The Great Divide

A common topic of today is the great divide that exists between various groups within our republic.  Some see it as a simple divergence between political parties but, at a more basic level, I see the root cause as being between the extremely wealthy and everyone else.  If you can’t afford to easily write checks for $100,000 a pop without making a dent in your finances, you are “everyone else.”  Without that ability to funnel cash to decision-makers you have no say in the operation of our government and what it does for and to its citizens.  There are roughly 331,899,280 of us and 720 of them.

For my calculations, I drew the line at the billionaire class, and by estimate, there are 720 of them in the US who could easily afford to hand out large sums of money without thinking.  There are also billionaires outside the US who manage to influence and guide decision-making in our country.  If we add to this group, the 4,971 corporations with over $1 Billion in revenue, we have 5,691 entities with deep pockets to control the destinies of an entire nation.  This is not a hard number and there are degrees of influence that may be had by the sub-billionaire individuals and large corporations, but it goes to illustrate the nature of the great divide.

The mere fact that legislation can be bought by anyone is what should be abhorrent.  Before the Supreme Court removed all barriers to money influencing legislative decision-making when they equated wealth to “free speech,” we had at least some semblance of honesty in politics.  Now, those with the biggest checkbooks have the biggest “free speech” megaphones.  While there is still the ballot box to decide which politician gets to make legislation, it must be realized that voting decisions are now being based on information that may be more easily corrupted than at any time in our history.

With big money now in control of our former “free press” and all of its new platforms, the messages used to influence the voters making decisions about who they want to represent them, is tainted.  We now see those with fame, wealth, education, and corporate, religious, political, or military control, being used to govern in whatever manner they see fit.  This is now the American oligarchy.  

Not all within this controlling group of individuals and groups have evil intent and some may have the good of the people in their hearts.  It, however, must be noted that, in a capitalistic society, money rules and whatever is needed to advance the bottom line takes priority.  Everything else is secondary.  

This brings us to a discussion of conmen.  By definition, a conman is a person who cheats or tricks someone by gaining their trust and persuading them to believe something that is not true.  The term comes from the word confidence whereby a person is fooled into some action when they are persuaded to confide or instill unwarranted confidence in another.  The fact that our congress has the word “con” right in its name is perhaps a coincidence.  The same would hold for a congressman or congresswoman.

By controlling the message, either through traditional news media or by any of the newer information dissemination avenues technology has provided, we have a tool that may be used to con large numbers of people.  Confidence tricks exploit human frailties like greed, vanity, religious fervor, lust, national pride, racism, sexism, or other cognitive biases.  Politicians and/or those who want to influence the selection of a politician may use the well-known methods of the confidence scheme to achieve their ends.

There is not some cabal of wealthy individuals or corporations working in consort so much as a collective learning of what works to effect.  If under-educated people are easier to con, then keeping education standards low is of some benefit while the wealthy class can afford themselves the best education money can buy.  If xenophobic behavior or racism is prevalent within a community, then appeal to those biases to distract from what you are really doing.  If you can appeal to nationalistic pride or some exaggerated feeling of machismo to defeat gun legislation in the face of school children being slaughtered, then there are profits to be made.

A certain unnamed politician can claim he is protecting Florida citizens from the job-stealing, disease spreading, criminals within the flow of migrants to the state, while rounding up those immigrants in another state only to ship them, at Florida taxpayer expanse, to a third state.  Who did he protect?  That same politician can claim he is protecting the rights of parents by banning books that mention accurate historical accounts of racial strife that might make some white people uncomfortable.  He can attack a minority group of gay or transgender people claiming to protect the religious ideology of a larger group.  We see politicians claiming to protect our freedom to vote while restricting that freedom for classes of voters who don’t share the same political views of that politician.

Yes, the divide and conquer adage works in subtle ways to advance wealth, power, and control over others.  How many times have you heard someone use a term with a positive connotation while actually doing something completely opposite?  Sell some new ideas as protection of freedoms while taking them away.  There is no other explanation that comes to mind when people vote against their own interests beyond the fact that they have been conned.  When it is easily apparent that income inequality has risen sharply, why do people continue to vote for those who promise that, by advancing the wealth of a few, some of that wealth will trickle down to their benefit? 

Ever since the Reagan reforms of the 80s, unions have been eviscerated, wages have stagnated, poverty and homelessness have increased, and the rich have gotten richer.  Antitrust regulations have been curtailed to the benefit of giant corporations that monopolize large industries.  Poor people still vote for those who want to cut Social Security, cut Medicare, eliminate unions, keep minimum wages stagnant, cut unemployment insurance, and basically make big businesses and their stockholders more money.  Someone appeals to voter anger and certain politicians got elected, and those politicians side with and are controlled by those who got them elected.  Who was it that got them elected?  It was those who donated large sums to PACs and campaigns who are now the beneficiaries of that largess.  

Politics and Football and Money

When it comes to either politics or football, we are all playing the same game.  There may be different leagues, different teams, and a wide variance of expertise among the players, but the objectives should be the same.  The rulebook has been written but we have all seen different interpretations of the same event even when we view the replay.  In the NFL, on-field referee calls may be reviewed by the stadium replay booth officials or even by the Art McNally GameDay Central in New York.  In politics, we have the courts who are supposed to be unbiased but such “unbiased” opinions are rarely devoid of political leanings.

Political Football

In politics, our two major leagues are the Republicans and the Democrats.  While both play the same political game, their strategies and objectives differ.  In both parties, however, we can better understand motivations using the tried and true investigative tome, “follow the money.”  This phrase was popularized in the docudrama All the President’s Men examining the Watergate scandal.  In Latin, there is the phrase Cui bono meaning “to whose benefit.”

Scene from the Great Depression

The Great Depression brought about a “rule change” in the banking industry known as the Glass-Steagall Act which separated commercial banking from investment banking and created the FDIC to insure our bank savings.  This was passed in June of 1933.  That act separated traditional banks that offered savings and checking accounts from those banks that backed riskier investments, insurance, swaps dealing, hedge funds, and private equity activities.

Bank Panic Great Depression

While Ronald Reagan, and later Donald Trump, are seen as the champions of deregulation, it was Bill Clinton who, in 1999, signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed sections of Glass-Steagall that separated commercial and investment activities.  This made banks bigger, raised the bar for allowable risks, and was a catalyst for the subprime mortgage financial crisis of 2008. 

This 2008 financial crisis dropped GDP by 4.3% which was the deepest recession since WWII.  While many banks went into a downward spiral, John Alfred Paulson made a bundle.  Mr. Paulson created one investment vehicle at Goldman Sachs that bundled risky home loans in Arizona, California, Florida, and Nevada while secretly betting against those assets.  He made $4 billion on one trade during the collapse.  He made major donations to Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Donald Trump.  He was a top economic advisor to Trump in his 2016 campaign.

When the Obama presidential team had the ball in 2010, they passed the Dodd-Frank regulations that put rules in place for large banks (over $50 billion in assets) which might place the financial system in jeopardy if they were to fail.  This “too big to fail” concept was coined during the Continental Illinois bank failure of 1984, which was the largest in US history at the time.  It held this distinction until the failure of Washington Mutual in 2008, which was over seven times larger than Continental Illinois.

Trump rolls back Dodd-Frank

It was President Donald Trump who rolled back Dodd-Frank that enabled Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) to make risky investments without maintaining levels of capital to absorb potential losses.  Trump raised the bar from $50 billion to $250 billion in assets before guardrails would be in place.  SVB had $40 billion in assets when it argued before Congress to raise the limit and $209 billion by the end of 2022. It should be noted that the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank saw the collapse coming and sold $3 Million in shares of bank stock before the FDIC takeover. This is typical of executives who risk shareholders' money with highly speculative "play-calling" and are able to make themselves whole when their 70-yard field goal attempt hits the crossbar.

While the Trump rollback of Dodd-Frank had some bipartisan support it was mostly a Republican-backed change with 50 Republican senators and only 17 Democrats voting in favor.  The House passed the bill with a 258 to 159 split with only one Republican voting no.

In all fairness to Republicans, the Trump rollback of Dodd-Frank may or may not have had an impact on SVB’s failure as the regulators could still have instructed SVB to change its ways.  Ultimately, SVB had a high percentage of uninsured depositors and was heavily concentrated in the local tech industry.  As we all know, industry regulators are often loathed to enforce rules that affect profits within an industry.

Sen. Burton Wheeler of Montana
The basis for Jimmy Stewart's role in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

The game of politics was forever changed by the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.  Campaign finance laws were changed under the guise of free speech.  Unlimited secret spending by special interests now makes integrity in politics scarcer than a drag queen at a DeSantis rally.  The likes of Sen. Burton K. Wheeler of Montana will be unheard of.  Mr. Wheeler was the politician upon which the Jimmy Stewart role in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was loosely based.  Wheeler in real life attacked the bribery scandal known as the Teapot Dome scandal during the Harding administration.  It was the biggest scandal in American politics before Watergate.

Albert B. Fall , Sen. from New Mexico, was the first
U.S. cabinet official sentenced to prison.
He was the only one jailed in the Teapot Dome Scandal

Yes, politics is a brutal sport and not one for the timid or weak.  It is also now one where the advantage goes to the unscrupulous as they "follow the money."  We will all have our opinions as to which “team” plays dirtier than the other, but neither team is without tarnish.  It will however be difficult to imagine that someone like Donald Trump will survive history as the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) of the Republican Party.  I think even Fox News would agree at this point, just not in front of a television audience. 

Florida, Trade in Your Freedoms at the State Line

 

In the latest shredding of the United States Constitution, Florida Republicans are proposing a bill that is designed to intimidate anyone who has anything bad to say about our governor. If you write anything about the Fuhrer of Florida, aka Governor Ron DeSantis, you would be required to register with the Florida Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics. If you write more than one post, you would be required to file monthly reports detailing where, when, and by whom the post was published, plus the amount of compensation received.

Sieg Heil

The bill would also cover the Governor’s Cabinet officers and members of the Florida legislature. The bill did exempt newspaper websites, perhaps as an afterthought, assuming any thought went into this bill in the first place. This legislation was proposed by State Sen. Jason Brodeur and includes fines for failure to file the appropriate forms and reports that also disclose the sources of any revenue. The fines are $25 per day not to exceed $2,500 per violation. The bill would also make it easier for the subject of the blog post to sue for defamation by lowering the bar of proof to only having to show negligence rather than intended malice.

Since Tucker Carlson of Fox “News” fame maintains a home on Gasparilla Island in Florida and maintains a website that is not owned by his “news” employer, he too would be covered by such a law. The lower bar for defamation would be a bonanza for the court system. It would be hard to imagine how a change in Florida's defamation law could be structured to only protect the governor and not some liberal target of the Tucker Carlson megaphone.

While I would normally doubt that any such clear violation of the First Amendment would ever see the light of day, our Florida Fuhrer seems very comfortable trampling on the rights of anyone who gets in his way. Much like his mentor, Adolph, he has seen fit to stack the courts with his conservative friends, ban books he doesn’t like, attack the state’s largest employer Disney, revise Black history to make slavery and discrimination more palatable, attack the gay community from all sides, completely revamp the education system in his image, break the law when it suits him, and he has even retroactively changed a law he violated after he had been taken to court.

Books Banned in Florida Schools

The proposed legislation would intimidate anyone with a view that might upset the governor. It would attack their source of revenue as the disclosure of any supportive revenue would subject that business or individual to the full wrath of a governor who is known to use the power of his office to settle grudges.

From this vantage point, it is hard to know if he is channeling Adolph from the beyond or is taking lessons from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The governor’s press secretary (Christina Pushaw) admitted that the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” law was patterned after the one in Hungary which was described as an “anti-grooming” bill to stop gay people from preying on children.

It's Ron's Turn at the Mike

Our pugilistic culture warrior extraordinaire uses perceived cultural threats as an excuse for aggressive, sometimes illegal, uses of state power against his declared enemy, the “liberal woke mob.” He wants to be president of the United States. Stranger things have happened. I seem to remember another demagogue with a spray tan and a blonde combover with a reputation for lies and deceit who threaded the needle to get the GOP nomination and become president.