Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  Tucker Carlson's son quits JD Vance's team after pundit suggested Trump might be 'Antichrist' News from inside the belly of the beast.  JD Vance is best bud with Tucker Carlson.  Back in the day, Tucker got his ambitious son, Buckley Carlson, a job on Vance's staff. I personally like to imagine that the rest of the staff called him Skippy.  That was back when Carlson, Vance, and Trump were all posing alike in their professed opposition to the neoconservatives of the Bush family circle and their forever wars.  Now, Trump is the wartime president, Carlson (bless his otherwise infernal soul) will not abide that.  Vance has no choice but to abide whatever Trump does and put a smile on his face while Trump does it, devastating as it may be to JD's chances of prevailing as a peace candidate in 2028.  Also devastating to Skip Carlson's chances of being a bigshot. Imagine my despair. 

 Presidential authority as the commander in chief of the armed forces, under Article II of the US Constitution, is real and important, but it surely isn't all that President Donald Trump needs it to be for this war to be even remotely lawful.  To review six familiar points: (1) The US Constitutional reserves to Congress exclusively the right to "declare" war; (2) Probably because the framers considered the point too obvious to require stating, there is no specific statement that undeclared wars are illegal wars; (3) The courts have refused to make that inference leaving a gap in the whole notion of the checking of war powers, but (4) Congress, overriding President Nixon's veto, filled that gap with the War Powers Act of 1973, and (5) if Congress does not approve President Trump's action, then under the War Powers Act, the President will have to end hostilities within 60 days of starting them -- which would be by the end of April, but (6) nobody expects President T...

Isn't it past time we flush this ugly fellow out of our national politics and conversation, now? I don't mean President Trump.  For now I'll give him a bye.  The guy we need to flush at long last is ... Elon Musk. Seen in the photo here with one of his exes, the actress Talulah Riley, best known for Westworld.   Musk busted pleading to visit Pedo Island in Epstein files The world's richest man repeatedly sought to arrange a visit to "Little St James," aka Epstein's island or Lolita island. In particular, in November 2012, Epstein emailed Musk in expectation of such a visit, asking about logistics, "how many people will you be for the heli to island?"  The future head of the US Department on Government Efficiency responded, "Probably just Talulah and me. What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?" Musk had divorced Talulah in March of that year. Plainly though  they had not cut each other off entirely: they would remarry in...

 The administration of President Donald Trump has made many of us eager to cheer on virtually any check or balance as it appears, even as we were briefly cheering on the old neoconservatives of and around the Cheney family (yes, the old torture caucus), insofar as it limited Trump's reach. It served a human and humane purpose.  Anyway, the issue of the independence of the Federal Reserve, America's central bank (the third central bank in the history of our country) has come to the fore of late.  The political hack's instinct is often to advance the cause of inflation, in part because it assists net debtors in relieving them of some of the net value of their indebtedness, and that can have stimulative effects in the marketplace and at the ballot box.  Also, if the nation-state itself is a debtor, as the United States certainly is on a world history record-breaking scale, then reducing the value of the currency on which its bonds were issued is a way of getting the ben...

The US administration has now decided to let Nvidia export its advanced H200 semiconductors to the People's Republic of China. A think tank that keeps track of such things, the Institute for Progress, says that the H200 is approximately six times as powerful as the previously most advanced chip the US has been exporting to the PRC. The usual (bipartisan) policy has been to try to keep China behind the cutting edge on such chips, given our competitive situation with them with regard to AI, and for that matter given the potential for a military showdown in which computer sophistication could well play a part.  There was a time when I would have hailed such a decision.  As a sort of laissez-faire reflex.  What business does the US government have telling Nvidia they can't sell to willing buyers? Heck, there is a neat legend surrounding Nvidia and how it was founded after a late-night BS meeting in a Denny's restaurant. Sort of like the legends of how firms that would be Gian...

Those of you who receive my newsletter, Center and Margins , will likely at the beginning of October receive an essay (on the 'Center' side) that overlaps with the material below.  But the overlap is not repetition, and may indeed be a sort of parallax.  ---------------------------- On the Epstein matter in general, Trump is simply saying what he deems he has to say. Politically, this is a toughy for him. After all, perhaps even more than immigration/border issues, revulsion about pedophilia and elite conspiracy are what has gotten him where he is. During his first campaign, in 2016, the emails of John Podesta, a Clinton family advisor, were leaked to the public (through Russian efforts) and one circle of theorists decided they were all written in a secret code that when decoded detailed Podesta’s involvement with a child-abuse ring. There is no evidence of this, the ‘code’ was something the theorists made up. This soon led to a bizarre story about the basement of a Washingto...

  Virginia always provides a test for a new President. Indeed, Virginia's Governorship may not run for a second term -- so there is never an incumbent advantage. As a consequence the race for the post often has a fascinatingly hot contest the year after the election of a new President to work out of the Oval office right across the river.   In 2005, a year after the clear victory of George W. Bush's re-election campaign (so much clearer than the way W ended up with his first term -- but we will speak naught of that) -- Democrat Tim Kaine (pictured) won the Governor's seat in Richmond.  In 2004, W had received 53.68% of the popular vote in the state, while Dem. John Kerry received just 45.48%.  Kaine's victory a year later indicated the political tides were shifting, and that Bush's post-9/11 momentum was spent.  Likewise, in 2021, a year after the victory of Joseph Biden over Donald Trump, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia gubernatorial contest. Th...

  Powell has done a fine job as chair of the Federal Reserve.  He is under attack, as Fed chairs often come under attack.  President Trump clearly wants an interest rate cut.  POTUS sometimes talks as if such a cut is a nice reward for a well-performing dog. Our economy has "virtually no inflation" he has said, and "is doing really well," so the rate should be cut to 2 percent.  Good dog. Here's the treat.   That is insane.  The economy seems to be avoiding inflation because Powell has kept rates up.  After all, one of the consequences of high rates is to make fixed income instruments, bonds and the like, attractive. Investment in boring long-term bonds is like investment of one's cash in a pillow case.  It is money effectively taken out of circulation -- hence it is a damper on prices.   To be clear, Powell is not holding rates at historically high levels, unless one's historical lens is quite near sighted. Rates are roughly...

This seems odd, but no more odd than so much else that is going on around us.  The tanning salon tax may seem a rather small piece in the giant jigsaw of US fiscal issues, but it may prove monumental this year.  It was also only a rather small piece of the legislation in which it first arose, the Affordable Care Act, passed by Congress in 2010 and signed by President Barack Obama. Pne provision there requires that tanning salons using ultraviolet lamps pay an excise tax. The real reason for this was that the guesstimated revenue from that tax made the numbers come out right. The purported reason was that salons cause skin cancer so it is fair to use the proceeds from such a tax to support healthcare programs.   The tax, 10% of the charge, is imposed on consumers by the shops in the same manner as a state sales tax, and the salon pays it to the US Treasury quarterly.      The Trump budget bill, in the firm in which it was unveiled by the Ways and Means ...

Supplemental briefs in the matter of KENNEDY v. BRAIDWOOD MANAGEMENT arrived at the US Supreme Court Monday, May 5. The court had requested them subsequent to oral argument on the case, which is itself unusual.  KENNEDY is the latest in a line of cases challenging the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Specifically, this case involves the ACA's creation of the Preventive Services Task Force, a body that passes on which preventive medical services must be covered by compliant insurance plans.  Braidwood, a small Christian owned business in Texas, doesn't want to be required to pay so its employees can be protected from HIV infection. Braidwood says that the coverage mandates raise an issue under the appointments clause, Art. II, section 1, clause 2. This clause distinguishes between "officers of the United States" on the one hand and "inferior officers" on the other. Officers of the United States must be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the...

Trump's tariffs are imbecilic.  If they ever go into effect as designed they stand to do the whole world economy an enormous amount of harm. Even if they are reversed quickly by one route or another, -- not just put off for 90 day intervals but reversed -- they stand to do harm, because these things are not simply a switch easy to turn on and off and on again.   But let us think about a simple bilateral example of this stupidity for a moment. Trump proposes to create a "reciprocal" tariff of 47% on imports from Madagascar, to go into effect when the latest "pause" comes to an end. Why? On some level (the one that justifies the word "reciprocal") he seems to want us to believe that Madagascar at present has a 47% tariff, or greater, on the US, so it is the least we can do on behalf of fairness.  You will likely not be surprised to learn that that is not the case.  About 40% of imports to Madagascar require payment of a 20% customs duty.  Not 47%. Not ev...

On the final day in March, Marine Le Pen, a Trump-style French politician and a Member of the European Parliament, was convicted along with eight other MEPs of misappropriating more than  €4 million of the funds of the EP for the coffers of Le Pen's political party, known as the National Front.  With luck, she has now been consigned to the dustbin of history.  Le Pen was sentenced to four years in prison and a five-year ban on running for political office. So unless she can reverse that she will not be in the running for France's next President in 2027.  Wow.  A country where you can NOT be President after being convicted of a felony.  What a concept! I guess we cannot import that idea because ... the new US tariffs. Importing any damned thing is getting expensive!    

  If there was any one subject about which Donald Trump has been pellucidly clear, it has been this:  Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are to remain sacrosanct. Indeed, I would argue this has been central to his takeover of the Republican Party -- he adopted not just elements of the New Deal but elements of the Great Society too, jettisoning the political baggage of having to oppose them.  When he did debate other Republicans in the spring of 2016 he was consistently 'to their left' on such matters.  And (a distinct but related point) when he was President the first time, he consistently told us that in another two weeks or so we would see a great new plan for health care coverage that would make Obamacare obsolete. Talk like a populist though you walk like a plutocrat.  The Republicans in the House of Representatives, it appears, did not get any of those memos.    One and only one Republican voted against the budget resolution, which uses Medic...

By now you have all seen the footage. Elon Musk, amidst the pageantry of the so-called "indoor parade" after the inauguration of a President -- Musk showed his own view of our new chief executive by offering him a long familiar sort of salute.  Then, to make it clear that this was no accidental expression of exuberance, he turned around and did it again. He wanted to make sure we all saw the Sieg Heil gesture. [Also, look at that facial expression: neither accidental nor exuberant.]  Nor has he denied that this is what he was doing.  Others have denied it for him. But he has not denied it.  He has said that "they" shouldn't make such a big deal of it.  That is not a denial.  “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks,” he wrote. “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.” I am happy to speak for a moment as one of the "they" who think this a big deal.  We don't think you're Hitler, dude. We think you're Hugo Ferdinand Boss.  The German cl...

  On the 10th of the month, the US Supreme Court heard arguments on "whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act" violates the First Amendment.  One week later, the Supreme Court issued per curiam opinion with no dissents upholding the law. Sotomayor and Gorsuch each filed a concurrence.  By way of reminder: this case arose because President Trump, in his first administration, sought to make it impossible for TikTok to continue in the US. He purported to ban it by executive order. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-tiktok/ But a district court judge struck down the ban on the ground that there would have to be a statutory mandate.   Under the Biden administration, Congress passed a statutory mandate, and that is the law that (oddly, with Trump's blessing) the PRC backed management of TikTok was seeking to have declared unconstitutional on first amendment ground...

Amid all the discussions of Trump's cabinet pick, that circling around his choice of a Treasury Secretary has fascinated me the most. This is, after all, Hamilton's heir.  What other cabinet post can you think of that is at the center of a Broadway show?  George Washington had only four members in the first cabinet: an Attorney General (Randolph), a Secretary of War (Knox), a Secretary of State (Jefferson) and of the Treasury (Hamilton). Those remain the four most critical of cabinet offices. Okay, Jefferson was also at the center of a Broadway show, 1776 -- but as the title suggests it wasn't about his work as a cabinet secretary.  Hamilton , very largely, is.  It delights me that Trump has chosen Scott Bessent.  I suppose that if the Trumpets meant the crap they've been saying for so long about George Soros, about how evil he is, how he reaches his monstrous tentacles into everything ... if they meant it they would now be venting their fury at Bessent, the o...

Random comeback that should have happened.  Trump: "I am the father of IVF" Interviewer: So are you grandpa to all the children of IVF? I bet you plan to send out a LOT of Christmas cards! ------------------------ Now it's in YOUR head. 

  During the now-infamous debate between the former President and the incumbent President, the debate that forced the incumbent, Joseph Biden, out of the campaign altogether, there was a moment that looks a lot different now than it did at the time. There was a moment when Donald Trump was going on about the wonders that would be worked for America by his, Trump's, great relationship with Putin. He said, for example, that by a simple phone call he, Trump, would get the Wall Street Journal reporter, then being held in prison by the Russians, released. In fact, Trump even spoke some kind words about that reporter, Evan Gershkovich.  I don't remember the words -- and I'm too lazy to look them up-- but they were an exception to the general rule of calling reporters "enemies of the people".  As is his wont. Except, apparently, when praise is convenient. Anyway ... it would only take one phone call....  At the time, Biden simply kept his head down and stayed silent. Th...

  As you may see from the news stories to which I linked you yesterday: the former President is open about the fact that he would not use US forces to protect Taiwan from an invasion from the Chinese mainland. He has allowed for the possibility that Taiwan could pay the US enough to change his mind: but I doubt that deal would ever get done.  The business of lending out an army for mercenary use didn't end well for  Yevgeny Prigozhin. [In case you have forgotten the name, you'll probably remember the face, here.]  One fascinating fact about this situation: Taiwan is the center of the world's semiconductor industry. Somewhere at the back of the Orange Guy's alleged mind is the thought, "If the PRC takes them over, the fighting will likely destroy their semiconductor industry, allowing the US to re-assert its dominance in that matter."  That is insane, but no more so that his babbling about sharks.  Anyway, there are lots of industries in the United States th...

We as a country will have a wild few weeks now while Donald J. Trump is (a) receiving the formal nomination of a major political party for the presidency, and (b) also receiving his probation report and sentence. An odd intertwining of processes. It is a good time to try to put one’s thoughts together with some clarity. So … what do I think? First, I want to set aside the warnings we hear from the former president and his admirers, that “if it can happen to Trump, it can happen to you.” Yes, I know it can happen to me. I’m an ordinary non-billionaire non-celebrity. I'm a schmoe. It has always been the case that “it,” arrest, trial, conviction, sentence could happen to me. The fact that it is happening to Trump means he joins the club in which the rest of us are members, it doesn’t bring the club into existence! “They” don’t have to get through Trump to come after me, They could always have just come after me. When someone like Elon Musk says that, though, he may mean, “since it i...