Category: Politics

I got some interesting feedback on my last post (you can see it in the comments section below the post). Even more interesting was the Washington Post story accusing SecWar Hegseth of a war crime regarding the very first boat-strike (back in September), which was published just days after the Democrats’ video dropped. Is this to what the video-makers were alluding? I still have my doubts, as they cited the administration pitting soldiers against civilians, which connotes the National Guard/Regular Army deployments to various cities, not the drug-boat interdiction effort.

Sticking to the war crimes accusation, the Post reported that a single anonymous source quoted the Secretary as saying “kill them all” in reference to the boat-strike. The source (and the Post) did not place this quote on a timeline of the action: before the initial strike, or after. The inference was that the first missile killed many of the fisherman/drug-smugglers (two things can be true, as they were both fishermen and smugglers), but the boat did not sink, and two men “clung to the burning ship.”

As a means of showing just how complicated all this is, let me use a land warfare example. Others will quickly point out war at sea is different, and they are right, but I’ll cover how the difference plays out at the end, so please hold your objections!

Here’s our notional scenario: you’re in a war, operating as a tank commander. You are in a “hide-position” from which you can see the enemy, but they won’t see you at first, so you get a clean first shot. You’re surveying the battlefield in front of you, and an enemy tank pulls clear out from a tree-line. It stops. Its turret is pointed away from you, and you have a clear shot at its flank, one of the most vulnerable spots. Can you fire on the tank legally?

Absolutely! There is no fairness doctrine in war. You get an easy kill, cheers to you. So you look through your gun-sight, which gives you enhanced magnification, and you see the other tank’s commander standing behind the turret, taking a whiz off the back of his tank. If you think this doesn’t happen, you’ve never been around tankers. This man and his tank present no danger to you; can you legally open fire and kill him and his tank?

Yes. The fact he is otherwise engaged does not mean he and his tank aren’t still legitimate targets. A soldier urinating (or bathing, or praying) is still a soldier at war and it is entirely legal to kill him. Sometimes soldiers adjust their views on this, called the rule of military necessity (“I don’t need to kill him peeing because I want to pee in peace, too”) but this is informal and a courtesy, not the law of armed conflict.

You fire on the tank. The commander is blown off the vehicle, and smoke is billowing out of the open hatch. The tank is not moving, but it is unclear if it is disabled or not. Can you fire at it again?

Yes. It remains a target until it is destroyed or surrenders. Note here you can assume there are injured crew members inside; it doesn’t matter.

You scan for other targets, not wanting to waste another round on a tank that may be out of the fight. You scan back to the tank, and you see the crew climbing out of the hatch and falling off the sides, clearly escaping the vehicle just to breathe. Can you target them or the tank? This is murky water. You are judging from a distance that they are incapacitated, but the tank is not. You can legally fire at the tank. If you target the tank crew, it’s a shady value judgment. You may be wrong. But the larger point to this part of the exercise is that while you may not target the incapacitated, there is no such thing as a “no-fire” or safe-zone due to injury or incapacitation. It’s unfortunate, but being near a piece of military equipment makes you possibly collateral damage.

Now you see the tank commander climbing back onto the tank, and motioning his crew to join him. Can you legally fire at the tank and/or the crew? Yes. The tank is a weapon of war, and by climbing back on, they are signalling they want to continue to fight. But wait, the commander grabs a white hanky and starts waving it: ceasefire! This tank and crew have surrendered and are no longer legal targets.

See how clear and clean cut it all is? Now imagine this scenario while you’re inside a sixty-ton metal monster, bouncing around at fifty miles an hour, with your crew screaming in your headset, your commander asking for updates, shells exploding around you, and (oh, yeah) facing imminent death if you make a mistake. All the armchair lawyers should take a breathe.

Now back to the differences between war on land and war at sea. Soldiers separated from their vehicle are still–literally–on terra firma. Man is a land mammal, and being on the land is not in itself deadly. The same is not true for sailors. A sailor in the water is at risk (side note: I always wondered why the Navy had a swim test. If a sailor is in the water, they are already in the wrong, no? Why test for it?) So when a sailor is separated from his boat/ship, there are rules which require the opposing side to rescue them, not to leave them to their inevitable fate. Sailors have to make the same difficult choices I described above: is the ship viable? Are the men surrendering? And the circumstances of naval warfare are just as prone to the fog of war as the land examples I cited above. When all is said and done, the sailor has a duty to police-up the survivors. Even on land, the soldier has to collect up and process the enemy wounded, not shoot them.

People jumped all over the original Washington Post story. While several sources in that story confirmed multiple strikes, only one quoted Hegseth as giving his “kill them all” directive. Now the Admiral in charge has denied it. Before you even think “of course he did, he sees his career flashing before his eyes,” know that he is a thirty-year veteran of the US Navy Seals, was one of the first SOF officers deployed to Afghanistan, was recently unanimously confirmed by the Senate as head of Special Operations Command, and when he was confirmed, Senator Tillis described him as one of “the most extraordinary people that have ever served in the military.” If you want to call him a careerist or a coward, I hope you forward the comment to him first. Let me know how that works out.

So there was no “kill them all” order. I admit that it sounds like the kind of thing Secretary Hegseth would say, and it would be lousy command guidance. Truman didn’t need to tell Colonel Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay over Hiroshima, Japan, to “kill everybody.” He already knew that. To the extent such a command represents a no-quarter order (do not accept surrendered enemy, kill them) it is always illegal. The fact remains there is no evidence such an order was given, and there is a complete denial of same from the one man with authoritative knowledge: the Admiral in charge.

In other news, there appears to have been two strikes on the boat. The second strike comprised three missiles (perhaps in sequence, that part is unclear as I write this), because the damn thing just wouldn’t sink. Which reinforces the story the boat was the target, not the fishermen-smugglers. They were collateral damage, not the victims of a war crime. We still haven’t seen the video of the second strike. Congress members who did reacted along predictably partisan lines. But remember, the issue revolves around (1) who gave the order, (2) what was the order, and (3) what was the reasoning behind the order. Not what Senators felt when watching a video.

If the video is eventually released, I will bet people will have strong opinions on it. If you’re debating the legality of the second strike, remember one thing. You’re not debating me, nor Hegseth. You’re debating the Admiral who gave the order. The professional we all count on to do the right thing. The man, who according to the video from the Congressional Democrats, we can count on to uphold his oath.

I know it’s hard for some to believe, but one can make the arguments here about the law of armed conflict as I did without supporting the boat-strike campaign either as an effective or legitimate policy. Plinking speed boats may help intimidate the traffickers in the short term (it certainly intimidates-to-death the fishermen-smugglers), but it does nothing to staunch the flow of drugs into the US (note: those boats can’t get to the States, and what they carry is mostly cocaine headed to Europe). Perhaps it helps intimidate Venezuela. But it’s ineffective as counter-drug policy. Furthermore, the “authorization” the administration had publicized is based on the concept that (1) the President is authorized to strike terrorists, (2) the President has designated drug cartels as terrorists, therefore (3) the campaign is legal. To see the obvious fallacy here, re-read (2) and replace “drug cartels” with “elephants.” Babar beware.

This is part of a larger problem with the War Powers Act and the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF, the initial post 9/11 law), whereby Presidents have sought ever more leeway in the use of the military, and Congresses have worked hard to avoid being blamed for it. Once again, a real, long-standing issue has been corrupted by the “Trump effect.”

The entire controversy rests first and foremost on the notion SecWar Hegseth gave a no-quarter order which never happened. Some leapt from that to the notion he actively supervised the murder of defenseless, shipwrecked fishermen (note the drug-smuggler part of their job is omitted in this version of the account). Which Hegseth contends he wasn’t there for, and which the Admiral in charge flatly confirms that he gave the command in order to destroy the boat, not to kill the fishermen/smugglers. Because he is well trained, well-versed in naval warfare, and because that’s the kind of guy he is. If you continue to contend this is a war crime, you’re not making a case against the Secretary of President Trump; you’re calling into question the morals and professionalism of Admiral Bradley. That’s okay, but be clear about it.

If you’re asking me whether I trust Secretary Hegseth or Democrats in Congress, I pass: both would merit a chapter in the book entitled, “Lyin’ Liars and the Lies They Tell.” If you’re asking me whether I trust Admiral “Mitch” Bradley or an anonymous Washington Post source: please. In the end, the boat-strikes in general and the first so-called “double-tap” are poor policy, not war crimes.

People who know me know I don’t lose my temper often. Okay, with the exception of watching my favorite Notre Dame football team lose (not often), or when driving (more often). Even those cases are momentary, as I try to keep a pretty even keel, probably because my Irish-German heritage makes me prone to behavioral extremes. Something I just saw had me simmering, because when anything masquerades as morality, morality suffers. At first glance, you may think I’m overreacting. Please consider my full case. For starters, here’s the offending video (this copy of the video repeats, so you only need to watch the first two minutes):

Firstly, I have just as much credibility to discuss this matter as anyone you saw speaking: West Pointer, Army officer, career federal civil servant in the departments and agencies cited, with over thirty-eight years under this oath:

“I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

That oath is basically the same for all civilian federal employees and military officers. Enlisted personnel have a slightly different version, which includes the following: “to obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” Notice the differences, as they are important. No mention of orders for the civilians and officers, and a requirement to obey among the enlisted.

Service members (civilian, officer, and enlisted) receive a great deal of training in what the oath means. Part of that training always covers the concept of an illegal order: that under this oath, we not only didn’t have to obey such an order, but that we were morally and legally required to disobey such an order. I joined the Army less than ten years after the infamous My Lai massacre, so that was often the focus of the Army’s training. To wit, just because your commanding officer says everybody in the village is an enemy combatant, you can’t justify shooting unarmed women and children. It was a recent, searing example which drove the point home. The overwhelming majority of the oath takers would never face such a dilemma in their careers.

The emphasis in the training was that for officers and civilians, there was a system you could engage if you found an order to be questionable. The enlisted were taught the same, but the emphasis in the oath is clear: obeying is the norm, engaging with the system is the exception. For those public servants, the training went on to explain what to do: when you see something you consider potentially an illegal order, you should state such to the officer/leader giving the order, that they may clarify or reconsider. You can ask that it be referred up the chain of command. You can go to appointed persons like the Judge Advocate General, Inspector General (IG) or an Ombudsman, who can investigate it for you. You can even in some circumstances contact your Representative or Senator under special “whistleblower” provisions.

Here’s the catch: whatever path you choose, it does not include deciding for yourself. Once you choose among these different options, you are required to accept the legal or moral judgment rendered by the official in question. That’s the system in law, as in the Constitution. What is not in the Constitution is the right of an individual to abrogate to him or herself the right to decide what is Consitutional/legal or not. Why is that? The oath-takers are taught that they may not have the same advantage of information the person making the decision does. They might not be expert in law, or the overall situation. What may seem counterproductive or unreasonable at one level may be entirely justified at another level. That is why there is a system for you as the person “pulling the trigger” so-to-speak to reach out to others to confirm or deny your suspicions.

As a practical example, Eddie Snowden decided the electronic spying the National Security Agency (NSA) was doing was morally wrong and probably illegal. He made this decision on his own, from his lofty perch as an analyst and later contractor. He didn’t do the right thing; he sent an email to the NSA General Counsel asking a vague question about whether an Executive Order can override federal statute (it can’t), and from this he made the definitive legal judgment to leak massive volumes of classified data to the Russians, Chinese, and who knows who else. He continues to defend himself from a protected spot in Moscow, calling himself an advocate for truth, transparency, and individual rights. Rather, he is the avatar of ego, mal-education, and moral turpitude. This is what happens when people mistake using the system with being the ultimate decider.

Now the video I asked you to watch reiterates much of the training I experienced, so you might be wondering why my blood pressure spiked. It did so because it adds some things and omits others. It adds specifically that “this administration” is the threat to the Constitution. Not that a certain policy is wrong or illegal, but the administration itself is a threat, “pitting” soldiers and civilian professionals “against American citizens.” That is a sweeping statement well beyond the confines of the subject of lawful orders. How is the average oath-taker supposed to process such a generalization, other than to suspect everything they are told?

Second, it omits the most important part: what the oath-taker is supposed to do. Yes, if you’re the trigger-puller on the Special Forces Black Hawk helicopter in the Carrib, you do face a real, instantaneous decision on whether to blow the boat out of the water. But there was a time before that, during the pre-operational briefing, to ask the right questions. There is a system to do so. Telling that soldier, or any government employee, that they have the right–nay, the obligation–to ignore an order without explaining what that means within the system they operate? That is unconscionable. Suggesting the hundreds of thousands of oath-takers in the government who don’t face such a stark, immediate decision do the same? Immoral.

I have seen some of the people featured in this video explaining that they have “constituents” in the military expressing concerns, for example, about the drug-boat strikes near Venezuela. This explanation makes the situation worse. If it is true, they should be referring the constituents to the system designed to answer their concerns, not making generalized videos about “the administration.” Whether it’s the drug boats or domestic military deployments, these issues are either currently in the courts (domestic deployments) or an issue of international law, and not something a soldier or civilian is placed to decide for themselves. Worse still, the self-identified patriots in the video have ample means to seek redress if they think the administration is in error. They are in Congress. They can be specific about issues and use their (constitutional) authority. Instead they spout generalities and spark others to act; that’s cowardly.

For my friends who never had the honor of taking the oath, here is an analogy that might resonate. Imagine you wake up tomorrow and there’s this video, from a former Surgeon General of the United States, the head of the Mayo Clinic, and other prominent medical officials. They say “the administration” is the problem and you shouldn’t follow the medical advice of the government elements like the CDC, the Public Health Service, or the National Institutes of Health. They don’t take issue with any specific thing, like vaccine recommendations or puberty blockers or hormone treatments for women in menopause. No, they simply remind you that it’s your health, your right, and you can stand up to the government. But remember, the government’s medical advice is suspect. Does that sound like a good idea, or a recipe for disaster?

The leaders in the real video say that they “have your back.” There are two kinds of people who stand behind you. Those that have your back, and those who will stab you in the back.

Choose wisely.

Why are so many people so interested in this story? For many in the MAGA movement, it was the secretive proof of perverse left-wing elites protecting themselves. They will not be happy until all the dirty laundry is dragged out into the streets, sure it will hurt the other side most. Democrats and Progressives mostly mocked the MAGA obsession with Epstein, until it became a seismic rift inside the MAGA world, and now they too are all about it. If you don’t believe me, ABC World News Tonight took to playing the same two-minute script (with the same videos) for five nights in a row, although of course there was nothing “new” about any of it.

So why am I joining in the fun? I do think there are lessons here worth considering. But first–as always–let’s review the facts.

Jeffrey Epstein was a rich pervert who died in custody awaiting trial on federal charges. He was undoubtedly rich based on his homes, private jets, and lavish lifestyle. No one is exactly certain how he became rich, but he was associated with several millionaires (especially Lesley Wexner of Victoria’s Secret fame and Leon Black from Apollo Global Management) who either rewarded him for great work, were victimized by his thievery, or fell prey to blackmail. All of those options are conjecture, but they remain the sole explanations for the fact of Epstein’s wealth, which was key to his lengthy criminal behavior.

He was a pervert because he plead guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18 (the youngest was apparently 14), and was sentenced to 18 months in a minimum-security state facility. He was eventually released and a decade later charged with one federal count of sex trafficking of minors and another of conspiracy to do the same. Under federal law, the last two charges were dismissed upon his death. At no time was the word pedophile introduced or used in his prosecution; it’s far easier to use the popularly-understood term “pervert.” That’s about as far as facts go, and that’s where the strangeness and conspiracies start.

It’s quite possible he got rich completely legitimately. No one knows for sure. He impressed people at Bear Stearns (investment banking firm) and rose quickly, then did the same when he left to start his own firm, where he got Wexner and Black as clients. Based on later behavior, some believe he must have run in perverse-elite circles, too, and anyone associated with him is therefore suspect.

Epstein did run in New York City’s high society circles, and as such, partied with the rich and famous. Who else knew about his depravity and what did they do about it? Watch American Psycho or read Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. New York City in that era was a cesspool of whatever you can get away with. It was the ultimate expression of libertinism, and nobody was going to call “foul” or “disgusting.” All the while, Epstein engaged in elaborate grooming rituals with his former girlfriend-turned-accomplice Ghislaine (pronounced “hill-ane” with a hushed “g”) Maxwell, who was convicted of five federal counts around and including sex trafficking of a minor. She is currently serving a twenty-year term in federal prison. She assisted him in taking in vulnerable, underage women, and under the guise of arranging “massages,” implicating them in sex work with Epstein.

What is suspicious about all this? When Epstein was first tried in Florida, the federal prosecutor, Alex Acosta, was set to bring multiple charges. The two sides bargained down to a plea deal of one state charge each (as noted above) and remuneration to the victims. The bargain also included a further non-prosecution agreement (NPA) deal for Epstein and his colleagues, as well as confinement in a minimum security prison with a sentence of 18 months. In total, this was very lenient. Much is made of the latter provisions, but they are not unusual. Epstein’s legal team would have insisted on the NPA to prevent the government from coming back on the other charges they bargained away, and Epstein’s willingness to plead guilty, and lack of previous record argued for a lesser place of confinement.

But on top of that, the prison had a work-release program which allowed Epstein to leave for twelve hours a day to work at his office, and eventually reduced his sentence to thirteen months for good behavior! While sex offenders (and Epstein did have to register as such) are not normally allowed work-release, the judicial system did not treat his illegal behavior with the same seriousness as pedophiles or child rapists. Was that because he was rich, all the people involved were also pedos, or a moral failing when it comes judging another man’s sexual criminality? In any case, it was wrong.

Epstein left prison, only now two things changed: fewer of his former friends wanted to be seen with him, and more girls were coming forward claiming he abused them. Epstein had to settle a continuing series of civil suits to avoid testifying or perjuring himself. In 2021, the feds charged him with new counts of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. Shortly after being charged, Epstein was found hung to death in jail, a suicide according to the New York City Chief Medical Examiner.

What stinks here? Alex Acosta, the federal prosecutor who agreed to the lenient plea deal, later became President Trump’s Secretary of Labor, but he resigned as more people expressed outrage at the Epstein agreement. But no one has discovered any connection, bribe, or evidence against Acosta. And Acosta originally took on the Epstein case because state prosecutors thought the victims were too unreliable as witnesses and the case wouldn’t result in a conviction. So Acosta treated Epstein more, not less, rigorously than others.

What about the victims, or as they call themselves, “the survivors?” None of the women who originally came forward to accuse Epstein mentioned being trafficked to anyone other than Epstein. Later on, two women (Virginia Giuffre and Sarah Ransome) claimed to have been so trafficked. Under the rubric of #believethewomen, this ends the conversation. Why did no one follow up on these accusations?

• Giuffre claimed to have been trafficked to the Andrew-formerly-known-as-Prince, and American attorney Alan Dershowitz. The former settled with her with no admission of guilt, the latter sued her for defamation and she withdrew her claim, saying she “may have made a mistake” in her identification. She had a previous case of claiming to have been sexually assaulted dismissed for a lack of evidence, and later claimed she was rescued by the FBI in another case of abduction, although the FBI has no record of such an incident. Giuffre committed suicide recently, so the allegations she made will never be adjudicated.
• Ransome drew attention for claiming to have sex tapes with Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, which she later admitted was false. She also claimed to be the target of a shadowy international conspiracy, but said the “Russians. . . are coming to (her) aid.”
• Julliette Bryant , another victim, claims Epstein was a reptilian shape-shifter, and she witnessed him changing into a lizard or devil during orgasm. There’s a sentence no one should ever have to write.

Needless to say, one can see the problems with such people as witnesses. Other survivors have stepped forward to demand the federal government release all its Epstein files. This is a confusing request: if they know who did what to them, why don’t they announce it? Why is the government even involved? There is no doubt these women were sexually abused by Epstein; there is no evidence produced so far, by anybody else (journalists, victims, police, courts) that anybody else was involved. Was there perhaps someone else involved? Possibly. Was there a vast conspiracy? No. And if you fell for the anti-Semitic trope about Epstein as an intelligence asset, I feel sorry for you (and read this).

Now some of the “survivors” insist they want the full release of the files because it will disclose those who helped Epstein. The problem here is the difference between law and vengeance. Under the law, if there was evidence someone assisted Epstein in his felonious criminality, they would be subject to charges, too. But they weren’t, with the exception of Ms. Maxwell. Plenty of people were his friends, and while I am sympathetic with those who feel such people should suffer our contempt, I am not sure it is in the government’s rights or obligations to provide the content for such a popular action.

I am even more suspicious now, as the first release has shown the non-voting delegate from the US Virgin Islands, Democrat Stacey Plaskett, received funding from and was actively seeking the advice of Epstein well after his criminal behavior was confirmed. Did she seek culinary tips from Jeffrey Dahmer; inquiring minds want to know! Yet House Democrats succeeded in defending her from a simple censure vote, and she remains on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. How does that square with punishing Epstein’s “friends” or co-conspirators?

Will the material be abused for partisan purposes? Of course. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Hell, I mean Dallas) is a case in point. She took to the floor of the House to announce her intrepid staff had already determined that “a Jeffrey Epstein” had donated to several prominent Republican candidates. Turns out, not “the Jeffrey Epstein.” As Emily Litella would say, “nevermind.” I’m sure she’ll be far more professional with the rest of the Epstein files.

What about those Epstein files? People throw the term around like it’s the “X-files.” Every state and federal case results in a case file. This forms the basis of the prosecution, and much of it must be shared with the defense team. The case file does not get publicly released. It includes hearsay, irrelevant detail, things alleged but not charged, pretty much everything the investigating officers uncovered. If you’ve ever been a witness, a victim, charged, or a close relative of the same who was interviewed, your name is in a case file somewhere. It is absolutely no one else’s business, and such things are protected by state and federal privacy laws. Could you imagine if gangs or organized crime could get a hold of case files?

Some suggest there is a client list in “the Epstein files.” This is based on the assumption that Epstein partied with the rich and famous, so they must have partied with him, too (wink, wink). And so he kept a list in case he needed to blackmail them. And he got treated leniently, so he must have blackmailed someone (nudge, nudge). And he died suspiciously, so probably that same someone “rubbed him out” (choke, choke). If you’re in a red hat, you’re sure Bill Clinton spent some wild nights on Epstein’s private island and Epstein himself was victim #57 of the Clinton crime family. If you swing blueski (I know it’s Bluesky, but isn’t blueski funnier?), Trump’s number is up and you’ll finally catch the damn roadrunner (beep-beep).

In point of fact, if there was any hard evidence of other people engaging in the crimes Epstein was guilty of, the investigators would have brought charges against them. Few prosecutors would have turned up the opportunity to get Clinton, or Trump, or Andrew-what’s-his-name-now in exchange for an Epstein plea deal. As a result of leaks, acknowledgments and agreements, other names like Bruce Willis, Cameron Diaz, Cate Blanchett, Kevin Spacey, Naomi Campbell, Leonardo DiCaprio, Woody Allen (!), Les Wexner, Leon Black, Jes Staley (Barclay’s bank), Joi Ito (MIT), Glenn Dubin (Highland Capital), Steve Bannon, Bill Gates & Larry Summers (who both continued to see Epstein after his initial convictions) have shown up. None have been implicated in anything. While some of Epstein’s victims have cited specific incidents with specific famous people, those cases have either been dismissed or settled. Did some of the rich and famous join Jeffrey in his criminal endeavors? Undoubtedly. But little evidence exists. And state and federal prosecutors have been investigating for twenty years. Read that again: twenty years of different political parties, both state and federal judicial officers, and nothing.

Ahhhh, but that proves the conspiracy, no? So let’s entertain the conspiratorial mindset for a minute to understand just how far it goes. Epstein was tried and convicted, creating a case file history in 2008. So the conspiracy must start there, and include the investigators, the state and federal prosecutors, and probably the federal judge. Remember, the first tranche of the “Epstein files” has been sitting in prosecutors’ file cabinets/cloud storage for seventeen years, and probably thousands of people have had access. Nobody saw nuttin’.

Then Epstein got into more trouble. Numerous cases of civil litigation followed, with discovery and trial and . . . no additional evidence of a conspiracy. Or they were all bought off, or threatened, or brought into the conspiracy. At this point, the conspiracy is either as powerful and violent as a Mexican cartel, or as large as WalMart. But wait, hay mas (there’s more)!

The files are available to first the Trump administration, then the Biden administration, then finally again the Trump administration. Trump shows remarkable restraint and never drops a dime on Bill Clinton. Right! Biden has hard evidence of Trump with teenage girls but decides instead to go after real estate valuations in New York, instead? Right! What if both teams found incriminating evidence, so each decided not to expose it? And this grand conspiracy never got around to destroying the files? Right!

Finally, there is another federal case, under a different prosecutor. All those files are going to be shared again. Where were Epstein’s protectors? Maybe they turned on him? Or did the great conspiracy decide that if Epstein “killed himself,” it would all go away? Because there would be nothing suspicious about that, and no one would be talking about Epstein, would they? Right. Even Epstein might have been running low on funds, and he wasn’t going to get another part-time gig in Club Fed. So like the coward he always was, he likely hangs himself.

What do we take from all this? There is some poetic justice in watching President Trump hose down his most frenzied conspiracy-minded supporters. And we’ll never have to listen to anyone on the left seize the pulpit and moral high ground after they joined in a fake conspiracy they knew was nonsense, just to “get Trump.” I hope Progressives enjoy Marjorie Taylor Greene as much as MAGA has, and congratulations, you’re now on Team Jewish Space Lasers! Lesson One: Bad men and women did very bad things, and people looked the other way. Other people did not take these crimes seriously, and many victims’ lives were ruined and they never got justice. If you think this is limited to the rich & famous, think again. Next time there is a teacher at a local school caught in an inappropriate relationship with a minor student, google the accused and find their work history (it’s easy these days). You’ll find a string of other schools where the teacher came and left under questionable circumstances. Groups protect their own, and avoid calling disrepute upon themselves and their colleagues. Lesson Two: Many, many more people turned the affair into a a sex-stained, public rugby match, rolling around in the filth while disclaiming how dirty the other side was. I saw way too many of my educated friends falling into such speculation, when they should have known better. If you don’t want to be included in any of these groups, walk away fast and never come back. If I never hear the name Jeffrey Epstein again, it would be too soon.

Brings to mind a joke I heard on Ezra Klein’s podcast the other day. A conspiracy theorist dies and goes to heaven. At the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter says, “welcome to paradise. Now you may know the secrets to all the mysteries of all time. Do you have any questions?” “Just one,” the man replies, “who really killed Jeffrey Epstein?” “He hung himself,” Saint Peter replied nonchalantly. The conspiracy theorist shakes his head and says, “I had no idea how high the conspiracy went!”

PS: I wrote this back in September, hoping the whole story would go away and I would never need to publish about it. That’s why there is a *sigh* in the subject line. Now gobs of material have been released, with more pending. Nothing has changed. I could add many more names to the list of public figures who paled around with Epstein, some before his perversion was public, some even after. It goes to the point the rich and famous look past each other’s moral failings, which is only news if you lived your life in a cave. Whether you simply seek justice or had an ax to grind, none of it matters.

Did you see Epstein’s email to Maxwell saying “Trump spent hours with (Giuffre) at the house”? Yet she testified under oath to the contrary, and told the same story in her autobiography penned just before her suicide. Some will misquote Epstein’s email that “of course, Trump knew about the girls” without including the rest of the sentence, “he told Maxwell to stop.” Epstein alleged he knew all about “Trump’s dirty side” but also said “he never got a massage.” When the writer/bullshit artist Michael Wolfe tried to get dirt, Epstein offered “a picture of Trump with girls in bikinis in my kitchen.” Some fail to see the ridiculous humor in that. Wolfe claims he got close to Epstein to get information, but the emails expose a seedy relationship where one prostitutes himself to the other without getting payback. Perhaps it was another case of Epstein’s sexual abuse. Sure, Jeffrey Epstein went to prison (and death) without ever releasing the photos he had. Even after he claimed he was “the only one who could take (Trump) down.”

Epstein, his perversions, and his eponymous files are a modern Rorschach test: you see in them what you want to see. It tells you something about you, not Epstein, not Trump, not even the rest of us. All of this recalls for me a Friedrich Nietzsche quote: “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.“

I don’t normally recommend a forensic autopsy on a live patient, but who knows when the latest government shutdown will end? You might have heard it was about ObamaCare. It was and it wasn’t. You might have heard it was all the (Republicans’/Democrats’) fault. It was and it wasn’t. You might have heard it was necessary (according to some) or inevitable (according to others). It wasn’t. But you have to understand government, politics, the federal budget, and health care if you want to have an informed opinion about what just happened. Or just post your favorite uninformed meme on social media.

By now, most people are generally familiar with the federal budget process. They know it takes a bill through two houses of Congress and a President’s signature to become law. That’s called “authorization” in budget-speak, meaning, it tells the executive branch agencies they have authority to spend money thusly. If they try to spend more, or differently, they’re breaking the law (the budget is, in the end, a law). To put it in everyday terms, when you sit down with your spouse and agree that you’re only going to spend $100 a week on eating out at restaurants, and only $5,000 on your vacation, you have “authorized a budget.” If you commit to your friends to blow an extra $100 on boys’ night out, there will be consequences (legal or otherwise).

Authorization is permission, but the money still has to found. That second process is another bill (again through Congress and the President) called “appropriations.” This actually sends the money to the executive branch to be spent in accordance with the budget. If the Congress authorizes you to spend a million, but only appropriates one-half million, the latter is the limit. In family terms, if the savings account only has $2,000 in it, you’re vacationing in Dollywood, not Disney World. Normally the federal government passes many separate appropriations bills, but since normal isn’t these days, the Congress has taken to passing omnibus bills or continuing resolutions (which say keep spending as you were spending). Earlier this year, Congress passed such a resolution as the Democratic leadership held to the idea shutting down the government was a bad idea. Just wait.*

The MAGA party (formerly the GOP) controls both houses of Congress and the Presidency, which should make passing a budget easier. However, they hold less than sixty seats in the Senate, which has its own norm called the filibuster, meaning it takes sixty votes to break the filibuster and pass a bill. The main exceptions are to confirm some nominations, and to pass the budget (as long as the budget is strictly about money). So MAGA passed an authorization into law, called the One Big Beautiful Bill, but could not get enough Democratic support to break a filibuster on the appropriations paying for what it authorized. And a shutdown ensued.

Normally, the two parties negotiate to resolve the impasse. The minority party (the Democrats in this case) picks some ideas they want to support or resist, and the majority party (MAGA) chooses what they can live with to get the larger bill enacted with the rest of their agenda. Needless to say, these are not normal times. President Trump and MAGA are in no mood to negotiate, period. Senator Chuck Schumer caved the last time this happened, based on a long-standing Democratic party principle that shutting down the government is irresponsible. This time, the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate decided to reject their previous principled opposition to government shutdowns, and instead to stake their negotiating position on several healthcare provisions. President Trump probably would not have negotiated on any Democratic party requests, but these were tailor-made to (1) get support from the party’s progressive base, and (2) aggravate the President. And we achieved shutdown.

There is nothing wrong with all of this: it’s politics. Dysfunctional politics, mind you, but those complaining about it remind me of Captain Renault:

Whose fault is it? Yours. And mine. Every time we voters give a party control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency, but not a sixty-seat majority in the Senate, we invite this chaos. The governing party thinks it has a mandate, the minority party wants to play with fire, and we voters get burned. It should force the parties to negotiate, but that’s failed often enough to not be a justification for continuing to do business this way.

MAGA’s fault? Yes, because they could have negotiated, but refused. What the Democrats asked for was their opening position; President Trump, he of The Art of the Deal, could have gotten a better deal, no? But he refused to try. The Democrat’s fault? Sure. They once again abandoned a principle to oppose Trump, then they chose enhanced ObamaCare subsidies as the point of contention. Why were these subsidies at risk? Because they were expiring, and MAGA left them out of their budget bill. Why were they expiring? Because when a Democratic-majority Congress and President passed them in 2021, they did so on the basis of the idea they were temporary, to make sure no one lost health insurance during a pandemic despite being a very expensive benefit. What kind of fool does the party leadership think voters are to say now it must be continued regardless of cost, when the Democrats approved them as temporary?

Furthermore, Senator Schumer correctly pointed out the last time a shutdown loomed that to cause one gives the President enormous emergency powers to decide how the remaining money gets spent. Facing an internal party revolt (perhaps a primary challenger!) and progressive desire to “fight Trump” (without thinking things through), Schumer caved this time to cause the shutdown, and President Trump predictably used those emergency powers to gut federal programs the Democrats support.

What about the enhanced ObamaCare subsidies? Aren’t they worth fighting for? Firstly, they were an extension of the original subsidies. The original subsidies weren’t temporary, so they are unaffected. Second, President Obama promised his Affordable Care Act had provisions to bring down the cost of health care (not the cost of the insurance, the actual cost of health care). None of these worked, as most experts predicted. ObamaCare did bend the cost curve somewhat: the costs rose 6.9% annually for a decade before ObamaCare, only 4.3% the decade after it. But that’s a decline in the rate of growth, not a decrease! One of the arguments for the temporary subsidies was to offset the continued rise in health care costs. So all the ObamaCare provisions to add more people to Medicaid or to create the exchanges where these subsidies help cover the cost of insurance? They amounted to a huge increase in demand for health care, with no increase in supply. You don’t need a Nobel in Economics to know what happens next: prices surge, as they did.

And remember, we’re not talking about the basic subsidies for the poorest Americans. As an example, I asked Gemini (Google’s AI product) to tell me whether a California family of three making $300,000 annually could qualify for the enhanced ObamaCare exchange subsidies. The short answer is yes under the expanded, temporary subsidies at the heart of the shutdown. Not to be heartless here, but do you think the government should be subsidizing health care insurance for such a family? Given our deficit and debt, I don’t.

The shutdown is now the longest in US history. It won’t end well for either side, especially for the government workers or benefits recipients trying to make ends meet when the checks don’t come. Perhaps the Congress will start talking amongst the parties and come up with a compromise. Whatever the outcome is, it won’t be an improvement in how government runs, how we reduce our profligate spending, or the relative power imbalance between the legislative and executive branches. Other than that, it’s been great for political junkies and social media memes.

* For the love of God, I’m not even going to get into “authorized but not appropriated” called “A-not-A” in budget lingo, or the reverse. Let’s just say there are parts of the sausage-making process better left un-examined.

Norms are expected patterns of behavior, usually applied to a specific group, organization, or even culture. The penalty for breaking norms is usually social: from criticism to ostracism. The purpose of the penalty is to re-establish the norm: you broke it, and we make you return to it by apologizing and making appropriate restitution. Or you refuse, and suffer the social consequences.

If the society or group in question decides to enact civil/criminal penalties, the norm may evolve into a law. An historical example of this was consanguineous marriage, that is marriage between close blood-relatives. It used to be a norm, since most of the eligible marriage partners in pre-modern societies came from your village, which was your extended family. The Catholic Church opposed it, and eventually influenced people to reject it. That changed norm became so fixed in many people’s minds that countries enacted laws prohibiting it. And many people today recoil and the very thought of it.

But norms by themselves have little or no power. The funny thing about norms, unlike some other social constructs, is that they can only be restored by insisting on them, not by violating them. If you have a social norm that violence is never acceptable as a means to settle a disagreement between two opponents, you can’t insist that you can use violence to respond to a violation of that norm. “He hit me first, so I hit him back,” is playground jurisprudence that has never won a case.

As an example, many societies have a norm to the effect that “you don’t speak ill of the dead.” It’s not a superstition, or even a religiously-inspired norm. It stems from two, solid, human emotions: the dead person isn’t there to defend themselves, and every death is a cause for mourning, so the immediate aftermath of a death should be about mourning, which can include being positive about the deceased. The process has no balancing criteria: I’ve looked closely at the quote I posted as the norm, and try as hard as I can, I can find no asterisk.

If you stand up at a eulogy and say, “that rat-b@st@rd slept with my wife” people will think less of you, even if it was true. It’s not the time nor the place. It’s just wrong; that’s the norm. People will criticize you or even exclude you until you make reparations for violating the norm. But what if, right after you commit the faux pas, someone else stands up and yells, “Sure, but you *bleep* goats, so what’s your issue, goat*bleeper*?” This will not re-establish the norm; rather, it also violates it (not the time, nor the place, not even if the goats are willing to testify in court), and exacerbates it. You can’t re-establish the norm by engaging in the same norm-violation. It doesn’t work that way.

I’m sure I don’t need to make the obvious point about celebrating someone’s death. Okay, maybe Hitler’s. But to those who say they felt compelled to point out a recently-deceased person’s faults because others were lauding the man? Read the norm again. Or just decide if you want to put your likeness onto the person in this video:

I wrote all this (and made you read it!) to get to the larger issue: one of my biggest concerns about life in these United States today is we have come to the point where both sides now believe they can–or more truthfully–they must violate the norms to re-establish them.

Let’s start with the walking. talking epitome of norm-breaking, President Trump. He gets very upset when people make fun of his weight, his hair, his orange-hued tan, and about a hundred other things. He says people who make these comments are “nasty.” He proceeds to talk about them in ways that also break the norm: “dummy,” “ugly,” “horseface,” and “retarded” are among his rejoinders. The norm teeters. His opponents respond with “pedophile,” “rapist,” and “Nazi.” Down goes the norm.

It happens not only in impromptu, personal observations, but in policies, too. The President maintains he was the victim of selective, vindictive prosecutions. Reasonable people may agree or disagree with him. But what are his directions to go after certain members of his first administration but the same thing? “Oh, but they’re guilty,” my MAGA friends would object, as did my progressive friends when talking about Trump’s legal problems. You see the point: guilt or innocence is not it, the norm is the point.

We used to have a norm in this country that we don’t go after our political opponents using the justice system (federal or state). Richard Nixon committed a bag of felonies in addition to the cover-up that got his impeachment rolling and resulted in his resignation. His successor, Gerald Ford, could have let the prosecutors go after him, but instead he cost himself re-election by reinforcing the norm and pardoning Nixon. And it wasn’t just Nixon. Reading history will remind you that many of our leaders (great and otherwise) could have been in the docket after the White House. That’s what happens elsewhere, not here . . . until now.

Some norms are small things, but they are part of larger things, like small building blocks. The Senate filibuster is one example, ensuring a majority party needs either an overwhelming majority or some minority support to get basic things done. Yet some are itching to erase it despite its obvious utility to whichever team isn’t in charge. Beware those who say such progress is always good, because norms great and small play important roles. You won’t know what you got till it’s gone, as the song goes.

Look at the norm about non-prosecution of past administrations. When the Democrats tossed it aside “because Trump,” they proceeded on a federal and state tear amounting to four indictments and eighty-eight criminal counts. Among these were the charges of interfering in the 2020 election, including the Supreme Court case of Trump vs. the United States. The decision established the President has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

Now the Supreme Court majority reviewed the competing notions that the Founders certainly wanted no kings above the law, but also did not want a presidency which ended with endless subsequent criminal litigation. Before this, it was just a norm, understood that the President can’t be subsequently sued or charged for his actions in office. The push to end the norm led to a binding precedent that is sweeping. Whether you agree with it (I do) or not, I’m not sure this is a better place for the country to be in legally. I am absolutely sure the Democrats who pursued this course of action didn’t intend where it ended up.

When Michelle Obama told her Party, “when they go low, we go high,” many Democrats rejected it and described it as “weak,” “defeatist,” or simply “unacceptable” when facing Trumpism. She was right, they were wrong. It’s not weak or defeatist to insist on norms, it’s principled. Principled positions win in the end. Many people who don’t know the derivation of the term Nazi* but like to talk about fascism or Hitler forget that the Allies didn’t win by rejecting the norms of human decency in society or war. We won by insisting on those norms. Even after the war, we insisted on a legal tribunal with certain rights, judges, defense attorneys, and procedures before administering justice . . . even for Nazis.

Once you start jettisoning norms, principles and laws are next on the chopping block. Mr. Trump has always viewed laws as things to be manipulated or obeyed only as a last resort. Trying to claim he doesn’t have to back-pay some government employees idled by the shutdown is just his latest one, or is it bullying his ball room over the East Wing of the White House? It’s so hard to keep tally. Mind you, it’s a bipartisan sport. The Democrats recently took a principled stand against Gerrymandering, going so far as to put specific limits on it in blue states, with some notable exceptions (Maryland, for instance). History again is instructive: what are the norms of districting in America? Well the very term Gerrymander is a home-grown term, showing it has been going on since the inception of the Republic. There was indeed a norm that a state normally only redistricted after a federal census, or under court order, but it was only a norm. The Republicans tossed it aside, and then so did the Democrats with their once-principled stand. So much for norms and principles.

“Pat, you’re missing the larger issue. If Trumpism is not defeated in the next election, it will change us forever.” I regret to inform those who hold this view that it has already changed us forever. The question is whether those changes will be for the better or for the worse. If we toss aside every norm, principle, or even law, those changes will be for the worse. If we insist on reestablishing the norms, etc, by continuing to abide by them, it will be for the better. I would remind all that about ten years ago, Democrats were predicting their coalition had an unstoppable majority which would dominate the Presidency and the Congress for decades to come. Didn’t happen. Republicans feel somewhat similar today. Nothing is guaranteed. The new districts the Texas GOP is developing are based on continuing support from Hispanics in Rio Grande border areas. If those voters change their mind (which they did in 2024), the gerrymandering fails miserably. The same will happen elsewhere.

American politics are in flux. This is yet another reason the norms need to be re-asserted by all of us. Nominees come and go, as do parties. What we have left are the rules they compete under. When we suggest those rules are just part of the game, not even norms (let alone laws), we weaken the ties that bind us together. That is a far greater challenge than anything on the ballot in 2026 or 2028.

*Most people know the term Nazi stands for National Socialist in German. But the derivation is interesting. It should be NaSo, right? But Socialists in Germany were called by a derogatory term “SoZis” by the other parties. When the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP in German) came on the scene, the other parties gave them the derivative NaZi nickname. They embraced it.

Sound familiar? You’re about to hear more about it, and you may want to brush up on it. The story you will hear from partisans–including the legacy media–will be all about abortion. Seems there is always another legal issue with abortion causing political controversy. But the underlying issue the Supreme Court will have to decide is (1) a bedrock principle of our Republic, and (2) one that has not ever been fully reconciled by the courts! Strap on your headgear and let’s get smart about it.

Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States:

“Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.”

A pretty short, simple statement. This was a principle of international law which the Founders borrowed for the Constitution, applying it to relations between the sovereign states. The concept is simple: accept the legal judgments of the other entity as you own, as long as that entity has jurisdiction. What? Okay, here is a concrete example: if your state claims you are a married couple, then another state must recognize your marriage when you’re there, too. Or driver’s licenses. Or a legal case resulting in a fine, or finding of guilt/liability, or paternity and child custody, and so forth and so on. It’s a simple concept that allows life to continue without undue additional aggravation. Imagine if you had to stop at each state line and pass a driving test!

The point was to keep borders (between countries or states) from becoming something people could hide behind (avoiding a judgment or re-litigating a case they lost) while making the continuation of life across those same lines easier for law-abiding citizens. It is not universal: states don’t have to recognize another state’s doctor’s license, for example. Marijuana is legal in Colorado, illegal in Nebraska. A Cornhusker can’t be arrested in Colorado for smoking a joint, but if they bring that joint back to Nebraska: get out the cuffs (figuratively).

The Dobbs decision (which overturned Roe v Wade) removed the fundamental right to abortion and left the issue to the States, providing fertile ground for interstate conflict. Some Red states banned abortion in toto. Abortion proponents insist that sending abortion-inducing drugs from Blue states into Red states is not only legal, it is morally required. Some Blue states have enacted shield laws to protect doctors, insurance companies, pharmacies and individuals from being criminally tried or civilly fined by Red states for providing abortion services. Some Red states have enacted ever-more laws permitting (practically) anybody to sue someone who enables abortion in a Red State. The main antagonists in this continuing drama are New York and Texas.

Texas contends New York residents and businesses are directly enabling Texans to violate Texas law in Texas. New York claims Texas is infringing on the rights of New Yorkers and attempting to enforce Texas law in New York. Because it is ostensibly about abortion, partisans have occupied their predictable trench lines. Under New York law, any woman can get an abortion at any time. Texas prohibits almost all abortion with very narrow exceptions. A New Yorker cannot go to Texas and claim they may have an abortion, but a Texan can go to New York and get one. The issue is about people in New York sending abortion-inducing drugs into Texas, where such drugs are illegal.

Because this is an interstate issue, it will eventually end up at the Supreme Court. I’m asking my friends to look at the larger issue here, because that is where the Supreme Court will look : to the Full Faith and Credit clause. If the court were to find for Texas, the status quo ante would pertain; nothing changes except New York would either have to respond to Texas’ legal claims against New Yorkers, or those New Yorkers would have to stop sending the pills.

But what if New York prevails? If you defend the “right to choose” you might see this as cause for celebration, but think about it for a moment. This finding directly undermines the Full Faith and Credit clause. If it’s legal for New Yorkers to send drugs into Texas, where those drugs are illegal, is it legal for Texas to send bump stocks, high-capacity magazines, or 3D printed firearms into California, where those things are illegal? Can Indiana decide not to recognize same-sex marriage licenses from Oregon? How about Alabama sending anti-trans books to Connecticut? Or Florida allowing its auto dealers to sell gas-guzzling SUVs directly to Californians?

Because the issue in play is abortion, each side is absolute in their thinking. But the issue before the court is NOT abortion: it is how states get along together, which is bound by the Full Faith and Credit clause. Tweaking that could jeopardize the entire notion of federalism in unforeseen ways. Remember: no one in this case is arguing about what New Yorkers do in New York, or what Texans do in Texas; this is about what New Yorkers do (send) to Texas. Pro-choice advocates claim a moral imperative to ignore Texas sovereign laws; pro-life advocates in Texas claim the right to reach into New York to exact justice.

I don’t envy the Supreme Court in this case. It’s exactly the kind of case with great possibilities for unintended consequences, which is why I expect them to find a way to defuse the issue without rendering the kind of judgment susceptible to such outcomes. If I had to bet on the outcome of a real decision (not a deflection, which is what I really expect), I believe the court will side with Texas. For all the rule-of-law folks out there who have been decrying every move by the Trump administration, this will be where the rubber meets the road. Does New York arrest the doctor prescribing abortion-inducing pills for women in Texas? Do they enforce the fines levied on the New York businesses doing the same? Or do they resist the court’s judgment?

Stay tuned. The case isn’t even on the Supreme Court docket yet, but unless one side or the other yields, it will be, probably next year. When it does, remember: abortion is just the topic, the case is about Full Faith and Credit.

Imagine you saw a good friend, and he looked really sad. You ask, “What’s wrong, friend?” He responds, “My brother just died. He was murdered, and I just feel numb!” Would you:

• a) Express your condolences and shock
• b) Say “I’m sorry” and sit and talk with your friend
• c) Just give them a hug, and say “words fail me!” or
• d) Explain that you had never met his brother, didn’t know him, and thus don’t feel that much compassion.

Any normal person sees responses a, b, and c as variations on compassion: suffering with a friend, because that friend is suffering. Any normal person sees response d as practically sociopathic.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

— John Donne, English poet

Donne got it right. Now that’s not to say we all don’t experience grief differently, based on the circumstances. I trust you feel more emotion about the death of a close family member than that of a distant one, let alone a complete stranger. We also feel differently about different deaths. We might feel more emotion about a promising teenager taken from us too early, as opposed to an old man who led a long and happy life. That’s just being human, after all. But that’s not what I’m talking about here.

What does it say about you when you revel in the fact someone you hate has died? Not someone you knew, or who did something horrible to you. Just someone others told you about, and that person was brutally murdered, and you said, “just desserts” or “good riddance.” Where on the spectrum of disordered behavior does such a sentiment lie?

“Our nation is broken. . . . If anyone, in the sound of my voice, celebrated even a little bit at the news of the shooting, I would beg you to look in the mirror, and see if you can find a better angel in there somewhere.”

Utah Governor Spencer Cox

Governor Cox said this speaking spontaneously only hours after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Would that more people could be as eloquent, compassionate, and demonstrate such leadership. I’m not going to address the people on TikTok, FaceBook, Bluesky, etc,. who really were celebrating. Some doubt these claims are real, but if you must, here’s a site (edit: no longer active, probably due to legal concerns) which catches the over 50,000 people (at the moment I posted this blog) who have done just that. Imagine what type of depravity would lead one to believe it’s a good idea to post a video of the shooting with a happy soundtrack and a thumbs-up emoji. There is no sense in talking to such people, for they have delivered themselves over to the darkness.

Rather, I want to talk to my social media “friends” who immediately went to one of the following rationaliztions:

1. Charlie Kirk engaged in hate speech, he said . . .
2. I won’t shed a tear/feel remorse/express condolences because the other side didn’t when the Hortmans were killed (in Minnesota).
3. Trump/Fox News/MAGA shouldn’t make such a big deal about this one man.
4. Maybe the MAGA/GOP/Conservatives will finally get serious about gun control.

If you’re in group one, you might want to find the real, hateful statement, or reconsider. Author Stephen King claimed Kirk “advocated for stoning gays.” No, he didn’t, and King apologized. In debates, Kirk pointed out what the biblical injunction and punishment for homosexuality was/is. Two very different things. Others claimed Kirk was antisemitic, but the allegation was refuted: he was quoting someone else and refuting the antisemitism. Denying transexualism is not violence, nor even hate. And even if it was, does it justify cold-blooded murder? Even trying to use this line of argument merits the censure and general approbation which have happened nationwide.¹

Imagine group two, thinking they’re making a nuanced statement about hypocrisy. No, they’re publicly admitting to pettiness at an monumental level. If Christian, it’s almost a disqualification except that we believe in repentance, which should start right away for those making this claim. Otherwise, imagine being so obtuse as to admit compassion is called for, but is being withheld because of politics. I didn’t know the Hortmans, so I just said a prayer for them/their family and left the matter alone. Perhaps some deranged soul somewhere immediately sought out Speaker Hortman’s voting record as justifying her assassination. But 50,000? Nope.

Group three is annoyed by all the fuss, and to be fair, legacy and social media is full of non-stop coverage. Many people in this group never heard of Charlie Kirk, except for an occasional headline in Occupy Democrats decrying his “hate speech.” What’s the big deal? Here’s the big deal: he was a force of nature. Instead of going to college, at the tender age of eighteen he formed an organization called Turning Point USA (TPUSA) with the goal of turning his Gen Z cohort towards Trump/MAGA. Even most Republicans/conservatives thought he was crazy. TPUSA had $85 million USD in revenue in 2023 and chapters on 850 college campuses. Despite no formal training, he constantly went to those campuses and engaged in hours of public, free-form debate, and eventually got very good at it. Gen Z turned out to be the group with the biggest pro-Trump move among voters in 2024. He may be more responsible for Trump’s victory than anyone else. And because he was such a force on the right, all the politicos and talking heads knew him on a personal basis. That’s why they’re making such a big deal about it, because he was a big deal for them. It was personal. And it’s why the Hortmans’ murders were less covered, even by the legacy media. Sadly, few outside Minnesota had heard of them.

The fourth group is simply guilty of exploiting calamity as a foil to make a political argument. It’s crass and self-debasing, but it’s also very common these days, especially with respect to gun violence. Since this group is out there and raised the issue, let’s replay the same stale argument we do every time this happens: tell me what gun control law or regulation would have prevented this assassination? The coward used a hunting rifle, a Mauser with a scope, legal in all fifty states. No one is seriously considering limiting or restricting its use. Utah is an open-carry state, but even if it wasn’t, the punk stuck the rifle down the leg of his pants. So don’t raise irrelevant points at a time like this.

In 1859, Abolitionist John Brown had had enough. Slavery was pure evil, and he was willing to kill or die to end it. He and a small band of the like-minded raided the federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, hoping to spark a slave revolt. The slaves didn’t revolt. The local militia (and the US Marine Corps, under Robert E. Lee) surrounded and captured Brown and a few survivors of his group. Brown was hanged. His raid didn’t cause the civil war, but it did confirm in people’s minds, both North & South, that violence was justified, and indeed, inevitable.

The assassination in Utah is NOT the start of another civil war. But we should all look in the mirror. It should remind us, like the Harper’s Ferry raid, that if we insist our fellow Americans are evil, the weak-willed or weak-minded among us will act out on those beliefs. Charlie Kirk wanted to convince people, and to those who met him or watched his videos, he was very good at it. Others only heard “of him” and formed opinions absent facts. All Charlie wanted to do was talk, not hate . . . and that got him killed. In response to someone who asked why he kept debating the other side, he said, “we have to keep talking, because when we stop talking, the violence starts.”

He was wrong about that; the violence was what stopped the talking.

1. A comment about free speech. My perceptive friends know that the freedom of speech guaranteed in the First Amendment of the US Constitution is freedom from the government restricting your speech. It does not protect the speaker from natural consequences with respect to your job or your school. The government should not be exacting punishment on those making outrageous statements. But no firm and no school need stand by silently, either. Most importantly, we need to regain the notion of responsibility which accompanies freedom of speech. if you say something so odious, you should admit it, not defend it, ask forgiveness, and if necessary quit to avoid causing your company or school further embarrassment. ↩︎

I was re-reading what I wrote (here) when Russia invaded Ukraine. It holds up well, I think. There was a brief moment recently when it looked like President Trump might have gotten the sides to negotiate, but that was a mirage, used by Putin to forestall secondary tariffs.

Let’s review the situation, what the various actors want, and how it will play out.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to control all of Ukraine. He would prefer to incorporate it into Russia, but he would be willing to settle for a passive client state a la Belarus. He tried nibbling pieces of Ukraine, when he invaded Crimea and parts of the Donbas during the Obama administration. He thought he could blitz his way to Kyiv when he invaded during the Biden administration, but that failed, resulting in the current war of attrition.

Look at the map. Putin has achieved the occupation of almost all the primarily Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine. He has established a land bridge to Crimea, augmenting the single overseas bridge which used to be the only connection between Crimea and Russia. His forces in Kherson and Zaporizhzia occupy the eastern bank of the Dnipro river, giving them a defendable line. The Russian Army has eliminated any pockets of Ukrainian activity in Russia, and it is slowly advancing to take the rest of Donetsk province. Ukraine can not stop that advance, only slow it.

Russia has withstood all the sanctions placed on it, which have damaged the Russian economy, but that same damaged economy is producing more drones, more artillery, and more soldiers than Ukraine. While Putin has not realized his overall objectives, Russia is winning the war, and can continue to do so if it chooses. This is why Putin rejects talk of a ceasefire. A ceasefire only helps Ukraine rebound, while a continuation of the current fighting, as costly as it is to Russia, benefits the Russians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to keep his country free, intact, and independent. His army has fought bravely and innovated rapidly, but it cannot evict the Russians from the territory they occupy. The country itself is stuck in transition: it was a corrupt former-Soviet state trying to become a European democracy, but the war has set those goals back. It retains major corruption problems, and even the unity of the war effort is barely enough to hold it together. Despite chronic shortfalls in military manpower, Ukraine has never extended its draft to men below the age of 25! Why? Because the government fears widespread draft avoidance and public discontent if it did.

President Zelensky needs time to rebuild his economy, his military, and a functioning government. A ceasefire would do that, and a peace agreement would be better, but only if it comes with some kind of security commitment from NATO, the US, or major European states.

European leaders want to put a stick in the ground to contain future Russian aggression, correctly fearing that if Putin feels he has “won,” he’ll try again for more. They have already committed to major increases in defense spending (without identifying how they will pay for it), added Sweden and Finland to NATO’s protective canopy, and given billions in aid to Ukraine. The one remaining question for them is do they collectively have the fortitude to stick with their commitments (when the bills come due in terms of a military draft or reduced social spending)?

President Trump desperately wants a Nobel prize; he has publicly admitted it, and it clearly animates his many recent negotiations. He wants to be able to stop spending money and sending equipment to Ukraine, which is in his opinion, Biden’s fault. He wants to drop sanctions and sign a big economic deal with Russia. Putin sees an economic deal with America as the end of sanctions and a chance to recharge his economy.

Putin has raised all kinds of secondary issues. He demands limits on Ukraine’s military, but I suggest this is a negotiating ploy: Putin knows the Ukrainian military is as large as it is going to get. He asks that Ukraine recognize Russian as a second national language and permit the Russian Orthodox Church to operate freely. This is public posturing, to look like he’s defending “Mother Russia” while not really asking for anything of substance. The only import to these conditions is they will be what Putin cites when he decides Ukraine has reneged on the peace deal and he chooses to invade, again.

So how and when will these competing desires work out? When it comes to timing, I believe the when is probably within the next six months. Putin is in no hurry, as his forces are advancing on the final portion of Donetsk province, so he can await their eventual victory or gain the territory by negotiating.

Despite the pleas from Kyiv that it cannot negotiate away any territory, it will do so. If the US, Europe, and Russia build an agreement all three can accept, President Zelensky would find himself unsupported if he used his constitution to deny it. That may sound sad, but it’s true. Ukraine will cede the rest of the Donetsk and all the land Russia already occupies, in exchange for very little. Some military experts point out that such an exchange would cost the Ukrainian Army a defensive belt that is currently holding the Russians at bay; that is true, but new defenses can be built. In the end, the strategic consideration to get a peace agreement will override the military’s operational objection. Whether the Russian occupation is recognized by anyone remains an open but unimportant question (to Russia).

Back in “college,” I had a European history professor who was known for his classroom theatrics, wandering the classroom and alternating between a whisper and a shout. I will never forget his lesson on Yalta, the WWII conference that divided up Europe among the Allied powers. “Did FDR give up eastern Europe at Yalta?” he whispered near my desk. Again, slightly louder, “did the allies legitimize the Communist occupation at Yalta?” A long pause, then a thunderous, “NOOOOOOOOO! The Red Army legitimized it. They took it. You can’t GIVE UP what someone else already HAS!”

Europe will give Ukraine security guarantees; perhaps the United States will also. Why would Putin roll off his current demand prohibiting such support? Because Ukraine has had them before. Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister John Major confirmed Ukraine’s security in the Budapest agreement in 1994 (Russia too!). President Obama ignored it when Putin took Crimea and started to invade the Donbas the first time in 2014. French President François Hollande and Germany’s Angela Merkel mediated the Minsk agreement, which failed to stop the fighting again. President Biden warned Putin not to invade in 2022, and we know how effective that was. Putin doesn’t believe that Europe or the US is willing to fight Russia over Ukraine. He will bide his time and seek to change the government in Kyiv through other means, knowing that some time later, he can always resume the military option.

Why have so many American and European leaders been so lukewarm about Ukraine in this conflict? First, as a post-Soviet state, it has been a mix of democratic aspirations, repression, and corruption. That’s not meant to be as harsh as it sounds. Media have made Ukraine the “good guys” in this war, and that they are. But before that, Ukraine was struggling with poor governance, corruption, and a lot of Russian meddling.

Second, from a geostrategic perspective, Ukraine is not as important to NATO or Europe as it is to Russia. Remember that not long ago, Ukraine was a reliable, post-Soviet ally of Russia, much like Belarus is today. Part of Putin’s ire was sparked by the Maidan revolution, which chased Russia’s puppet leaders in Kyiv back to Moscow. Oh, and Putin’s great disgust with Hillary Clinton goes back to her support (as US Secretary of State) for that revolution. President Obama and Secretary Clinton had offered a “reset” with Russia, then they promoted the Maidan revolution which belied their “reset” claims in Putin’s mind. Mind you I am explicitly NOT agreeing with this Russian interpretation (they’re wrong), just stating it as Russia’s view of the history.

True Story: In March 2009, Secretary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov with a small red button ostensibly labelled “reset” in Russian, signalling a desire to improve US-Russian relations. Lavrov pointed out that perhaps the Americans needed better translators, as he said the button was actually the Russian word for “overcharge.”

In the end, if Russia had a client state in Ukraine, it would greatly extend its border with NATO, but only to what it had been in 2009. And the addition of the Russo-Finish border is a far more significant factor.

Finally, the outcome of this war is only symbolically important. If Russia “liberates” the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine, or if it eventually installs a puppet government in Kiev (reverting to Russian spelling), the important point is what Europe is prepared to do about it. If Europe goes through with their stated intentions to man, re-arm, and integrate their military capabilities, Russia will be hard-pressed to push further, much like NATO deterred the far more powerful USSR. If Europe’s leadership falters, or fails to follow through, Putin or his successor will almost certainly choose another victim nation to seize.

The war in Ukraine, for Ukraine, will have to end soon. It is decisive for Ukraine, but not for Europe (and certainly not for the United States). It is only a precursor to a larger competition in Europe, for Europe.

I’m writing this post safely from an undisclosed location outside the country. I never thought it would come to this. Jack-booted thugs patrolling the nation’s Capital. Marines occupying the City of Angels. More troops pouring in every day, and the White House threatening more cities. It’s only a matter of time before Trump pulls off the mask and announces martial law, and the end of our democracy.

Or not.

When you look at the litany from that first, overwrought paragraph, you see the problem. Exaggeration multiplied by fear to the point of irrationality. When President Biden deployed 4,000 active duty and National Guard troops to the border, he was chastised by both Democrats and Republicans. The former said he shouldn’t do it because Trump did, the latter because it was all a show (the GOP was correct in this case). The troops went to Red states. Nobody seriously called it an invasion by the federal government against his political opposition.

Trump deployed 5,000 National Guard troops and US Marines to Los Angeles. They prepared a defensive perimeter around several federal building that had been the scene of protests and some minor violence. The deployed elements cross-trained to accompany ICE and DEA on raids; their mission was (again) to provide a secure perimeter for the other federal agents as they completed their law enforcement operations. Was any of this necessary, and why?

Protection of federal buildings is first and foremost, the federal government’s responsibility. While state and local officials usually complete this role, the federal government retains the right to defend itself (period). Was the threat sufficient to justify the deployment? While you may think no, it’s not your decision; it’s the President’s. Why would ICE or the DEA need federal troops to provide security on raids? In California, state law prohibits state and local law enforcement from assisting ICE. If ICE coordinates with local law enforcement, someone leaks the impending raid, ending its effectiveness. And numerous civilian vigilantes track ICE and report on them, endangering their operations and officers. So yes, security is needed, and the force providing it must itself be secure from operational leaks.

Almost all the Marines and guards troops have left. There is a residual lawsuit by California against the Trump administration, but it will come to nought, perhaps by the US District Court judge in San Francisco, or later on appeal. Some fascist takeover.

The case in DC is even more ridiculous. There, the President has special authorities which make any lawsuit against his recent moves dead-on-arrival in court. The best the DC government could do was get the administration’s scheme to replace the police chief overruled by the courts, but the principle that the federal government can and has taken control of the metro police stands. All that legal kerfuffle was actually about one thing: the DC Council passed a rule prohibiting the DC metro police from cooperating with ICE (sound familiar?), and the police chief claimed she didn’t have to obey any federal edicts to the contrary. So the Trump administration tried to replace her, which they don’t have the authority to do. Now the Mayor has had to admit that the federalization of the Metro Police allows them to coordinate with ICE. End of that discussion.

What about the National Guard soldiers on the Mall? They’re doing the same sorts of things they did in Los Angeles: securing federal property or operations. The first tranche is the DC National Guard, so they know the area. In fact, the main Army unit in the DC Guard is a Military Police Battalion, so, you know, they might know a thing or two about crowd control, securing a perimeter, establishing checkpoints. At least I hope they do! Other deployed Guard units are logistics. With a bunch of federal agents and guard elements deploying, somebody has to provide food, fuel, bunks, etc. That is what a logistics unit does. So spare me also the “they’re losing their combat readiness” nonsense. They’re doing one of their military missions, on the fly, in a semi-hostile environment. Great training.

Was the crime rate in DC such that it justifies federalizing the Metro Police or deploying the National Guard and other federal officers? In whose eyes, with what data? There is a great discussion of the data at Substack’s Jeff-alytics here. You really should go there and read his work. The DC murder rate and carjackings are way down from their pandemic highs . . . but the DC rates are high among other US cities. The DC data on violent crimes is a mess. Look at this chart Jeff created:

There is a huge discrepancy in both the total and trend line direction between what DC posts on its pages and what it reports to the FBI! And there is no single good explanation for the difference. On top of that, there is a DC police union allegation of widespread data fraud in violent crime reporting. While it’s unproven at this point, I’m shocked (not really) that friends who tell me that unions are the bedrock of our society are quickly denying the union’s claims.

Fun with Numbers! Trump and the MAGA world claim crime is high in DC; the Resistance says it is dropping and less than it was 30 years ago. Both are correct. Let me explain, with an exceedingly absurd example. If DC suffered a million murders two years ago, then half a million last year, and a quarter million this year, the murder rate would indeed be dropping in a spectacular fashion. And crime would still be high. By the way, DC in the 1990s was the unofficial “murder capital.”

The bottom line? Crime is almost certainly down from pandemic highs, but still high for a major metropolitan area. And the data is at least suspect. Does that make DC unsafe? Should the nation’s capital be more or less safe than Portland, Oregon? San Francisco, California? It’s a value judgment. I have friends who assure me they felt completely safe in DC before the Trump administration moves. I have other friends who said things were getting out of control.

When Governor Hochul deployed nearly one-thousand national guard personnel into just the New York City transit system, there were only a few raving lunatics calling it an invasion. She admitted subway crime was actually down, but there were high profile and particularly unsettling crimes like people pushing others in front of subway trains. She acted, and things got better. In DC, crime too may be down. But there have been unsettling carjackings of government employees, muggings of Congressional staffers, even criminal assaults on members of Congress in their homes. And in DC, the President has constitutional prerogatives to take action, like the Governor did in New York City.

If you want to believe this is the Gestapo, or the beginning of a fascist dictatorship, or the “end of our democracy” (sic), that’s your right. You have no obligation to learn the facts, to understand the politics or the history, or to even be consistent. It’s a free Republic, after all.

Wait, did I hear a knock on the door?

If I asked you to describe inflation, could you do so? Some might say it’s when prices rise. Some would say it’s “bad.” Others might comment that it’s why they can’t afford their groceries, or rent, a car or a home. These descriptions are not wrong, but like the old tale of the blind men and the elephant, they’re not quite complete, either.

Prices are a symptom of inflation; you can’t have inflation without rising prices, but not all rising prices indicate inflation. Prices are set by supply and demand. If more people want to buy something, and the quantity for sale is limited, the price goes up. That’s not inflation, that’s just the market doing what the market does.

The best and shortest description of inflation comes from the legendary American economist Milton Friedman, who said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” That clears it up, right? Sorry, but here’s what he meant: inflation happens when too much money is chasing too few things (goods and services). Let’s look at an example.

Imagine an estate sale, where Granny’s elephant-foot lamp, Gramp’s velvet Elvis picture, and Uncle Ernie’s bottle cap collection are up for bid. People will arrive and bid what they think the items are worth to them, based on how much money they have. People with more money might bid more, or people with less money overall might bid more if they value the object more. It’s a simple marketplace. Now imagine that as people enter, you hand everyone $500 cash, no strings attached. Suddenly, the man who collects bottle caps is willing to bid more for Ernie’s stash, not because it’s worth more, but because he can. The woman who has always wanted a matching elephant-foot lamp won’t get beat because she runs out of cash, she’ll run it up all the way to $500+ since she can. Nearly all the prices at the auction will increase, even though the goods for sale did not change! Why? Inflation. You handed out cash, and that made too much money chase too few things.

Notice that nobody did anything wrong here. You are free to give away your money, and the estate sale just sold things as they always do, and the people bought things as they always do. That’s inflation.

Is inflation bad? No, not at all. In a perfect market, supply and demand work themselves out and prices could–in theory–become set: neither inflation or deflation. But of course markets are never perfect. And deflation, when (you guessed it) too little money is chasing too many things is really bad. Periods of deflation usually happen when an entire economy collapses; for example, the US experienced years of deflation during the Great Depression. Why would prices going down (a symptom of deflation) ever be bad? Another example:

The economy is deflating. You go to the store to buy a 400″, surround-sound, 3D immersive TV. The price is US $1000. You think, “wait, prices are going down, so next week it will be only $950.” You’re right, so you keep waiting, because it only makes sense. But everybody else is too. So no one is buying anything, and all their money is sitting on the sidelines (“too little money chasing too many things.”). Now the store is cancelling televisions from its suppliers, and the suppliers are laying off their workers, and soon you are out of a job, even though you got a sweet deal on your television.

Both of these examples hit on a key to inflation: psychology. If the price rise or the money supply is a one-time change (I won the daily double, or the government gave me a stimulus check), it’s unlikely to cause more than a temporary price increase, and therefore no inflation. But if there is a supply of money that keeps flowing, inflation can build. A third example:

You go to the store during your lunch hour and they’re changing the prices as you wait in line for the register. “Yikes!” you think, so you grab a few extra items to lock in the price now, and as soon as you check-out, you head back to work. You tell the boss, “I can’t afford to buy dinner on my salary; give me a raise or I quit!” The boss is sympathetic, and you’re a great employee, so he says “yes” and gives you a raise. Other employees line up. “We have the same problem, and we didn’t even get to go out to buy stuff at lunch!” The boss raises everyone’s pay, then starts raising his prices to cover it. A vicious cycle has started. Everybody expects the prices to rise, and pay to rise, which leads to one fueling the other until paper money becomes essentially worthless. This ends in hyperinflation, where people are being paid twice a day in wheelbarrows full of paper money which they then rush out and try to buy something.

To recap, during our recent pandemic, markets got all screwed up (technical economic term, that). Things weren’t literally moving, perishables were rotting before they could be marketed, people could not work to keep things working. This created shortages, at the same time the government was worried about a complete collapse of the economy since so many people were out of work. So the US government (and others) created various monetary stimuli (i.e., artificially increased how much money was available). They sent stimulus checks, froze rents and repossessions, deferred some payments, etc.. This extra money kept people from begging on the streets until the economy could get back on its feet. But it also meant that a lot of money was chasing a few things, which meant (you guessed it): inflation.

Now let’s not be too critical of our leaders (red & blue) here. It’s not like there is an economic control panel that shows just how far to push things. And if you have a panel of five economic experts advising you, you’ll get six different answers. Back in 2008, President Obama was more concerned with moving too far, too fast, and he got a very slow recovery from the financial crisis. President Biden “learned” from that and went big, adding in many long-time progressive programs to the spending spree, because as Rahm Emanuel (who wants to be President someday soon) liked to say, “you should never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” And thus we experienced the inflation that became the hot topic of the 2024 election cycle.

I understand how debilitating inflation can be. When I was in high school (and buffalo still roamed the plains), the inflation rate averaged over 9% per year; when I was in “college,” it averaged 11% annually! For comparison, the catastrophic post-pandemic inflation the US experienced topped out at 8%, so you’ll find me in the “we made too much of this thing” aisle. And before someone says, “Pat, you’re an expat, you didn’t experience inflation here!” Well, amigo, inflation has been higher in Mexico than in the US throughout the period.

Anyway, while some prices may go down because their spikes were related to the market, no one is proposing (or could achieve) a sustained, across-the-board reduction in prices because (you’re right again) that would involve deflation, which is bad, bad, bad. The federal government, especially the Federal Reserve (hereafter “the Fed”), seeks a stable inflation rate around 2% annually. Just enough to prevent a deflationary spiral, not enough to get into the psychology of wheelbarrow money. They do this by controlling the interest rate for lending. Reduce it and banks lend more at less interest, increase it and banks lend less at greater interest.* More money from banks to people and businesses is the juice that gets things going, less money is the glue which slows things down.

What about tariffs? Will they cause inflation? Let’s apply what we’ve learned! Tariffs are paid at the point a product is imported. They are paid once, at a percentage rate of the value of the good. You could call them a tax, and it wouldn’t be terribly wrong. A small tariff results in a small tax, a huge tariff might result in the item no longer for sale, because it’s so expensive to buy with a tariff added on. So we are talking about a price increase, but is it inflation?

Many things can happen when a tariff is introduced:

• The buyers can stop buying the product, so no money is raised, but also no one pays any more.
• The buyers can keep buying the product and pay the entire extra fare.
• The importer can “eat” some of the tariff, charging his customers some extra, but not the same as the full tariff.
• The foreign producer can lower their prices, resulting in a lower tariff.

Ignoring the first outcome, the other three have an increase in prices. But is it because more money is chasing fewer things? No. In fact, all three generally happen at the same time. WalMart went to its Chinese manufactures and grabbed them by the Yuan, saying if they still wanted to supply WalMart, they were going to eat some delicious tariff tofu. And WalMart decided to raise some prices, too. And people decided whether to keep shopping at WalMart, buy less, or substitute with lower-cost, domestic products.

This was all the market at work, as it should be. Now, a sufficiently high general tariff, across the board in an environment where many products people need are produced abroad (like the US until recently), could send a supply shock through an economy. Supplies would freeze up (like they did during the pandemic), and soon too much residual money would be chasing too few goods. Even if the price rise was one-time due to tariffs, if they were large enough, it could set people into the psychology of inflation.

While most economists insisted President Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs were exactly the kind to shock the US economy into an inflationary spiral, he has since backed down from them. The tariffs left are much greater than anything the US has experienced in ninety years, but not so great they should spark inflation. But that’s a debatable point. The data so far shows producers ate some of the tariff and importers/wholesalers ate some, but there’s still some tariff cost to go around. Guess who’s next in line? Us.

Each month, the federal government announces updated inflation numbers, including revising previous announcements. There are two numbers you need to watch: the overall inflation rate, and the core goods inflation rate. The former adds in many things, including things like groceries and gasoline, which can shoot up or down any given month. The latter number only counts more stable products, so it isn’t as affected by external forces. In today’s partisan environment, the two sides choose to focus on whatever element best fits their political arguments, so I recommend you ignore them (the partisans, not the data). Here are the keys: is the overall rate consistently changing up or down, in an identifiable pattern? And is the core goods rate making large/sudden moves (up or down)?

The overall trend here is a slight rise for the most recent data.

And here is a slightly more pronounced rise. Anyone saying anything definitive about this data and (1) tariffs , (2) stagflation, or (3) a recession is playing politics, as there isn’t enough definitive data to make a trend. It’s like calling the outcome of a baseball game by the strike count (“That’s a strike, looks like the Orioles are going to win. No, wait, that’s a ball, now it’s the Nats’ game to lose!”). The bottom line is the US economy is at an inflection point, which is why everybody is trying to predict what happens next (or pre-emptively blame someone else).

The real fear is tariffs cause a moderate increase in prices just as the Fed starts to reduce interest rates, and we have more money chasing fewer things. That sounds a lot like too much money chasing too few things, just as tariff prices increases hit.

That way bad things lie.

*This is a gross simplification of all the Fed does, but you’ve suffered enough for one post, haven’t you?