Political Irony

The Medical Examiner has officially declared the death of Jeffrey Epstein a suicide by hanging.

I can actually believe that. No really. After all, someone wouldn’t actually have to snuff him themselves. All they would have needed to do is talk to him, and point out that he was about to spend the rest of his disgusting life in jail, probably being raped by other inmates three times a day (would serve him right, yes?).

Or subtly threaten the life, health, or happiness of anyone he cares about (of course, that assumes he is capable of caring about anyone other than himself). I’m sure it would not take much effort to convince him that he has nothing to live for, and why should he go through an embarrassing public airing of his horrid life?

The only thing that could have gotten him out of jail was if he squealed on a bunch of rich and powerful people, who would then make sure he paid dearly in multiple horrible ways for the rest of his short miserable life.

The last thing Epstein would have wanted was justice. So why wouldn’t he take the easy way out.

New York magazine just published an interesting article titled “Trump’s State-by-State Approval Ratings Should Scare the MAGA Out of Him“. The article points out that current polls show that Donald Trump’s job-approval ratings are negative in ten states that he won in 2016, by 9 to 12 points.

The article then makes what appears to be a reasonable assumption, that Trump will only win the states where he has a positive approval rating. Which means he will win 119 electoral votes (and lose 419 electoral votes). That is an incredible landslide for whomever runs against him.

There’s just one big problem with this. Polls make lots of assumptions about who will actually vote. These assumptions could well be wrong. Furthermore, if enough people read articles like this one and conclude that Trump is toast, they may not bother to go vote against him.

Like what happened last time, when all the polls showed that Hilary Clinton was going to win. Don’t be fooled again.

On Monday, 21 Republican senators, led by Ted Cruz, sent a letter to the Trump administration, proposing that Trump issue an executive order to give another huge tax cut to the wealthy. You might have noticed that Trump and the Republicans don’t talk much about the last tax cut that they gave to the wealthy, since trickle-down economics again didn’t do as much for the 99% as was promised. Which is probably why this one is being kept somewhat under the radar.

But I want to point out that this proposal is actually worse than last tax cut. The Republicans want Trump to index capital gains taxes to inflation. Here is what the GOP is trying to fix, in their own words:

They want to protect investors in stocks and bonds from inflation. How nice! Unfortunately, this only applies to capital gains, which are already taxed far less than income (money for which one actually works being income).

Furthermore, if you have a regular savings account that earns interest, you don’t get any protection from inflation. According to the FDIC, the national average interest rate on savings accounts as of February 2019 was 0.09% APY. That is 20 times less than inflation, which is currently around 1.8%, so your savings account is losing money. But you still have to pay taxes on that interest.

It should be no surprise that 86% of the benefit of the GOP proposal would go to the top 1% of wealthiest Americans.

You are likewise not protected from inflation if you haven’t received a raise recently, or if you are a retiree on a fixed income.

But the really ironic thing about this proposal is that it causes inflation. Inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods. When the wealthy get more money, they often use it to buy property. Not just for vacation homes, but also to turn them into bed and breakfasts. This drives up the cost of housing,

I live in a city where housing prices have gone up as much as 30% in a single year, causing homelessness to spike.

So this proposal will actually increase inflation, but the people who will be causing this inflation will be protected from it. That’s just insane.

A new study shows that hate crimes more than doubled in US counties where Donald Trump held a campaign rally, compared to similar counties that did not host a rally. In general, hate crimes increased 17% in 2017, year over year.

While it is true that correlation does not necessarily imply causality, a considerable number of reported hate crimes directly reference Trump. So he is unquestionably a catalyst.

I’ve been on an extended trip recently, and returned home just a couple of days ago to find an interesting story, the sex trafficking case of Jeffrey Epstein. Initially I didn’t pay significant attention to it, as it didn’t seem all that related to politics (ironic or otherwise). But now that I have time to look into it, I find that I was wrong. This has everything to do with politics.

This may be the story of the century, up there with Watergate. In fact, this could be much bigger than a little break-in in 1972 that eventually led to the downfall of president Richard Nixon. Indeed, Epstein has ties to a large number of politicians in both parties. And there is strong evidence that he has been blackmailing these people, along with other wealthy and powerful players.

The real question is “how did Jeffrey Epstein make so much money“? He claims to be a billionaire and a hedge fund manager, but there is no evidence that he has ever done business with anyone. Everything is secret, safely offshore.

So why would someone who is a confessed and convicted sex offender have all these wealthy and influential friends who were only too happy to give him lots of money? Or arrange to keep him out of jail for his crimes?

In the end, this all hinges on whether he has enough powerful people blackmailed so that he can again avoid any significant punishment. Only by focusing attention on this and making sure it is investigated fairly and throughly can we avoid this getting swept under the rug and forgotten.

By now, pretty much everyone knows that the Democrats are trying to decide whether or not to impeach Donald Trump. However, impeachment is only half the game, and while Democrats control the House and can impeach Trump anytime they want, it is up to the Republican controlled Senate to convict him and then remove him from office. And conviction requires a vote of two-thirds of the Senate. Clearly that is extremely unlikely.

I’m on the side of Nancy Pelosi, who thinks that if the Dems impeach Trump and the Senate acquits him, it will probably backfire on them and could get Trump reelected, which would be a complete disaster. On the other hand, if the Dems do nothing, that will also hurt them severely.

However, David Faris has come up with what I think is a brilliant solution. His solution consists of a series of steps.

1. Keep holding hearings and investigating Trump and his administration.
2. In late August 2020, just before the Republican National Convention, start impeachment proceedings (the normal path to decide whether to impeach). This will reflect poorly on the Republicans during their convention.
3. (extra bonus step) Undoubtably, Trump will go on a total rampage, tweeting up a shit storm. That will make Tump and the Republicans look even worse.
4. Draw out the impeachment proceedings as long as possible. In fact, until a day or two before the presidential election in November. That’s right, vote to impeach Trump immediately before the election.

There will not be enough time for the Senate to acquit Trump, so Trump cannot say he has been vindicated. In fact, as part of the impeachment proceedings, the House should have gotten ahold of Trump’s tax returns, and plenty of other incriminating evidence from other places, making both Trump and the Republicans who support him look really bad.

How bad? Bad enough that the Democrats could retake the Senate. And if that happens, then it is even possible that the Republicans go ahead and vote to convict Trump in order to distance themselves from him.

Not only do I think this is a good solution, in fact the best solution, I think it just might be the only solution that can save our country’s democracy.