How Much Better Off Would America Be If Trump Becomes Infected A Goes To Meet Satan?

Die For Me by Nancy Ohanian

In 1969 I bought a VW van in Wiesbaden, Germany and drove to India. When I drove back to Europe a couple of years later, I was sick and penniless and stranded. I made my way to Amsterdam and lived in my van and ate rice and vegetables everyday for a dollar at a macrobiotic restaurant in the city's meditation center, the Kosmos. Eventually the chef there liked me and told me she could cure what was wrong with me-- without the operation doctors said I needed. She gave name a job washing dishes, taught me how to work in a restaurant and how to cook. And cured me. I had some good years there and wound up as the manager but my favorite days were always the days I cooked; there were several of who took turns.

In January, when I caught on to Chris Martsenon's warnings about what the pandemic was bringing to America, I went out and started stocking up on the kinds of beans, grains and root vegetables I used to cook with in Holland-- common ones like carrots, onions, cabbage, potatoes and less common ones like daikon, turnips, rutabaga, celery roots... I hadn't been cooking regularly for decades. But it's like riding a bike; you don't forget, especially microbiotic cooking, which is also very reasonable and based on simple principles and techniques. So every day-- except Sundays when I fast, a hold-over from my Kosmos days-- I make healthy, delicious food for Roland and I.

I've also been able to buy perishables easily-- fresh fruits and vegetables. Today I noticed for the first time there were no roma tomatoes , no string beans and no leeks at the organic store. Maybe they'll have them tomorrow. Or, maybe not, I thought, after speaking with a friend in New York, where the shelves are far emptier than in California and after reading the latest piece from David Cay Johnston at the DCReport.org, Another Trump Screw-Up: Food May 'Rot In The Fields'. Johnston's point? Trump's obsessive "anti-Mexican racism is barring legal workers from picking fruits and vegetables; food production, distribution system could collapse."

Early signs show that the systems that get fresh fruit and vegetables to American homes is strained and may experience major failures. The Trump administration is only making matters worse, allowing his racism against Mexicans to inflict damage on American farms that depend on legal labor from south of the border.

...“Nearly all of our fruits and vegetables are not automated and you need a strong labor force to handpick those crops,” John Walt Boatright of the Florida Farm Bureau Federation told the Palm Beach Post.  “We are hearing a lot of concerns from the blueberry industry and other labor-intensive crops, and working to find a solution.”

U.S. farmers depend on more than 200,000 Mexicans who get visas each year to pick apples, pears and other crops.

Yet Mother Jones magazine reports that the American consulate in Monterrey, Mexico’s third-largest city, and other consulates have closed. That means most Mexican farmworkers have no way to get annual work visas. Unless the visas are issued much of this year’s American fruit and vegetable crops will not be harvested, barring some other unexpected development.

Each year as president, Donald Trump has gotten such visas for Mar-a-Lago while assiduously avoiding the many qualified workers in Palm Beach County, many of whom are African American. Federal law allows such visas for chambermaids, cooks and waitstaff only when no Americans are available.

...Representative Austin Scott (R-GA) says that delays in issuing visas to farm laborers are a serious threat to vegetable and fruit growers who, unlike grain farmers, don’t have federal crop insurance. “If delays continue” in issuing visas to Mexican farmworkers “we’re going to see crops rotting in the field,” Scott said.

The number of these Mexican farm labor visas has grown more than six-fold since 2000, a revealing indicator of how much America depends on Mexican labor to supply fresh fruits and vegetables in grocery stores.

Of course, Trump is hostile to all Mexicans and his administration has shown no signs it wants to resume the issuance of visas for Mexican farm laborers who take most of their money home with them. Trump thinks like a 16th Century mercantilist, believing any dollar that leaves us makes America worse off. It’s discredited and downright crazy economic thinking that hurts America more than Mexico, not that Trump understands this.

A lack of imported farm labor means not just the loss of those foodstuffs, but of income for farmers and those in the related packing, processing and shopping businesses, worsening the cascade of economic damage.

Labor intensive crops such as strawberries and crops that require placing beehives for pollination will be most affected by a shortage of labor.

Tree fruits require intensive labor not just to harvest, but also to cut away diseased limbs and plant replacement trees. Not minding the trees each year means reduced production in future years... Trump’s de facto policy: Crops be dammed, just keep Mexicans out.

You can always count on Trump to make everything and anything worse. As Jennifer Rubin noted in yesterday's Washington Post, "No one could make up a character as narcissistic and lacking in human empathy as President Trump... More than 2,400 Americans had died by Sunday. Governors around the country are screaming for more assistance from the federal government. Trump? He obsesses over ratings. It is hard to comprehend how indifferent he is to human suffering."

Increasingly, the country seems to operate on two tracks. On one, groveling courtiers flatter Trump, try to soften his impulsive pronouncements and scramble to catch up after months of delay. As they cater to the president, exploring patently absurd ideas, they have less attention to devote to real issues that only the federal government can address. On the other track, governors have no time for bowing and scraping; they are dealing hands-on with hundreds of logistical challenges, made worse by the absence of coordinated purchasing and by lack of a comprehensive testing program. Thank goodness governors are actually doing their jobs, which increasingly entail navigating around Trump.

Then there's the way grocery chains-- lookin' at you, Whole Foods-- treat their workers. In fact Whole Foods workers are going out on strike today nationwide to protest unsafe work conditions. They plan to "call in sick to demand paid leave for all workers who stay home or self-quarantine during the crisis, free coronavirus testing for all employees, and hazard pay of double the current hourly wage for employees who show up to work during the pandemic. 'COVID-19 is a very real threat to the safety of our workforce and customers,' Whole Worker, the national worker group that is organizing the 'sick out' wrote in a statement. 'We cannot wait for politicians, institutions, or our own management to step in to protect us.' The sick-out follows reports that Whole Foods workers at numerous stores across the country, including locations in New York City, Chicago, Louisiana, and California have tested positive for Covid-19. In each of these locations, the stores have remained open, leading some employees to charge that Whole Foods has failed to prioritize their safety during a period of record sales for the company."

While Trump was accusing NYC hospitals of illegally selling masks and respirators "out the back door"-- an excruciating and typical Trump lie-- the city's health care providers have been getting infected and dying. Many people question if Trump is human. "The coronavirus pandemic," wrote Michael Schwirtz, "which has infected more than 30,000 people in New York City, is beginning to take a toll on those who are most needed to combat it: the doctors, nurses and other workers at hospitals and clinics. In emergency rooms and intensive care units, typically dispassionate medical professionals are feeling panicked as increasing numbers of colleagues get sick... Medical workers are still showing up day after day to face overflowing emergency rooms, earning them praise as heroes. Thousands of volunteers have signed up to join their colleagues. But doctors and nurses said they can look overseas for a dark glimpse of the risk they are facing, especially when protective gear has been in short supply. In China, more than 3,000 doctors were infected, nearly half of them in Wuhan, where the pandemic began, according to Chinese government statistics."

And it isn't only Americans' physical health he's threatening. Americans' fiscal well-being is in great jeopardy because of his mental debilities, incompetence and self-absorption. Wall Street on Parade noted yesterday that in 2015 Carl Icahn called BlackRock "an extremely dangerous company." And the Fed picked them to manage their corporate bond bailout programs.

Icahn was specifically talking about BlackRock’s packaging of junk bonds into Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and calling them “High Yield,” which the average American doesn’t understand is a junk-rated bond. The ETFs trade during market hours on the New York Stock Exchange, giving them the aura of liquidity when one needs it. Icahn said: “I used to laugh with some of these guys…I used to say, you know, the mafia has a better code of ethics than you guys. You know you’re selling this crap.” Icahn warned that “if and when there’s a real problem in the economy, there’s going to be a rush for the exits like in a movie theatre, and people want to sell those bonds, and think they can sell them, there is no market for them.”

BlackRock not only sells junk-rated bond ETFs under the brand name iShares, but it has some of the largest investment grade corporate bond ETFs, including one that trades under the stock symbol LQD, which was experiencing serious losses and seeing major outflows of money until the Federal Reserve announced recently that it was creating three facilities to buy investment grade corporate debt from the primary and secondary markets, as well as investment grade corporate bond ETFs, along with agency commercial mortgage-backed securities.

And just who is going to be running these facilities for the Federal Reserve? None other than BlackRock-- posing an enormous conflict of interest which was readily observable in the market as BlackRock’s investment grade ETFs rallied dramatically on the news.

...Picking a highly conflicted Wall Street firm to manage a taxpayer-subsidized bailout of the highly reckless and irresponsible securitization practices of Wall Street is nothing new for the Federal Reserve and its unlimited money spigot, the New York Fed. The Fed did the same thing during the financial crisis of 2008. (See The New York Fed Has Contracted JPMorgan to Hold Over $1.7 Trillion of its QE Bonds Despite Two Felony Counts and Serial Charges of Crimes.)

Too Many Multimillionaires In Congress? How Many Are Too Many? How Rich Is Too Rich?

In 2014 the Center for Responsive Politics analyzed the personal financial disclosure data from 2012 of the 534 then-current members of Congress and found that, for the first time, more than half had an average net worth of $1 million or more: 268 to be exact, up from 257 the year earlier. All those rich people... do they understand what most Americans go through? Can they even begin to understand? The number of millionaires is probably closer to 300 now. And while over 50% of Congress are millionaires, only 4% of Americans are millionaires. Wow are they over-represented! And when you start talking about multimillionaires, it's even more out of whack!

Monday, David Hawkings did a column for Roll Call, Wealth of Congress: Richer Than Ever, but Mostly at the Very Top, which deals with not how many millionaires there are in Congress but about how multi, the millionaires in Congress are. "The people’s representatives," he began, "just keep getting richer, and doing so faster than the people represented. The cumulative net worth of senators and House members jumped by one-fifth in the two years before the start of this Congress, outperforming the typical American’s improved fortunes as well as the solid performance of investment markets during that time." And that inevitably leads to a discussion of "the financial disparity between those who try to govern and those who are governed."

Millionaire lawmakers have always been a part of the congressional story-- from the landed gentry who created and first populated the legislative branch, through the industrialists who wielded outsize influence in the Gilded Age, to the corporate bosses and old money heirs who larded the cloakrooms through the end of the Cold War.

What’s marked recent years, a time when wealth disparity has grown wider than ever in American history, is the arrival of so many of the superrich. For every 13 members, in fact, one may fairly be dubbed a “1 percenter,” the term of derision imposed by liberal groups on the richest 1 percent of Americans. Data from the Fed pegged the net worth threshold for these people at $10.4 million in 2016, a mark exceeded by 26 Republicans and 17 Democrats.

At the high end of that group are 10 House members and three senators worth more than $43 million, which the Fed calculates as the richest one-tenth of 1 percent of the population.

Two cents from Howie: only 2 can be termed even remotely "progressive," Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Jared Polis (New Dem-CO). Remotely. The rest are all Republicans or reactionary Democrats unsympathetic to the legitimate aspirations of working families. Yesterday's column in the same publication, using the same data, asked the question: Maybe They’re Too Rich for Congress? But mostly about the millionaires who are quitting Congress. Of the 44 current members who have announced they are voluntarily leaving, they account for nearly a third of the $2.43 billion in cumulative riches of the 115th Congress. The column doesn't real with all the multimillionaires remaining in Congress, but does touch on the plague of new ones trying to buy seats and join the other crooks.

A short detour: when Trump said he is so rich he didn't have to steal, that was a laugh. Generally speaking, the wealthier someone is, the more corrupt, greedy and unethical.

Of course, the departing lawmakers of this year will be replaced by the newcomers of 2019-- and several credible candidates for Congress look to have little trouble cracking the roster of richest members.

In Southern California, health insurance executive Andy Thorburn and Gil Cisneros, who won the state lottery eight years ago, are both in the hunt for the open 39th District House seat-- and each has filed candidate financial disclosure forms signaling a net worth above $50 million.

Lucas St. Claire, an heir to the Burt’s Bees “earth friendly” cosmetics fortune, is a top Democratic prospect in Maine’s 2nd District, and wine store magnate David Trone is back for another House run, this time in Maryland’s 6th District.

The Republican side features Senate candidates Mike Braun of Indiana, who’s worth at least $35 million after creating a successful truck parts and equipment company, and, of course, Mitt Romney, now of Utah, whose private equity fortune was calculated at $250 million when he ran for president six years ago.

And that barely even touches on the ranks of the vile self-funders. In California alone, as of December 31, 2017 (the last FEC reporting deadline), there were 13 self funders vying to buy seats in the House who have already gone beyond $150,000. Expect millions more before November, especially from Jacobs, Cisneros and Keirstead, three candidates with absolutely nothing to offer but their wealth, ruthless ambition and money-hungry consultants:

• Andy Thorburn (D-CA-39)- $2,335,900
• Gil Cisneros (D-CA-39)- $1,352,762
• Sara Jacobs (D-CA-49)- $1,074,151
• Harley Rouda (D-CA-48)- $730,500
• Paul Kerr (D-CA-49)- $712,728
• Omar Siddiqui (D-CA-48)- $458,498
• Ron Varasteh (D-CA-45)- $250,000
• Michael Kotick (D-CA-48)- $245,452
• Mai-Khanh Tran (D-CA-39)- $230,000
• Stelian Onufrei (R-CA-48)- $228,000
• Hans Keirstead (D-CA-48)- $220,400
• T.J. Cox (D-CA-10)- $215,500
• Sean Flynn (R-CA-31)- $177,059

Other crooked, swampy candidates running for House seats who have already spent over a million dollars of their own money:

• Kathaleen Wall (R-TX)- $2,733,802
• David Trone (D-MD)- $2,281,939
• Shiva Ayyadurai (R-MA)- $1,163,248
• Steven Lonegan (R-NJ)- $1,006,972

And let's not forget poor (rich) Dan Moody (R-GA), who made an idiot of himself by flushing away $3,053,120 of his own in a primary where he came in 4th with just 17,028 votes (8.8% of the total). Today a rich Tennessee businessman, Darrell Lynn (R) jumped into the open U.S .Senate race, saying he "can easily spend $5 million" from his own pocket on the campaign. Republicans love self-funders. Establishment Democrats have come around to seeing it the same way the Republicans do.

A little tangent: tell me, is this a coincidence or part of a culture of corruption that pervades the Trumpist swamp? Another way to ask the question is if our government of the multimillionaires and by the multimillionaires is also a government for the multimillionaires. Carl Icahn is a longtime Trump crony, a friend and a short-lived member of the Regime. Insider trading maybe? Icahn sold a $31.3 million stake in Manitowoc whose stock tanked by 6% right after Trumpanzee he would be slapping a 25% tariff on steel imports. steel tariffs announcement. When Icahn sold off his Manitowoc shares in mid-February, they were trading at around $33. Friday they were selling at around $26. I bet other investors wish they had the same access to info Icahn had.

You Don't Need To Be A Career Politician To Run For Office... But There ARE Worse Things Than Career Politicians

It isn't only the KKK and American Nazis who have been inspired by Trump's candidacy. All kinds of egomaniacs with gigantic senses of entitlement and self-importance want to run for office as well. Kanye West must have thought that if Trump can get as far as he is, how hard could it be? And this week we have Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who says his policy positions aren't the same as Trump's but--

I love the fact that he has changed the game… The idea of imperfect candidates with forceful ideas opens the door for a lot of people that would not have previously run.

Like sociopaths? Not that Congress doesn't already have some of those. Think no further than Darrell Issa (R-CA) or Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), the former a car thief and arsonist-for-pay turned politician and the latter a medical-doctor-who-specialized-in-drugging-his-patients-and-having-sex-with-them turned politician.

Cuban-- who in the past has feuded with his fellow rebel billionaire-- is hosting a Monday mega-rally for Trump at his Dallas arena. The Republican frontrunner called to ask about using the venue and Cuban saw the opportunity to strike a deal. “Our arena is amazing and his checks will clear,” explained the Mavericks owner.

Cuban is not the only famous, and famously, rich guy moved to reevaluate his view that the only people to succeed in public service are second-rate hacks who are full of baloney. Inspired by seeing one of their own do it, a slew of flamboyant moguls are giving politics a second look.

“Why would having government experience be a plus for a presidential candidate?” asked one-time multi-millionaire software pioneer John McAfee. The former fugitive from authorities in Belize who was arrested on DUI charges in Tennessee last month is now running for president. “I’d rather have a Trump, or I’d rather have a man on the street who has no knowledge of government.”

Unlike hip-hop mogul Kanye West, who may or may not have been sincere when he announced at the MTV Video Music Awards that he would seek the White House in 2020, McAfee is unambiguously serious about his campaign. He filed the papers for a third-party presidential bid with the FEC on Tuesday.

...Cuban-- who is not now planning to run for any specific office-- said he believes top American executives and entrepreneurs could “absolutely” hold their own in government and politics.

He is less impressed with the country’s top politicians. “Would I hire any of the other candidates? Maybe Marco Rubio,” Cuban said.

Cuban added it’s “too early to tell,” whether Trump could succeed at governing. He said he would be open to serving in a Trump administration “if he promises to do exactly what I tell him to do. ... Otherwise, it's highly unlikely.” [Update: Cuban might run next year.]

Billionaire financier Carl Icahn, on the other hand, has come around to the idea of public service under a President Trump.

In the 1980s, as Trump was penetrating the American consciousness, Icahn was shaking up the business world with a hard-charging corporate takeover of air carrier TWA.

In June, after Trump said he would name Icahn as his Treasury secretary, Icahn wrote in a statement that he would not take the position. But after the first Republican primary debate on Aug. 6, Icahn tweeted that he would be willing to accept Trump’s offer after all.

Trump’s run has also drawn billionaire car dealer Ernie Boch Jr. into the political process. Boch, who also inherited a family business from his father, said Trump’s run has energized him to become an active supporter of a national political campaign for the first time in his life.

Boch-- known in Massachusetts for appearing in quirky television commercials for his dealerships-- had never met Trump before this summer but said he is “fascinated by the man” and that he has been a longtime admirer of Trump’s business career. “He’s been the guy since the ‘80s.”

After lying in bed one night this summer and finding the businessman’s face on every news network as he flipped through television channels, Boch decided to host a fundraiser for Trump.

He called up conservative radio host Howie Carr, who has hosted Trump on his program, and Carr gave Boch a phone number for Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.

Boch called Lewandowski, a Massachusetts native who told the car dealer he was a fan of Boch’s rock band, Ernie and the Automatics (one benefit of being a rebel billionaire is that people have heard of your passion projects) and arranged for the event in about 10 minutes.

Boch said that after observing Trump up-close at the fundraiser-- which featured his personal drone hovering overhead taking aerial camera footage and a large, expressionist portrait of Trump displayed on an outdoor patio-- at his mansion outside of Boston, he determined that Trump is more authentic than career politicians.

He said he is now willing to do whatever is asked of him to assist Trump’s campaign and would be willing to serve in a Trump administration. Boch added that a group of his wealthy, normally apolitical, friends who attended the fundraiser were similarly impressed and have asked him to broker a meeting with the campaign so that they, too, can offer their services.

He said the group wished to remain private, but offered, “These are people who have more money than they know what to do with and can do whatever they want.”

Although the new WMUR poll released this morning showed that Trump-- for the first time--had lost his lead in New Hampshire, going into the CNN debate (Carson is within the margin of error)-- we still have to ask ourselves, how does this end? Badly. I'd be less than eager to see the GOP run Tom Brady for office... or any of the most beloved stars of MSNBC's program Lockup Raw get recruited to run for political offices, perhaps Fleece Johnson or Christian Knighten or... Raul Leon, this guy, a perfect successor to Chuck Schumer:

Who Will Save Atlantic City? Certainly Not Carl Icahn And Chris Christie

New Jersey voters reelected Chris Christie with their eyes open; after a first term of breathtaking-- even for New Jersey-- corruption and non-stop, unabashed catering to Big Bucks special interests, they knew exactly what they were getting. And now the chickens are coming home to roost. New Jersey's economy is in turmoil as their governor spends his time jockeying for position inside his crazy right-wing ideological political party. This is falling hard on working families all over New Jersey, but right now it is absolutely devastating Atlantic City, whose vibrant gaming and tourism industry Christie had pledged to protect and make prosper.

Carl Icahn is just the kind of billionaire vulture capitalist who Christie gravitates to; working with predators like Icahan to disadvantage unions is his vision-- his only vision-- of building an economy. Today Icahn is threatening to shut down one of the major Atlantic City hotels unless he gets huge tax breaks from the state. "Carl Icahn is not the savior Atlantic City so desperately needs," editorialized the Courier-Post yesterday.

The billionaire investor, who controls the Taj Mahal, has offered to rescue the struggling casino. He’s willing to invest $100 million-- but only if owner Trump Entertainment Resorts can get $175 million in aid from New Jersey and Atlantic City and if the company can get out of paying into workers’ pensions and health insurance to the tune of $14.6 million a year.

The state said no. The city said no. And the workers said no. But while Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney and Mayor Don Guardian have held firm in refusing to throw good money after bad, the 2,953 people who keep the casino running have far less power. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross ruled last month that Trump Entertainment could cancel its collective bargaining agreement with UNITE HERE Local 54, eliminating the company-sponsored pension and health plan.

Instead, workers will get a 401(k) and an extra $2,000 to buy insurance through Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act health exchanges. Generous, isn’t Icahn, to allow taxpayers to share the honor of subsidizing compensation for rank-and-file workers while scaling back the company’s investment in them?

...In an open letter to the members of Local 54, he cast himself as a perpetual underdog who is the casino’s only hope... As a man who is not afraid to stand up to low-paid workers in order to maximize shareholders’ profits.

Rather than present the concessions he seeks as an investment in a more prosperous company that will benefit workers and Atlantic City in the long run, Icahn uses threats and speculation to cow them into giving him what he wants. Unfortunately, his plan to turn workers against their union and government against government seems to be working.

On Monday, Taj Mahal employees begged Mayor Don Guardian to reconsider. Guardian declined, noting that the company had already received massive tax breaks before it stopped paying its taxes. Yet while he’s drawn the line at giving any more of his suffering city’s money to a foundering company, he’s still trying to get the state to step in with a solution.

Given what Atlantic City has been through this year-- losing four of its 12 casinos and shedding some 8,000 employees-- no one wants to be standing near the next domino when it falls.

State Senator Ray Lesniak (D-Elizabeth) is a Jersey reformer who's battled the transactional, transpartisan political bosses for his entire career. He's probably best known for his pioneering environmental bills like the Environmental Cleanup Responsibility Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Pesticide Control Act and for an across-the-board progressive vision for the state, from marriage equality to abolishing the death penalty. But Lesniak, who won his last reelection battle 75.5- 24.5% and is the chairman of the Senate's Economic Growth Committee, has been the force behind a plan to legalize (and regulate) sports betting in Atlantic City casinos-- the same way it works in Las Vegas.

State Senate President Steve Sweeney has taken on Icahn and says he's working tp prevent Atlantic City from becoming "another Detroit." Last week he said he's introducing legislation that would redirect casino tax revenue to keep the city and schools running, and require casino operators to provide health benefits for their employees as a condition of holding a state license.

Highlights of the proposed legislation include:

• Requiring casinos to pay $150 million in lieu of property taxes for two years so city officials would know how much they could count on to pay the bills, with future payments tied to gaming revenues instead of property taxes.

• Redirecting about $25 million to $30 million a year from the investment alternative tax to pay down the city’s debt. Casinos pay a 1.25 percent on gross gaming revenues and 2.5 percent on internet gaming revenues to pay for economic development programs. About $30-$40 million is sitting in an account unspent.

• Finding $72 million in “cost savings” from the cost of running city government and the board of education.

• Amending casino licenses to require operators “provide a baseline health care and retirement package” for their workers, in response to the judge’s decision last month to allow Taj Mahal billionaire investor Carl Icahn to void its contract with the union.

Icahn says if he doesn't get his way, he'll shut down the casino on December 12, laying off a thousand workers and delivering another ghastly blow to Atlantic City's and New Jersey's struggling economy. To much power for the one percent? For decades, Icahn has built his immense fortune using the bankruptcy process to hurt workers and destroy companies. Workers say the current crisis in Atlantic City is the latest one that Icahn has created and profited from. But to Chris Christie, he's... a job creator.