JXIndivisible

Some perspective

My dad often remarked that a single dollar paid the monthly rent on the house that provided a roof over the family seven in which he grew up in Upper Michigan in the early 1900s. His dad, my grandfather, who was long dead when I was born, made a dollar a day back then as the sawyer in the local lumber mill, the highest paid skilled laborer in the mill. My father had only a high school education, but he lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s and, perhaps as a result, he understood that the value of money is not constant, it erodes over time.

One of the earliest lessons my dad preached to me was that if you took the little money you could save and “stuffed it under your mattress” it would lose its value. To keep up with “inflation” you needed to have a savings account with a reputable local bank, an account that was protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) against the bank failures he had lived through in the 1930s. Just as importantly, he emphasized that you had to make sure that your savings account paid a rate of interest that exceeded the rate of inflation—otherwise what you could buy with your saved dollars would diminish. In this same context dad would discuss the “hyperinflation” that destabilized Germany in the 1920s, impoverished common folk and led to the rise of the Nazis and the Second World War—one more example of the potential instability of the value of money. 

Note that in my youth in the 1950s and 60s “credit cards” were in their infancy, money was tangible as paper bills or coins or paper checks written on money held in a bank as a “checking account”. The closest one came back then to saddling yourself with consumer debt was buying something “on time” or on “layaway”, both of which were anathema to my parents. You either saved up to buy a thing you wanted or you went without. With the single exception of a carefully-researched mortgage to buy a home, saddling oneself with paying interest to purchase something was viewed with great suspicion. After all, over time the value of one’s money was going to erode thanks to inflation. Adding an obligation to pay interest on a purchase was to compound that erosion. 

My point in recounting all this is to emphasize that “inflation,” the devaluation of money with time, and the instability of the value of money, is embedded in our lives and the nature of money.

Inflation is expressed as a rate of rise, the percentage change from one year to the next, of the surveyed price of a defined basket of goods and services chosen to mirror the “cost of living”. Every year since 1955 that percentage change has been a positive number, i.e. every year since 1955 the cost of living has risen by an amount that has varied from 0.25% to a high (in 1980) of 18% with a corresponding decrease in what a dollar can buy. 

In an ideal, vaunted (and non-existent), totally “free market” economy the price of goods is determined by “supply and demand”. If supply is limited by some shortage of the materials with which to make the goods (or by the sort of supply chain disruption experienced in the late pandemic) and demand is stable, the price will increase by “cost-push inflation”. Similarly, if consumers “demand” more of something the price will also increase, “demand-pull” inflation. Like so much else in economics, this is a wild over-simplification. For example, “demand” is determined as much by the total amount of money available (and who has access to that money) as it is by the desire of consumers to purchase a product or service. 

Here’s where the “monetary policy” of the Federal Reserve comes in. Since the “1951 Accord” between the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve has acted independent of the executive branch of the federal government (i.e. the president and political parties) to try to control the rate of inflation via “monetary policy.” As a practical matter, that means that the Federal Reserve, currently headed by Jerome Powell, adjusts the availability of money in the economy to try to target the year-to-year rate of inflation to around 2%. The Fed has several means to change the money available in the economy. The one you most hear about is by adjusting the “federal funds rate,” the interest rate “at which depository institutions (banks and credit unions) lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight on an uncollateralized basis.” Changes in the federal funds rate either restrict or loosen the money available for borrowing in the economy, for example, the terms on which banks offer mortgages to prospective home buyers. 

With some rare but notable blips (like that 18% rise in 1980 mentioned above) the Federal Reserve’s independent adjustment of “monetary policy” has kept the rate of inflation in the U.S. above zero and fairly stable since 1954. (See this table.) Note, though, that, in those 70 years, the overall cost of living still increased each year. “Controlling inflation” means only that the rate of rise of prices has been reduced to what is considered an acceptable level. Ongoing erosion in the value of money, a reduction in the purchasing power of money over time, is baked into how our system works. Anyone who wistfully points to a gallon of gasoline costing thirty-five cents in the 1960s or longs for the price of goods even five years ago needs to see those prices through the lens of inflation.

Over the seventy years from 1954 to 2024, the average annual rate of inflation has been approximately 3.5% (derived from manipulations of this formula), a remarkable achievement considering all the financial crises of our earlier history. However, that also means that what a dollar would buy in 1954 is the same as what $11.70 will buy in 2024 dollars, which harkens back to my father’s comments about savings account interest levels and inflation. (A useful rule of thumb: a dollar today has the same buying power as ten cents did in 1964, a factor of 10, i.e., roughly speaking, $15K invested in 1964 would have to have grown to $150K just to have the same value today.) 

Many voters are convinced that whoever is president at the time is responsible for the rate of inflation, i.e. the rise in the cost of living. Trump recently fueled that belief by accusing the Federal Reserve of “playing politics” by lowering the federal funds rate a half a percentage point, even though the Fed was clearly responding (belatedly, at that) to data confirming that the rate of inflation was nearing the Fed’s target of 2%. 

Anyone who demeans the Fed’s largely successful effort over the last 70 years to tame the rate of inflation ought to spend some time in a country like Argentina, where the  Argentina peso routinely loses value (i.e. prices rise) significantly from morning to evening and prices are written in chalk. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

he little-noticed Republican effort to control how your retirement fund is invested

For the last half of the 20th century the popular libertarian economist of the “Chicago School”, Milton Friedman, tirelessly promoted his conviction that the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits:

This shareholder primacy approach [known as the Friedman Doctrine] views shareholders as the economic engine of the organization and the only group to which the firm is socially responsible. As such, the goal of the firm is to increase its profits and maximize returns to shareholders.

Friedman died in 2004. His Doctrine was tarnished by the crisis of 2008 when the relentless pursuit of profit by deregulated big banks nearly crashed the economy, but—little noticed—the principle of profit above all else lives on in the fossilized economic convictions of the Republican Party. Little noticed by most of us, the concerted Republican attack on “ESG” (standing for environmental, social, and governmental concerns) is a bid to legislatively enshrine Friedman’s profit primacy as the only criterion investment managers are allowed to use in choosing where to park our retirement money—with the result that yours and my retirement savings are often used to fund industries of which we might staunchly disapprove.

The fundamental policy question is this: Should investment managers be allowed to consider anything other than corporate profitability (Friedman Doctrine) in making investment decisions? Specifically, should such managers be allowed to consider the environmental, social, and governmental (obscurely labelled “ESG”) consequences of corporate actions?

If all that has flown under your radar, you’re not alone—and that is exactly where the Republican Party wants the issue to fly. Did you completely miss—as I did—that President Biden’s very first veto, issued three years into his presidency in March of 2023, nixed a Republican led effort to forbid that investment managers of retirement funds consider ESG criteria in their management decisions? From CBS news at the time:

“There is extensive evidence showing that environmental, social, and governance factors can have a material impact on markets, industries, and businesses,” Mr. Biden said in a statement announcing the veto. “But the Republican-led bill would force retirement managers to ignore these relevant risk factors, disregarding the principles of free markets and jeopardizing the life savings of working families and retirees. In fact, this bill would prevent plan fiduciaries from taking into account factors like the physical risks of climate change and poor corporate governance, that could affect investment returns.”

Republicans have heavily criticized the rule and say ESG investing practices that take into account issues like climate change unfairly penalize industries like the oil and gas sectors.

When I look back at this Republican, Leonard-Leo-led effort to restrict the criteria by which my retirement money is managed and invested, it makes me hopping mad. The fossilized Friedman Doctrine that enshrines short term profit above all else lives on in the Republican quest to villainize and outlaw the use of ESG considerations as “woke capitalism.” This is another clever culture-war-couched effort to use the force of law to impose Republican economic doctrine to restrict our freedom—in this case by narrowing the criteria investment managers are allowed to consider in investing yourretirement savings. 

The personal significance of this seemingly obscure issue was brought home to me by a Reveal podcast entitled “Your Retirement Investments Are Probably Fueling Climate Change.” Vanguard Group, Inc. is a huge money manager with about 9.3 trillion dollars under management. (Yes, that’s a “t” for trillion. For scale, 9.3 trillion is more than 50 times a whole two-year budget for the State of Washington.) I, probably like many of my readers, have a retirement account parked with the Vanguard Group in a “mutual fund,” to the specific investments and management of which I pay almost no attention. The Reveal podcast points out that Vanguard is a huge investor in new carbon fuel projects, including a current vast expansion of the Coalstrip, Montana open pit coal mine. On top of that, the podcast details how Vanguard, under pressure from Republican-dominated state governments, recently abandoned a 2021 commitment to environmentally conscious investing. 

It’s not just Republicans in the U.S. Congress, it’s Republican lawmakers who control legislatures in many states. “By 2024 a total of nineteen states had passed laws restricting investment firms from considering environmental factors in their decisions.” 

Does every current day Republican lawmaker understand the linkage between the ludicrous Republican culture war crusade against “woke capitalism” and the drive to keep our retirement savings flowing to corporations that have only short term profit as their goal? Probably not, but ignorance is no excuse. We are being led astray. This relatively obscure Republican effort to enshrine the Friedman Doctrine into restrictive law is yet another reason to vote against every Republican on the November ballot. 

Furthermore we might all do well to delve a bit further into how our retirement money is invested. Life is not just about short term monetary gain.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Many of my readers are old enough to remember the effectiveness against the institution of Apartheid of the decades-long effort to disinvest in South Africa. That action, begun by university students in the 1960s, eventually grew to an international financial pressure campaign based on condemnation of the social institution of Apartheid—NOT on any Friedman-esque fixation on short term profits that the current day Republican Party wishes to enforce on the U.S. financial system.

They’re trying to distract us.

The Washington State Climate Commitment Act was passed and signed only three years ago, in 2021, without much fanfare. The intent of the Act is to provide economic incentives to nudge our state’s economy toward a long term goal of converting to a non-fossil-fuel-based economy by 2050. Emry Dinman, in a front page article in the Spokesman last Wednesday, describes the mechanism:

…[T]he Legislature approved the Climate Commitment Act in 2021, capping how much [greenhouse gases] can be emitted in the state each year and requiring businesses that emit the most carbon to bid for an “allowance” to emit a small portion of that overall cap.

Billions have been raised since the first cap-and-trade auction in 2023, money the state has poured into hundreds of projects, including the purchase of electric buses, air quality monitors and air filters in schools, the conversation of the state’s diesel powered ferries to hybrid-electric models, and work to boost salmon populations.

Unable to block passage of the Act, Republicans immediately set to work to undermine and repeal it. While publicly pretending that they, too, wish to tackle climate change (even as the leader of their party, Donald Trump, openly declares his disdain for climate science, withdrew from the Paris Accords, and now declares he will “Drill, baby, drill” if re-elected), Washington State Republicans set out to criticize the cap-and-trade mechanism and to pretend that the whole effort would be too costly for the average citizen. 

Already in May of last year Chairman of the Washington State GOP, Jim Walsh, had filed Initiative 2117 with the Secretary of State’s office as “Repeal the Cap and Trade Tax”. Later in 2023 multi-millionaire hedge fund manager and transplant from California, Brian Heywood, single-handedly funded paid signature gatherers to get this and several other initiatives on the ballot. No time was wasted to see how the Climate Commitment Act might work in practice. As noted above, the first carbon allowance auction didn’t even occur until 2023 and we are only beginning to see the benefits of the money from carbon allowance auctions or have any hint of the reductions in the burning of fossil fuels that should result from the cap-and-trade system.

All of this should remind us of a similarly timed effort by Republicans to repeal another landmark law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) The ACA (dubbed “Obamacare”) was signed on March 23, 2010. By the fall of the same year the Republican Party’s “Tea Party” movement took up, among other things, repealing the Affordable Care Act as a crusade of Republicans—before any of the provisions of the ACA had even been put in place. Republicans campaigned (and some are still campaigning) on “repealing Obamacare” even as Americans decided that, in spite of some warts born of compromise, once it was put into practice they generally liked the provisions of the ACA. 

One of the important functions of government is to look forward and incentivize actions that will prove ultimately beneficial for the entire country. Knowing that a majority of citizens responsibly understand that global heating resulting from the burning of carbon fuels is a major threat to the future of life on our planet, only a few Republicans (besides Donald Trump, Spokane County Commissioner Al French comes to mind) openly articulate their disdain for climate science. Instead, they twist themselves in knots.

A cardinal example is Tod Myers, vice president of the Washington Policy Center, the reliably fossil-fuel friendly, Koch-donor-group-affiliated think tank that pumps out “free market” propaganda, served as Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ brain, and supports Mr. Baumgartner as her replacement. Like most of the writers and talking heads at WPC, Mr. Myers’ degrees have little or nothing to do with the environmental science in which he professes expertise:

He has a bachelor’s degree in politics from Whitman College and a master’s degree in Russian/International Studies from the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.

According to Emry Dinman’s article, Mr. Myers “emphasized that he believes climate change is a serious threat, has long been an advocate for a ‘carbon tax,’ effectively a tax on all fuels.” It is true that years ago Mr. Myers was criticized by some of his fellow Republicans for an opinion piece he wrote arguing in favor of a carbon tax at the well head or the coal mine (coupled to a dividend sent to those most affected) as a “free market” alternative to government mandates. Of course, no carbon tax has ever come close to passing, mostly on account of Republican opposition to anything that includes the word “tax”. 

Regardless of Mr. Myers’ claim of “believ[ing] that climate change is a serious threat”, he recently debated on the same side as multi-millionaire Brian Heywood specifically against the Climate Commitment Act. Note that Mr. Myers is staunchly criticizing the Climate Commitment Act before giving its application a chance to demonstrate its utility in reducing emissions. 

For my part, I often reminded myself while performing surgery that “Perfect is the enemy of good.” That adage served me well—and I submit that it also applies to Mr. Myers. The Climate Commitment Act of 2021 was the best compromise that could be made into law to address the real threat of global heating. Certainly it has flaws—like virtually all legislation—flaws that can be worked out over time. For Mr. Myers to lobby along with Mr. Heywood for the repeal of the Climate Commitment Act, a ‘good’ law (in my adage) that has hardly been tested, is an example of throwing out the ‘good’ while claiming to pursue his unattainable ‘perfect’ (carbon fee and dividend). If any of these people were anything but closet climate deniers they would want to give the Climate Commitment Act at least the benefit of the doubt. 

A good portion of Mr. Dinman’s exhaustive, nearly 3000 word treatise is directed at trying to determine how much (if any) the Washington State Climate Commitment Act might affect sticker prices for carbon-based fuels, headlined as gasoline. This is precisely the issue on which I-2117’s climate-denying masterminds, Brian Heywood and Jim Walsh, want everyone to focus. They certainly don’t want voters thinking about the long term consequences of government NOT encouraging the transition to renewable energy: the epic storms, the heat, the drought, and the wildfires, the leading edge of which our region is already experiencing. After all, some in the Republican camp profess that “God is in charge of climate change,” that is, we should ignore it. Humans have no responsibility; trying to curtail the burning of fossil fuels is foolish and flies in the face of “progress”. 

Meanwhile, on the lower part of the same Wednesday, September 18th, Spokesman front page (pictured below) was an implied warning: “Spokane Recorded Its Third-Hottest Summer.” The body of the article adds some striking details: the second hottest summer in all of Spokane’s weather record keeping (which began in 1881) was just three years ago in 2021—and first place was set in 2015. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist—or a climate scientist—to see the obvious trend to the hotter and drier inland northwest summers predicted by climate models—nor does it require much to link heat and drought to our new annual summertime focus on wildfires. Climate change, better-labelled global heating is already here.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Here’s that front page. 

Shall we just change the standard?

In 2017, at the same time the Fairchild Air Force Base was owning up to it’s PFAS contribution to groundwater contamination on the West Plains, Spokane International Airport (SIA) quietly sampled several test wells on its property for PFAS. When the tests came back with high concentrations consistent with decades of use of PFAS-containing Aqueous Fire-Fighting Foams, the SIA board, SIA’s CEO, Larry Krauter, and Spokane County Commissioner Al French kept the results quiet, resulting in seven more years of French’s constituents drinking PFAS contaminated water from private wells. During those years Mr. French blocked county government from even considering administration of grant money that would have offered well testing to investigate the extent of the spread of PFAS to private wells. 

During those seven years not only did Krauter and French on the SIA board seek to avoid exposure of the test results and block investigation into the extent of contamination, but at various times lobbied against laws regulating the use of PFAS-containing Aqueous Fire-Fighting Foams, a complicated story laid out by Aaron Hedge in his article “Airport CEO: Lawmakers should ‘wait and see’ before banning toxic PFAS.”

All of which begs the question of how these officials could sleep at night knowing that they were keeping people in the dark while their constituents, their children, their farm animals, and their gardens drank PFAS-laden water for seven years longer than necessary? Denial is the key.

It seems likely based on SIA’s lobbying activity that, without saying so openly, Al French, Mr. Krauter, and others engaged in denial of the science linking PFAS to cancer, birth defects, liver and kidney problems. Certainly there is precedence for this view. Mr. French, past master of political games himself, is quick to label the science of global heating (aka “climate change”) as a “politically driven agenda.” Mr. French’s arrogant disdain for public health and medical science was on display during the Covid pandemic in his engineered firing of Dr. Bob Lutz from his position with the Spokane Regional Health District. For Mr. French any science that conflicts with his development goals is to be discounted as “playing politics”, not legitimate science.

So as to the question of how one sleeps at night knowing that one’s silence is poisoning people, there’s a simple answer: “I don’t believe that PFAS is really dangerous (even if I won’t come right out and say I’m a ‘PFAS denier’). 

So where does the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership,” come in. Project 2025 is the blueprint for the remake of government that would occur in the event of a second Trump administration. It is 920 pages of rather dense reading. On page 431, the issue of PFAS is addressed in a couple of bullet points under “New Policies, Superfund”:

• “Revise groundwater cleanup regulations and policies to reflect thechallenges of omnipresent contaminants like PFAS.
• “Revisit the designation of PFAS chemicals as “hazardous substances”under CERCLA.” [Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 that established Superfund]

Clearly, the easiest way to dispose of an environmental threat is to use political power to change the standards by which the threat is judged. Nevermind the science, if we can just raise the acceptable level of PFAS in drinking water from say 4 ppt to 70 ppt, which, after all, we believe (based on our arrogance) is perfectly safe, then most of the problem of PFAS poisoning wells pretty much goes away, businesses will thrive, and money will be made. Voila! Problem solved! All we need is the power to take over the decision making process.

Mr. French is up for re-election this November. We should encourage him to retire.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

The real world consequences of a scurrilous claim by the leader of the Republican Party

The proper response is full-on laughter and derision to an elderly, addled, angry bully asserting to an audience of 67 million viewers that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are killing and eating their white neighbors’ cats and dogs. Since last Tuesday’s debate social media has been awash with memes mocking the bully’s statement; his declared source, “They’re saying it on TV”; and his continued claims, against many official denials, that pets are being killed and eaten by immigrants. Trump doubled-down even after the woman in Springfield who wrote the Facebook post admitted it had no basis in fact.To an increasing number of American voters Trump reminds them of their elderly, crazy uncle raving on at a family gathering. 

Worse, on the Friday following the debate, Trump’s weird running mate, JD Vance, expanded on the elderly uncle’s xenophobic rhetoric:

Without citing evidence, Vance wrote on X: “In Springfield, Ohio, there has been a massive rise in communicable diseases, rent prices, car insurance rates, and crime. This is what happens when you drop 20,000 people into a small community.”

Vance went on to charge that the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, “aims to do this to every town in our country.”

A spokesman for Vance told the Washington Post that he would provide evidence for the senator’s claims but did not say when.

Meanwhile, as ridicule is heaped on Trump’s nationally televised statement, there are real life consequences:

The rhetoric has escalated, and numerous buildings in Springfield – including its City Hall and an elementary school – were evacuated Thursday due to a bomb threat that included “hateful language” about the city’s immigrant population.

On Friday, two elementary schools were evacuated based on information received by the Springfield Police Division, the Columbus Dispatch reported. The Springfield City School District did not immediately return a voice message seeking comment. 

The best and most thorough discussion of the fallout from the Republican statement is Robert Hubbell’s Substack post from September 13, “Why Springfield, Ohio matters.” (Click the underlined title and, if you’re not already a subscriber, you will see a page where you can either enter your email address to receive his near-daily email missives or click “No thanks” to take you directly to the post.) 

Historian Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack post on September 13 (a great read), provides more detail on the build-up of the lie. It started with JD Vance’s increasing focus on Springfield back in July. His words spurred white supremacist groups to gather in Springfield. The whole ugly lie expanded following the hearsay Facebook post in late August (since withdrawn, see above). The whole build-up led to Trump’s ludicrous debate assertion that “They’re eating the pets.”

Senator Vance (R-OH) evidently couldn’t care less about the effects of his words on the well-being of the people of Springfield, Ohio, including his own constituents. Heather Cox Richardson points out that, at least for Vance, this whole episode is fundamentally about political power, the little people hurt in the process be damned: 

The widespread ridicule of Trump’s statement has obscured that this attack on Ohio’s immigrants is part of an attempt to regain control of the Senate. Convincing Ohio voters that the immigrants in their midst are subhuman could help Republicans defeat popular Democratic incumbent senator Sherrod Brown, who has held his seat since 2007. Brown and Montana’s Jon Tester, both Democrats in states that supported Trump in 2020, are key to controlling the Senate. 

Two Republican super PACs, one of which is linked to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), have booked more than $82 million of ad space in Ohio between Labor Day and the election and are focusing on immigration. 

The outcome of these two U.S. Senate races might determine the course of the federal government for the next four years. If Republicans in the November election can capture a U.S. Senate majority—even by one vote—they will use that toe-hold to block nominations to federal judgeships, block any efforts to provide an enforceable code of ethics for the Supreme Court, stymie voting legislation, and, finally, blame the administration for “not getting anything done.” Recognize further that this would prolong the “tyranny by the minority” that is inherent in the composition of the U.S. Senate, where, in 2020, Republicans held half the seats while representing only 43.5% of the population of the nation. The stakes are high for continuation of their minority rule—and JD Vance and Trump don’t care who they hurt in pursuing it.

One hopes that the unfounded rumor, “They’re eating the pets”, to which Trump exposed the nation last Tuesday will result in continued ridicule by highlighting the dangerous, racist, dehumanizing, xenophobic, white supremacist rhetoric on which the Republican Party has pegged its brand. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Heather Cox Richardson, in her closing paragraphs, drew a sickening political parallel to the “They’re eating the pets” rumor, a political parallel that underscores the real-world consequences of spreading lies and rumors in pursuit of power:

In 1890, Republicans faced a similar problem. They had lost the popular vote in 1888, although they installed Republican president Benjamin Harrison in office through the Electoral College, and knew the Democrats would soon far outnumber their own voters. So they set out to guarantee that they could never lose the Senate, which should enable them to kill popular Democratic legislation. 

But they misjudged the electorate, and in the 1890 midterm election, voters gave control of the House to the Democrats by a margin of two to one, and control of the Senate came down to a single seat, that of a senator from South Dakota. In those days, state legislatures chose their state’s senators, and shortly after it became clear that control of the Senate was going to depend on that South Dakota seat, U.S. Army troops went to South Dakota to rally voters by putting down an “Indian uprising” in which no people had died and no property had been damaged. 

Fueled on false stories of “savages” who were attacking white settlers, the inexperienced soldiers were the ones who pulled the triggers to kill more than 250 Lakotas on December 29, but the Wounded Knee Massacre started in Washington, D.C.  

Of course, there is a stark difference. In the late nineteenth century statements and rumors spread at a snail’s pace via telegraph, newspapers, and word of mouth over months. Fact-checking was equally slow. Today, in contrast, Trump makes his incendiary claim to 67 million people, social media explodes, and fact-checking (via the debate moderator) is nearly immediate. 

Fitness for Office

Last Tuesday evening we learned, from his own words, what the former president considers a proper “fact” check. It was a stunning—and disqualifying—admission offered to a national audience. Below is the relevant part of the debate transcript published by ABC News (the bold is mine):

DAVID MUIR: Let me just ask, though, why did you try to kill that bill and successfully so? That would have put thousands of additional agents and officers on the border.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: First let me respond as to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. So, she can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That’s because people want to take their country back. Our country is being lost. We’re a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War 3, just to go into another subject. What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country. And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk — not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame. As far as rallies are concerned, as far — the reason they go is they like what I say. They want to bring our country back. They want to make America great again. It’s a very simple phrase. Make America great again. She’s destroying this country. And if she becomes president, this country doesn’t have a chance of success. Not only success. We’ll end up being Venezuela on steroids.

DAVID MUIR: I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community —

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’ve seen people on television

DAVID MUIR: Let me just say here this …

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food. So maybe he said that and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.

DAVID MUIR: I’m not taking this from television. I’m taking it from the city manager.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.

DAVID MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there’s no evidence of that.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’ll find out

First note that, as is so usual, he totally ignored the question asked. Then, in an unforced extra he riffed about immigrants (“people who went there”) killing and eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. (Elsewhere he and his running mate, JD Vance spoke of “Haitian immigrants”.) This racist, dehumanizing, xenophobic, unfounded rumor emerged from several sketchy Alt-Right posts in various social media. The original Far Right posts were researched by reporters Sarah Ellison and Jeremy B. Merrill of the Washington Post entitled, “Anatomy of a racist smear: How false claims of pet-eating immigrants caught on.” It’s a good read but I am unable to figure out how to “gift” it, and it lives behind the WaPo paywall. Importantly, the Springfield, Ohio, “police issued a statement ‘to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.’” In pre-Trump/Vance, pre-social media times the police disclaimer would have been sufficient to quash the rumor, but for Trump/Vance and Republican law makers like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.), and Arizona’s conservative firebrand and Senate candidate Kari Lake it was too tempting to resist their confirmation bias in re-posting on social media. Then Trump broadcast the unfounded divisive, racist rumor to an audience estimated at 67 million people watching the debate. 

Trump’s they’re-killing-and-eating-cats comment in Tuesday’s debate stoked the sort of divisive tension that is Trump’s stock in trade. The WaPo also reported that Thursday “The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, said a bomb threat Thursday that led to the evacuation of City Hall and numerous buildings ‘used hateful language towards immigrants and Haitians in our community.’” 

Trump’s stoking of racism is not in doubt, nor is there any equivocation about his plan to round up and deport ten million or more undocumented aliens from the United States. 

The Greater Admission

What should send a shiver down the spine of every voter is Trump’s admission, in all seriousness, of his source for the story: “Well, I’ve seen people on television.” A man who collects and acts on rumors generated on social media (by actors of unknown intent and trustworthiness) and cites what he sees on television without verification, accepts them as his truth, is a gullible twit who ought to be disqualified from service as local dogcatcher, much less returned to the White House and entrusted with the nuclear codes. 

And then, of course, to round out the cat theme from the title we must touch on the weird ideas of the VP candidate:

In a 2021 interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, then-Senate-candidate Vance complained that the U.S. was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

I hardly think Taylor Swift, when she signed off her Instagram endorsement of Kamal Harris, as “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady” was miserable. JD Vance has been branded (rightly) as a weird misogynist for his “Childless Cat Lady” remarks. Trump’s “Immigrants are killing and eating their neighbors’ cats” and Vance’s “miserable childless cat ladies” [my constructions-paraphrases, not direct quotes] capture these two perfectly. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. NPR offers a fascinating article titled “JD Vance went viral for ‘cat lady’ comments. The centuries-old trope has a long tail.” As always, click the underlined words (a “hyperlink”) to jump to the article.

Taylor Swift

Like many of you, no doubt, I watched the debate last night. I was impressed to say the least. From the handshake she initiated at the very beginning, Kamala Harris took the lead. 

Taylor Swift was watching the debate along with the rest of us. Shortly afterward she posted to Instagram. By 9PM the post already had 3,158,305 likes [the bold is mine]:

Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most. As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country.

Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.

I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharrisbecause she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.

I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make. I also want to say, especially to first time voters: Remember that in order to vote, you have to be registered! I also find it’s much easier to vote early. I’ll link where to register and find early voting dates and info in my story.

With love and hope,

Taylor Swift
Childless Cat Lady

If you feel and little disconnected from the modern music scene and wonder why Taylor Swift’s Instagram post is important check out my post I Think I’m Becoming a Swift. She has the power to inspire young people to vote.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. In case you missed The Chicks’ (formerly the Dixie Chicks) rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at the Democratic National Convention last month, click here. It gave me chills.