Mass Deportations

The internet is alive with stories about people being deported due to mistaken identity, or for exercising their rights to free speech, guaranteed by our Constitution.  In some cases, they are not just being deported, but are condemned, without due process, admittedly by mistake, to a hell-hole prison, where our government intends to abandon them to their fate.  

Seems to me an excellent subject for discussion in the days leading up to Good Friday - the annual remembrance of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  In that context, it is worthwhile for each of us to consider in our own hearts, which side we are on.  

SAVE Act and DINOs

The Republican Party faces an ongoing demographic barrier to remaining relevant. A key part of their response to this is to disenfranchise as many progressive voters as possible. Once enshrined in law, these changes are almost impossible to reverse, because those most seriously affected no longer have a voice in our democracy - and are thus reduced to a substandard tier of citizenship.

Whether one is a woman who changed her name when she married, a poor person who doesn't have a passport, or even a public figure who moves fluidly between using her birth surname, her husbands surname, and a hyphenated version of both, the effect is the same - disenfranchisement.

Even a small number of Democrats voting for this outrageous attack on fairness lends it a transparent patina of bipartisanship. We cannot allow the center to be moved so far to the side of unfairness ... or leave it to the Senate to display the courage lacking in our representatives.

Pump and Dump

The folks who gloat over the about-face on tariffs this week—who say that maybe he has learned his lesson, and is chastened—have missed the point.  

It's a variation on he classic 'pump-and-dump', perfected in the days before securities regulations, to move money from investors to insiders.  There is money to be made on stocks, whether they are going up or down.  The trick is to know which way they are going, and when.  

Though sharing or receiving, and acting on, inside information for a single stock has earned high-profile individuals a few high-profile stretches in jail (Martha Stewart, for example), there isn't much in the way of precedent for going after those with inside information on the timing of tectonic shifts in the entire economy, and the timing of their reversal.  Trillions of dollars were made and lost in the recent boomerang announcements of crippling tariffs, followed by their postponement.  The opportunities for an insider for sudden wealth would be irresistible - assuming such an insider intended to resist in the first place.  The person who can pull these economic strings would be in a position to make or break fortunes, and demand loyalty from the wealthiest people on the planet.  

He has indeed learned a lesson - a lesson he intends to repeat over and over again, until he perfects it.  He has nothing to lose.  He's playing with house money.