Taxation Without Representation and Mad King Don

 

REPORTER: I've spoken with some economists about your tariff proposals and they say they don't see how it won't make items cost more--

TRUMP: I don't need Congress, but they'll approve it. I'll have the right to impose them myself if they don't. pic.twitter.com/YuRHvzCkE3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 23, 2024

Mad King Don is pretty sure this would constitute an official act and he would get away with it. Sure, it raises prices (he knows it would "punish" John Deere if he put a heavy tariff on their products, so he understands the mechanism when he wants to).

But keep in mind that this is the same person who says that the stock market is up because people are anticipating he will win, when his own stock, $DJT is plummeting, and even its CEO, Devin Nunes, is selling. Something seems pretty sketchy with that reasoning. 

The Trump solution is here, though-- never fear: because something something crypto, something something also a commemorative coin. And the hem of his garment, which possibly cures scrofula. 

Have you even ever met someone with scrofula? You don't know!

What Are the Odds He Believes This?

 

Trump: A tariff is a tax on a foreign country. A lot of people like to say it’s a tax on us. No… It’s is a tax that doesn’t affect our country. pic.twitter.com/NNyNthZbKg

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 17, 2024

This isn't how tariffs work. People have been pointing out this is not how tariffs work. The benefits of tariffs are mixed. But if consumers are concerned about high prices, tariffs are not going to do anything about them. Economists say it would result in Americans paying more--it is a tax on us. Trump's concept of a trade war against foreign countries is just not how things in a global economy work. The answer--inflation. 

I'm not 100% Trump understands what his immigration policy would do to supply chains here in the US, and I'm relatively sure that if he hasn't got the tariffs thing right in his head, he definitely doesn't understand how devaluating the dollar is also terrible for consumers.

But you or I might be thinking about things from the point of view of people with "normal" incomes. We do things like work for a living or have a "fixed" income from a pension. We would actually feel those costs--the people who help set Trump's economic policy and the people who can afford Trump country club memberships would not. I don't think it matters whether Trump understands these policies, I think it's that he does not care and will say absolutely anything to be elected.

Devin Nunes is Just Asking Questions

 

Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes says he has hundreds of thousands of smaller MAGA investors in Trump Media, and they are calling him asking why the stock is tanking, so he filed a complaint with the SEC and says Biden is conspiring with Wall Street bankers to screw him. pic.twitter.com/ZxTEmxeN0J

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 20, 2024

Something about Truth Social puts me in one of those "can't place where all the emotion is coming from" moods, somewhat akin to when Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Art Laffer. I guess it's my strong feeling that shitty economics threatens livelihoods and personal savings--it isn't a game. Supply-side economics does not work in practice. It's an upwards transfer of wealth that has led to increased income inequality and which holds back growth because there is no incentivization for long-term investment or worker protections. 

Something about Trump, the man, the myth, the legend, is trapped in a 1980s elephantine "greed is good" vision of worshipping sacred golden calves. He's wealthy, so he is supposed to be a job-creator--look at how he created a job for Devin Nunes, a man so intelligent he sued an internet cow for defamation for linking to true stories like a thin-skinned goober who never heard of the "Streisand effect".  

Trump is like an icon of a different time. "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and all that. That time sucked and the people sucked.  Even Trump's rivals kind of sucked. (Everything was the worst.) 

Anyway, Nunes is looking beyond the Trump Media fundamentals, to blaming the "naked short sellers" for the devaluation of the stock he had to answer for when frankly, the business hadn't done anything yet. (And they will do something--they will be a streaming service for stuff you just won't get anywhere else on the internet, which I promise you is not a thing.)

TWGB: It's Bad

 

The conviction of the Trump Organization for 17 counts of assorted tax fraud charges is, to put it mildly, a bit of a setback for the presidential candidacy of former president Donald J. Trump, although of course, he's appealing it. And we can look back and note that the sad ends of Trump University and the Trump Foundation didn't scathe Trump's image as a successful (and definitely not a con artist) businessman. (They totally should have.) It's hard to say that what should be a bit of a (to use a term) legal coup against a corrupt real estate scion is even the beginning of the end of Trump--the man, the myth, the mofo. 

But why not say it is? Because whatever is going down around him--it isn't good. 

I wonder about little gestures in TrumpWorld, like the revelation that Trump's lawyers have a team investigating whether there were still classified government documents to be found on Trump properties, and while they did find a couple in a storage unit, they are pretttttttyyy sure Trump's usual haunts are clean. 

My favorite bit is where the FBI decline to watch the search:

The team also offered the FBI the opportunity to observe the search, but the offer was declined, the people said. It would be unusual for federal agents to monitor a search of someone’s property conducted by anyone other than another law enforcement agency. Federal authorities have already searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s primary residence, and he spends almost all of his time at those three properties, advisers say.

They would like to watch a search at Trump Tower or Bedminster, is my guess, but doing it when expected is not how this is going to go down.  I just have the vague suspicion that this story is Team Trump trying to get out in front of something.  I mean, Trump;s lawyers say he's got all the clasified docs out of his sstem but they've been wrong before, right? 

Nunes Left Congress for This

 

Anyway, you know the TMTG media thing that Trump launched after he left office and that looked like a pump and dump thing because the project seemed to have little material investment and lots of puffery?  The thing that started being investigated right away because wow, if it looks bad, maybe it is bad?  Anyway, subpoenas were issued to TMTG by the SEC and a grand jury for the SDNY--but Trump and Don, Jr. and a handful of other folks were already off the board. Apparently. It's amazing how that happens. 

So, according to the records, Devin Nunes, who left Congress for this, is still the CEO. It's very likely that the merger stuff between TMTG and Digital World was already in the can when he came aboard, and per Truth social posts, TrumpWorld is denying that Trump is really off the board. It's all a misunderstanding and a witch hunt. Except...

Is it? There's something really weird about a "successful" billionaire always being investigated to the extent Trump is (you know, like Trump University, and the Trump Foundation, and the tax fraud..) and always seeming to be dodging accountability (like, being himself or having associates in contempt of court for not turning over documents, which is still going on--would you believe?) that makes it seem like, maybe, just maybe, this Trump character isn't a great businessman, but a kind of possible...crook?

I'm not saying I know for sure. Maybe he's just extraordinarily unlucky. I mean, imagine the odds that Trump "foes" (also known as public servants who were just doing their jobs) like Jim Comey and Andrew Mccabe were selected for intrusive IRS audits by an agency run by a partisan Trump pick? Then throw in the odds that Michael Cohen fell under their gimlet eye as well (although that one doesn't necessarily feel as remote). 

The astronomical bad luck, am I right? You'd have to have some especial low opinion of how the world works (or at least, how certain people work in it) to see a not-so-hidden hand there, given how obviously bullies actually work in the open, yeah? 

Anyway, Devin Nunes, who left an influential seat in Congress for this, once sued an internet cow among other people who said very bad things about him on the internet, all of which were true. I think his current position is udderly ridiculous, and he should be cheesed off about it. 

TWGB: There Ought To Be A Law!

 

Trump loves obstruction and lawsuits the way normal people would love things like their families, or maybe their country, or like, I guess, their personal notion of a deity. Trump established a pattern of obstruction that was fully noted in the Mueller investigation, and which I rather wish had been followed up on. He's done everything he can to obstruct people getting hold of his tax returns (although they sure have) even though that's kind of a normal thing for presidential candidates to turn over. He loves countersuits and appeals.  He is, verily, the illegitimum qui carborundums. 

Anyway, he's still doing that. In somewhat fascinating news following on a weekend where David Cay Johnson predicted that Trump might be facing an indictment for racketeering, and it has seemed very likely that he is also sweating the closeness and hotness of the 1/6 Committee's investigation, it looks like Trump is behaving in usual form: he's suing Letitia James for violating his rights, and I really think he's been the one who has directed the various subpoenaed of reasonable culpability to plead the Fifth and even sue. Cleta Mitchell and Alex Jones are doing it. Mark Meadows, who already let his document hand-over and his book do a lot of talking for him.  John Eastman and Jeffrey Clarke.  Etc.

Now, I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on the blog, but I think the constitutional right issue is sort of a non-starter because it upends the idea that crime should be investigated because people are involved. I mean, what if people were hoping to find a certain outcome, like, that someone was ever guilty of a crime? Biased! What if someone said bad things about a person they considered guilty of crimes? Obviously biased! Just entirely violating the right to not ever be accused of a thing despite evidence and reasonable cause for which warrants have been obtained, and, no, that isn't a thing. Being of the opposite party from an AG also shouldn't be a "Get Out of Investigations Free" card. It's a really weird reach. 

But it's about the public opinion. It's about poor little Everyman Trump struggling to keep his family business from being torn apart by political vultures when he meant it to be a legacy for his own kids, who are also all totally conniving shitasses. His father built that real estate empire with his own two hands and his grandfather's brothel money, and despite multiple bankruptcies, Donald Trump will be goddamned if he'll let it get shut down like his fraudulent University or his bullshit charity! 

Will it really matter if he's already screwed to the wall? See, he and his little buddies who want to stay shtum right now perpetrated a whole fraud. Trump, like Sidney Powell, fundraised off of bogus election fraud claims he had to have known weren't so. The RNC did. Multiple Republicans have used these fake claims. They sent emails and regular postal mailers with these false claims. They tried to pay for pointless audits and are still doing that sort of thing.

It really does look like the election fraud of 2020 was the proposal of many devious and dumb people to pretend there was voter fraud so as to a) maybe overturn an election but definitely b) make money and convince state legislatures they needed to DO SOMETHING to make sure (Republican) candidates didn't face what Trump faced: a searing loss because people realized he didn't know what the hell he was doing. Because that, not any voter fraud, was what actually happened. He sucked. He lost jobs, his foreign policy was awful, his SCOTUS picks are going down in history in totally not a good way. 

But regardless of the politics, the money grab over false pretenses was definitely a whole crime. And I don't think there ought to be a law about that, I believe there is. And Trump should go down for that, and the incitement for 1/6 as an attempt to obstruct the business of Congress, and for his business practices. Basically, I think we should, as a nation, set aside every January to find a new thing to prosecute Trump over in memory of his two impeachments and just make that a national thing going forward. 

As to the pic above: He is Vigo! You are like the buzzing of flies to him! So many Trump followers are like the Peter MacNicol character. It's so weird. 

Also, I mean, he totally did not win that election. He had to finagle a new AG because Bill Barr even said he lost. He lost. He really did. You can tell by the way he isn't in the White House anymore. He lost. 

Some Very Legitimate Business!

 

You know, it's not for me to question the ethics of a congressman who announces he's leaving the US House right about....now-ish, because he already has a really plum job lined up. It might look like he cast around for a job because his new district didn't look as friendly. Sure, some people might say that the only reason Trump wants Devin Nunes on board is their political relationship (and Nunes' abiding loyalty to Trump) but I don't know. He does have recent media experience, if you want to count trying to sue Twitter and a parody cow account. 

Hm. I don't know if that goes against the branding of Trump Media & Technology Group as being all about the freedom of speech, but that might be the least of the problems with anything bearing a Trump brand. 

My original take on Trump's media group is that it's got some big scam energy. Looks like that's not just me--the SEC is very interested in how this plan came together. There's good reason for it besides Trump being involved at all, but I've got to say, when you've got a twice-impeached former president who is going around still making Big Lie noises about the last presidential election, and that guy just happens to be someone who can't operate a charity anymore, ran a fraudulent "university" for six years, and has always been kind of money-laundering adjacent in his business practices--I mean, really? This guy whose Trump Organization is under indictment? Whose taxes may have been fiddled for years? 

I just have a hard time believing that really honest people would be putting their money where Trump's mouth is. It seems like the offering always was about employing the One Weird Trick of knowing when to dump out of it. But then again, some people do put their trust in Trump, I mean like Deutsche Bank--they were always willing to give the sucker a better than even break. Maybe Patrick Orlando just likes the cut of Mr. Trump's jib.

Ah, well, people do stupid things with their money I guess. The poor trusting souls, they are. 

TWGB: The Open Questions

 In Des Moines, IA, elder statesman Chuck Grassley openly embraced the traitorous and obviously unwell twice-impeached one-term ex-president while he ranted his way through grievances and conspiracy theories. Which hearkens me back to when the Senate Pro Tempore tweeted that maybe the Vice-President wouldn't be available to do his ceremonial duties on 1/6, and how wrong I had been. Pence showed up then, in the breach, and did the right thing. Grassley shows up at a rally, 9 months after Trump has been out of office, and at this advanced age and reputation, kisses Trump's medi-ochre behind because he would like another crack at being Senator. 

Because what else is there? Eating you know what, riding a tractor, telling the History Channel to get off his lawn and bothering with "pidgins"? 

Of the two, Grassley looks like the one who is up for a grueling campaign, though. Trump looks sad. His hair is gracelessly in denial of the baring of his scalp, as much as his clothes can not contain the drooping quality of his gait and posture. But why should Grassley be any different than the young suck-ups who salute Trump and then do their thing? The salute is what matters. Keeping that untidy Trump ass pleased and almost normal. Denying his obvious transgressions. 

TWGB: No Moneyman Can Win My Love

 

So: Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Org have been indicted with multiple counts in a 15 year tax avoidance scheme where many company officers received "fringe benefits" that were not reported for tax purposes. This is a good start. It probably should involve more years but there's statutes and whatnot. Anyway, bags of cash in the form of rent, tuition, and other nifty expensive shit kept top bosses happy so they didn't have to pay tax on their full compensation and went about their jobs (and I dunno, I'm not a lawyer, let alone a mob lawyer, but when folks in your employ are paid extra--it's because you expect extra--like keeping shtum about things that might otherwise be very interesting.)

Trump and his kids aren't named in the indictment--but I feel like we will get to that at some point in this investigation. I find it hard to believe randos not named "Trump" got special compensation and people actually named "Trump" working for that company did not. Have you seen these large adult children? 

Anyway, the charges here definitely imply lots of IRS tax fraud, and I would like to hope DOJ follows up on that part, because cha-ching. 

Anyway, Weisselberg is pleading "not guilty" because he is very loyal and has been comfortable for a long time and is totally stalling and maybe he thinks Trump still has some pull to help a brother out. I don't know about that, and I definitely suspect someone else is already diming out every bit of what Weisselberg could already offer, except for a few pieces. It might not matter whether Weisselberg "flips"  (All Trump scandals presume Trump is guilty and the only question is whether associated parties talk--you ever notice that?)

Have they tried...Branding?

I really feel like the president asking "what the hell do I know?" is just irresistible bait, but I will just make a few points:

Trump ran for president on branding. "Make America Great Again" was basically an ad campaign. It isn't really a policy statement and that explains (gesturing at all the things) a lot of what we see today. It's not a fix for anything, it's a Band-Aid with cartoon characters on it.

Trump had an airline for a very little bit. Branding did not help.

I really feel like saying "no product has suffered like this one" is a weird gloss over all the fatalities. But sure--branding!

Climate Monday: A Humble Media Suggestion

Trump White House issues climate change report undermining its own policy https://t.co/SZb2vFpdJg

— Vox (@voxdotcom) November 26, 2018

I don't think that the narrative that the Trump Administration is necessarily "hiding" their National Climate Assessment report is correct because I don't think news cycles really have a "Friday news dump" lacuna anymore, but I definitely agree that the actions of the administration serve to undermine it (or as they probably see it, the damned scientists are trying to undermine them). But this isn't something that's just peculiar to President Trump's anti-intellectual, conspiracy-minded, staring up at eclipses sort of nonsense. This is a problem we specifically have with US conservatives, and sadly, with how our media screws up reporting fact-based issues "for balance".

Take the Sunday shows. It's not hard for the chatty journalism format of the designated serious newsy shows to work in a "Friday news dump" item and give it a going over. Meet the Press, the ancient and venerable, bothered to mention it.

And they fucked it up. They let Senator Mike Lee get away with being stupid regarding the financial aspects of the substance of the report. The report specifically addressed the fact-based reality that real economic damage would be the fall-out of climate change, but libertarian Lee was able to burble that he saw no policy proposals that would not be economically damaging.

Let me rephrase that: is it that he sees no proposals that immediately address climate change that also permit entrepreneurs to capitalize on the deal? First off, that's short-sighted, but second, the turning a buck is their problem, not as a law-maker, his. His job would be legislation aimed at mitigating the effects for the safety and welfare of his constituents, which might not always be direct regulations (if he's so ideologically opposed), but could mean tax penalties or credits as a carrot and stick incentivization scheme to encourage better environmental practices. He doesn't seem to understand the question. He is, unquestionably, not a scientist--but you'd think he might understand the policy end a bit more, no?

Questions regarding the report were also put to regular MTP panel-member Danielle Pletka, of the AEI think tank. Her answers were also god-awful stupid.  And of course, she is not a scientist, and the AEI think tank she hails from gets a not-inconsiderable subsidy from Exxon, and maybe for all I know, other fossil fuel companies. This merits a disclaimer, I would think. But that MTP asked Pletka, and not, say, Tom Steyer, who was also on the program and actually has a committed and informed point of view on climate change, but was only asked about the 2020 horse race (really?) is, well.

Stupid.

But this isn't the worst stupidest thing. CNN actually pays my former senator, Rick Santorum of PA, for opinions about things when there is no evidence that he is actually, in any respect, a person with worthwhile and well-considered opinions. He actually fatuously repeated the dumb thing that Trump said about forest-raking, even though, once again, California does not manage all the forests, but the Federal government is in charge of most of it, and no, no one ever rakes forests because that is fucking stupid. Droughts are about less rain, and raking would actually pull more moisture out of the forest floor, and, you know, just read a book or something if you don't know why that is stupid. In the history of ever, there has never been a time when forest fires were managed by troops of people sent out into tens of thousands of acreage of trees, raking up shit.

But he also said a funny thing regarding climate change and the scientists who study it, to wit: they propound that global warming is real because of the sweet cash involved:

"I think the point that Donald Trump made is true, which is, uh… Look, if there was no climate change we’d have a lot of scientists looking for work," Santorum said. "The reality is that a lot of these scientists are driven by the money they receive, and of course they don’t receive money from corporations and Exxon and the like. Why? Because they’re not allowed to because it’s tainted, but they can receive (money) from people who support their agenda and that, I believe, is what’s really going on here."

Is he saying the people who support the thing where the established companies with all the money are going to have to make less money are somehow offering more compensation than the companies with all the money?* Because that is either really stupid or exactly what somebody who has been getting fossil fuel money and is also really stupid would say. And if Exxon and the coal companies and the natural gas guys and them could pay for Rick Santorum to say stupid stuff on tv (and also get paid by CNN, and provide no disclaimer about that whatsoever), than frankly, whatever stopped them from paying an actually very intelligent person or a hundred to put a scientifically shut-up-shutting up empirical stake in the heart of climate change science for once and for all?

Except, you know, the empirical facts?

So, my humble suggestion is this: If you have a political operative who might be swayed because of their income streams into siding with a corporate enterprise or entire industry opine on a subject pertaining to that industry, make it abundantly clear or don't have their asses on at all. And it you want balance, instead of "not a scientist" viewpoints dueling in a nebulous policy arena, maybe try to actually be informative and have a scientist weigh in! Also, maybe dedicate more of your staff to knowing this shit cold so they can respond to actually brain-damaged statements about raking forests and the glamorous pay of research scientists in real time.

I think it could be very helpful and serve the public a lot more than this farcical coverage.

*No. Tom Steyer is not paying all the other guys. It's, like 97% of scientists. He and Al Gore are not behind the whole global warming thing. The greenhouse effect was first described in 1824.

Hello--Goodbye

As noted the other night, Bannon's time art the White House was, indeed, about to draw to a close (although I'm pretty sure his presence will still be felt.) With Bannon's ouster, the betting window is now taking serious money for how long Sebastian Gorka will remain--I've never really been entirely sure what his job was, myself. I'm not really even sure what the impact on the White House will be--people who did not care for Bannon and thought his associations with the so-called "alt-right" were bad might feel that Bannon's leaving matters, but I can't help but note--Trump remains.

This was a week for other departures as well. After several CEO's left the president's Manufacturing Council and Strategy and Policy Forum, Trump ended them so that they could stop quitting on him. As a tidy capper to Infrastructure Week, Trump also wrapped up plans for an Infrastructure Council by scrapping it. Billionaire Carl Icahn will no longer advise Trump. (Steve Mnuchin's Yale classmates would like him to do the same.)

And the membership of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities sent Trump a "Dear Don" letter, which cleverly spelled out: "resist". His faith advisors are also concerned with what the president has been saying this past week. Pastor A.R. Bernard stepped down.

No wonder, then, that the President and the First Lady will not be attending the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony this coming December--he feels unwanted. I suggest that Trump doesn't have "personnel" problems--he has a Trump problem, and he takes it wherever he goes.

UPDATE: I forgot about all the Digital Council resignations. My apologies. There are just so many.

Protecting the Brand

It seems like just yesterday, then-candidate Donald Trump was offering us an opportunity to let him fix America's branding. Today, it looks an awful lot like now-President Trump is using the White House to help his (and Ivanka's) brand.

It was kind of hard not to notice that Donald Trump hasn't divested from his various holdings, and that he uses them and sort of promotes them (as does his Press Secretary) to the extent that even the Pentagon is considering renting space at Trump Tower. For convenience, of course. It might be a bit less obvious when Melania Trump's business was promoted on the White House website, although it's really hard to miss her recent lawsuit claiming damages because all the business opportunities she might have expected as First Lady were in jeopardy due to assorted scurrilous allegations. (Said opportunities were not in any jeopardy, apparently, due to possible ethical qualms.)

But Trump's Tweeted "defense" of his daughter Ivanka's brand and her "unfair" treatment by Nordstrom seems to take on a whole other level of interest. The Tweet:

I think the thing that sticks out at me is that he's implying that Nordstrom is making a kind of moral choice rather than a business one--Ivanka is great! Nordstrom is unfair! But Nordstrom has made a point of saying this isn't anything political at all--sales for Ivanka Trump merchandise simply dropped. Are they obligated to keep lines of product in stock that they can't shift? They aren't even the only business experiencing "Ivanka fatigue". (And for a switch, Trump's Tweet about Nordstrom doesn't seem to have hurt their shareholder value.) 

But that is just a father defending his daughter's brand, right? He doesn't like to see his daughter's name-value suffer. That alone would seem touching, right there--but it didn't stay right there. He re-Tweeted this comment under his @POTUS account, which is sort of an official stamp, and then the matter was taken up in a WH press briefing, with Sean Spicer baldly stating that  

"There's a targeting of her brand and it's her name," Spicer said. "She's not directly running the company. It's still her name on it. There are clearly efforts to undermine that name based on her father's positions on particular policies that he's taken. This is a direct attack on his policies and her name. Her because she is being maligned because they have a problem with his policies."

She's not running the company, but she hasn't divested from it anymore than her father has from his. If her business is undermined by association with her father's policies and her support of them, this is happening at the consumer level. People are "voting with their wallets".  Free. Bloody. Marketplace.

And then it got absurd, when KellyAnne Conway literally turned a spot on Fox News into a commercial to promote Ivanka's stuff.  She's a White House Counselor. She's a trained lawyer. She had to know this was not ethical. But there just isn't any separating Donald Trump or his daughter as political entities from their business selves--not least of all because neither of them took steps to do so. So perhaps unpopular political views will hurt their business brand--I'm not entirely sure how this could have been unanticipated.

I do believe, however, that despite the current partnership with the Trump family, America's brand should endure.

Depressed Conference

There's nothing better for democracy than good, old-fashioned transparency, am I right? When the government does the people's business, we surely hope they are going about their affairs in an above-board manner, and if there is anything amiss, we'd like to know that the fourth estate is on it. Or one would think that's how it should go, but Wednesday's presser was a shitshow, and does not bode well for the future relationship between a Trump Administration and the news media.

I'd like to draw your attention to the staging--there were props. (He has used props before.) The above file folders are supposed to represent all the paperwork involved in turning his business over to his sons. No journalist was able to look at them, and they are probably just filled with blank paper because this is obvious bullshit.  The Chief of the Office of Federal Ethics has derided the scheme as "wholly inadequate". Trump thoughtfully provided his lawyer to take questions regarding the set-up, but she is not a constitutional lawyer and seems to be under the impression that "emoluments" is something more like gifts or profits and not just payments in general from foreign interests. Just owning his business is a problem--especially since you can't miss assets that have his name on a big sign overtop of them. And do we really expect him not to talk shop with the lads? Also, because this is Trumplandia, his lawyer's firm won Russia's law firm of the year. It just feels wrong not to point that out as a weird coincidence, even if its significance is sketchy.

You want transparency? Meh. He's not giving up tax returns, and if you want to know whether any of his campaign or transition staff have ties to Russia, you're either history's greatest monster or something from Nazi Germany. And in light of the media's coverage of the dossier regarding his potential compromised position by Russian intelligence, he's not really copacetic with the press right now, anyway--as in, well, had he been during his campaign?

Trump has demonized the press for just covering him and quoting him accurately.  His campaign on occasion outright banned certain outlets from coverage. His rhetoric and the zeal of his supporters against journos is highly worrisome--a threat to freedom of speech and to the lives and welfare of people who are just trying to cover the news. In his presser, Trump struck out at Buzzfeed, who published the dossier, and CNN, for reporting about it.  Chillingly, Buzzfeed was advised that they would "suffer the consequences" for reporting. Jim Acosta, of CNN, was threatened with ejection by Sean Spicer, who has opted to behave like a newly-hired nightclub bouncer trying to impress the boss.

So much of this would be viewed by folks like me as pretty hostile and not at all a great indicator of how well Team Trump is going to manage dealing with the press, handling ethics issues, or responding as if Trump was not actually a wholly-owned subsidiary of Putin Enterprises LTD.  (His protestations of "NO LINKS!" did not, actually, distract from the previous "hell yes, links" coverage previously uncovered. ) Also, Trump being unhinged, he revealed something that sounded exactly creepy--he assumes that in hotels, there are cameras everywhere.  He owns a mess of hotels! And there were reports he was bugging guests at Mar-a-Lago. (What is he trying to say--are his own properties some kind of Orwellian Total Information thing? Should one worry one's own stay might result in kompromat?)

No good communication happened. Trump had paid staff cheer and clap for him to create an atmosphere where he could seem to be "winning", even if a close review of what was actually happening didn't look positive at all. Maybe they were also there to audit who the "good ones were" amongst the paid ink-daubers? But the laughing of his paid audience, the empty files that make it look like he offered transparency, and the reflexive anti-media bias atmosphere he created made this circus satisfying for his fans. This is what they wanted. He reinforced their biases--he made himself appear the victim of a vicious news media that destroys people for just being conservative. (Poor Orange Snowflake!) He even ended the performance with the catchphrase of his reality tv show'' he implied that if his boys didn't manage his business well, he would be telling them "You're fired!" It was a show. A put-on.

Tragedy and farce are seldom so entwined.

Donald Trump Has A Tech Conference

So, there was a to-do with PEOTUS Donald Trump and many members of the Technology tribe today, but the torch of Twitter was notoriously absent--and it might have to do with a Hillary Clinton emoji that never happened.  This is a really weird story--Trump wanted a little bitty icon that implied Clinton was corrupt. And a platform that has let some alt-right folks get away with who knows what, decided that fake-memeing HRC was just a bridge too far. It is kind of weird that the excuse for Twitter not being at the tech conference table was that the table was only so big, but somehow, three of Trump's kids and one notable in-law were right there.

The table was plenty big, it's just Trump's outlook got small.

Bob Dole! Boeing! Carrier! Flynn Jr!

It seems like we can sort of clear up whether the Trump "congratulations" call from the Taiwanese government was a faux pas or pre-panned, now--it had been prepared months in advance with the assistance of paid lobbyist, former Senator Bob Dole, which does contradict the surprised "They called me!" Tweet PEOTUS Trump had made.

This seems like a case of poor communications--was the incoming Trump foreign policy transition team unaware that this would probably be found out? (After all, transient team members are being held to some fairly strict guidelines that includes a non-disclosure agreement--as well as a ban on lobbying, so they might not have realized this would become transparent via a document trail.) But this may actually be a trend--

Take a recent Tweet made by Trump regarding the cost of Boeing's Air Force One contract, which had an effect on Boeing stock. It wasn't actually accurate, and lead to speculation that the Tweet was in response to criticism regarding free trade that Boeing's CEO had made. It's a concern that one Tweet could have that kind of effect on stock prices--and be inaccurate. People need a president who understands that his or her communication can no longer be deemed "casual" and doesn't play games.

I've pointed out that the Carrier deal seems to have been over-hyped, and that the media needs to really investigate claims made by Team Trump. United Steelworkers leader, Chuck Jones, put it a bit more bluntly than I did, accusing Trump of "lying his ass off", which resulted in Trump responding, via Twitter, in kind, resulting in the union leader receiving threats. Trump's original Carrier claims wre inaccurate, and Jones' comments represent a difference of opinion--but Trump's reckless communications regarding a single citizen could have dire effects. (But this is of a piece with Trump's previous response to criticism, for example, from journalists.  And journalists who have run afoul of Trump have received death threats.)

We've seen just recently that inaccurate or outright fake information can have potentially disastrous consequences, with the shooting that took place in a DC-area restaurant.  A member of the Trump transition team actually had been responsible for furthering that nasty, lurid bit of conspiracy theory. However, VP-elect Mike Pence, when questioned about this, responded as if Michael Flynn, Jr. never had been part of the team (he was fired, but certainly had been part of the transition).  This type of deception is anything but innocent--when people in authority regularly lie, people might begin to get the idea that our institutions simply aren't to be trusted, but without some kind of trust in our institutions, their efficacy is sorely diminished.

Donald Trump represented himself as a straight-shooter, but this hardly seems to be the case. If he is to govern effectively, though, he needs to show greater respect for the truth, even if it comes at the expense of the narrative he wants to feed the public.

Don't Rush to Give Trump Credit

There was an amusing story from just the other week where Donald Trump took credit for stopping a Ford plant from moving to Mexico when it never was actually going to go to Mexico. That was a cute way for Trump to telegraph that he was taking no prisoners in his quest to give himself the best possible press for genius deal-making. It doesn't have to be true, it just has to play into his campaign persona.

So, take the Carrier deal as a great example of this: he used Carrier many times in his stump speech about companies draining jobs away from the US. So it was "trumpeted" just recently that he negotiated another of these great deals to keep Carrier--his regular stump speech bogey--operating in Indiana. Well, a portion of the staff. And with a considerable tax break from the governor of that state. Who is the VP-elect, Mike Pence. More details are pending. But some jobs are definitely still going.

Surely, offering local tax deals to any company thinking of leaving the US or willing to say they are mulling it over isn't an especially sustainable method of keeping businesses here. Local municipalities depend upon "ratables"--and when the option to gain revenues from a local business is eliminated, that business is essentially receiving local government services gratis. It's corporate welfare. How many corporations might like a piece of the action where the threat of flight rains down an operational cost-assist? They aren't being cajoled, badgered,  or leveraged into behaving as good citizens of the areas in which they were making their profits--they are being rewarded for having "tried it". I'm not even sure this model disincentivizes "trying it again" to see if better rate-paying can be gained.

What I do know is that this model doesn't promote fair taxation or equitable distribution of social responsibility, which is, in part, what we'd like the relationship of taxpayer to taxing authority to be. Arbitrariness is a lethal trust concern.  Some companies "getting over" is a bad case of cronyism, lather, rinse, repeat. And it sort of betrays the whimsical association Trump makes with the relationship of entities (whether individual or corporate) to government altogether--he has never considered whether government has a point. Ours- the US of A's, has very much a point laid out in the Constitution. I do not know if he has read it--he just burbled some anti-1st Amendment nonsense on the Twitter-machine that should really give us all pause. He considers flag burning to possibly be worthy of losing one's citizenship. Becoming stateless? For what has previously been ruled an exercise of free speech? What can we expect from such a mind regarding unfavorable press?  (Even regarding, perhaps, D-list bloggers?

But among things Trump has tried to take credit for--trying to "apparently" divest from his business holdings while not actually divesting and hoping the world pats him on the back for it  takes the taco. There is a Twitter thread o' snark from the US Government Office of Ethics that uses the term divest to try and shame Trump into admitting that handing his business' reins over to his kids (who seem to also be his gov't advisors) and pretending he will pay no attention to those multi-million dollar assets is just weak-sauce, and leaves plenty of room for conflict-of-interest.

In other words--I feel like the media should wait until they have found the "damn" before they trot out even faint praise.