https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/06/dely-and-deny-deny-deny/
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Two Sick Old Men from the Black Paintings by Francisco Goya.
“Deny, deny, deny. That’s how you hit your numbers. If you take a breath or think about any of these cases, you’re going to fall behind.”
– Dr. Debby Day, former Cigna medical director
It appears that the killer of Brian Thompson left his manifesto etched on the spent casings of the bullets used to gun down the CEO of UnitedHealthcare outside the Midtown Hilton just down the block from Rockefeller Center: “Delay” and “Deny.” Those two chill words might also serve as the unofficial motto of the $500 billion health industry giant, whose investors Thompson was preparing to address.
Thompson, a 20-year veteran of the Minneapolis-based conglomerate, became CEO of UnitedHealthcare in 2021. In his three years at the helm, Thompson oversaw the rise of the corporation’s profits from $12 billion the year before he took over to more than $16 billion in 2023. He was lavishly rewarded for his services, pocketing more than $10.2 million in total compensation. The only cloud on the horizon was a pending Justice Department investigation of the company’s monopolistic practices. Indeed, some of the investors awaiting Thompson’s address at the Hilton may not have been so adoring of his sparkling corporate achievements. In May, Thompson was sued by a firefighters’ pension fund in March for insider trading. The suit charges that the CEO sold $15 million in company stock while failing to disclose the federal investigation into the company, which only became public after a Wall Street Journal article appeared on February 27, 2024, five months after Thompson became aware of the probe.
How those profits were generated is another story. Brian Thompson wasn’t a healthcare professional turned corporate titan. He was an accountant who’d learned the tricks of his trade at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Among the profit-enhancing schemes Thompson brought to UnitedHealth Care was a new method of cashing in on the privatization of Medicare by habitually denying claims to seniors who’d bought into the Medicare Advantage scam.
To pick just one example of this ruthless strategy, under Thompson’s tenure, UnitedHealth increased its denial rate of claims for post-acute care made by seniors who had suffered debilitating falls or strokes from 10.7 percent the year before he took over to more than 22.7 only a year later, when this shameful practice came under the scrutiny of a Senate committee. The same investigation found that UnitedHealthcare increased its denial rate for skilled nursing facilities by nine times from 2019 to 2022.
While Thompson was an executive at the company, UnitedHealthcare used an AI system to automate the denial of medical services. The program had a 90% error rate, resulting in thousands of people being denied medically necessary and fully covered treatments.
The Senate Committee report briefly made headlines, but it didn’t do much lasting damage to UnitedHealthcare or change its mode of profiteering through the systematic denial of claims. Instead, it left families suffocating under mounds of medical debt or bankrupted by bills they thought they’d bought insurance to cover. That’s mainly because one of UnitedHealthcare’s most significant corporate acquisitions has been the US Congress. Since 1990, UnitedHealth has made $34.4 million in political donations and invested more than $100,260,000 in lobbying since 1998.
It’s a depraved business model and you can understand how someone might have snapped and gone looking for revenge. Thompson’s wife, Paulette, said that the CEO had received threats: “There had been some threats. Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.” So that leaves about 20 million suspects…
+++
+ Annual Compensation Packages for Health Industry CEOs in 2023…
Michael Carson, WellCare: $23.5 million
Gail Boudreaux, Elevance Health, $21.9 million
Karen Lynch, CVSHealth: $21.6 million
Joseph Zubretsky, Molina Healthcare: $21.4 million
David Cordani, Cigna: $21 million
Sarah London, Centene, Corp.: $18.6 million
Bruce Broussard, Humana: $16.3 million
Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare: $10.2 million
A Gallup poll released this week shows growing dissatisfaction among Americans for both the quality of health care in the US and health insurance coverage. Nearly 55 percent of Americans say the quality of health care is either “low” or “poor,” a 24-year low. Meanwhile, around 60% say the quality of their health care insurance coverage is “low” or “poor.” The rising discontent crosses party lines.
+ If you followed the Harris campaign, you’d have no idea how pissed off most Americans are about the health insurance industry. Thanks, Obama, for devising a plan that drove everyone into their mendacious arms…!
+ In November, Pro Publica reported that UnitedHealthcare “through its subsidiary Optum, is focused on reducing “overutilization” of services for patients covered through its privately contracted Medicaid plans that are overseen by states…these plans cover some of the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable patients.”
+ Pro Publica found that UnitedHealthcare rewarded workers with bonuses based partly on their ability to convince providers to reduce the level of care or by referring therapists to peer review. According to reporter Annie Waldman, “former employees told us how they steamrolled providers to boost cost savings for the company. savings for the company. One said he felt like “a cog in the wheel of insurance greed.”
+ In 2021, the federal found UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest health insurer, was deploying dozens of algorithms to flag people who they decided were getting too much therapy, prompting scrutiny of the records and termination of care.
+ Keith McHenry at Food Not Bombs: “I will be getting another flood of calls today from Americans without food who were told by United Healthcare that I can deliver food to their homes. For the past year and a half, I get from 10 to 20 calls a day, and their stories are so sad, and all I can do is tell them to try 211.”
+ Anthem/Blue Cross Blue Shield in Connecticut, New York, and Missouri says it will no longer pay for anesthesia for the entire length of some surgeries. If the procedure lasts more than a certain time, anesthesia will not be covered for the duration. US health insurance companies are on their way toward adopting the Gaza Model. If amputations and other surgeries can be done without anesthesia, why pay for them?
+ The day after the killing of Brian Thompson, Anthem announced it was backing off (for now) on its plan to anesthesiology coverage, in Connecticut at least.
+ The Financial Times on the blowback from the systematic denial of coverage for life-saving treatments…
+ A new study by economist Jessica Min argues that non-college US employment has declined by over 1,000,000 positions since 2000 because average employer healthcare premiums have doubled, making middle-income workers not worth hiring.
+ There’s never been a more succinct definition of capitalism. Neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx could have put it so vividly.
+ Life expectancy:
Japan: 84 years
Australia: 83.2 years
Sweden: 83.1 years
Singapore: 82.9 years
UK: 82.06 years
Denmark: 81.3 years
Canada: 81.3 years
Cuba: 78.16 years
US: 77.43 years
+ If only we’d “defunded” health care the way we “defunded” the police…
+++
+ If Obama assembled a “team of rivals,” Trump has surrounded himself with a team of plutocrats and billionaires.
Scott Bessent, hedge fund manager and former CIO of Soros Fund was picked by Trump to lead the Department of the Treasury. Net worth: $1 billion.
Massad Boulos, Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law and the CEO of a Nigerian motor vehicle company, is set to become a senior advisor to the White House on Arab and Middle Eastern Affairs. Net Worth: Around $1 billion.
Doug Burgum, former North Dakota governor and CEO of Great Plains Software, who Trump picked to head the Interior Department. Net Worth: $1.1 billion.
Stephen Feinberg, a co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management who ran the firm’s defense sector investments, appears to be in line to become the number two at the Pentagon. Net Worth $5 billion.
Jared Isaacman, CEO of the Pennsylvania-based processing firm Shift4 Payments, who also founded the defense firm Draken International and sold it to Blackstone in 2019 for a reported nine-figure sum, is Trump’s pick for administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Net Worth: $3 billion.
Charles Kushner, Ivanka’s father-in-law, founder of Kushner Companies real estate firm, and beneficiary of a Trump pardon, as ambassador to France. Net Worth: $1 billion.
Kelly Loeffler: the former Georgia GOP senator married to is married to Intercontinental Exchange founder Jeff Sprecher, was chosen by Trump to run the Small Business Administration. Net worth: $1.1 billion.
Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is Trump’s pick for Commerce Secretary. Net worth: $1.5 billion.
Linda McMahan, who Trump tapped to head (or kill off) the Department of Education, the former CEO of the World Wrestling, and chair of the America First Policy Institute. Net Worth: $3 billion.
Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and Twitter and reportedly the world’s richest human, was tapped by Trump to co-head the Department of Government Efficiency. Net Worth: $344.6 billion.
Mehmet Oz, TV doctor and snake oil salesman, who Trump wants to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Net worth: $100 million to $315 million.”
John Phelan, a financier and founder of MSD Capital, is Trump’s Secretary of the Navy nominee. Net Worth: Around $1 billion.
Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and former pharmaceutical exec, who Trump tapped to co-head his dismantling of the federal government group known as DOGE. Net Worth: $1 billion.
Warren Stevens, Trump’s pick for ambassador to the UK, is the head of Stephens, Inc., the Arkansas investment bank founded by former Clinton backer Jackson Stephens. Net worth: $3.4 billion.
Donald Trump, TV personality who was re-elected President of the United States. Net Worth: $6.6 billion.
Steve Witkoff, a real estate tycoon who owns 51 major properties, including the Woolworth Building, in Manhattan, is slated to serve as Trump’s envoy to the Middle East. Net worth: $1 billion.
+ The combined wealth of Trump/Biden’s cabinet nominees/members…
Trump: $10.7 billion*
Biden: $120 million
(*Doesn’t include Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy.)
+ Median Net Worth of a US citizen age 35-45: $91,000.
+ Hooray for billionaire populism!
+++
+ November 2024 was the second warmest November on record in the Copernicus ERA5 dataset, at 1.62C above preindustrial levels. It was second only to November 2023, which was 1.75C above preindustrial.
+ A new study reported in Oceanographic Magazine suggests that plankton may not survive global warming. The effects on the oceans’ biotic life are described as “devasting.”
+ Once an infrequent event, there is now an open water passage in the Arctic Ocean for nearly 40 days a year.
+ The small North Carolina town of Carrboro (pop. 21,103) has launched the nation’s first-ever climate accountability lawsuit against an electric utility. The suit alleges that Duke Energy has run a decades-long ‘deception campaign’ about fossil fuels.
+ Brazil has become the sixth nation in the World to surpass the 50 GW mark in solar energy production. Solar now provides 20% of Brazil’s electricity. This year alone, 189 solar energy plants were built.
+ Instead of setting aside more acreage for threatened wildlife in advance of the rapacious team that will soon be running the Interior Department, Biden’s Secretary of the Interior, Deb Halland, announced last week she’s cutting the critical habitat protection for the imperiled Canada Lynx by more than 88 percent in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Mike Garrity, Alliance for the Wild Rockies: “It appears that the FWS’ strategy is to cause lynx to go extinct in the lower 48 states so they no longer have to pretend to protect habitat for lynx.”
+ There are now more than 280 million electric bikes and mopeds, which are reducing carbon emissions and the demand for oil by more than all other electric vehicles combined.
+ Philosopher Martha Nussbaum files a report on America’s slaughterhouses in the New York Review of Books: “The meat industry has great power in American politics and even has a voice in the confirmation of cabinet-level officials…. Laws protecting animals from cruel treatment routinely exclude the animals people like to eat.”
+ To rephrase Ben Franklin: “It’s a beautiful planet if you can keep it.” (Not looking good, unfortunately.)
+ While I was out counting wintering raptors on a frigid Saturday morning on the French Prairie in the northern Willamette Valley, Our Little Mountain emerged from behind the usual curtain of low November clouds, looking pretty majestic under a new coating of snow…
+++
+ Kamala Harris was one of the most scripted politicians of our time. Her fatal problem was that it was a bad script, from which she didn’t possess the skill or political sense to deviate.
+ According to the Huffington Post, Harris campaign aides said internal polling never showed her ahead of Trump. Then maybe they should have diverted a couple hundred million into trying to win the House.
+ David Plouffe, the top strategist to two failed Democratic presidential campaigns, said last week that Democrats “have to dominate the moderate vote.” Of course, at this point, after following the advice of people like Plouffe for 3 decades, the Democrats would have to move substantially to the Left to attract any “moderates”…
+ The last outstanding congressional race was decided this week when Democrat Adam Gray declared victory in CA-13. The final tally showed him ahead of Rep. John Duarte by 187 votes, a Democratic Party flip. The last time a Democrat won the most contested race was in 2012. This will leave the GOP with a slender five-vote margin in the House.
+ How far did Trump’s win travel in state elections? Not very far. Out of nearly 6,000 statehouse seats on the ballot nationwide, the Republicans only gained a total of 58 seats.
+ Of course, in some states, like the former Democratic strongholds of Ohio and West Virginia, there’s just not that much ground left for Trump and MAGA to gain…
+ Losing Ohio…Sherod Brown’s last four elections.
+ A similar Democratic collapse occurred in West Virginia, where the Democrats held a 54-46 advantage in the West Virginia House in 2012. In 2025, the GOP will hold an astounding 89-12 super-majority. In 2014, the Republicans held a two-seat majority in the West Virginia state Senate 18R-16D. When it opens for session in January, the GOP advantage will be 30R-4D.
+ Rahm Emanuel, who can’t bear to be out of the spotlight, says he wants to be the new head of the DNC. There’s an entire landscape of reasons to oppose Emanuel, perhaps none more illustrative of what a creep he is than his answer to Tim Russert’s questions about his support for the Iraq war:
+ Astra Taylor wrote an instructive piece in the Guardian on how the Democrats’ vaunted ground game ran aground: “When Democrats insist that Trump had no ground game, they ignore the right wing’s investment and presence in spaces that are not purely electoral and that engage people year-round.”
+++
+ From 2019 to 2023, the manufacturing sector added 113,000 jobs in the US, almost all of them in the Sunbelt states. The rustbelt continues to shed jobs.
Manufacturer Job Gains/Losses by State, 2019-2023
Texas 49,450 (5.5%)
Florida 36,986 (9.6%)
Georgia 20,303 (5%)
Arizona 16,797 (9.5%)
Utah 15,990 (11.8%)
Wisconsin -8,759 (-1.8)
Michigan -12,449 (-2%)
Ohio -13,441 (-1.9%)
New York -18,432 (-4.2%)
Washington – 19,351 (-6.7)
+ Swipe fees for credit cards are the third largest expense behind rent and payroll for small businesses in the US. There’s no real justification for them. The fees constitute a 4% tax assessed by Visa on every non-cash consumer transaction.
+ After working at a Florida IHOP for 13 years, Victoria Hughes was fired after feeding a homeless man a stack of pancakes and some water.
+ We get more accurate assessments of how the US economy is really doing for people who live and work here from outfits like Redfin than from the Treasury Department. A Redfin survey found that 22% of renters are spending all their income directly on rent, while another 20% are working a second job to afford it: “Renters are also dipping into their retirement funds to keep a roof over their heads, with 13% pulling money out and another 12% contributing less to savings.”
+ In the entire county of Los Angeles (population 4+ million), only 498 houses (3+ beds, 2+ baths) are currently listed for less than $1 million.
+ Flint still doesn’t have safe drinking water and Biden still hasn’t fired Louis De Joy…
+++
+ Vivek Ramaswamy explained how the Trump administration intends to defund federal programs it doesn’t like without congressional approval: “The executive branch has no obligation to send out a payment if it is wasteful or if it is known to be fraudulent or has a reason to believe that there is an error associated with the payment.” This is a new twist on the line item veto and pretty much how Trump has justified stiffing contractors on bills his entire career.
+ And what does Vivek have his sights set on cutting? How about “hundreds of billions” from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which he told CNBC can be “extracted just from basic program integrity measures.”
+ Alex Lawson, Executive Director, Social Security Works: “Elon Musk’s commission is a plot to destroy our Social Security by giving it to Wall Street executives — so that you get nothing and they get everything.”
+ Ramaswamy and Musk’s mission isn’t to reduce waste in government but to waste the government.
+ CNN obtained audio and video of Vivek Ramaswamy denouncing his current DOGE sidekick Elon Musk as a stooge for China. Ramaswamy repeatedly called Musk “in China’s pocket,” said he bent “the knee to Xi Jinping” and jumped “like a circus monkey” to win China’s business.
+ Rep. Richard McCormick (R-GA): “We’re going to have some hard decisions. We’ve got to bring the Democrats in to talk about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. There are hundreds of billions to be saved [cut], and we know how to do it. We just have to have the stomach to take those challenges on.”
Maria Bartriromo, Fox Business: “Do you believe that the Defense budget should be cut?”
McCormick: “I’m not a big fan of that.”
+ John Bolton: “The single most important priority in foreign affairs today is to increase the American defense budget. I think Congress would support a major increase if Trump proposed it. I hope that’s what he does.”
+ Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s choice for Counterterrorism adviser: “I’ll give one simple way the Ukraine war will end, the president has mentioned. He will say to that murderous former KGB colonel, that thug who runs the Russian Federation: you will negotiate now or the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts. That’s how he will force those gentlemen to come to an arrangement to stop the bloodshed.”
+ “A sclerotic monopsony”: What Shyam Sankar, Chief Technology Officer at Palantir, calls the Defense Department for its “communist approach” to the acquisition of weapons technology. (Palantir is on the receiving end of billions of dollars in federal contracts from the Pentagon, CIA, and DHS.)
+++
+ Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, drank in ways that concerned his colleagues at Fox News, according to 10 current and former Fox employees who spoke with NBC News. Two of those people said that on more than a dozen occasions during Hegseth’s time as a co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend, which began in 2017, they smelled alcohol on him before he went on air. “Everyone would be talking about it behind the scenes before he went on the air,” one of the former Fox employees said.
+ Given the number of kids he’s about to help slaughter, you’d be suspect if you weren’t an alcoholic. Look at what the carnage of the Civil War did to Grant.
+ Hegseth is an awful, if not ridiculous, choice to run the Pentagon. But some of the objections are ludicrous, such as this from former Navy brass: “If you’re: China, China, China, why would you pick an Army guy to run the Defense Department?”
+ The great Jane Mayer writing in the New Yorker on Trump’s pick to head the Pentagon: “A whistle-blower report and other documents suggest that Trump’s nominee to run the Pentagon was forced out of previous leadership positions for financial mismanagement, sexist behavior, and being repeatedly intoxicated on the job.”
+ Hegseth on why his group, Vets for Freedom, went into debt running ads supporting the Iraq War (which Trump opposed, at least retrospectively) during the 2008 presidential campaign:
I’m really proud of the work we did at Vets for Freedom. I didn’t start the organization, but I came in shortly after it was started and built on the success of the group, and we fought for the warfighters during the surge in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our job was to bring the message of what we believed to be a successful strategy in the surge and what General Petreus was doing in Iraq and advocate that to the American people. And that made its way up to 2008. What was happening in 2008? Barack Obama was running against John McCain. John McCain had been a big advocate of the surge during the war in Iraq and we had worked a lot with him on Capitol Hill…Ultimately, at the very end, I’ll never forget, we were about two weeks out from the election, and the politico types were saying, ‘We’re looking at the polling, and McCain’s going to lose, and it’s time to turn off the spigot. He’s going to lose. And you tell that to a guy who’s back from war, who believes in the war, and has a candidate who’s fighting for that war? That lieutenant, which I was at the time, is going to say, ‘Go fuck yourself. I’m fighting for this war. I’m going to raise the money to do even more! I’m doubling down when you say the fight is lost. Because it matters to me, and it matters to the warfighters. And so we did.
+ Did anyone tell Trump about Hegseth’s devotion to McCain?
+ From a paper (The Effects of Combat Deployments on Veterans Outcomes) published in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy: “As millions of soldiers deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021, Veteran Affairs Disability Compensation payments quadrupled and the veteran suicide rate rose rapidly.”
+ Hegseth admitted to his first wife that he’d had five affairs in the first four years of their marriage…is still about 38 fewer than RFK Jr!
+ Hegseth seems to be on the ropes. Not because of the allegations of sexual assault, but because Trump doesn’t like drinkers. Apparently, DeSantis is in the wings, waiting to fill Hegseth’s shoes, though some lifts may be required.
+++
+ A new analysis of NYPD’s “shotspotter” system shows that 83% of the street surveillance network’s alerts might not have been triggered by gunfire.
+ Baltimore is on track to end the year with fewer than 200 murders.
+ Scared that someone might take his stuffed bunny, a 13-year-old with autism and intellectual disabilities in Tennessee told a teacher that his backpack might explode. The school called the police, who arrested the boy and charged him with a felony.
+ Oregon proudly continues to lead the nation in chronic absenteeism in public schools, at 34%. It is followed by Illinois at 26%, Louisiana at 25%, South Carolina and Iowa at 22%, California at 21%, and Virginia at 15%.
+ Sen. Dick Durbin roused himself from his usual lethargy and called on Biden to ‘borrower defense’ authority during his last weeks in office to cancel student debt: “Before the next President is sworn into office, let’s make sure the borrowers who’ve been waiting for relief and students who’ve been waiting for justice receive it.” There is no sign of any similar movement from Durbin’s equally lethargic former senate colleague, Joe Biden.
+ According to the economist Brad DeLong, If Britain continued on its pre-2008 growth trend instead of implementing austerity and passing Brexit, it would now be forty percent richer than it is today. That is £11,000 per capita per year.”
+ After two decades of austerity in the UK, 2.9 million people in England suffer from malnutrition. Hospital admissions have increased by 39% in the last decade, and malnourished children are being treated for scurvy, bow legs, rickets, and heart murmurs.
+ An unknown disease killed 143 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s southwestern province in November. Reuters reported that the infected people had flu-like symptoms, including high fever and severe headaches.
+ Massachusetts is one of the few states with detailed cause-of-death statistics from before the era of vaccinations. According to Lyman Stone’s Historic Massachusetts Vital Statistics Series, 1842-2019, 70% of all deaths were from diseases for which there is now an effective vaccine.
+ Fewer kids are getting vaccinated for whooping cough; predictably, cases are rising in many states. Ohio, for example, has reported more than 1,188 cases this year–more than 550 cases above the 632 cases confirmed for all 12 months of 2023. Meanwhile, Canada has reported the highest number of measles cases in nearly a decade: 130 cases already this year, 17 more than the previous high in 2019: “The 130 cases reported so far in 2024 eclipses the 113 reported in 2019 and is the highest number of cases Canada has seen since 2015.”
+ The contention that COVID was not a severe disease for children without underlying conditions has been thoroughly discredited by the data. Covid was responsible for 2% of all deaths for those under 20 without underlying conditions, making it the leading cause of death by infectious diseases and 5th leading cause of death in all diseases.
+ In the last 18 months, fentanyl deaths in the US have declined from nearly 10,000 a month to less than 6,000 a month. One reason may be the availability of NARCAN.
+ After Portland recriminalized street drugs, the Portland Police Bureau admitted in a statement released Tuesday that Multnomah County’s drug addiction issues are “much more complex and cannot be solved solely by law enforcement activity.” How many times do they have to rediscover in a decade?
+ Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: “By 1985, the average U.S. cat ate more beef than the average person in Central America. Such facts were the causes of the wars that ravaged the region.”
+ Understandably, more Americans dread the coming of AI now than they did in 2021.
More Excited Than Concerned
2021 18%
2022: 15%
2023: 10%Equally Excited and Concerned
2021: 45%
2022: 46%
2023: 36%More Concerned than Excited
2021: 37%
2022: 38%
2023: 52%
+ Many countries saw improvements in student test schools after the pandemic. Not the US, which saw scores for the lowest performing students (those in the bottom 10%) “drop by 37 points in math and by 22 in science compared with similar students in 2019.”
+ Why Pelosi filed to run for reelection when shel’ll be 86? According to an analysis by Quiver Quantitative, Pelosi’s stock portfolio increased by $9 million this week. They estimate her net worth is now around $269 million.
+++
+ Biden in June on whether he’d pardon Hunter: “I am not going to do anything. I will abide by the jury’s decision.”
+ James Woods called Hunter Biden’s pardon a coverup of the “Biggest Criminal Operation in American History.” Back down, Jay Gould! Move over, Meyer Lanksy! Stand aside, Bernie Madoff! Try harder, Ken Lay! Back of the line, Marc Rich! Next time, Dick Cheney!
+ Before dismissing the charges against Hunter Biden, Federal Judge Mark Scarsi, a Trump appointee vetted by the Federalist Society, had a few words for the President: Judge Scarsi in CA dismisses Hunter Biden charges — but takes President Biden to task. “Two federal judges expressly rejected Mr. Biden’s arguments that the Government prosecuted Mr. Biden because of his familial relation. And the President’s own…DOJ oversaw the investigation. The President asserts that [Hunter] Biden ‘was treated differently’ from others ‘who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions,’ implying that Mr. Biden was among those individuals who untimely paid taxes due to addiction. But he is not.”
+ Gavin Newsom, already angling for the next tough-on-crime Democrat from California with presidential aspirations, also condemned Biden’s pardon of Hunter: “I took the president at his word. So, by definition, I’m disappointed and can’t support the decision.”
+ A YouGov poll asked: Do you approve or disapprove of Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter Biden?
Disapprove 50%
Approve 34%
Not sure 16%
+ The only issue I have with Biden (who has the stingiest pardon record of any modern president) pardoning his son is that in four years, he’s yet to show the same empathy for other people’s sons, moms, dads, brothers, and sisters. He should start by clearing death row and pardoning the victims of his own excessively punitive and racially motivated crime bills, many of whom are still rotting in federal prison or under federal supervision…
+ Recall that Biden was one of the bigwigs on the Senate Judiciary when it enacted a 100-to-1 crack versus powder cocaine sentencing disparity under which distribution of just 5 grams of crack carried a minimum 5-year federal prison sentence. In comparison, the distribution of 500 grams of powder cocaine carried the same 5-year mandatory minimum sentence.
+ There are 41 inmates on federal death row. If Biden doesn’t commute their death sentences, Trump will almost certainly try to kill them as quickly as he can.
+ I suppose Trump, given his animosity toward the FBI, would be more likely to finally free Leonard Peltier, a genuine political prisoner, from federal prison than Biden. Still, it’s time to right a 50-year-long injustice, Joe. Step up to the plate and do it. Then issue pardons for Reality Winner, Edward Snowdon, Julian Assange, Thomas Drake, Jeffrey Sterling, and Chelsea Manning.
+ People are saying that Biden’s pardon of Hunter is proof of his guilt, which is absurd. Innocent people are convicted every day in courts across the country. Some are executed (See: Marcellus Williams.) The only problem with the pardon power is that it isn’t used widely enough.
+ Yvonne Chisholm: “For 248 years, a POTUS never asked for immunity. Trump asked & was granted. Why? Because there’s absolutely nothing he won’t do. A Democrat POTUS will never get away with what Trump has & will do. The real thugs can stay mad… ”
+ Presidents have been committing crimes for 248 years with de facto immunity. None asked for it because they were never indicted for war crimes, surveilling US citizens without warrants, corruption, torture, and lying the country into war. The court made explicit what had been implied.
+ Even the “best” presidents did unspeakable things: Lincoln oversaw the largest mass execution in US history and FDR locked up 10s of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent for no reason other than their race. Were there any other even remotely good ones? JQ Adams, maybe.
+ Of course, Bill Clinton foolishly rushed forth to claim that the pardon he gifted to his half-brother Roger for cocaine trafficking wasn’t comparable to Biden’s pardon of Hunter, which is an absurd thing to say. But what about Marc Rich, Bubba?
+ The presidential pardon is a good thing. It should deployed much more generously.
+++
+ The trade war is already heating up and China just raised the stakes by announcing a prohibition of “dual-use items” to “U.S. military users” and a complete ban in principle of export licenses of “dual-use items related to gallium, germanium, antimony, and superhard materials to the United States.”
In accordance with the Export Control Law of the People’s Republic of China and other relevant laws and regulations, to safeguard national security and interests and fulfill international obligations related to non-proliferation, it has been decided to strengthen export controls on relevant dual-use items to the United States. The relevant matters are announced as follows:
1. Export of dual-use items to U.S. military users or for military purposes is prohibited.
2. In principle, export licenses will not be granted for dual-use items related to gallium, germanium, antimony, and superhard materials to the United States; for graphite dual-use items exported to the United States, stricter end-user and end-use reviews will be implemented.
Organizations and individuals from any country or region who violate the above provisions by transferring or providing relevant dual-use items originating from the People’s Republic of China to U.S. organizations and individuals will be held legally accountable according to law.
+ Bloomberg reported that corporations whose executives donated to Republican candidates had a “higher likelihood of winning exclusions from President-elect Donald Trump’s first-term tariffs on China, while those that gave to Democrats saw their odds fall.” Trump’s deportation plan will work the same way, giving exemptions to the Trump-supporting ag, slaughterhouse, and construction businesses that depend on cheap migrant labor…
+ Trump’s deportation plan will work the same way, giving exemptions to the Trump-supporting ag, slaughterhouse and construction businesses that depend on cheap migrant labor…
+ The incoming Trump team seems serious about blocking federal funding to “sanctuary cities” like Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and LA that refuse to cooperate with his mass deportation scheme. Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, says he’s “not intimidated” by the threats.
+ Border Patrol is hiring more chaplains to treat the moral anxiety of its agents in advance of Trump’s mass deportation pogram. Don’t worry; Jesus wants you to separate the kids!
+ In 1979, the US generated 62 percent of the global agricultural trade. After four decades of neoliberalism, the US share has fallen to 12.3%. The response to Trump’s tariffs will only exacerbate the decline.
Trump’s threat to impose a 25% tariff on all imports from Mexico ($476 billion in goods a year) and Canada ($437 billion) will result in a $200 billion annual tax on American consumers.
+ The US auto industry expects profits to decline by at least 17 percent if Trump imposes tariffs.
+ Steelworkers in Pittsburg are reeling from Trump’s pledge to block the US Steel-Nippon deal. One of them spoke at a Trump rally earlier this year, and he said on Tuesday that Trump’s statements felt like a “gut punch.” Better sign up for some Pilates and work on strengthening that core because this is likely only the first of many such punches…
+ Forget buying Greenland; Trump told Justin Trudeau last week that if Canada couldn’t handle his tariffs, perhaps it should become the 51st state–a status I thought was already claimed by Israel.
+ Trump, who now has his own crypto venture, is being urged by the Crypto industry to establish a “bitcoin federal reserve:” “They want him to acquire tokens worth billions of dollars, then hold them for decades in the hopes they will skyrocket in value and help pay down the national debt.”
+ The economy already seems to be grinding to a halt. Current job openings by industry compared to a year ago:
Construction down 40%
Transport/warehouse down 44%
Federal gov’t down 42%
Manufacturing down 20%
Healthcare down 20%
+++
Sen. Crapo’d probably sacrifice his own kid out on Highway 61 if Trump told him to…
+ Trump’s nominee to head the IRS, Rep. Billy Long, the Republican from Missouri, who is a former auctioneer and professional poker player, has given dozens of speeches on the floor of the house calling for the abolition of the IRS and replacing it with a national sales tax, another shift of the tax burden onto the working poor. Long once tried to get the IRS to rescind the tax status of the Humane Society.
+ A federal government taking decisive action to raise the minimum wage not only can be done, it’s being done by a more progressive, humane and enlightened society than our own: namely, Claudia Scheinbaum’s Mexico, which just boosted it by 12 percent.
+ You might want to pin this to the fridge door. In the next few months, we’ll probably see a similar “Martial Law to Protect Democracy” order here.
FULL TEXT: Order from South Korea’s Martial Law Command:
To protect liberal democracy and safeguard the safety of citizens from the threat of anti-state forces operating within the Republic of Korea, the following measures are hereby declared across the entire nation effective from 11:00 PM on December 3, 2024:
All political activities, including the operation of the National Assembly and local councils, political party activities, political associations, assemblies, and demonstrations, are prohibited.
Any acts that deny or seek to overthrow the liberal democratic system, as well as the dissemination of fake news, manipulation of public opinion, and false propaganda, are prohibited.
All media and publications will be subject to the control of the Martial Law Command.
Strikes, slowdowns, and assemblies that incite social unrest are prohibited.
All medical personnel, including resident doctors currently on strike or who have abandoned their posts, must return to their duties and fully resume work within 48 hours. Failure to comply will result in punishment under martial law.
Measures will be taken to minimize inconvenience to ordinary citizens who are not part of anti-state or subversive forces.
Violators of this proclamation will be subject to arrest, detention, and search and seizure without a warrant under Article 9 of the Republic of Korea Martial Law Act (Special Authority of the Martial Law Commander) and will be punished under Article 14 (Penalties) of the same law.
+ Yoon’s coup–a blatant attempt to crush the left-wing parties that won South Korea’s recent elections– lasted a mere 8 hours. Now, the would-be autocrat is hoping to hang on until Trump takes power in January, and he can serenade him with YMCA the same way he warbled American Pie to Joe Biden at the White House.
+ Belgium has been found guilty of crimes against humanity for kidnapping mixed-race children in the Congo. This is the first time the country has been held accountable for its actions as a colonial power.
+ In addition to gaining access to the eight major telecom firms, including AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies, accessing the call records of the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Chinese hacking operation called Salt Typhoon also penetrated the systems that U.S. law enforcement uses to wiretap Americans’ communications under the 1994 CALEA law. In other words, the wiretappers have been wiretapped.
+++
+ The New York Times announced this week that Paul Krugman is unplugging his keyboard after 25 years as a columnist. Remember when Krugman pocketed $50,000 for advising Enron and, after it was exposed, said he gave them a discount (ie., “somewhat less than my normal rate.”)? Paul Krugman could always be relied on to emphasize the liberal in neoliberalism.
+ Professional mansplainer Matt Walsh was outside the Supreme Court during the hearing on the Tennessee Trans Rights case doing that thing he does: “This case is just the beginning of the fight. It is not the end. We are not gonna rest … until trans ideology is entirely erased from the earth. That’s what we’re fighting for, and we will not stop until we achieve it.”
+ Sen. Roger Marshall, the Kansas Republican, has introduced the STOP Act, which would direct the Health and Human Services (HHS) to impose a civil penalty of at least $100,000 on those ‘providing transgender mutilation services and treatments’ for minors.
+ When the Montana statehouse is more humane and less sexually hung-up than the US Congress, your country might have a problem…
+ Nina Turner: “The issue with Walmart isn’t DEI; it’s the fact that in nine states alone, Walmart had 14,500 employees on SNAP and 10,350 on Medicaid. Instead of attacking corporations for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, people should call out the low wages.”
+ After Trump’s election, the audience for FoxNews rose by 1.4 million from the previous year and MSDNC’s fell by 330.000 a day. FoxNews now averages 4 times as many daily viewers as MSDNC. (Before the election, the ratio was 1.65.)
+ Fox pays Hannity $25 million a year. You’d think he’d be able to come up with something a little snappier than rehashing a Gerald Ford quote that became a cliché five minutes after he said it…
+ According to CNBC, one in five Americans currently gets their news from social media influencers. Sounds low to me…
+ The Economist analyzed 38,358 of Elon Musk’s Tweets and concluded: “He may have more money than anyone else on Earth and the ear of the next president, but…he may not seem that different from any other American man in his 50s: lurching rightward politically, online a huge share of the time, complaining about immigration and mocking the left.” Duh…
+ Did Nostradamus predict this?
1997: the President of the United States was born in 1946.
2007: the President of the United States was born in 1946.
2017: the President of the United States was born in 1946.
2027: the President of the United States was born in 1946.
+ Ben Franklin’s daily schedule
5-8 am: Rise, wash, and address Powerful Goodness; contrive days business and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study; and breakfast.
8-Noon: Work.
Noon -2 PM: Read and overlook my accounts and dine.
2 – 6 Work.
6-10: Put things in their places, supper, music, or diversion or conversation; examination of the day.
10–5 Sleep
+ Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple, Rainbow): “Bob Dylan came up to me once, and he said, ‘Hey, who the hell are you?’ I admired him for that.”
+ Make America Blonde on Blonde Again!
(Behind closed doors: the dad’s gay, the mom’s doing the Salvadoran pool boy twice a week, the son likes to blow up frogs and the daughter wants a sex change.)
+ This Orioles fan wants to know if Trump is planning to put a tariff on Shohei Ohtani?
+ Lisa Marie Presley: “Twice a year after he died, I’d dream about my father . . . In the dreams, he and I would be together in my room. I’m in my hamburger bed, and he’s in the chair. We’re close and connected, talking. Suddenly, I get panicked and say, ‘Wait! You have to stop this, Daddy! You have to wait! You’re going to OD, you’re going to have a heart attack. Daddy! You’re going to die! It’s going to happen.’
“And in the dream, my dad looks at me so calmly, so knowingly, smiles, and says, ‘Darlin’, it’s already happened.’”… (From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough)
+ Chuck Palahniuk on Black Friday and Cyber Monday: “We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra…”
Everybody Wants an Explanation
Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…
Nobody Loves You More
Kim Deal
(4D)
A Peace of Us
Dean & Britta / Sonic Boom
(Car Park)
Live in Keel, 1977
Can
(Mute)
Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…
Disaster Nationalism: the Downfall of a Liberal Civilization
Richard Seymour
(Verso)
Just Following Orders: Atrocities and the Brain Science of Obedience
Emilie A. Caspar
(Cambridge Univ. Press)
Second Chances: Shakespeare & Freud
Stephen Greenblatt and Adam Phillips
(Yale)
Two Flows
“A book is a small cog in a much more complex, external machinery. Writing is a flow among others; it enjoys no special privilege and enters into relationships of current and counter-current, of back-wash with other flows — the flows of shit, sperm, speech, action, eroticism, money, politics, etc. Like Leopold Bloom, writing on the sand with one hand and masturbating with the other — two flows in what relationship?” – Gilles Deleuze, I Have Nothing to Admit
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