TRUMPIAN NIGHTMARES

Yesterday, Joe Biden set forth his opinion that Trump is so desperate that

"Mark my words. Trump will try to kick back the election somehow. He will come up with some rationale why it cannot be held."

Is that realistic? Is Trump that devious?

Yes, he is that devious, but the plan would not work, for several good reasons.

I.

First, the Constitution clearly gives Congress the exclusive power to fix "the time, place, and manner" of the election of members of congress, and the time of choosing presidential electors. Congress has specifically established the date for all states to hold these elections on "Tuesday after the first Monday in November."

There is neither Constitutional nor legislative warrant that would permit the president to change that under any circumstances, and no president has tried to do so. (We had timely federal elections during the War of 1812, the Civil War, and WWII.) 

                                                        

And there is a further complication to cancelling the election: The Twentieth Amendment provides that "The term of the President and the Vice President shall end on noon of the twentieth day of January." So by a cancelling the election, Trump cancels his presidency as of noon, January 20!

Good riddance, you say? Hold on: When Trump and Pence lose their office on January 20, who succeeds to the presidency? The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 says the Speaker of the House. President Pelosi?  Not so fast. The Twentieth Amendment also says that "the terms of the Senators and Representatives end on the "third day of January."

 So, if there is no election in 2020, the entire House of Representatives is dissolved on Jan 3, and by the time the Trump/Pence team is dethroned on January 20, Nancy has been out of a job for two and half weeks!

Who's next in line?  It depends. If the Senate is still in existence (conceivably only the one-third up for election in November 2020 lost their seats on January 3) the next in line is 87 yr old president pro tem of the Senate, Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who has been in the Senate for forty years!

On the other hand, If you read the Twentieth Amendment as dissolving the entire Senate on January 3, then the job goes to former Tea Party Congressman, now Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.

Would the Supreme Court allow this to happen? Would the Court allow Trump to shred the Constitution? Even this Supreme Court?

I doubt it. It is a reach too far, even for the likes of Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, et al.

Therefore, I suggest, Trump would not risk trying to cancel the election. No, not because he honors the Constitution, but because if he tried to delay or cancel the election, and was slapped down by this Supreme Court, he would have, for sure, forfeited any chance of re-election.

II.

The next nightmare that keeps Democrats awake is equally unlikely. Assume Trump announces that because the country is in a state of national emergency, he is extending his term of office under his emergency powers. His power is "total," he says, and as Commander in Chief in the war against the re-emergence of Covid-19, (or some other bullshit assertion,) he must remain in power until the emergency is over. This is the Michael Cohen prediction in his House testimony last year. (And recall please, that a former NYC Mayor by the name Giuliani made the same assertion after 9/11, but that was only a suggestion, and he was laughed out of office.)

No way Trump could get away with that stunt. Even if the worst Attorney General in history approved, the Supreme Court would fire Trump. And while some yahoos and neo-nazis would cheer him on, the country would not stand for it, and even his own party would abandon him, and federal marshals would carry him out. (Pence and Melania would go quietly.)

Bottom line, a self-imposed extension of his term of office would not only be illegal, Trump just could not get away with it.

III. 

Now the bad news. This chapter deserves the "Nightmare" label. Pay close attention please.

Trump needed 270 electoral votes to win the 2016 election.

He got 304. The margin of victory was a 77,000 popular vote edge in three states: Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes), Michigan (16 electoral votes,) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) -- 46 electoral votes. Without them, Trump has only 258 votes, and loses.

To win in November 2020, Trump must keep the red states he won in 2016, especially the big states like Florida (29 electoral votes, and Ohio (18 electoral votes), and keep at least Pennsylvania and Michigan.

But what if......

Assume it's the first week in October, and Trump has not overcome "just being Trump." His disastrous performance in his nightly Covid press conferences, when added to the lagging economy, has yielded polling results that indicate he will not only lose Pennsylvania and Michigan, but he is far behind in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida as well. A loss of those states' 93 votes would yield a 317-227 electoral college victory for Joe Biden. (Trump has often referred to his 304-vote plurality as "A LANDSLIDE VICTORY.")

While we are talking about the electoral college here, allow please, a brief historical review of how we got in this mess:

In the debates leading up to the adoption of our Constitution in 1787, James Madison argued for popular election of the President. Hamilton, a bit wary of "too much" democracy, wanted some elitism in the decision-making, (presumably to screen out draft-dodging, lying, illiterate narcissists, or their equivalent). Very much a Federalist, Hamilton urged that the people of each state should choose the electors, who would then choose the President, but there was no agreement on how that should be accomplished, and the Founders punted and provided, in Art II, Section 1,

"Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors ... ."

By 1836, each state in the Union, but one, had abandoned legislative appointment of electors and decided that its electors were to be chosen by popular vote of the citizens of the state. The last state to go that route was South Carolina in 1868.

 Now, back to our nightmare.

What do the five key states PA, MI, WI, OH, and FL have in common? Bicameral legislatures, that's what. What else? All ten of those legislative bodies have Republican majorities.

Get the picture?

Aside from morality, (but be real, we are talking Republican politics here, think Donald Trump, Leader Mitch McConnell, Rudy Giuliani, William Barr, et al) what would prevent the legislators of those five states from deciding to revert to legislative appointment of electors? They could then abandon popular election of electors and simply appoint Trumpists!

There is no law to prevent that. None. A court challenge would fail. The Constitutional mandate is clear: Each state legislature may decide the manner of appointment of that state's electors.

In the only Supreme Court decision ever to deal with that issue, the Court ruled:

"The Constitution does not provide that the appointment of electors shall be by popular vote. ... It recognizes that the people act through their representatives in the legislature, and leaves it to the legislature exclusively to define the method  of the object."

And if one has any doubt about depths of Republican villainy, be reminded that in the 2000 election, the Florida Republican legislature threatened to make hanging chads irrelevant by announcing, in its Supreme Court filings, that it was considering scrapping the popular vote method for choosing electors and switching to legislative appointment of electors!

(Hmm. I wonder if that threat had any influence on the five member majority in the shameful Bush v Gore decision.)

So what's to stop this from happening? I dunno, but it's five o'clock, the sun is behind the mountain, and it's time: bottoms up, friends!

A bientot.

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As my regular readers know, there is no fixed schedule for these posts. If you want a notice of

 each new posting, send me an email and I will add you to the notice list. 

 mlondon34@gmail.com

COVID,TRUMP, and the OIL CARTEL

No, a cartel is not a new-fangled phone for your car.  You knew that, right?

The dictionary tells us a cartel is "an association of manufacturers or suppliers who act together with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level for the purpose of reducing competition."

In other words, persons and/or companies that agree to act in concert to screw you, the consumer, by forcing you to pay more than you would have had to pay if honest competition had prevailed.

For readers who are not customers of illicit products from Mexican gangsters, the cartel that costs you the most money is OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Export Countries. It was founded in 1960 by four mid-east countries (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia) and Venezuela. It's mission was upfront: "To control international petroleum markets."

The group operates openly and in public. The members have formal meetings, and agree to fix production levels that will maintain the highest price for their product, being careful not to squeeze too hard and thereby precipitate an international recession.

Since its founding, OPEC has increased its membership to thirteen, all the new members being from the mid-east or Africa. OPEC controls 80% of the world's petroleum reserves.

But 80% is not 100%, and a major world producer, Russia,  goes its own way, and disrupts OPEC's effort to limit production.

The United States is not a member. United States oil companies are not sovereign powers, and cannot conspire to control production in order to raise prices without risking jail for its executives. This is because of something called the Sherman Antitrust Act, which does not beat around the bush. It is very specific:

Every contract, combination ... or conspiracy in restraint of trade among the several states or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.

Violators are subject to ten years in prison and a fine of one million dollars. For corporations, the fine is one hundred million dollars.

The courts have put a gloss on the statute by ruling that only "unreasonable" restraints of trade are illegal. I skip here a semester's worth of legal mumbo jumbo regarding how the courts apply what they call the "rule of reason," to decide what is an unreasonable restraint.

Bottom line: Agreements among competitors to fix prices, or to establish restraints on production to yield higher prices, are per se illegal. In other words, agree with your competitors to fix prices or production levels and you can save a lot of lawyers' fees:  Do not pass GO; go directly to jail.

But you say, wait a minute:  Didn't I hear the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, during his nightly Covid campaign outing, say he was proud to have been the instigator and middle-man in arranging something he called OPEC PLUS? Yes I did.

What Trump was so proud of was that he persuaded Russia to join the OPEC price-fixing cartel in order to raise oil prices that have declined because of worldwide covid lockdowns. Let me repeat that: The purpose of the Trump intervention he boasted about, was to aid in creating an international agreement to more effectively reduce oil production, so that the worldwide market price of oil would be increased.

Trump told his audience that OPEC PLUS would 1) enhance the profitability of U.S. oil companies, and 2) save jobs on the U.S. oil patch. Actually, I misquote him: he didn't mention number "1".

So, the President proudly announced he aided and abetted a conspiracy to reduce international oil production with the goal of fixing higher oil prices for U.S. consumers. Did he violate the Sherman Act? Is he immune from the Sherman Act because he is president and, as he has argued in the federal courts, can do no wrong as long as he holds that office? Is there some other legal defense to this conduct -- conduct that is designed to harm U.S. consumers?

And even if there is a legal loophole that permits Trump to escape indictment for violation of the Sherman Act, is it good policy to force U.S. consumers to enrich U.S. oil companies in order to encourage them to keep their work force, while not requiring that the oil companies actually use the added cartel revenue to maintain jobs?

And finally, when testing out the legality, morality, and economic advisability of Trump using the power of his office to enhance oil company profits at the expense of its customers, is it reasonable to consider that

i) Oil companies are acknowledged to be substantial contributors to Trump's election campaigns, and

ii) Trump has been a substantial contributor, via regulation and policy, to oil company profitability, and

iii)  Increased oil company profits will doubtless shore up oil company stock prices, a treasured goal of this president who sees a high stock market as good news for his re-election campaign?

Oh yeah, did you pick up the reporters' sharp questioning of the President on this issue in his nightly press briefings?

Me neither.

A bientot.

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As my regular readers know, there is no fixed schedule for these posts. If you want a notice of each new posting, send me an email and I will add you to the notice list.  mlondon34@gmail.com

THE LATEST TRUMP FAKIR

Meet Dr. Peter Kent Navarro, Ph.D., President Trump's principal trade adviser, who was just given the added job of heading a task force to supply PPE to the nation's hospitals. (If you thought that was Jared Kushner's job, welcome to the club.)

Navarro is the latest liar to step into the Trump-appointee spotlight.

Navarro's claim to fame is that he has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, and he has plugged his climb to a degree of prominence as a "China-hawk." Described as "self-important" (I read his resume. It is 17 pages long!) and "quick tempered," he is the author of books and articles attacking China. His most cited work is entitled, "Death by China." and is but one of thirteen books in which Navarro supports his anti-China arguments by quoting from the famed international economic expert Ron Vara.

What? You never heard of Ron Vara? Me neither. You and I are not alone. When an Australian scholar also wondered about the career and accomplishments of China expert Vara, his extensive research failed to unearth any mention of him outside of Navarro's written output. Convinced Navarro had created a fictive character to support his argument, the journalist confronted Navarro and accused him of fraud.

Navarro's response: "So what? Can't you take a joke?"

Am I the only one, who upon reading this incident, is reminded of the stories of pre-presidential Donald Trump creating a fictional character who then calls up a magazine and tells the author a series of lies with the purpose of getting Donald J. Trump onto a list of the 400 wealthiest people?

Navarro is clearly a man of many talents. Like the President who claims "to have an instinct for science," Navarro is reported to have invited himself to a covid-19 task force meeting in the situation room and single handedly persuaded Trump that hydrochloroquine could cure Covid-19. Trump immediately left the meeting where he plugged the drug during his press conference.

At another meeting, where the scientists urged the president to maintain social distancing, and said it that it was too early to send people back to crowded conditions, Navarro argued to the contrary. When asked what was the basis of his opposition to the medical professionals, Navarro responded that his Ph.D. in economics facilitated his reading and understanding of statistics on any subject, including medicine.

There is no doubt that Trump's tolerance for scientist-in-chief Dr. Anthony Fauci is growing thin. Trump supporters openly charge that Fauci's arguments to maintain mitigation is an effort by Fauci intentionally to sabotage the economy in order to hurt Trump's reelection bid. The drumbeat has intensified since Fauci's recent statement, in the clear,  that "more lives would have been saved if the country were shut down sooner." Trump has retweeted a call to fire Fauci.

"Dr." Navarro defends Trump against those who argue that his failure to act sooner has cost American lives. 

Trump says he acted promptly after learning the facts about the dangers of the pandemic, and those dangers weren't clear until the middle of March, when, for the first time, Trump supported social distancing mitigation. That claim is, of course, absurd, because Trump himself said he knew this was a pandemic at the beginning.

The evidence of Trump's early knowledge is not debatable. In January, 2020, two months before Trump took any action in support of putting social distancing mitigation in place, his National Security Pandemic group predicted the spread of the virus. 

And on January 29, six weeks before Trump acted, the esteemed expert of everything, Dr. Peter Navarro, Ph. D., submitted a memo setting out the risk to the U.S. and the "need to take aggressive action."  Navarro predicted 500,000 dead, millions hospitalized, trillions in economic loss. 

Two weeks later, Navarro wrote another memo referring to the "increased probability of a full blown covid-19 pandemic that could infect as many as 100 million Americans and cause 1.2 million deaths'"

Trump's reaction? The man is, if anything, consistent. He continued to tell the public, "It's like a miracle. Our cases will go down, not up. One day, like a miracle, it will go away."

How could Trump say that after the two Navarro memos? Did he see or learn of them? Sure he did: Trump told members of his staff he was sorry Navarro put it in writing. In other words, Where's My Roy Cohn?

The Trumpians are now screaming for Fauci's head because of his expressed view that it is too early to open the country. He is besieged with death threats (literally) and the only thing that keeps him on the scene is that the public trusts him (78%) vs. Trump (46%)!

Dr. Navarro, Ph.D., (surprise, surprise) is now firmly in the Trump camp to open the country sooner rather than later. How could that be after those two memos?

Because doc Navarro, relying on both his medical and economic expertise, has reached the astonishing conclusion that a continued mitigation pause will kill more people than covid-19.

I guess he must be correct about that because he has a Ph.D., from Harvard yet?

A bientot.

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As my regular readers know, there is no fixed schedule for these posts. If you want a notice of each new posting, send me an email and I will add you to the notice list.  mlondon34@gmail.com

SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT ... .

In 1776, we declared our independence from Britain. Down with George III, up with our own elected leadership.

Recent events have cause me to wonder if we made a bad deal. Can we reverse the trade? After all, we have "cancelled" other treaties, what about the one in Paris in 1783?

Yesterday, Queen Elizabeth II addressed her nation for only the fourth time in 68 years. (not counting annual Christmas messages), Meanwhile, here in the colonies, our Royal person spoke to the nation for the 17th (27th?) consecutive day. At least that's what I am told. I cannot watch him anymore.

The Queen, speaking to her countrymen about the covid epidemic, stressed courage and national unity in the difficult days ahead. The speech sounded much like the one her father gave on the opening days of WWII.

But to us Americans, the talk was lacking. For example, here are a few of the many things she missed:

Mention of hydrochloroquine.

Congratulating herself on her TV ratings.

Congratulating herself on what a great job she was doing.

Referring to the disease as the "Chinese Virus."

Assurance that a miracle was just around the corner and the disease will go away, and that people should ignore scientists who had contrary views.

Blaming her predecessor for lack of her government's efficiency in dealing with the problem. (Of course, her predecessor was her father!)

Urging people to "Pack the Pews" on Easter Sunday.

And oh, so many more.

Finally, the Queen left out the most important element: She did not appoint Mr. Jared Kushner, aka "Secretary of Everything" to the post of Covid-19 Squad Leader.

Upon his appointment, Kushner showed his combination of political smarts and deeply felt compassion for his fellow Americans, by making a statement about his father-in-law's failure to manage the distribution of the nation's stockpile of ventilating machines. Secretary Jared declared that the "federal government's stockpile of medical supplies is "ours" and is not supposed to be used by states" for the ultimate use of their citizens. This was entirely in synch with his father-in-law's earlier statement on the same subject: "We are not an ordering clerk."

Uh oh:

The people who manage the government's medical stockpile could not foresee the elevation of this Prince, so their website contained language directly to the contrary: It said the mission of the Federal stockpile was

to respond to state, local, tribal, and territorial governments in order to "ensure that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency."

You can be sure that website was re-worded within 24 hours of the Prince's comments.

24 hours is about the same time it took Trump's Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly to fire the Captain of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt who dared to ask for help in ridding his ship of a covid outbreak that threatened the lives of his 4,000+ crew. Captain Crozier's report to his superiors that the failure to help with an outbreak of covid-19 was threatening the lives of his sailors was not happily received. Modly, who spent seven years in the Navy never commanding anything but a small desk, made a  a speech to the Theodore Roosevelt crew, who apparently loved their commander. Modly told them Crozier might be too stupid for command.  Oh, yeah, the Acting Secretary also found reason to attack Joe Biden!

Trump criticized Crozier, as follows: "This is terrible what he did, to write a letter. This isn't a class in literature."

You can read Crozier's letter here and make up your own mind whether i) he has bad judgment and therefore deserved be fired, ii) his letter is too literate, and therefore he should be fired, or iii) Trump's acting Secretary of the Navy is a disgrace and he and his boss should be fired.

The letter, in full, is reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.

A bientot.

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 As my regular readers know, there is no fixed schedule for these posts. If you want a notice of each new posting, send me an email and I will add you to the notice list.  mlondon34@gmail.com