Recession? For Sure! Depression? Think Of Who's At The Helm

My friend called the other day and asked if I thought the economy would slip into recession. I think my response frightened him. We're already in recession. What we have to worry about now is something no one-- or almost no one-- thought we would ever see again: a depression. Although, if national leadership is a contributing factor, how could anyone not have considered that particular calamity after the first Tuesday of November, 2016! Welcoming Thursday morning at Axos, Dion Rabouin noted that the $2.2 trillion bailout "is not a stimulus bill at all; it is designed to prevent mass homelessness, starvation and a wave of business closures not seen since the height of the Great Depression." I just heard some well-heeled talking head congratulating his class for making sure working families would survive to pay their rent and food and so on... with a $1,200 one-time payment. It wasn't a comedy show.

In a widely quoted piece right after the Senate passed their bailout bill Wednesday night, Heather Long wrote "The good news is the majority of the money is going to laid-off workers, small business owners, hospitals and state and local governments. The bad news is it won’t be enough to stop a recession. And it’s an open question whether the nation can avoid an economic depression, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the 1930s."

So, what's the difference between a recession and a depression? The simple answer is that a recession is shorter-- months-- than a depression-- years. Yes, years. Hard to imagine, right? Did you ever imagine America would elect, more or less, something like Donald Trump president?

4 months ago, before anyone in the U.S.-- outside of government anyway-- knew about the coming pandemic, Kimberly Amadeo asked what makes depression so much worse than a recession? "A recession, she wrote, "is widespread economic decline that lasts for at least six months. A depression is a more severe decline that lasts for several years. For example, a recession lasts for 18 months, while the most recent depression lasted for a decade. There have been 33 recessions since 1854. There's only been one depression since then, the Great Depression of 1929. It was actually a combination of the recession that lasted from August 1929 to March 1933, and the one from May 1937 to June 1938. If you are wondering if we are in a depression or recession, it's probably a recession."

In a recession, gross domestic product contracts for at least two quarters. But that's not all. There are many more economic indicators that signal a recession. That's because GDP growth will usually slow for several quarters before it turns negative. That's in response to sluggish consumer demand.

A depression is an extended recession that has years, not quarters, of economic contraction. It's more severe than a recession. Unemployment reaches 25%, housing prices plummet 30%, and prices fall 10%. The devastation of a depression is so great that the effects of the Great Depression lasted for decades after it ended.

The best way to find out if we are in a recession or a depression is to understand where we are in the business cycle. The recession follows the peak of the business cycle. It's signaled by irrational exuberance and asset bubbles.

A depression on the scale of that in 1929 could not happen exactly the way it did before. Central banks around the world, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, are more aware of the importance of monetary policy in regulating the economy.

...The underlying cause of any recession is a loss of business or consumer confidence. There are 12 events that trigger this panic reaction. These include a stock market crash, deregulation, and high interest rates.

Without confidence in the future, consumers will stop buying and businesses will lay off workers. These situations create a downward economic spiral of unemployment, businesses failures, and bankruptcies.

Since stocks are a piece of ownership in a company, the stock market is basically a vote of confidence in the future of all these companies and, as such, in the U.S. economy itself. A drop of 11% in a quarter indicates a sustained loss of confidence.

If confidence is not restored, the stock market will continue to fall over a sustained period of time. A prolonged downward trend would eventually indicate the start of a bear market. This could hurt the economy more and push it further toward a recession... Bear markets coincide with a recession. These 20% declines in stock market prices can also signal an impending recession. If the shock is bad enough, they can trigger the next one.

She lightly warned-- probably not really grasping it could happen-- that "if the United States were to experience an economic downturn on the scale of the Great Depression, your life would change dramatically."

Yesterday, Neil Irwin, cheering the impending passage of the Trump Bailout, penned a piece for the NY Times, How To Prevent A Coronavirus Depression-- and it wasn't about being down in the dumps from too much social isolation. He began with the assertion that "There is little doubt that economic data in the weeks to come will obliterate all modern records in their awfulness. One Federal Reserve official has said the unemployment rate could hit 30 percent, three times its level at the worst point of the 2008-2009 Great Recession. And he has suggested that G.D.P. could fall at a 50 percent annual rate next quarter, which would be five times worse than the worst single quarter on record. Economic forecasters at major banks differ in degree, not direction, of the disaster facing the American economy. Just how bad those numbers get in the next few months may amaze future historians. But what matters now is whether this turns out to be a severe-but-brief disruption to economic life from which the United States and other major economies can quickly recover, or the beginning of a long, scarring depression. And the economic data we usually rely on are particularly ill-suited to offer useful information on that question. What’s critical now is not whether the May 2020 unemployment rate is 20 percent or 40 percent or 50 percent. It is whether the unemployment rate in May 2021 is back to something more normal-- if people have been able to move on with their lives without damage that will stunt their economic lives for years to come."




A little backdrop before we go back to Irwin. Do you recall, after Trump was elected, a term that came into relatively common currency-- kakistocracy? In case you've forgotten, the basic meaning is "government by the worst people." Months after Trump occupied the White House and the horror of what had happened had sunk in, on 29 June 2017, the Merriam-Webster dictionary website reported that searches for the word had spiked to an all-time high that day. That said, we've now entered the greatest challenge to the incredibly, grotesquely dumbed-down American people in almost a century. Dumbed down? Yeah-- compare, in your mind, Joe Biden, a virtual corpse, to Franklin Roosevelt.

To reach that more optimistic outcome, the U.S. government is trying to build, at great speed, a three-legged stool. All three components need to come together to make it plausible to return to prosperity reasonably quickly once the coronavirus outbreak is safely contained. One or two won’t be enough.

First, the nation needs to ensure that who lose their jobs do not experience personal catastrophe with long-lasting effects. Second, it must ensure that they have jobs to go back to-- that businesses with sound long-term prospects don’t collapse in the interim. Third, the system of borrowing and lending needs to remain functioning to avoid a freeze-up of credit that would make the other two goals impossible.

The remarkable $2 trillion legislation Congress that was on the verge of passing Wednesday, along with a series of extraordinary actions by the Federal Reserve this month, constitute the United States government’s efforts to bolster each of those legs.

Leg 1: Support people who lose their jobs

Not all unemployment is created equal.

Sometimes a person loses a job and after a few weeks finds something new. It can be a wrenching experience, but it is also how a dynamic capitalist economy reinvents itself, funneling labor where it is most productive.

Periods of prolonged mass unemployment, when there are simply no jobs out there, are a different story. They tend to create lasting damage.

When people lose their jobs and remain unemployed for a long period, they are more likely to lose their home to foreclosure, disrupting the rhythms of their lives. They may lose their health care coverage. Their skills and relationships may atrophy in ways that make it harder to go back to work when jobs become plentiful.

And the income the newly jobless lose in those circumstances contributes to the freeze-up in the broader economy. Being forced to drastically cut spending can fuel a vicious cycle of lost revenue for businesses and cause other people to lose their jobs.

In short, when people’s incomes collapse in a crisis like this, there’s a great risk that their lives will unravel, with long-term consequences.

“Unemployment is more than just a period when you have lower earnings,” said Katharine Abraham, a University of Maryland economist who has researched long-term unemployment.

Part of the case for generous help for people losing their jobs-- like the funding for a major expansion of unemployment insurance benefits, which is included in the bill moving through Congress-- is that it can halt that vicious cycle.

Ms. Abraham says that it will be particularly desirable to maintain workers’ connections with their employers. This could be accomplished, for instance, by work-sharing arrangements in which hours are cut but employees not laid off, with unemployment benefits filling the income gap. It’s an approach embraced in the new legislation.

“We really want to try to preserve the relationship between firms and their workers,” she said. “Then when things start to pick up, it’s a lot easier for the firm to restart because they don’t have to go out and hire people.”

Leg 2: Make sure businesses don't collapse

Helping people who lose their jobs won’t, by itself, prevent long-term economic damage.

With vast numbers of businesses experiencing a collapse in revenue-- and in many cases a complete suspension of operations-- there is an acute risk of widespread bankruptcies and business closures.

Think of a neighborhood restaurant that is reduced to a handful of takeout and delivery orders while customers are self-isolating. The restaurant can cut back employee hours, reducing payroll cost. But it still owes rent to its landlord; loan payments to its bank; utility costs; property taxes and more.

If the restaurant can get some mix of forbearance from its creditors and favorable loans or grants from the government, it may be poised to open as soon as people can safely eat out again, allowing a rapid return to its normal role in the economy.

If the landlord evicts or the creditors force the company into bankruptcy, it could be months or years before that economic activity returns.

Yes, eventually a new tenant could be found, and the former employees could find new jobs. That’s why bankruptcy works perfectly well in typical business failures. But when all kinds of businesses are failing all at once, it paralyzes the economy.

“Ideally you want all those small and medium-sized businesses that were solvent and doing a great job as of Feb. 1 to still be around and able to do business when folks can get back to work,” said Heather Boushey, president of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

It’s true even at bigger scale, with large companies like cruise lines and airlines. In a vacuum, it would do no harm to the economy for them to go through a normal bankruptcy process, with shareholders being wiped out and creditors taking over ownership.

The risk is that the entire complex fabric of the American economy will be ripped apart at once-- and that it will take years, rather than months, to weave it back together.

Several elements of the new rescue legislation are aimed at preventing that from happening. There is $75 billion in bailouts targeted at specific industries, and $425 billion devoted to business lending broadly, which the Federal Reserve can match with 10 times as much cash. Essentially, it sets the stage for a truly huge reservoir of funds to try to ensure businesses are ready to resume normal functioning as soon as public health allows.





Leg 3: Allow the financial system to support a recovery

In the last few weeks, the economic crisis has also been a financial crisis. For a rapid recovery to take place, that will need to change.

This isn’t really about the stock market. The plunge in stock prices is a reflection, rather than a cause, of this perilous moment. But what is happening in many credit markets is more worrying.

For several days, the market for Treasury bonds-- the most important asset in global finance-- was dysfunctional, with fewer transactions as buyers and sellers were far apart on price. This resulted in rising borrowing costs for the government, despite efforts by the Fed to push interest rates down.

Problems in the Treasury bond market have diminished since the Fed announced open-ended bond purchases under its quantitative easing program, which could reach into the trillions of dollars. That provides some confidence the government will have easy access to the credit it needs to rescue the economy.

But other sectors aren’t so lucky. Mortgage markets have also been dysfunctional as investors hoard cash, and as some firms that buy up mortgage securities face major financial strains. If that continues, it will be harder for home buyers to get mortgages and could cause problems throughout the housing sector.

Investors have dumped municipal bonds, causing their interest rates to spike. If sustained, that would make it expensive or impossible for state and local governments to borrow money they need to get through a period in which their public services are likely to be stretched to the limit.

Many years ago, the former Fed chair Ben Bernanke and colleagues wrote of a “financial accelerator” in which problems in the economy can, by disrupting the flow of credit, metastasize into much bigger problems. The Fed has recently announced a range of programs, many built on Mr. Bernanke’s crisis-response strategies from 2008, to try to prevent that financial accelerator from taking hold now.

There are two pieces of good news about the three-legged stool.

One is the U.S. government is acting on a remarkable scale, at rare speed, to try to ensure each leg is in place. There will be plenty of time to argue on the exact structure of the programs and what should have been done earlier, but the magnitude of the potential economic disaster has become clear in Washington.

The second is that strengthening each leg makes the entire stool more solid. Helping unemployed workers will help businesses get back to regular functioning sooner, and both will help reduce the freeze-up of credit more broadly, which in turn will help consumers and businesses.

But it is the combined strength of all three that will determine whether this episode is a footnote of economic history or a long, harrowing chapter.

Republican Oligarch Bloomberg Explains Why He Would Never Win A Presidential Race

Yesterday, in his often excoriating music business newsletter, Bob Lefsetz set his sites on... oligarchs in politics. "You’ve got to be rich," he wrote. "And it always comes down to who you know." That could've easily been the opening lines about a music business post. But not when he turned to the powerful dons who run the Nevada Culinary Union who "bargained for a blue chip health care plan" and have basically said SCREW YOU to anyone who doesn't have a plan as good. (NOTE: Medicare-for-All is better than any union-negotiated healthcare plan and for that matter, better than any healthcare plan offered to corporate presidents in any U.S. company.) Anyway, Lefsetz was quickly on to two detestable targets: Trump and Bloomberg, two beneficiaries of skillful marketing. "Trump," he wrote "won by being a renegade. By talking about how the government does not work and the game is rigged. The government has issues, but one thing’s for sure, the game is rigged. Let’s see, all the people Trump pardoned/commuted today… It’s not like they had public defenders, it’s not like they didn’t have the right to appeal, they were convicted, fair and square, there’s a system, based on laws, and if you sacrifice the law…you’ve got chaos. Which is what we’ve got today... [O]ne thing is for certain, if you’re not rich, you don’t count, you have no voice. Because they don’t want to let you have one. Oh, they’ll let you call in to talk shows, they’ll get you fighting about secondary issues, but they won’t let you challenge the system, which is imperfect but works just fine for them. Which brings me to last night’s John Oliver show, wherein he makes the case for Medicare for all:

Oliver goes through all the negative talking points, blows them away, and if you’re not for Medicare for all after you watch this, you’re greedy or, like members of the Culinary Union, have a blue chip policy.

But there can be no change.

But change happens. The last twenty years have been all about change. Digital disruption. It’s always outsiders with a creaky new way that is cheap and pooh-poohed that ultimately triumphs and kills what came before. Why can’t this happen in politics?

BECAUSE THOSE IN POWER DON’T WANT IT TO!

I’ll vote for any Democrat against Trump. But I must say, the DNC and the media are bending over backward to hand it to Michael Bloomberg. Today the polls came out and the stories were all about Bloomberg’s surge, when Sanders surged way ahead of the field.

Selective reporting.

It used to be different. There was the Fairness Doctrine, making sure the limited news outlets presented both sides.

And if you owned a megaphone, a newspaper, TV or radio station, you were powerful.

You’re less powerful today.

Those in power, the elite, hate technology, even though they selectively use it. I listened to NPR tonight wherein they sang the virtues of the independent bookstore, saying the digital book was neutered. But the sycophantic host even admitted he showroomed the Ron Chernow book on Ulysses S. Grant and bought the digital copy, because the physical book was just too heavy.

This is the establishment, they like it how it was, even though it’s no longer this way.

I get it if you’re a member of the Republican elite. The money and perks have always flowed upward. But the Democratic elite? They have contempt for those below them, believe they know better, spread their own disinformation in pursuit of their goals. There can be change, just as long as they don’t lose out.

And you wonder why the rank and file voted for Trump.

So it all comes down to hope. If Bloomberg is elected, we’ll get rid of the orange menace. But will the fundamental problems of this country be addressed? Of course not, because Bloomberg doesn’t even know how the hoi polloi live.

So Blagojevich broke the law. We don’t want our elected officials selling Senate seats. But we live in a country where our President can lean on Ukraine to neuter the campaign of Joe Biden, which he successfully did!

Mitt Romney did the right thing, and he was excoriated by the right, but…they still love him in Utah, because their society is built on the family and helping one another, morality.

Bernard Kerik was caught red-handed, as was Eddie DeBartolo, Jr. Commit a blue collar crime and you’re screwed, there’s a camera everywhere, you’re going up the river. But white collar crime is seen as less bad, these are good people, we don’t want to ruin their lives, like the judge said in the Stanford rape case. SO WHY DID THEY DO THIS?

That’s what you’ve got to ask. These people thought they were invulnerable, they’d been getting away with bending the rules for years, it’s just that this time they got caught. Whereas you’re lucky if you can get probation on the first offense.

So there’s a different legal system for the rich and poor. And unlike in the old days, the rich no longer worry about the optics. Trump doesn’t care how it looks, Kerik working with the Donald’s henchman Giuliani, Blagojevich appearing on The Apprentice, he just does what he feels like, with a vengeance, vindictively.

Susan Collins told us Trump learned a lesson…yeah, that he can do whatever he wants!

As for those who support him, it’s less about him than the tribe on the other side. They hate Democrats so much, they’ll endorse the behavior of any Republican, just ask the evangelicals.

So if you live online, you see contrary opinions.

But big media has told us it’s all cranks and their opinions don’t count. Meanwhile, Breitbart and the Daily Caller got Trump elected. Who cares about veracity, that demonstrates power.

And although the right decries authoritarianism in China, it refuses to publicize any story it doesn’t agree with, that doesn’t reinforce its position.

So, you can be an outsider, you can have the illusion of power, because you vote.

But for the first time in my life I’m starting to wonder if it matters. If we organize and come up with a contrary candidate, our own opinion, they shut us right down. Bernie Sanders is a socialist who loves Russia and will ruin the economy, after eliminating Democratic coattails.

Meanwhile, Trump is a guy who really loves Putin, and endorses/enables socialism for the rich, with low taxes, the carried interest rule, government handouts, but somehow that’s different.

It isn’t about Bernie Sanders the man, it’s about what he’s saying, telling the truth in a world where that is abhorred. The everyday person got screwed, and the playing field must be leveled, while everybody is taken care of while they get back on their feet.

But those on both the right and left say this can’t be so. Change must be gradual, and you know there can’t be change because the government is gridlocked, and you’re asking the impossible anyway.

Meanwhile, let’s hand the nomination to a billionaire who just recently was a Republican, who changed the law so he could serve a third term as mayor, who made the elites feel safe while his police force threw those less privileged up against the wall.

But that’s overlooked. Even the sexism. Because this is the guy the elites want, because he’ll just be the anti-Trump, who cares if he gets anything done.

And their plan is working. I was with three twentysomethings just now, all were Bernie fans, now they’re behind Bloomberg, the media has convinced them, they’re defeated. Even though it’s their future at risk.

So what we’ve found is despite our numbers, we ain’t got much power. Even if Bernie Sanders wins a primary, he loses. The owners of this country want it this way.

As for Michael Milken… Wasn’t he the first guy to make so much money on Wall Street? Isn’t he evidence of the basic problem? By pardoning him aren’t we endorsing this kind of behavior, especially if you employ your riches that remain for good causes?

It’s depressing. And everybody is telling us we know nothing and should do what they say. And however it plays out, they’re not gonna lose, but we are.

Meanwhile, we’re fighting each other for scraps and most have no idea how the game is really played anyway. Everybody believes they’re gonna be a successful entrepreneur, become a billionaire. Someone else did it, so why can’t they?

Because that other person had wealthy parents who gave them the best education at institutions where you can make relationships that pay dividends down the road. You never had a chance. And today, both parties are doing their best to snuff whatever light, whatever hope remains, out.

And you wonder why there’s a rash of suicides.

"I'm not a dictionary, but I know what words mean. And I'm not a clock, but I know what time it is." That was from Richard Eskow in his post for Common Dreams earlier this month, Of Course Bloomberg's an Oligarch-- and He's Coming For Your Social Security. "By any common definition," he wrote, "Bloomberg’s an oligarch. He wants to buy your vote. Based on his record, he’s also coming for your Social Security.

An “oligarch,” according to the Cambridge American Dictionary, is “one of a small group of powerful people who control a country or an industry.”

Is Michael Bloomberg such a person? Maybe he’s just really rich and doesn’t control that much. But let's have some background.

With an estimated net worth of more than $60 billion, Bloomberg is the twelfth-richest person on the planet and the ninth-richest person in the United States. That’s a pretty small group of people. But do they control the country? Ferguson et al. found that campaign cash drives election outcomes. That means campaign donors largely control the process.

Gilens and Page found that wealthy people and interests usually get what they want. The rest of us usually don’t, unless what we want is also what they want. The fact that progressives like some of Bloomberg’s positions doesn’t undermine these findings. In fact, it reinforces them.

Bloomberg hasn’t just given money to a number of campaigns. He also controls a media empire. In true oligarchical fashion, he decreed years ago that his news outlets would not cover his political career. He said recently that it would not cover his rivals’ campaigns, either-- a move that drew criticism from journalists and an ethics professor. Less than a month later, however, Bloomberg News violated that edict by running a hit piece against Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

That’s oligarchical behavior.

Bloomberg’s own political history is an exercise in the use of oligarchical wealth to change electoral outcomes. He was unpopular when he first ran for mayor of New York-- a situation he rectified by dramatically outspending his rivals. Even so, Bloomberg only eked out a two-point victory against Democrat Mark Green in his first mayoral race, after outspending him five to one.

The argument between Turner and Johnson involved another compelling example of Bloomberg-as-oligarch. The DNC’s rules said each candidate had to have a minimum number of donors to quality for the debate stage. That rule wasn’t overruled for Cory Booker or Julian Castro, despite calls for greater diversity in the race. But it was overturned for Bloomberg, who had donated more than $1 million to the DNC and a related organization a few short weeks before.

Will Michael Bloomberg Cut Your Social Security?

If you thought there were problems with Joe Biden’s Social Security record, wait until you see Bloomberg’s. His record of espousing austerity economics has including a special enthusiasm for cutting Medicare and Social Security.

As he told Face the Nation in 2013:

No program to reduce the deficit makes any sense whatsoever unless you address the issue of entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest payment on the debt, which you can't touch, and defense spending. Everything else is tiny compared to that.

Bloomberg has called for raising the retirement age, a move that would cut Social Security benefits for all retirees and create physical hardship for many older workers.

These are bad ideas. They make for even worse politics. Voters love Social Security. A Pew study released in March 2019 found that “74 percent of Americans say Social Security benefits should not be reduced in any way.”

And voters don’t like entitlement cuts, or the Bloomberg-endorsed thinking behind them. That can be seen in a GBAO/Center for American Progress survey conducted in October 2019. Less than half of Republicans, one-third of Democrats, and roughly one-third of independents agreed with the Bloomberg-like statement that “our national debt is way too high, and we need to cut government spending on the biggest programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.”

Trump has given Democrats an opening on Social Security. His administration is currently engaged in a de factor program to cut Social Security disability benefits, by forcing millions of disabled people to endure the punishing process of eligibility screening as often as every six months. Newsweek reports that the Social Security Administration concluded that this would lead to $2.6 billion in benefit cuts and an additional 2.6 million case reviews between 2020 and 2029. It’s a brutal assault on the health and security of a vulnerable population.

Trump also said he intends to pursue additional cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid after the upcoming election, when he no longer has to worry about public opinion. Worse, he did so at the annual gathering of billionaires in Davos. That reinforces the perception that he’s imposing hardship on the majority to help a privileged few.

Most leading Democrats understand that there is wide support for protecting and expanding Social Security. Most leading candidates-- including Joe Biden-- have offered some form of Social Security expansion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has embraced the idea in principle. There’s an opportunity here-- if Bloomberg doesn’t stop them from taking it.

...Given his virtually unlimited resources, Bloomberg could theoretically win both the nomination and the presidency. By my calculation, Bloomberg could pay the same “unit price” he paid to make himself mayor of New York-- $88 per voter-- and make himself president for $12 billion. He’d even have $50 billion set aside for a rainy day.

The nomination would presumably cost less than the presidency, so he has a better shot at that. But it would be a bad look for the Democrats to become the first party in modern history whose candidate openly bought the nomination. But then, Bloomberg’s used to getting the rules changed just for him. When he wanted to run for a third term as mayor, Bloomberg used all the tools at his disposal (one of which led to an ethics complaint) to change the city’s rules. Once he got what he wanted, Bloomberg then pushed to change the rules back. It seems that some privileges should be labeled, “for oligarchs only.”

Am I saying that all the members of Congress who have endorsed Bloomberg are corrupt and should be defeated in primaries? Pretty much. YES! Right now there are a dozen of them, 10 Blue Dogs and New Dems and one-- Bobby Rush-- an outright criminal who takes bribes from everyone, not just Bloomberg. All these members should have the guts to withdraw their endorsements of Bloomberg today after his disqualifying performance last night. Instead, this morning, 3 other money-hungry Democrats endorsed him-- Blue Dog walking cesspool Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA) and Nita Lowey, who is retiring from Congress and knows she'll never have to face the voters again.

• Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)- F
• Juan Vargas (New Dem)- D
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)- F
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)- F
• Ted Deutch (FL)- C
• Lucy McBath (New Dem-GA)- F
• Bobby Rush (IL)- B
• Haley Stevens (New Dem-MI)- F
• Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ)- F
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)- F
• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)- F
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- F

Jerry, Jr. vs Jesus

So it wasn't just Lindsay Graham leading the charge on the right to allow Trump to seamlessly rid himself of Jeff Sessions with no noisy consequences from the base. Jerry Falwell had a son, Jerry, Jr., and some people bill him as "a top conservative religious leader." On Monday, Jr. urged-- in a display of raw religious-power politics, born no doubt from a feeling of impending doom, a realization that they’ve doubled down on the wrong side of history-- Señor Trump to fire Jeff Sessions over failure to protect Trump from his role in Putin-Gate. Claiming Sessions has lost evangelicals' support, he said "He really is not on the president’s team, never was. He’s wanted to be attorney general for many, many years. I have a feeling he took a gamble and supported the president because he knew he would reward loyalty." WOW!

In forsaking Sessions, faith leaders are turning on one of their own, a man who for decades fought in the political trenches for conservative Christian causes. As a senator from Alabama, Sessions was one of the first Republicans to endorse Trump’s long-shot presidential campaign, taking heat from his party in return.

...During an Aug. 8 speech, the attorney general received a standing ovation from faith leaders after he praised the Trump administration's record.

"The people of this nation are still the most religious nation in the developed world. Yet people of faith are facing a new hostility. Really, a bigoted ideology which is founded on animus towards people of faith," Sessions told the assembly at Alliance Defending Freedom.

"Fortunately, President Donald Trump has heard these concerns," Sessions said. "He made a promise-- and from Day One of this administration he has delivered. He is defending religious freedom at home and abroad."

As a community, evangelicals have been willing to overlook what they see as the president’s personal shortcomings-- including payoffs to women during the 2016 campaign who said they had previously had affairs with Trump-- in return for his attention. Vice President Mike Pence has hosted a series of dinners at his home for faith leaders.

On Monday afternoon, faith leaders met with White House officials in a series of meetings on immigration, prison reform and abortion.

Falwell said Sessions lost the group’s loyalty “a long time ago" and has not stopped the Justice Department from going after Trump's allies. Last week, the president’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted of fraud and his onetime lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to tax evasion and campaign finance violations.

“A lot of Republicans pretend to be friends to conservatives and the faith community for decades when they really were not,” Falwell said. “I don’t know if he’s in that category. If he was really a fair person, he’d be going after both sides.”

This morning Frank Schaeffer posed the question, "Why do evangelicals support whatever Trump comes up with next-- even when he turns on one of their own as he's now turned on the evangelical Jeff Sessions?"  Luckily, since he knows that community better than most, he also answered it. "Because evangelicalism isn’t about facts, let alone true spirituality. It’s a made up political reality based not on logic but theological methodology. What is theological methodology? It is a belief systemall of which must be wholeheartedly accepted for any of it to work. Question anything theological as you would-- say-- something ordinary like traffic directions to a post office and it falls apart. There is no post office as it were, just a post office feeling that must be sustained at all costs by everything but facts. Trump has been folded into this sort of theology-based 'reality.' He can’t be logically defended any more than the resurrection can. He merely must be accepted as an inevitable manifestation of God’s will in a faux born-again type political experience of a theological, not logical, kind. People who didn’t grow up in the evangelical bubble don’t realize what they’re demanding when they ask an evangelical to accept simple facts as true: say, that Trump is a lying fraud. The white evangelical brain is deaf, blind and dumb to reality given its cradle to grave conditioning. Once theological thinking is the issue then of course just as the Bible is 'inspired' so too must Trump's lies be true, be they about himself of Jeff Sessions."

I hope you will recall our Vote Common Good friend Samir Selmanović from Monday. At the time he wrote that "in its endorsement of Trump, the most organized, outspoken, and influential religious group in America, Evangelical Christians, have essentially abandoned its most prized and potent capacity: faith. That was the very high price of Trump. Jesus' teaching is that the world is a safe place to be and do good-- and that his followers, having faith in the power of God, do not need to resort to lying, excluding, and immorality to advantage themselves. Jesus-followers and admirers are invited to live, love, and lead in truth and grace. By contrast, organized Evangelicalism has now opted for the opposite of faith: fear. Leaving their faith in God behind, they have now embraced fear of immigrants, fear of the poor, and fear of liberals. This new creed has, incredibly, abandoned the teachings of Jesus as naive and impotent. The greatest irony of American Evangelicalism today is that it has given up on God's presence in the world and chosen an anti-Jesus criminal as its protector. Evangelicals essentially elected a modern-day Barabbas, thus crucifying their former Lord again. Instead of living the liberating faith of Jesus, they are now living in the confining siege mentality of Trump. Living by faith has given way to living in fear."

This morning, Samir and I talked about this Jerry, Jr. thing and he discussed it in terms of how religious groups abandon their founding values and how it is the Evangelicals who are showing the way. "First, religious groups do well by serving the world and thus gain legitimate power. Then they want more power, without corresponding service to their non-adherents. When they don't get the power, they morph from being heroes into seeing themselves as victims. Victim identity further weakens them from within by taking them further and further from their vision of possibility in the world."

Eventually, they pay attention only to what scares them and to the weaknesses of the Other (which becomes everyone else—and increasingly hostile), and thus they begin to lose their grip on reality. That's where we are now: They control the Presidency, the House, the Senate, prospectively the Judiciary, and the majority of Statehouses--and still feel oppressed!

The last and long stage of dying from within starts when they circle the wagons and make loyalty to powerful protectors paramount. They would take Trump over Jesus, any time.. Jesus is about possibility and progress in the world and love for the Other, Trump is about power in the world and fear of the Other. Nothing can now stop them from operating from deep-seated fear since they have now created circumstances that naturally make them afraid ("everyone hates them") and have destroyed their own resources (the integrity and validity of their own theology and ethics). They thus swiftly remove their own people at any whiff of disloyalty, such as Jeff Sessions They project this motivation as a virtue to their own: "Great leadership requires hard decisions, often sacrifice and suffering!” (Always, of course, sacrifice and suffering by the disloyal and never by the leaders who stay.)

But, most importantly, and something that will become increasingly obvious to them and to everyone very soon, once they lose touch with reality they also lose touch with what I would call The Future: the inevitable resisters, defectors, and new visionaries from within, all streaming out of the compound (with their heads, hearts, and/or feet) and looking to build new reality around a new fire. When such fearful groups disintegrate, it is always a self-fullfiling prophecy: They fear they will fall apart and that very fear makes them fall apart. It is inevitable, like clockwork, historically speaking. It begins invisibly and gently from within, and by the time they finally notice it, it's a big surprise to them. Please reference the story below (something I use with corporate folks but is applicable here).

What is Vote Common Good about? We are about The Future. We will find the disillusioned, reality-seeking ones, support their founding values and original faith, show them they are never alone, and conspire Common Good with them. (The future of Christianity is blue and green, with a touch of red.)

TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO
by Samir Selmanović
WisdomWorkRoom

I don’t know whether this story really happened.

But I know it is true.

Ten thousand years ago, there was a tribe that lived around a fire. Fire was their source of heat, light, and comfort.

The first ring of people around the fire, those closest to it, were elderly and children. Every night, the tribe would listen to the stories of the elderly and watch the children dance.

The second ring around the fire was occupied by wood gatherers. The tribe held wood gatherers in honor. Wood gathering was a difficult and a never-ending task.

The third and final outer ring of the tribe were the hunters and warriors. The tribe was in awe of their skill and bravery. With them, the tribe was fed and safe.

One day, the wood gatherers said, “We want to be closest to the fire. Without us there would be no fire.” The tribe leaders met, pondered, and decided to make it so. They all new, without the wood gatherers, there would be no fire.

After this, there were less stories from the elderly and less dancing from the children.

Not long after that, the hunters and warriors of the tribe said, “We want to be the closest to the fire. Without us there would be no tribe.”  The council of the tribe met again, pondered, and decided to make it so. They all new, without hunters and warriors there would be no tribe.

At this point, the stories from the elderly and dancing by the children all but vanished.

After couple of years, one clear sky summer night, an elderly woman stood up, walked through the crowd to the fire, took a piece of burning wood and carried it to the outskirts of the tribe. She set down the fire that she was carrying and began to tell a story. Then the first child came.

Welcome To The Kakistocracy... Step Up And Take A Bow, Brian Allen Benczkowski

Yesterday America's supine Senate confirmed that they, as a body, are as kakistocratic as any other part of the Trumpist government, confirming, 51-48 Mr. Benczkowski as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. It was a largely party-line vote, every single Republican voting to confirm this clearly unqualified freak, with every Democrat, sans Joe Manchin (D-WV), voting no. Manchin voted with the GOP, as he usually does. Not even Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Claire McCaskill (D-MO) or Doug Jones (D-AL) went along with McConnell on this. A bridge too far. I can tell you which Senate candidate votes like this will not cause even a moment's hesitation starting next January: Kyrsten Sinema, who describes herself as a Manchin supporter but is quite a bit to the right of him.

If Schumer couldn't stop Benczkowski, how can anyone possibly think he has what it takes to stop Cavanaugh? As Maddow explains in the clip up top, Benczkowski is actually part of Putin-Gate, having working to do an image makeover on the Kremlin-controlled Alfa Bank after it was caught communicating-- and hiding those communications-- between Putin and the Trump campaign. (Mueller and the FBI are both investigating Alpha Bank but apparently none of the Republicans claiming to bot be Trump rubber stamps-- Flake, Corker, Sasse, Collins, Murkowski, Moran, Paul-- thought this was a big enough deal to make a fuss over. They were wrong, probably tragically so. Is Benczkowski a Russian mole? Maybe. Is he a Trumpist mole? Oh yeah... no question.

Dick Durbin (D-IL) wrote to Trump that "unanswered questions remain about Alfa Bank that should be resolved before the Senate even considers voting to confirm this bank’s lawyer to a top Justice Department position." Sense of humor, huh?

Welcome To The Kakistocracy-- 500 Days Of Corruption Made Simple

You know how everyone says "If Trump does this or this or this or that, it will lead to a constitutional crisis? Let's get real-- as Jonathan Chair wrote yesterday, The Constitutional Crisis Is Already Underway. Does anyone think Putin-Gate is not the biggest constitutional crisis since The South succeeded? Yes, the Trump Regime: "The President not only has unfettered statutory and Constitutional authority to terminate the FBI Director, he also has Constitutional authority to direct the Justice Department to open or close an investigation, and, of course, the power to pardon any person before, during, or after an investigation and/or conviction. Put simply, the Constitution leaves no question that the President has exclusive authority over the ultimate conduct and disposition of all criminal investigations and over those executive branch officials responsible for conducting those investigations."

Trump, in their view, has unlimited control to open or close any federal investigation.

Trump has been angrily tweeting demands that the investigation into him and his allies be halted, and that the Department of Justice instead open investigations into his political enemies. These tweets have been treated as the ravings of a blowhard who just happens to occupy the most powerful position in the world, yet is somehow merely blowing off steam. His lawyers are fully endorsing Trump’s right to do exactly the thing he is calling for. Trump’s lawyers are saying that he should be taken seriously and literally.

Should Trump’s legal case prevail in the courts-- and the legality of such broad claims remains largely untested-- it would confer upon any president, but immediately Trump, the ability to open charges against anybody the president wants to charge, and prevent investigations of anybody the president wants to protect, beginning with himself. This is l’état, c’est moi rendered as a formal legal case.

...Trump cannot obstruct justice, according to his official legal stance, because justice is whatever Trump says it is. Before this is over, either Trump’s sweeping claim will survive, or the rule of law will, but not both.

That's why the Trumpists are so worried that the Democrats will stumble into taking back the House in 5 months. On Sunday CNN had RTrump ally Rick Santorum on State of the Union where he explained that the White House looks "at the election results in my home state of Pennsylvania... and the fact is that voter turnout in a lot of Trump areas has been very low among Republicans." The Trump isn't energized-- and even less than energized for congressional Republicans. Democrats and increasingly anti-Trump independents are very energized. They feel a check desperately needs to be put on Trump to slow down his authoritarian tendencies. And the graft and corruption regime of Trump and his congressional enablers is starting to seep down into common knowledge. Yesterday Politico noted that GOP staffers who wrote the tax bill cash in with lobbying gigs. "Top-level GOP aides who helped write the new tax law are now leaving the Hill in droves to cash in as lobbyists on K Street and other marquee private-sector destinations." When is enough enough? When he pardons the whole stinking lot for their criminal, treasonous behavior-- including even his vile family and himself.

The Kakistocracy Project Moves Forward-- With Speed

Nancy Ohanian feels Trump is an albatross around the neck of the GOP

On Saturday, Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, writing for the Washington Post, reported on Trump’s breakout. The lunatic is trying to run the asylum on his own… well, with the help of a few imbeciles and misfits he still has faith in: Corey Lewandowski, David Bossie, Brad Parscal, and Kushner-in-law. This is the garbage that, in effect, is left “running” America. The best investment Putin could have ever made! Over the weekend, crooked boxing promoter and Trump crony, Don King, joined them. “Nowhere to be seen was John F. Kelly, the beleaguered White House chief of staff and overall disciplinarian-- nor were the handful of advisers regarded as moderating forces eager to restrain the president from acting impulsively, who have resigned or been fired.”

“The gatherings neatly illustrated an inflection point for the Trump presidency. Fourteen months into the job, Trump is increasingly defiant and singularly directing his administration with the same rapid and brutal style he honed leading his real estate and branding empire.”

“Trump is making hasty decisions that jolt markets and shock leaders and experts-- including those on his own staff. Some confidants expressed concern about the situation, while others, unworried, characterized him as unleashed.”

The president is replacing aides who have tended toward caution and consensus with figures far more likely to encourage his rash instincts and act upon them, and he is frequently soliciting advice from loyalists outside the government. As he shakes up his administration, Trump is prioritizing personal chemistry above all else, as evidenced by his controversial selection of Navy Rear Adm. Ronny L. Jackson, the White House physician, to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“The president is in an action mood and doesn’t want to slow-roll things, from trade to the border to staffing changes,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “He wants to make things that he’s been discussing for a while happen. He’s tired of the wait game.”

On policy, Trump is making sudden decisions without much staff consultation, wagering that they will pay dividends-- accepting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s invitation for a face-to-face meeting and threatening to veto before ultimately signing the most recent government spending bill.

On the stump, Trump is an improvisational showman. He swooped into the working-class Ohio town of Richfield on Thursday to pitch his infrastructure plan but diverged from his script to deliver surprise commentary on a medley of issues. He threatened to delay a newly renegotiated trade deal with South Korea and announced that the United States may soon withdraw troops from Syria.

…Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former New York mayor and longtime Trump friend, said the president is entering a new phase: “It took time for the president to discover how far he could move things and find the pieces that fit. Now, he sees he has an open field.”

To many beyond the White House, the Trump White House appears dangerously dysfunctional. Theodore B. Olson, a Republican former solicitor general, declined to join Trump’s legal team in the Russia matter.

“I think everybody would agree this is turmoil, it’s chaos, it’s confusion, it’s not good for anything,” Olson recently told anchor Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC. “We always believe that there should be an orderly process, and of course government is not clean or orderly-- ever. But this seems to be beyond normal.”

…“This is now a president a little bit alone, isolated and without any moderating influences-- and, if anything, a president who is being encouraged and goaded on by people around him,” one Trump confidant said. “It really is a president unhinged.”

Other than Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the lone remaining enforcer is Kelly. But his power as chief of staff has been diminished. Officials said the days of Kelly hovering in the Oval Office morning to night and screening the president’s calls are over. Trump is largely circumventing Kelly’s strict protocols.

The president recently reached out to some people Kelly had sought to excommunicate, calling former communications director Anthony Scaramucci to banter about politics and inviting Lewandowski and Bossie to dinner in the residence.

“He’s rotating back to the people who actually like him and is more willing to take advice from those people,” Scaramucci said. “They’re more honest with him, and he’s more comfortable with them.”

Allies said Trump is reverting to the way he led the Trump Organization from his 26th-floor office suite at Trump Tower in Manhattan. There, staffers were functionaries or lawyers, and many of his advisers were outside the company-- rival business leaders, media figures and bankers. Back then, Trump controlled his orbit himself from behind his cluttered desk, relying on assistant Rhona Graff to field calls.

Trump has welcomed friends to the White House recently, including former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who visited Tuesday and met with Bolton, among others. And the president has turned to outside surrogates to carry his messages. After consulting with Trump, Newsmax chief executive Christopher Ruddy went on ABC’s “This Week” on March 25 and revealed that Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin was expected to be removed. Trump fired him three days later.

“It was the direction [Trump] was always bound to take,” said Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official. “The phone book at the White House was filled by complete strangers. . .  But now he knows how the White House operates, and he’ll operate it himself.”

Ascendant in the West Wing are advisers who play to Trump’s gut: Kudlow on tax cuts and deregulation, Bolton on a muscular approach to foreign affairs, Peter Navarro on protectionist trade policies, Stephen Miller on crackdowns on undocumented immigrants and Kellyanne Conway on an open press strategy and tangling with reporters.

Like Conway, Bolton and Kudlow are seasoned cable news commentators who share Trump’s hard-charging instincts and have no illusions about his governing style. Officials said they are expected to cater to the president’s wishes and seek to avoid the internal knife fights that have befallen many a Trump aide.

Kudlow has told Cohn’s top deputies that he would like them to stay on in their posts, a gesture that West Wing aides described as a reflection of Kudlow’s respect for Cohn’s operation as well as his understanding of the difficulties he would probably encounter if he attempted an overhaul.

Kudlow, 70, is a generational peer of Trump and a staple of the New York business elite to which Trump has long aspired. Kudlow has privately told associates that the president has asked him to be an energetic salesman on television-- by acting as a principal, with speeches and road trips-- for the Republican-authored tax law ahead of the midterm elections, as opposed to functioning as a behind-the-scenes manager, according to people who have spoken with him.

“He’s squaring up his economic policy with the right adviser for him,” Giuliani said. “Gary was really good, but I don’t know if Gary ever embraced the Trump economic ideas. He was more of a traditional Democrat or moderate Republican. Kudlow is a real cheerleader for the tax cuts in a way Gary never was, although he helped get them passed.”

Bolton, meanwhile, has told allies that he may make major changes on the National Security Council staff but has been careful not to reveal his plans until he formally takes over later this month. He has been working to appear as a team player-- touting his bond with Pompeo and lunching Tuesday with McMaster-- despite his reputation as a sharp-elbowed bureaucratic brawler, officials said.

Ohanian sees an applecart overturning in November

Trump has been frustrated by news stories of White House tumult and has ordered aides to contest the notion that there is chaos. He also has vented frequently about the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill, griping that Congress did not fully fund his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall and labeling Republican congressional leaders “weak negotiators.”

Adding to this weekend’s chaos, was the White House lie that Shulkin left as Veterans Afffairs Secretary on his own, even though everyone knows Trump forced him out-- and even though Shulkin, who hasn’t submitted a resignation letter and even though he himself confirmed that he was fired on NBC and in an NY Times OpEd that he penned the day after Trump unceremoniously ousted him. Lawyers say Trump needs to rewrite history to make Shulkin’s departure voluntary in order to temporarily fill the post with whomever he wants. He picked a right-wing crazy person, Robert Wilkie, instead of anyone from the Veterans Affairs Department. Trump didn’t want to appoint Shulkin’s number 2, Deputy Secretary Thomas Bowman, because he opposes Trump’s plans to privatize the V.A., something Wilkie is fine with. This week Blue America is asking for contributions for progressive military veterans running for Congress and committed to preventing Trump from privatizing the V.A. To see their names and contributing to their campaigns, please click on the ActBlue thermometer on the right.