Tag: virginia

The Mismeasure of Man: Democracy in America

As a young boy, around 8 I think, my family was stationed at West Point, New York. One of many places I lived as an Army brat. My favorite place to hangout and play was at the old stone fort overlooking the Hudson River:  Fort Putnam.  One’s childhood imagination filled the space with soldiers, and prisoners in the dungeons, as we played on the ramparts and nearby woods.

One day, wandering through the fort’s grounds, there was a young man digging a shallow pit, about four feet by four feet and several inches deep.  A small pile of dirt was nearby, along with a shovel, a small shallow wooden box with a screen, and some bags.  I stopped and asked what he was doing.  He said he was doing archaeology for a class project.  He showed me some bits of pottery and a handful of rusty nails.  He let me hold them.  He even let me do a little digging.  

About a decade later I was majoring in Anthropology with a concentration in Archaeology.  My favorite class, ever, was a lab in human osteology.  Bones, human bones.  Ancient bones. My favorite professor, Dr. Ann Palkovich, was giving the class.   The bones we were studying were from a dig in the middle east, Israel, I think.  They were approximately two millennia old.

Every Friday there was a quiz.  There were about a dozen small boxes, labeled with a number, and in that box was a fragment of a bone.   Our task was to identify it.  Was it a bone?  If so, was it a human bone?  If it was a human, what bone was it?  What side of the body?  As the course progressed, and our skills and knowledge developed, the bone fragments became smaller and smaller. 

One day, walking into the lab, sitting on the tables were skulls from the collection.  Their empty eye sockets – orbits technically – beckoned.  Holding one, looking into the empty orbits, one wondered what that person had seen, what their life was like.  Skeletons spoke to us.  They told us their age, height, sex, what diseases they may have had, a history of injuries, markers of malnutrition, signs of what labor they engaged in.

Skulls have a very disturbing history in anthropology I learned in another class.  Much of it dark. Stephen Gould’s Mismeasure of Man greatly influenced me; a tattered copy of his book sits next to my keyboard as I type.

 In the mid- to late-19th century, the emerging science of anthropology was consumed by racist notions of white European superiority.  There was a confluence of 18th century notions human species being divided into race-based species — endowed with different levels of intelligence—and empire, colonialism, and Darwinian evolution.  Scientifically determined racial hierarchies of intelligence and civilizations were developed, with white European men (and their descendants) at the very top, with blacks at the very bottom.  Women of every race were also inferior to the men within their race.

This combination of naturalists, anthropologists, and cranks set out to scientifically prove that whites were superior.  The skull was the key, they thought.  Skulls were collected (mostly looted and stolen) from around the world and the craniums volumes were measured.  Cranial volume was a measure of brains, or intelligence.  And wouldn’t you know it.  Skulls of white European origin men had the highest cranial volumes.  Blacks the lowest.  Criminals also had the lower cranial volumes…. as did women.

The results were rigged we know.  Through both intentional and unintentional selection biases, data was manipulated or ignored.   This era of scientific racism had massive consequences.  It informed government policies on immigration, policing, the penal system well into the 20th century.  It served to justify colonization, empire, slavery, Jim Crow, and oppression of certain peoples.  You see, they believed, blacks could never be civilized, or intelligent, or worthy of humane treatment.  

You hear this racist legacy now when a white person says a black person is articulate.  Or, read that Florida’s school curriculum requires teachers to teach that black slaves learned life affirming skills from their white owners.  Or when black and women generals are fired for no reason other than their skin color or gender.  Hegseth believes that blacks and women can’t achieve high ranks in the military without preferential, woke, promotions. They are, Hegseth is convinced, inherently inferior intellectually and morally.

I thought scientific racism had met an ignoble death.  But alas, it’s rearing its ugly head once again and is alive and well in Trump’s world.  It is a corner stone of America’s foreign and domestic policies of the current administration.  Trump’s national security policy paper claims that western European civilization is being diluted by immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.  His constant demeaning of Africans – Somalis are low-IQ – or banning of visas from mostly African and Islamic countries, harken back to that dark age of scientific racism. 

Does Trump not know that the wheel was simultaneously invented in Mesopotamia (Southern Iraq), Turkey, and in Hungry (per recent study), some six thousand years ago while west Europeans were, well, still eating each other.

Does Trump not know that the chemical compound now known as gunpowder, was invented in China in the 9thcentury? Then about four centuries later the Chinese also invented the cannon.  According to a Ming dynasty book, they called it a “thousand ball thunder cannon.” Now that’s cool. West Europeans, were, well, still too uncivilized to invent a cannon.

Does Trump not know that an Arab mathematician at Baghdad University in the 9th century, wrote a book titled “Al-jabr ‘wa al-muquabala“?  Or, as we know it, Algebra.   Mohamed al-Kwarizimi, is the father of Algebra and the namesake of Algorithm. West Europeans, were, well, still in the Dark Ages. 

Does Trump not know that our number system 0 to 10 (the Arabic System) was invented in India, adopted by Arabic mathematicians?  That zero was not a western invention? In addition, trigonometry developed over millennia in Babylonia, India (sine, cosine, versine is attributed to an Indian mathematician and astronomer named Ayabhata), and the Arab world before reaching so-called western civilization, those great Teutonic cultures, who, were, well, still eating without proper utensils.

(Note to dumbass Texas: since you recently codified a state school curriculum denigrating Islam and the Arab world perhaps you ought to ban the teaching of high-level math. Don’t want them ‘Arab’ ideas to infect your children’s brains do you?)

So called western civilization is greatly indebted to other “civilizations.”  All those right-wing gun owners who don’t want to be replaced and fear western civilization is in terminal decline fearfully clutch guns made possible by those barbarians, the Chinese. 

Perhaps the one thing so-called western civilization can lay claim to is Democracy.  A Greek word meaning rule by the people.  Our Constitution’s preamble, “We the people….” traces directly back to Ancient Athens.  Mind you, in the late 19th century as Greeks emigrated to the U.S. they weren’t welcomed.  One person wrote they were ‘broken men from a broken land.’

Paradoxically, America’s claim to fame – a constitutional republic where the people rule – our one true gift to the world, is being laid to waste day-by-day by Trump, his administration, and his supporters that insatiably guzzle his tonic of racism and white supremacy.  Quite the contradiction to destroy democracy to save it from the clutches of non-western civilization.

The movement of people, and thus, ideas and inventions over millennia are what makes humans so powerful.  When you block the movement of people, you also block innovation and new ideas.  These inventions and ideas are what power our modern way of life in America.  A cumulative synthesis of ideas spanning peoples across the globe. Building walls and rejecting new people invites a slow decline and death of American civilization, not a golden age, but a new dark age.

The Power Grab:  NextEra Energy and Virginia’s Dominion Power.

NextEra Energy wants to buy Dominion Power for $67 billion, or thereabouts.  That’s not good for you, for me, for Louisa, or for Virginia.

This week Virginia’s Lt. Governor Ghazal Hashmi started a listening tour in Loudoun County to hear what voters have to say about the proposed acquisition or merger.  According to reporting from one packed public hearing, the critiques and concerns were many.  Only one person, it was reported, approved of the merger.  NextEra is expanding and buying electric company utilities up the east coast, not just Virginia.  

It is a juggernaut.  While it boasts of being Florida’s largest public electric utility, it has its corporate fingers and tentacles everywhere: Data centers, power grids, transmission lines, battery storage, solar power, gas fired power plants to power data center campuses, nuclear plants.  Last year It partnered with Google Cloud to “scale multiple gigawatts of power” for new data centers across the U.S. 

With the acquisition of Dominion Power, NextEra claims it will be the “largest regulated electric utility business by market capitalization and one of the world’s largest energy infrastructure companies,” adding for emphasis, “with an unmatched operating platform benefiting customers.” Ha! 

I think we know a monopolistic octopus when we see one.

They are, it seems, bad neighbors as well.

NextEra describes itself as “the largest electric power and energy infrastructure company in North America and is a leading provider of electricity to American homes and businesses. Headquartered in Juno Beach, Florida, NextEra Energy is a Fortune 200 company that owns Florida Power & Light Company, America’s largest electric utility, which provides reliable electricity to approximately 12 million people across Florida. NextEra Energy also owns one of the largest energy infrastructure development companies in the U.S., NextEra Energy Resources, LLC. NextEra Energy and its affiliated entities are meeting America’s growing energy needs with a diverse mix of energy sources, including natural gas, nuclear, renewable energy and battery storage.”

NextEra has been in federal court recently.  

In April NextEra agreed to a $150 million settlement with investors who alleged “fraud and deceit.”  I think the settlement is merely window dressing and housekeeping before it becomes an issue with Virginia’s regulatory body.  The settlement, it appears is still under review, by a federal appeals court, before final approval.

Clean Virginia, an advocacy group that has filed motions with Virginia’s State Corporation Commission regarding the proposed merger, stated that the merger “would hand Virginia’s electric grid to a company with a troubling track record of raising bills in Florida, heavily interfering in state politics and prioritizing corporate profit over the public interest” (https://www.cleanvirginia.org/2026/07/15/mergerapplicationfiled/).  This included ‘ghost candidates’ and surveillance of a journalist.

It has its own political arm:  NextEra Political Action Committee.  In fact, there was a Federal Election Commission (FEC) investigation in 2022 which alleged campaign finance law violations.  In 2024 the FEC closed the investigation, citing it did not find illegal activity.   Hmmmmm.

Additionally, according to online reporting, NextEra’s PAC has donated approximately $60 million to various politicians in various states.  Our new governor received some of that largess.  It was reported that Governor Abigail Spanberger’s inauguration committee received two donations from NextEra totaling $15k.  While $15k seems like a small amount, it opens the door for larger donations.  Like a free bag of dope.  Spanberger, now that she is on the bandwagon to challenge the merger and apparently the first governor in Virginia history to “intervene” in the regulator process, should return the donation.

Campaign donations, public utilities, and politicians go together like a peanut butter and banana sandwich on white bread, and, are not a new combination to Virginia.  A recent Virginia Mercury article reporting on the NextEra merger, “Public Utilities Shouldn’t be Funding the Campaigns of the People who Govern them,” journalist Ivy Main highlighted the perils of taking unlimited donations from public utilities.  According to the article, Virginia’s House speaker Don Scott reportedly has received nearly $4million in donations from Dominion Energy over the years.  Wow, $4 million (https://virginiamercury.com/2026/08/31/public-utilities-shouldnt-be-funding-the-campaigns-of-the-people-who-govern-them/#).  

Overall, the merger would be a disaster in my opinion for Virginians already battling high electricity prices and a tsunami of data centers, Louisa County included.  NextEra has a history of price spikes.  In Florida they raised the rates 33 percent from 2021 to 2026 and has a poor history of customer service, unauthorized charges, doubling or tripling rates after the initial, introductory, contract expired.  

Basically, the merger would create a monopoly with NextEra’s tentacles everywhere, from our pocketbooks to politicians’ pockets.  Monopolies mean higher prices, poorer service, and more woe. Let’s not move on to that next era of monopolies.

Time to write your local representatives and Governor Spanberger.  The final decision by regulators is January. Tell them “NO” to the merger.

V is for Voting

Famously, presidential candidate Bill Clinton posted a reminder note that said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  A cue that wonky policy sound bites or nuanced discourses on the pro and cons of a particular policy only go so far with the average voter.  For most voters, it comes down to kitchen table issues:  

Can I pay the mortgage or rent? 

Can I feed my kids?

Can I afford a middle-class life?  

They measure these questions against the previous few years:  Am I better off today than I was four or two years ago?

For conservatives and Republicans, continuing failures to successfully manage kitchen table issues – remember 2008 and 2020, the Great Recession and then the COVID pandemic – brought them down a path to embrace the most divisive candidate, and then President, in modern American politics.  Kitchen sink issues were replaced by xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, gynophobia and its corollary misogyny, and racial animus.  

The basic kitchen table question must be revived.  Am I, and the people of Louisa, better off today than they were January 20, 2025?

I say, “No.”  The people of Louisa are worse off by most kitchen table measures.  

Louisa’s farmers are hard hit.  High diesel and gas prices, record fertilizer costs combined with low prices for commodities, and disappearing lucrative foreign markets, like China, are crushing Louisa, and American, family farmers.  This is the result of Trump’s misguided tariff war with China.

While unemployment remains at 3.9 percent, core inflation continues to shrink paychecks.  Wage shrinkage from inflation continues to be a self-inflicted wound.  Trump’s economic nationalism, which includes steep tariffs on most countries, continues to drive inflation up and shrink real wages.  

The disastrous never-ending war on Iran continues to keep gas at over $4.00 a gallon and diesel at over $5.00.  Borrowing money is increasingly costly as investors sour on America’s ten-year bond, raising interest rates for mortgages, credit cards, car loans, and small farm and business loans. 

Food Insecurity: The Louisa Resource Center Council’s Food Bank has seen record numbers of visitors, I learned, over the past year.  Louisa County Public Schools this  summer — starting June 8 — began a summer school age nutrition program serving meals at various locations throughout the county. The meals are free of charge, and available for any child ages 2 to 18. No ID is required. This program speaks to the ongoing food crisis for vulnerable children in our county. How is it we have the first trillionaire, yet our children go hungry?

Housing costs in Louisa soar:  Housing costs have been increasing for well over a decade.  The median sales price for a home in Louisa is $445k, up from $234k a decade ago.  The price per square foot, however, increased close of 6 percent over the past year.  This is a huge rise, directly correlated to Trump’s tariffs.  His recent 50 percent tariff on Canadian wood products, will only make matters worse regarding affordable housing.

Access to health care continues to shrink: Deep cuts to Medicaid and Medicare subsidies and the elimination of the Affordable Health Care Act premium subsidies have left many folks in Louisa County with no health care or delayed health care, many of them vulnerable children.

Meanwhile, as the denizens of Louisa pay the price for Trump’s mismanagement of about everything he touches, he and his family have profited to the tune of $2 billion dollars, mostly in the dark world of crypto currency.  The swamp he promised to drain has turned into a deep sea of corruption.

You can also frame the “are you better off today” question in terms of our democracy.  Is America’s democracy better today than it was before January 20, 2025?

I think most Americans would respond with an emphatic “No.”

By most measures, America is backsliding from the hallmarks of liberal democracy:  Pluralism, the rule of law, a healthy civil society, a government with three coequal branches, government transparency, equal access to voting and representation in government at local, state, and federal offices.

Sustained attacks on America’s institutions such as a non-partisan civil service, an apolitical military, Congressional powers, the federal courts, an independent justice Department have severely degraded America’s 250-year experiment.

Our Justice Department has become so rotten that a man was arrested and charged with vandalizing the Lincoln reflecting pool just to support Trump’s claims that his embarrassingly botched reflecting pool make over was sabotaged.  Prosecutors lied to and mislead the grand jury that indicted him.   This is what dictators do.

Despite all these challenges and threats to our democracy, we must still care …. and take the time and effort to vote.  The Democratic primary is this coming Tuesday, August 4.  Get out and vote for one of the three Democratic candidates for our district (Tom Perriello, Rob Tracinski, and Suzanne Krzyaowski).

As for this November, Rep. John McGuire (R) must go.  He has done nothing over the past two years for the folks of Louisa County or the 5th Congressional District.  His main job has been to kiss Trump’s big, beautiful orange ass. His legislative achievements for Louisa: a ‘big fat nothing burger’ as right-wing influencers are fond of saying.  Mostly culture war stuff.  He did vote for the big, beautiful bill, however, which crushes Medicaid and Medicare services to Louisa’s poorly paid working class and her seniors, and refuses to reign in Trump’s never ending illegal war with Iran.  As for Louisas farmers, he has been a big fat zero.  

Seems he is more interested in the stock market as he bought Nvidia stock twice this year and other stocks that his House Committee assignments oversee.  Once a couple of weeks after Trump purchased his own Nvidia shares.  Hmmmm?

Now, as we near the November mid-terms, Trump is increasingly signaling he will not accept the results.  He is positioning the Justice Department, the country’s intelligence services, and the Department of Homeland security to support his claims of fraud.  Will the military stay above the fray or go all in with Trump? What will the Supreme Court do?  

This raises the very serious question that are on many minds.  Will there be a peaceful transfer of power after the mid-terms?  Voter turnout this November must be huge. A democratic win must be overwhelming. Not by one or two points but by tremendous majorities.  Trump won’t dare to challenge a massive electoral loss, especially in deep red counties and states.  At least I hope he doesn’t.  But he is crazy, and not all there, so who knows.  If he does, then we must be prepared take a different tact, massive civil disobedience in coordination with court action. 

So, ask yourself, and ask your family or friends, are we better off today than we were in January 2025?  No. So, let’s get out and make our voices heard next week and in November. 

This Old Flag: What is the 4th of July to Americans?

“Our masters, they have lived under the flag, they got their wealth under it, and everything beautiful for their children. Under it they have grind us up, and put us in their pocket for money.  But the first minute they think that old flag mean freedom for we colored people, they pull it right down and run up the rag of their own. But we’ll never desert the old flag, boys, never; we have lived under it for eighteen hundred six-two years, and we’ll die for it now.”

Corporal Prince Lambkin, 1st South Carolina Colored Infantry

What is the 4th of July to Americans? 

Besides the obvious play on Frederick Douglass’ famous speech, that question has occupied, no troubled, my mind these past several months.  Not only for Americans as a people, but for myself as well.  Why does our 250thanniversary simultaneously inspire me, but also repel me?  I recall the energy and excitement of our bicentennial in 1976, although through the lens of a 12-year-old.   

As a patriotic American that served in uniform and served in our foreign service overseas in war and conflict zones, this anniversary bothers me. It vexes me because I think, it is deeply tarnished and soiled.  Mostly because it has been stolen and appropriated by Trump for his personal glorification and enrichment.  I ‘ve been to countries where tinpot dictators’ rule and Trump’s America has many hallmarks of these petite regimes.

There are two national plans on how to celebrate our nation’s story of independence. One, a bipartisan celebration planned by a commission authorized and funded by Congress in 2016, and the second, a partisan celebration highlighting one faction:  The Trump Organization.

America250 is, according to its website, is the “U.S. Semi-quincentennial Commission established by Congress in 2016 to plan and orchestrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.”  It is led by persons “Appointed by the House and Senate leadership of both parties, the nonpartisan Commission is composed of 16 private citizens, 4 U.S. Representatives and 4 Senators, as well as 12 Ex Officio members from all three branches of the federal government and its independent agencies.”  For close to a decade this commission has been working across party lines to plan for our 250th anniversary celebrations.

Freedom250 is a Trump initiative managed by an event planning firm – Event Strategies LLC — with long ties to Trump. As with anything Trump, things are opaque and murky, like the reflecting pool.  Its’ website is silent as to its leadership, organization, and make-up.  The White House calls it a ‘public-private venture.’  The company, according to a Wired article, has raked in tens of millions of tax payer dollars, to including a potentially $100 million windfall in government contracts with the General Services Administration. (https://www.wired.com/story/they-helped-plan-the-january-6-rally-now-their-events-company-is-raking-in-millions-in-government-contracts/)

Initially, from what I could gather, both the America250 commission and Trump’s Freedom250 organizers worked together.  The original event organizer for America250 was let go and Event Strategies LLC got the gig.  This explains, I think, what happened to $150 million that was appropriated by Congress for the 250th anniversary in the “big beautiful bill.  The bill did not designate whether the taxpayer dollars went to America250 or Freedom250.  From what I learned from an NPR interview regarding Freedom250, it was initially agreed that $100 million would go to America 250, with the remaining $50 million going to Freedom250.  That decision was reversed.  As of this writing, less than a week before the 4th of July, America250 was allocated only $25 million. This begs the question, where did the $125 million go? 

Freedom250 quickly monetized July 4th by selling Freedom250 logoed merchandise through its website, mimicking America250 website selling America250 logoed anniversary products.  Sales from America 250 would go to the Congressionally authorized Commission presumably.  Where then, do the sales from Freedom250 go?  Event Strategies LLC?   It seems Trump and his corrupt cronies are perhaps profiteering from our grand 250th anniversary.  

This arrangement highlights, I think, that Trump’s love of America is purely and simply transactional.  “Make America Great Again” is a multimillion-dollar profit center for Trump.  A slogan to capture the MAGA masses imagination and rake in their hard-earned dollars.

Our country has many blemishes, our history is troubled, great injustices were perpetrated, but as Corporal Lambkin intoned in his remarks, this is our country good or bad, we love it, and we will die for it.  It is as much our land as it is anyone’s, slave master or freed slave, and we will fight for it.  And we [the former slaves now soldiers] have the patriotic moral high ground.  He probably wouldn’t understand the MAGA slogan, or, more likely, think it more fitted to the slave master’s rebellion than his own quest for freedom and equality.

Lambkin and his fellow soldiers knew something about what it means to be a patriotic Americans.  Something that Trump can’t ever grasp.  America is about community, about service, about sacrifice, about progress towards a better good, to work for something bigger than oneself.  Trump is and always will be about himself.  Greed, corruption, money, power, and fame.  Trump had an opportunity to fight for his country.  He did not.  He thinks those that served and died for their country are “suckers.”  His words not mine.  

Trump is like those slave masters who got their wealth under the American flag, but when it became too pluralistic, too inclusive, too democratic, they rebelled like spoiled pampered aristocratic slave masters.  Instead of moving forward toward a better America, Trump wants ‘real’ Americans to follow him as a redeemer, a modern-day liberator of white Christian America.  

This self-styled autocratic piped piper of Mar a Lago is trying to take America back to a mythological, godly ordained America where great white men ruled wisely and justly, women swooned and had babies, and blacks knew their place.  That is the America Trump yearns for. I can’t tell if he wants to go back all the way to 1856 or just 1954.  Erasing the history of blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and women is part of that strategy.

Trump and Freedom250 hijacked our 250th anniversary. It is the coronation and deification of Trump, not a celebration of America and all walks of American life.  The mixed martial arts extravaganza on the White House lawn is an example of this Trump centric spectacle.  An eroticized male theater of mostly naked white men grappling with each other for the affections of our dear leader Donald Trump, with Trump sitting ring side admiring their hard, sweaty bodies, in a space mostly devoid of women.   Happy Birthday wishes big boy!

In the run up to into 2026 we have been subjected to a barrage of endless Trump vanity projects.  Renaming the Kennedy Center after himself.  Building a billion-dollar ballroom, hanging three-story tall portraits of himself on government office buildings, bejeweling the White House with gold, having the Treasury mint coins with his image, ordering special U.S. passports be printed with his image superimposed over a famous print of the signing of Declaration of Independence.  The message:  Trump is America, America is Trump.

It is hard to remain enthusiastic about our 250th anniversary when it is overrun by rats and imbeciles.  The constant conveyor belt of assaults on our constitution, on who’s a citizen, on our rule of law, on our civil society, on our courts, on our men and women of color who serve our country with dignity and honor, fatigues the everyday American. This list of Trumpian inspired vainglorious squalor can go on for pages.   

So, what then is the 4th of July to me?  For me it remains a time to reflect on our American origin stories, the confluences of many nations, representing peoples already here and those that immigrated, willfully or otherwise.  We were conceived as a nation built on an ideology of equality, not race or nation.  It was this enlightenment promise that all men are created equal that drew people to this country in the decades that followed. That promise today is still seen as equally valid as it was the day it was penned.  

We still have work to do, however, as anyone not blinded by rightwing propaganda can see.  Our founders in the preamble to the Constitution recognized that achieving this grand promise was just a beginning.  The preamble is a statement of a goal, an endpoint in some distant future.  It is a goal I think most Americans continue to strive for.  To go backwards is un-American, to go forward is quintessentially American.  

I am proud to be an American, but I find myself more akin to Corporal Lambkin’s ideal of what it means to be an American, to make for a more perfect union, despite our imperfections.  Not the backwardness, hate, and greed represented by the current person soiling the White House and its hallowed grounds. America and Americans are better than that.

Screwworm:  Putting the Screws to Texas and John McGuire

Screwworms infestations were detected in Texas recently, according to media and government reports.  The screwworm, known as the New World Screw worm, is a fly that lays eggs on open wounds, for instance on livestock, that then grow into flesh eating maggots.  It can be fatal if not treated.

The screwworm was eradicated from the U.S. in the 1960s.  For decades, the U.S. worked to keep the screwworm at bay, working closely with Mexican and Central American governments.  This included the U.S. government funding facilities to produce and distribute sterile flies, for instance.  In 2023, the screwworm started migrating north again, probably climate change related, no?  As a result of further northward migration, a ban importing cattle from Mexico was recently put in place.  This is a key contributor to the shortage of beef cattle in the U.S., in fact, a 75-year low.  

If the screwworm infestation becomes more widespread in Texas, the state could suffer close to $2 billion dollars in economic losses.  Canada banned livestock imports from Texas temporarily.  A 1976 screwworm outbreak in Texas caused economic losses between $700 million and $1.8 billion in 2024 dollars, according to a Congressional Research Report submitted as part of a bill introduced in 2025: H.R. 3392 (more on that bill a bit later). 

The response to the new infestation has been, to say the least, interesting.  Texas ranchers are blaming the federal government for being too slow to respond.  Yep, the same Texas ranchers I suspect who voted for Trump, once, twice, and most likely thrice.  They, I would imagine, cheered on the DOGE cuts to USAID and USDA, two agencies that are instrumental in programs to contain the screwworm south of the border. Things could have been different, but ….

On May 14, 2025, Texas Republican Tony Gonzalez introduced the “STOP Screwworms Act” in the House of Representatives.  H.R. 3392 required the Secretary of Agriculture to “establish a New World Screwworm fly rearing facility, and for other purposes.”  It never got past being introduced, much less become law.  It was a bipartisan bill, with over 50 cosponsors.  The same CRS report mentioned above outlined the devastating impact an infestation could have on Texas and other border states if no action was taken.  

The failure of this bill to pass and become law illustrates how screwed up and incompetent the House of Representative is under the control of the Republicans and Speaker Johnson. Not to be outdone, the current Trump appointed Secretary of Agriculture blames, wait, wait, wait….. Biden and open borders.  The cattle ranchers aren’t buying it.  

Some ranchers have proposed self-funding screwworm eradication programs given the federal governments slow and incompetent response. You know, you get slow and incompetent when programs are defunded, scientists hounded out of government service, and all sorts of other stupid stuff.  

Meanwhile, as the screwworm infestation gets worse, our President keeps a razor sharp focus on……the reflecting pool, his billion-dollar ballroom, and his birthday bash UFC fight at the White House’s Thunderdome.   Texans.  What the hell did you think was going to happen?  It’s your own damn fault.

Another thing that irritates me is that when there was a 2025 measles outbreak in West Texas that infected close to 800 kids, of whom about 100 were hospitalized, and two died.  All hell should have broken loose, but no.  Texans seemed to shrug.  Fits the anti-science, anti-vaccine, anti-government ideology of Texas. Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human services blamed the vaccines and suggested suspect treatments.  Where was the outcry?  I guess you all like your cattle more than your kids.  About 70 percent of kids are vaccinated in Texas, that is below the national average.  

Come on Texas, you can do better.  The federal government’s slow and haphazard response should be a warning to farmers and ranchers that still support Trump, in Texas and my home state of Virginia.  He’s not your friend.  Do you trust a politician whose hands have never touched dirt, or had a callous, or owned a dog, or got up before sunrise?  

But, I imagine you’re busy trying to find buyers for soybeans and corn crops you planted and worrying whether you can afford the diesel fuel or fertilizer as Trump’s incompetent and haphazard war of choice with Iran drags.  You farmers and ranchers all need some “straight” talk and tough love at times:  You screwed yourselves.  

This November, put a stop to the chaos. Make Congress vote for you and not Trump. Vote for Democratic candidates and family farmer friendly policies, not for corporate farm monopolies.  

John McGuire, our representative, has not introduced or sponsored one bill to directly help the farmers of his district. He doesn’t serve on any farm or agricultural subcommittees.  He did vote for two key bipartisan farm bills, however, which included funding for a new fire truck for Louisa County and monies for the Nottoway Sheriff’s office, hardly direct help to our farmers here in Louisa.  He did sponsor a bill to “Make the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful” in 2025.  

The sugar farmers love him it seems, as he gets campaign donations from them and their associations.  For instance, the America Sugar Cane League, the Michigan Sugar Growers PAC, and the Sugar Growers Cooperative Florida.  Do we even grow sugarcane in Virginia?  Did I mention he has been buying Nvidia stock this year?  Twice (January and May).

Philomela: The Nightingale, Epstein, and Trump

Philomel means lover of song. In classic literature and prose, philomel was substituted with the nightingale.  William Shakespeare, for example, employed the nightingale, or even philomel, at least 33 times in his plays and sonnets as symbols of song, grief, and trauma. Its’ origins trace back to Greek and Roman mythology; of how the gods created the nightingale.

It is a tragic story, and like many Greek and Roman mythologies, is racked with violence, sexual violence in particular.  This story contains such tales.  There are several versions of the myth, I learned, and over the ages this story has been reinterpreted in prose and art. 

The story I still thing resonates today, Greek and Roman Gods were powerful beings, they not only abused their powers to indulge their thirst for vengeance and lusts but also silence their victims. They also had soft spots and intervened at the last second in supposed acts of generosity and kindness. Today we have powerful men who use their money and office to silence victims.

The story of Philomela is one such example.  Philomela was the younger sister of Pronce who was married to Tereus, the king of the Thracians.  Philomela’s voice was considered beautiful, like a birds song.  Tereus developed an obsession for Philomela.  He raped her, and to stop her from telling his wife much less anyone else, cut out her tongue.  Philomela, however, used her master weaving skills to make a purple robe or shawl with hidden messages of the rape.  Through the symbols woven into the shawl or robe, Pronce learned of the rape, and in a rage killed her (Pronce’s) and Tereus’ son, cooked him, and served him to Tereus.

When Tereus found out, he raged, grabbed an axe, and chased Philomela and Ponce out of his palace, intending to murder them.  He caught up with them, but, at that point, before he killed them, the Gods turned all three into birds.  Ponce became a swallow, Philomela a nightingale, and Tereus a hoopoe, a very orangey, colorful bird known for its feathered crown.

Over a week ago, news media reported that E. Jean Carroll, was being investigated by the Department of Justice for perjury.  Carroll, famously sued Trump for defamation a few years ago, and won a $83.3 million settlement.  The civil jury found that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in New York City.  The judge called it rape.  Trump has appealed the civil courts verdict, asking that the settlement be set aside.  It sits before the Supreme Court today.  

You can smell the corruption all the way from Illinois and the White House. Trump, as President, presides over the Department of Justice.  The acting Attorney General is a former attorney for Trump.  The Trump appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Andrew Bourtos, is overseeing the investigation. As a side note he is an alumnus of UVA law school.

As the fate of the civil case and judgment against Trump rests before the Supreme Court, Trump is using the Department of Justice to ‘cut out the tongue’ of E. Jean Carroll.  She is today’s Philomela.  It is outrageous.  It is also meant, I think, to silence victims of Epstein and his many friends from coming forward.  

Trump is a vile and heinous man and thinks nothing to use the full weight of his immense presidential powers, both legal and illegal, to go after and silence his accusers.  He fancies himself a deity.  Congress and the Supreme Court have allowed him to be a king and deity.

He needs to be turned into a hoopoe, orange feathered crown and all. A massive turn out this November will effectively turn him into a flightless Hoopoe of sorts.  The Greek and Roman gods did have a sense of humor, however.  Perhaps they would turn Trump into the Dodo bird or better yet a fluffy-backed tit-babbler or a blue-footed booby.  

Goethe, a Dead Italian Poet, and an American Presidency

In the late 18th century Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe completed a play loosely based on the late 16th century Italian poet Torquato Tasso.  Part autobiographical, according to one scholar, Goethe explores Tasso’s real-life moments of inspired poems created in the throes of mental illness, perhaps during episodes of manic depression or schizophrenia.  

At one point Tasso was confined to a ‘madhouse’ for pulling a knife on his patron, the Duke of Ferrara, Alfons.  In the play, the protagonist also was placed under house arrest for threats and pulling a knife.  Goethe uses the play to explore the ‘tensions between the rational and the irrational,’ according to one academic article. From this play comes the much-quoted saying, “the coward only threatens when he is safe.”

This is a cogent observation of the human condition, even if the quote has become something of a truism.  It worries me because our President seems to be threatening everyone and everything as he too shuttles between the rational and the irrational.  His knife is our military and domestic paramilitary police.

Things are not going well for Trump – mentally or politically — it seems.  

His war with Iran is a military, strategic, and political disaster.  Iran checkmated him.  Meanwhile, as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and America’s main street economy tanks, Trump fiddles with childlike vanity projects.  

Inflation is rising at a quick pace, all because of Trump’s disastrous tariff wars and his catastrophe of a war with Iran, a war of choice.  Last week gas prices were at this country’s highest national average cost per gallon ….ever.  Americans, according to a new report, are falling behind in debt payments “at the fastest pace since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.”  Credit card delinquencies rose to 13 plus percent in the first quarter of 2026.  Additionally, auto loan delinquencies are also at record numbers.  His polls are lower than sleepy Joes ever were.  

Internationally, the world is aghast at Trump’s pretenses of not only being King of America but seeking to rule the world.  At every opportunity he channels the evil emperor Ming the Merciless of Flash Gordon fame.  Trump’s daily mental ruptures are rattling global markets.  The 10-year government bond yield is at record highs, meaning sureness in the U.S. government ability to pay off its debts is declining.  Because mortgage rates are linked to the 10-year bond, not to the Fed’s rate that banks get, it means that mortgage rates remain stubbornly high, making it harder to buy a home. That’s Trump’s doing, not the Chairman of the Fed. In short, international confidence in America is in freefall. 

Yet, Trump seems wholly unconcerned with the mid-terms or 2028.  Just pleasing his MAGA base and ignoring the basic sensibilities of democracy and the democratic process. As if they no longer exist. He even posted an image of himself with a rifle and the carcass of a rhino.  Threatening Republicans who don’t back him 100 percent. 

 Why?  What does he have up his sleeve that makes him think he is safe from political disaster and reversal?

I can only guess he isn’t concerned about the Republicans losing the house and senate this November or the White House with a democratic incumbent in 2028.   That the outcomes of the vote of 2026 and 2028 are irrelevant; that he intends, and believes, he can and will stay in power. 

As Trump vacillates between the rational and irrational, he increasingly lives in the latter camp. I am deeply concerned that a mental health driven constitutional breakdown is becoming increasingly likely should neither his Cabinet or Congress intervene.  Given the cowardice of his cabinet Secretaries, Vice President, Roberts, Johnson, and Thune, Trump has nothing to fear and continues his campaigns of threats.

Corrupt

Corrupt is a word much used nowadays to describe Trump and his administration. I even heard it in Louisa in an establishment that I would say is part of MAGA country. A few weeks ago, when my wife and I were in a store in the Louisa and Mineral area, the owner standing behind the counter, went on a tirade about Trump and his corruption.  Stating that Trump and his family pocketed over $1.4 billion.  

I have been to this store several times and there has been, on occasion, anti-liberal, anti-progressive, anti-democratic party bantering and comments made by folks in the store and behind the counter.  For instance, if something was free, it was a “democratic discount.”  I stopped going to the store, but sometimes they were the only game in town.

That said, when I heard the owner dis Trump recently, I got a grin on my face as wide as the Grand Canyon, said nothing, paid for my stuff, and left.  “Damn,” I said to my wife in the truck, adding, “holy shit that was interesting.”  

Whether that anger translates at the polls to a dem vote, is to be seen.  It may turn into low republican turnout, which will benefit the democrats.  But who knows.  Who knows whether a corrupt White House will try and cancel the November election by declaring a national emergency, or, if there is an election, whether Trump will nullify democratic wins by claiming fraud and seize ballots.  That is the $1.4 billion dollar question.

Corrupt, however, is more expansive than simple bribery, self-dealing, insider trading, and all unethical things Trump is doing to enrich himself, his family, and those loyal to him.  It has a much richer and broader meaning.  Corruption is plush in adjectives and verbs dating back to the 14th century.

Like many words in English, it has a Latin origin.  It’s root meaning corrumpere, simply means to destroy to spoil.  In the English language starting in the 1300s it took on the modern sense of how we understand corruption, both physically and spiritually. Most folks nowadays think just bribery, but it has many meanings.   Sadly, I think you can put a check mark by each of the words below and say, “yep, that’s Trump.”

Debased in character, unhealthy, uncouth, bribe, to break, decrepit, putrid, putrefy, spoiled, depraved morally, pervert, contaminate, impair the purity of, seduce or violate (woman or child), render impure, and finally, influence by bribe or other motive.

Not only is Trump using the office of the Presidency to corruptly enrich himself and his family, but the list of his other corrupt acts is deep, and America decays and putrefies every day he remains in power:

he demolishes the rule of law in America every opportunity he has. 

he routinely perverts the course of justice;

he broke America’s social contract;

he debases America and its allies daily with wildly crazy midnight social media posts;

he orders extrajudicial killings on the high seas and starts unjust wars without cause and without the people’s consent.

he violated a woman in a department store dressing room, a civil jury found;

 he was accused by a woman of raping her when she was 13, per FBI documents;

he was a longtime friend with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein;

he posts images of himself as Jesus.

And finally, he is personally uncouth, not worthy of the highest office in our great land.

So, what to do.  The first order is to vote in November, make pleas to friends and family to get out and vote.  That’s the easy party.  If Trump cancels the election or nullifies the election or tells congress not to seat the new congress, what then?  What’s the response? I think, and I believe this, it will be the beginning of the end of the union.  I don’t think disenfranchised states will wait for the courts.  

Civil War?  I hope not, and most Americans do not want this.  It would be fratricidal. Problem is Trump is an insane, corrupt nihilist who likes to play the madman, when he is in effect really a madman, surrounded by sycophantic child like nihilists like Vance, Miller, and Hegseth.  The question is, what will a depraved Trump do when massive demonstrations erupt across the country and in Washington DC should he cancel or nullify the elections?

A Supreme Mess: Roberts and His Den of Constitutional Thieves

“Good Morning Chief Justice Roberts, I see you put out the new signs”

We are, I think, in a supreme mess. A vindictive Chief Justice Roberts just settled a vendetta. As a Reagan Administration lawyer, Roberts opposed strengthening the Voting Rights Act. He penned memos arguing that letting someone sue a state for a ‘discriminatory effect’ was federal overreach, and interfered in states’ rights.

Despite his opposition to the amendment to the voting rights act, Congress in 1982 passed the bill in a bipartisan vote. Forty four years later he and five other conservative justices strike down that amendment as part of ten-year set of rulings undermining the law and Congresses’ intent. In effect stealing not only the Voting Rights Act, but the 15th Amendment, from the American people.

Congress clearly and resoundingly spoke on this major question in 1982. Now, the chief proponent of the Major Questions doctrine, says not good enough. If anything, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was, and is, an example of Congress clearly stating its will, the will of the people, on a major constitutional question. That is enforcing the 15th Amendment.

This ruling highlights why we are in trouble as a nation. To the conservative super majority, It’s not about the Constitution, it’s about settling personal and political vendettas. Dangerously, the Robert’s Court is a corrupt right wing political machine, rewriting the Constitution at will. The increasing use and misuse of the shadow docket, anonymous rulings, labored arguments that collapse under their own weight, the outright fabrication of history and data, all point to a debased and crooked Court. A Court where profiteering and acceptance of bribes by some justices is brazenly open.

I think the court will overturn birthright citizenship in part. It just opened the flood gate for gerrymandering districts to favor whites (sorry, I meant I Republicans) months before the mid-terms. I also believe when Trump seizes ballots this November the Court will permit it to do so. When Trump announces his intent to run for a third unconstitutional term the Court will invent a new doctrine to permit Trump to run again. Hopefully the gentleman with the scythe will come calling first.

This corrupt court and a dysfunctional Congress are all that stand before a tyrannical Trump and one party authoritarian rule. We are, therefore, in a heap of trouble, up a constitutional creek without a paddle. Now is the time to look to the future and decide how we, as a people, will respond.

A Very, Very Short History of Voting Rights in America: 1776 to 2026

Let’s begin with a very short quiz.  True or false: Up to 1926 non-citizens in many States could vote in local, state, and national elections.  

If you answered True, you are ………correct.

If you carefully read the original ratified constitution, you will note that it did not explicitly define who could vote.  Or, for that matter even define citizen or citizenship.  In fact, and practice, voting rights in the several states at our founding tended to be based on the big three:  acquired wealth, gender, and race.  These three qualifications defined who could and, consequently, who could not vote.  While property qualifications pretty much disappeared in the early 19th century, gender and race defined who could vote, not citizenship, for many, many decades.

Some state constitutions merely asserted “white males” could vote with no mention of citizenship.  As the country expanded westward voting by aliens was encouraged, for instance in the Northwest Ordinance of 1789 “freehold aliens” could vote.  Some states required aliens to take an oath that they were upstanding inhabitants and intended to become citizens.  Becoming a naturalized citizenship was linked to race, however, in our early Republic.

The Naturalization Act of 1790 stated that only “free white person of good character’ could become citizens after two years of residence, however, several following Acts raised the residency requirements first to five years, and then in 1798 the Alien and Sedition Act raised the residency requirement to 14 years.  This last requirement did not last long and was in response to fears of dastardly French influences.

The Constitution of 1789, while never linking voting to citizenship, clearly stated, however, that the President, Representatives, and Senators must be citizens, and added an additional modifier for President, they must be a ‘natural born citizen.’  The absence of any express statement in the constitution linking citizenship to voting suggests that voting by non-citizens was such common practice that it was deemed a common law right, at least in the American colonies which, before the revolution, were generally governed by written charters.  

Americans, it seems, before they were technically American, were better off than their fellow Englishmen in Great Britian in terms of suffrage.  In Great Britian, voting in the 18th century was extremely restricted and it was not until a series of reforms in the 19th century did Great Britian enlarge the voting franchise.  

For about 150 years then, many states permitted aliens, that is non-citizens, to vote.  I think Scalia, were he alive, and other constitutional originalists would vomit at that thought.  

Voting by non-citizens did ebb and flow over time, however. Wars resulted in contractions of voting rights by non-citizens, for instance the War of 1812 and the First World War saw pushback.  The rise of nativist movements as waves of immigrants arrived provoked some pushback as well on non-citizen voting rights in the mid 19th century.  This accelerated when immigrants from eastern or southern Europe — such as Greece or Italy — began arriving in huge numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[i]  

Basically, folks from an earlier list of shithole countries or representing threatening religions, you know, the ever-dangerous Catholic or Jew.   Claims of intellectual, genetic, and moral inferiority abounded.  They couldn’t assimilate many claimed.  Does that not sound familiar?

As we have seen, voting rights in America has a peculiar history and was (and is it seems) very much tied with gender and race, not citizenship. Citizenship was a variable state by state.  Women gained the right to vote 105 years ago.  African American men in 1870.  Asian immigrants could not become U.S. citizens until 1952, and therefore ineligible to vote.  

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 did much to enforce and federalize and nationalize the right to vote.  It did much to ensure all citizens, regardless of race or origin, were given equal opportunity to vote.  That is no longer the case.  While the reversals of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have been articulated in terms of impacts on black and brown voters, the demise of the Act will have broader impacts on other communities: Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, and other diaspora communities.  

Trump’s new immigration policy is designed to impact the make-up of the next generation of voters.  Afrikaners over Africans, whites over others.  And, with the help of the Robert’s court, making it harder for everyday Americans of color to vote in states with long histories of denying black and brown people the right to vote.  The attack on the Voting Rights Act is just one part of a broader, systemic attack on who is an American, who can become an American, and therefore, who has a voice in America’s present and future.

This November we are voting for more than just neutering Trump politically, we are fighting for whose America this is, and who will inherit America from us once we are gone.  This is a generational vote, a vote for our kids, our grandkids, and our generations of unborn Americans. 

Post Script:  The Supreme Court recently invalidated Louisiana’s congressional district voting map because districts were gerrymandered by race.  A normal grace period of a month was set aside by the Court to allow immediate action by Louisiana.  Voting was already underway.  The Louisiana governor is currently refusing to count over 30k mail-in votes already received.    

[i] Texas permitted non-citizens to vote until 1921.  Indiana as well. Kansas 1918. Oregon 1914.  Virginia 1818.  Pennsylvania 1838.  See Ron Hayduk, Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States, 2006.