De mortuis nil nisi bonum, and all that....

JUST IN: David Koch, the industrialist and libertarian who used his fortune to transform American politics, has died at 79 https://t.co/v5ZDK2BGgE pic.twitter.com/AGbBWpYihI

— Bloomberg (@business) August 23, 2019

I have found that for some deaths, the adage to speak nothing but good of the dead is, to utilize another quote, more honored in the breach than in the observance. To the extent the David Koch was a transformative figure in politics, it was a transformation that was entirely bad, grubby, inhumane, and noxious. And as a person with enough money to leave behind any number of trusts to continue the work of climate science denialism, retrograde social policies and the like, the bad he fostered may live long after him.

Even his riddance has a dearth of good in its wake.

There's Money in These TrumpWorld Grab-Bags

"Follow the money" is basically right up there with "Cherchez la femme" for getting to the heart of the plot of most weird capers--the apparent weirdness in the Trump/Russia orbit definitely seems to be a "follow the money" story. Take "Most Likely to Be indicted Soon if He isn't Already Singing Like a Nightingale", former general Mike Flynn. He seems to have at one point been working out a caper in which a green card- holding Turkish expatriate would be forcibly extradited to Turkey, for which Flynn and his son, Mike Flynn, Jr., would get a pay out of $15 million. 

Okay, if you're a TrumpWorld Grab-Bag aficionado, that knowledge doesn't seem all that brand-new to you. And if you're paying attention, that does mean that both Mike Flynn and son were on the Trump transition team contemporaneously with this stupid and not terribly-American thing being cooked-up, and yes, you probably have heard before that Congresscritter Devin Nunes was at a breakfast where...

Well, yeah. That was rumored about before. But now it looks like an actual investigation into all that has fallen into Robert Mueller's purview. So. This would be an investigation Nunes can't interfere with or try to squirt squid-ink on. 

But, of course, the same thing can be said about recently indicted Paul Manafort (whose former son-in-law also appears to be in some kind of legal jeopardy regarding financial shenanigans) who seems to have been doing some money laundering, possibly in connection with his work for the Putin-friendly Ukrainian regime of Viktor Yanukovych. In pursuit of this investigation, Mueller recently received relevant bank records having to do with the Bank of Cyprus. Which is so weird, because, coincidentally, Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whom Trump has known for 20+ years, also is connected with Bank of Cyprus and Russia. He's also not a real billionaire, apparently. 

It's a small freakish world, that's all I have to say. 

But anyhow, some of that financial jiggery-pokery and off-shore investment stuff that Manafort is suspected of playing with, seems to be what was funding Steve Bannon's early anti-Hillary Clinton smears, some of which, though oft-debunked, stay wingnut currency to this very day. This is because the money was coming from the Mercers (the recently-retired Robert and the recently upgraded Bekah) and they (rather like the Koch brothers, come to think of it) hate paying taxes. 

Which might explain why Cambridge Analytica made moves to coordinate with Julian Assange.  Especially since, if they talked to any of the folks in the Trump Campaign who were in contact with Russia and knew that the DNC hack was Russian and had reason to believe that WikiLeaks was the front for the eventual "leaks", they knew this could be paid back with a successful Trump win, since he would try tax reform. You know, the thing McConnell and Ryan seem to be willing to accept any amount of bullshit to pull off. 

I don't know if any recent interview with Stephen Miller might illuminate the Carter Page/George Papadopoulos all that much. That doesn't look to be about money, so much as love of the game. But what a dumb, sordid, not especially American, grifting game it seems to be!

In a sidenote that has nothing to do with money at all, former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller recently explained that, while he doesn't know of any activity between Trump and prostitutes, prostitutes were definitely on offer in his 2013 trip. He doesn't think anything happened, but hey! Man's gotta sleep sometime!

There certainly seems to be all kinds of leverage in this world. Money is one. Pride is another. But we're closing in to the real "money" question: What did Trump know about all this, if he ever did, and when?  

Carly Fiorina Could Be the New Mitt Romney

When considering the news that the Koch brothers and other donors were developing an interest in Carly Fiorina, an outsider candidate, I started considering what her appeal was, and then it hit me--she's credibly a little like Mitt Romney, no? He was a businessman with a thin political resume but a remarkable talent for lying, and she's a former business woman with a nearly nonexistent political resume but with a remarkable talent for lying. What the hell? Jeb Bush is like a dead frog with donors trying desperately to run a current though his ass every once in a while to see if he jumps. Fiorina, to give her her due, jumps all by herself. She's not as conspiracy theory-driven as Carson, as clowny as Trump, as nekkidly grifting and holy-rolling as Huckabee and Santorum, and unlike Ted Cruz, people don't want to sock her in the jibs.

She could be going places.

There's the rub--once you start getting taken seriously, why, people might start taking you seriously! I mean, take her business record. Not so great, actually. I think her story goes like this:

Don't cry for me Hewlett Packard,
The truth is I never left you,
although you shoved me
I think you still loved me,
I made increased revenue
if not shareholder value.

And as for my fortune
and as to blame
I never invited them in
even though it might seem
by an objective record of fact
I got paid for crashing
the stock.

But that's illusions,
you should listen to me,
I think I've been more than that,
I'm all I expected I'd be.

There may be reasons why people who worked for her then, or were laid off by her, aren't really in favor of her candidacy.
 

SCOTUS Shows Love for the Rainmakers and Buckrakers

In the home of the brave, free speech comes with a price tag, as the Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 (No! Really?) decision in the McCutcheon v. FEC case, which basically gives rich folks the license to print ballots. 

Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but here's the deal--if putting your money where your mouth is, is a form of free speech, then some animals on this farm are obviously more equal than others, if laws that try to keep the rich from drowning out the voices of the not-so-much are seen as onerously violating the rights of the people who can afford to pay for this here microphone and mean to use it.

It kind of says, if you can't afford to pay for the good sound system, you might as well shut up.

There was some dancing around in that decision about whether campaign financing was about quid pro quo--look, I get it. The decision for letting our politicians be bought outright was centered on not making it for each trick they turn out, but letting them perform on a retainer basis.  And that's sweet, but let's call it what it is. And let's not pretend that our transactional political system isn't about quid pro quo because the paymasters don't give direction when our little dears can figure out what they are supposed to do to please Daddy without all that much direction.

Now, there might be an antidote to the influence of money in the form of a critical, tough, independent media who can cut through the "talk" of money and see to it that "bullshit" hits the road. A lot of our mainstream media might not necessarily recognize that cutting through the bull is their job, though. That's kind of why I see blogging as important. Maybe this cosa nostra can strike a little bit back at the pezzanovantes that want to make peasants out of us. But otherwise, I encourage everybody to vote the fuck out of the GOP, because, let's be honest, they are the most boughten and paidest-for. I'm all for kicking the Koch-machine--how'bout you?

(Add--do I lie?)

Tom Perkins Makes Some Interesting Points.

I have the feeling that Tom Perkins and I don't have considerable overlap in our personal views or experiences regarding money. It's okay, and I judge, but, like, I don't judge, man.  He's made a living knowing things about money, while for me, economics is a neat hobby, but I read poetry in college because my folks wanted me to be a useful citizen and iambs kept me off the pipe and the pole. Kind of. So I am taking his pronouncements with a grain of salt and a spoonful of sugar.

It's hard to not look at a claim that people should earn votes based on their tax dollars as a form of elitism where wealthy people have more value in a system based on their proportionate capacity to pay more in tax dollars because they have those dollars to pay. I could envision a system where, by virtue of greed and the complicity of the hoi polloi, the wealthy could become disenfranchised by a tax law exempting the 1%-ers from all taxation. Followed by a brief and satisfying reign of terror in the exact year they lose all the votes. But I have long dipped my toes in speculative fiction where justice often follows narrative ends.

I do not suggest that such a future is practical nor probable. But I do note that our popular elections are so run that money does have sway in the ability of candidates, or whole movements, such as the Tea Party, to gain offices. The ability to create issues, generate turn-out, attract donations (by that old black magic called "It takes money to make money"), run ads that popularize a candidate's name and visage, and so on, are greated aided by money.

Why, let me introduce you to the Koch Brothers, if you haven't been introduced! They've got a system.  They are two guys who can fund a remarkable number of think tanks (thought tanks, I think, because the thinks were already pre-thunk, no?), action groups, and whatever you might call them. This is several different ways to funnel money to campaigns, really. Many ways to soften up voter minds or harden positions for the gullible faithful inclined to seeing things their way. Billionaires can even buy or build whole news networks. They are even owning whole states, in their unpleasant way.  With the Citizen's United decision, dollars pretty well convert to votes. Perkins' dream is about here.

I think this is why folks of limited resources need to take advantage of voting while we can, because it is regularly being screwed with. (Nope, even today.) And let's make sure our votes don't get bought out from under us.

(X-posted at Rumproast.)

Climate Sunday: The Way I Look at It

The above chart gives a pretty good visual representation regarding the consensus among scientists that global warming is real. There's similar consensus that it is being advanced by human influences. It is true that the rate of change having occurred thus far is a little over one degree globally, but the fact of the matter is--that isn't like saying a day that might have seen a high of 85 degrees F is a 86 degree F high day. The effects of an all-over warmer world is already being seen  and is liable to increase due to feedbacks in the system that drive increased warming, such as methane releases from areas previously ice-covered, or increased water vapor in the air. In other words, the worse things get, the worse they are going to get.

All of this sounds really, terribly, awfully pessimistic, and if you've followed my "Climate Sunday"posts over the past year or so, it really might seem like I'm full of doom and gloom and probably the least fun person at parties. But I'm actually pretty optimistic, conditionally.

Have About an Hour? See this: The Billionaires' Tea Party

This is a pretty good investigative documentary of the Astroturf nature of the Tea Party.



This is really timely given what we've been seeing especially in Wisconsin. At the Tea Party rally in Wisconsin just yesterday, Andrew Breitbart and Sarah Palin stood behind a sign that read "I am AFP" (Americans for Prosperity).  That's not exactly "I am Spartacus", is it?

When the film get to the business about the anti-climate science and "kill the EPA" stuff, you've basically got a pretend grassroots movement of people clamoring to have chemicals dumped into their water and air. What right-thinking people would be happy with pollution? In the water they bathe their kids in? In the water they cook with and drink?

(Governor Scott Walker, for one.)

Also mentioned, Glenn Beck and Fox Mushroom Farm--and lots of Tea Partiers spouting some total nonsense.

It's a pretty fascinating piece.