Abigail Spanberger for Governor this November, and in the mid-terms in 2026, help throw out 5th District representative John McGuire so Congress can do its constitutional duty to reign in Trump’s dash toward autocracy and bankrupting America’s farmers.  A vote for Democrats is a vote to return to prosperity.