Not Nothing.

 Los Angeles, yesterday.

                                  

Yes. Enough is enough.

Thanks to everyone who showed up. It's not the whole thing, but it's not nothing. And it's only the beginning. We need to live these next few months and years in a way we can be proud of when it's over.

Speak to you soon.

Why is everything so fucked up?

                      The answer to all your questions is: Money.

According to teevee host and former sportswriter Tony Kornheiser, television producer and network big shot Don Ohlmeyer once told him, "The answer to all your questions is: Money."

When we try and figure out how we got into this mess, I'm sure many of us can point to our own favorite incident, policy, condition, cause, or villain, as the reason things are so fucked up. When it comes up among friends, individual lists grow and merge into a gigantic trail of crimes and outrages and, of course, they and we are all correct. I don't even have to open my mouth anymore. When it's my turn everyone just shouts "Reagan!" before I can open my mouth. 

Turns out I may have a case, of sorts. 

A working paper from RAND released in February examines income inequality among U.S. workers. It builds upon an earlier study, and RAND describes it this way: "This short analysis extends the results from a prior study about the gap between what the majority of workers earned from 1975 to 2018 and what they would have earned with more evenly distributed income growth (Price and Edwards, 2020)." It's a short, clear, easy read and I encourage you to take a look at it here, but the money shot is as follows (emphasis mine):

These values are intended to provide an indication of the scale of rising inequality and its durability over the last nearly five decades. Looking at the net effects of these trends, if we had the income distribution from 1975, the majority of workers (the bottom 90 percent by income) would have made an additional $3.9 trillion dollars in 2023. Cumulatively, the gap between what workers from 1975 to 2023 earned and what they would have earned with the counterfactual income distribution amounts to $79 trillion (in 2023 dollars). Compared to the $47 trillion from the 2020 study, the additional $32 trillion dollars comes from extending the time-period by five years, inflating from 2018 to 2023, and additional growth in inequality.

Seventy-nine trillion dollars is a lot of money. A lot of child care and college educations and homes that could have been passed down to help create generational wealth. Instead, "the bottom 90 percent" did not fully participate in the growth of the American economy they helped produce. You know who did? You know who reaped their own benefits and a giant share of everybody else's? Sure you do. 

And not for nothing, there's this from the RAND paper:

For three decades following the Second World War, incomes for workers across the income distribution grew at the same pace as the broader economy. This changed in the late 1970s, when earnings growth began disproportionately flowing to those with the highest incomes leading to four decades of rising inequality.

The late 1970's. Arthur Laffer. Jack Kemp. William Roth. Voodoo supply-side trickle down "economics." And do you know who endorsed this nonsense, who ran on it and was elected in 1980? Sure you do. 

That is a huge part of how we went from thirteen U.S. billionaires in 1980 to over 900 today (+ around 7000 percent). Since geographical distinctions are not what they used to be, it's also instructive to note that Forbes reports its own count as rising from 140 billionaires worldwide in 1987 to 3,028 today. Up 2162% give or take. It's been a good run if you're a billionaire and/or heir to one. For the rest of us, not so great. 

And that is a big reason why everything is so fucked up.

Thanks for reading. Speak to you soon. 

Don't Do Nothing.

                                     

So many people have written or said it that I can't find a clear original source, but it's too true not to use. If anyone knows, please share its origin. Goes like this:

"If you ever wonder what you would have done in Nazi Germany, take a look at yourself. You're doing it right now."

I'll be at the rally tomorrow in downtown Los Angeles. Where will you be?

Free Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia

 and all the rest of them, too.

This isn't about crimes or "very bad people" (except those in our mafia government h/t Sarah Kendzior) or tattoos. It's about due process. Jeffrey Dahmer got due process. Timothy McVeigh got due process. Nazis got the Nuremberg Trials. The people being disappeared right now--from Abrego Garcia to college students to "the worst of the worst of the worst"--DESERVE DUE PROCESS. 

As Greg Sargent wrote yesterday in The New Republic:

It should go without saying that even if we ultimately learn terrible things about all these defendants, they are still entitled to due process. That’s how due process works: It’s afforded to everyone regardless of their eventual guilt or innocence. Indeed, this is precisely how we can be confident in the final decision that they are guilty or innocent under our laws.

Except it doesn't go without saying. The truth doesn't speak for itself; it has to be spoken by someone. And the truth is that this administration, our mafia government, doesn't care about guilt or innocence. It cares only about power and expressions of power. It believes it has the right to decide who gets treated lawfully and who doesn't simply because it has the power to do it and it wants to demonstrate that. 

It simply cannot be that one vicious racketeer with his evil band of thugs gets to decide who lives and who dies. We cannot allow it. 

Every detainee, and every deportee, and every one of us deserves to face our accusers and have our charges tried in front of judges and lawyers and the people who write it all down. We deserve it because it's right there in the American Bible everyone pretends to care so much about (emphasis mine):

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Persons have a RIGHT TO DUE PROCESS. It's what prevents Abrego Garcia--or you, or me--from ending up in a torture prison in El Salvador or Cuba--or Louisiana--by mistake with the mafia government shrugging that there's nothing they can do.

We are all Abrego Garcia. 

U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey

 

Democrats need to follow the scandal.

Time to fight. Brian Beutler at Off Message has a suggestion.

"This is why it’d be a mistake to let the Signal story die on the vine of its particulars...

It’s an ur-Trump scandal. A revelation, like the hidden call transcripts in term one, that points to wider wrongdoing and a reason to question just about everything the administration does."

 

The News

The news is bad. Whether talking about the actual shit that comes screaming out of the teevee machine (h/t Charlie Pierce w/respectful nod to driftglass) and your favorite social media, or about enormous corporate delivery systems scrambling to figure out how to integrate dictatorship into their business models, the news sucks.

People are being kidnapped and disappeared. Prices are about to explode. Canada hates us. This is not, as they say, the country I grew up in.

Not that the country I grew up in was perfect, or even all that great for a hell of a lot of people. It's just that it used to feel like there was progress, and like figuring it out was possible. 

I hate the people who've taken that feeling away. 

If you're feeling, as I was, that now nothing is possible and everything is pointless and it was all for nothing, I get it. If you're tired of feeling that way and you want to feel some other way, there are ways to make that happen, although some of them involve becoming a dumber, meaner person. Some of them involve drinking a lot, among other things. One thing we did was change the way we consume "news."

The first thing we did was cancel our subscription to the Los Angeles Times. For those who don't know or don't remember, the owner of the L.A. Times spiked a Kamala Harris for president endorsement that had been proposed by the paper's editorial board, instead offering to run a both-sides "non-partisan" analysis of policy. The board declined, and several members resigned. Not saying it would have made a difference in the election; just saying it made a difference in what we read every morning. 

Actually, the pulled endorsement was just the final straw in a series of disappointing moves by The Times, which also included giving "terminally smug Republican political propagandist and professional liar, Trump fluffer Scott Jennings"™ a prominent platform on the Opinion Pages of the paper. Oh, and getting rid of the box scores (I hear they may be back? Sort of?). Anyway, canceling that subscription was an easy call. 

We've also migrated from Xitter to Bluesky. Even though it's a work in progress, I've almost entirely withdrawn from that other place, and I find it immensely more satisfying. Virtually everyone I read every day is here and I find the links helpful in keeping up with news I'm tracking. Find me at @jeffwaid.bsky.social.

We've cut way back on teevee news. We haven't been CNN fans for decades, and since they also pay Jennings to smirk and deflect (What about Biden!), that's unlikely to change. Haven't watched the Big Three in forever, and that includes the "Sunday Shows." The clips I see sometimes remind me of a middle school art class with a substitute teacher. 

Other times, it's just a teevee robot talker with a list of approved questions facing off with the dissembler of the moment. No probing follow-ups. No holding firm until you get an answer. Moving on. And always both-sidesing the most obvious issues. "Critics are saying that kidnapping people off the street using unmarked agents in unmarked cars is a violation of due process protections, potentially illegal. Joining me today a spokesperson for the kidnap administration to offer a different perspective and explain why kidnapping is actually good." We're going to have to leave it there. 

Actually, that's pretty much all of teevee news. It may be different on FOX; I wouldn't know. I used to check in once in a while just to see what the enemy was up to, but every time I did what I saw was misleading and aggravating, sometimes appalling, and always the same. No surprise; it's their nature.

I suppose it's only disappointing if you allowed yourself to have a different expectation, which I did with respect to MSNBC. My love affair with the network began with Keith Olbermann, whose Countdown with Keith Olbermann gave me some place to put my anger during the Bush, W years. When John Kerry lost in 2024, the first presidential contest since the lawless 2020 Supreme Court election and the even more lawless invasion of Iraq, to say Countdown saved my life is only a modest exaggeration. It inarguably saved my sanity. 

Now MSNBC has become, with a few notable exceptions (fewer, with the departure of Joy Reid, and before that Tiffany Cross), just another corporate message machine dodging the tough stuff and staying out of the kitchen. They trot out the same old list of paid analysts to hem and haw and shake their heads and sometimes their fists. I'm sad, but now I have a lot more time for other stuff.

What now? As I say, in our house we've changed the way we consume news. We've cut back, not just on teevee news and the L.A. Times, but also on the amount of time spent doomscrolling. The anger and frustration that come with ingesting the images and stories of the daily horrors perpetrated by the present administration were not sustainable. 

For me, I'm mostly on Bluesky in the morning with local teevee news in the background. Traffic and weather! I use it to get current and to point me toward the pieces I need to read first. It also helped me find the substack/newsletters from writers I feel share my concerns. I subscribe (for free) to several and they arrive in my inbox throughout the day. True, the content that is restricted to paid subscribers can be frustrating, but our plan is to spend some of our L.A. Times savings to support a handful and get the full experience. I return to Bluesky in the afternoon/evening for updates.

We do still take the New York Times, but keeping it is an object of conversation. Were it not for our being native New Yorkers (it's The Times!) and the crossword puzzle, that conversation might end differently. Finally, we have a digital subscription to the Philadelphia Inquirer because Will Bunch.

The news sucks, but for me it's better than it used to be. This is going to be a long and intense battle. It's going to be essential that we have trustworthy sources of information and the energy and passion to act on that information. We need to keep fighting and we need leaders who will fight for us and along with us. The other side will not quit. They will never give up. It's existential for them and their privilege and their view of the universe, and this is an extinction burst. Time is not on their side, and (warning: Xitter link) they know it. 

        In the meantime, remember: It's baseball season!

What's a rally really like? 

"It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come." - Phil Alden Robinson, Field of Dreams

If you're looking to do something, please consider joining us!

         

Thanks for reading. Speak to you soon.

Since people are still coming here...

Since people are still coming here, I figure they must be looking for something. We in this nation are at a critical stage of our evolution. We may become the thing we dreamed of and promised to be. We may become just another fiefdom with a tough-guy boss--a mafia state full of minions trying to keep our heads low enough to keep them from being chopped off. The answer is unclear. The contest is, as yet, undecided.

Each of us is trying to figure out what we can do as individuals to save the dream we had for this country.

I've decided that, among other things, I'm going to continue writing. I'm going to write about what I'm doing, and I'm going to write about what we each of us can do to put us back on the path to freedom and equality. I know that a lot of better writers and better thinkers are doing the same thing much better than I can. Doesn't matter. It's one thing I can do.

I'll do what I can to amplify stronger and smarter voices than mine. I'll report on what we're doing in this house to save the project and the planet. 

If not now, when?

In the meantime, I'll dream of the day when I can again write about education as if it's the most important thing in the world.

Speak to you soon,

Jeff