Something is rotten in the state of Illinois

There’s some controversy in the village of Dolton Illinois (within the commuter belt for Chicago), regarding its Mayor Tiffany Henyard, who was been branded “America’s most corrupt politician”.

She’s been accused of misusing village funds. Most notably by running a fake charity, or spending lavishly on hospitality for herself and her entourage, including trips to Las Vegas and DC at the town’s expense. Keeping in mind, between her role as mayor and administrator for the wider township, she’s earning a 6 figure salary already. And also consider that Dolton isn’t a particularly wealthy town, with relatively high rates of poverty (compared to the rest of the state).

She’s also been accused of using the local police as her personal goon squad, one turning in 300+ hours of overtime in two weeks (implying he worked +21 hrs every day!) protecting her from unspecified threats. She’s been using the police to shake down local businesses for money (those who refuse to pay being closed), spending city funds on dictator like self promotions and much more (notably a strange obsession about ice skating rings). The FBI are now apparently investigating her.

I think what this highlights is that America is actually a lot more corrupt that many people think. The problem is that a lot of this corruption is so ingrained it doesn’t get called out as corruption. Hence why the US tends to rate lower that it should on the corruption perception index (i.e. the corruption either doesn’t get reported, or isn’t perceived as corruption).

For example, we have the massive corporate feeding trough that is US military spending (fun fact, the US military has never managed to pass an audit). As I previously discussed, the war on terror cost the US trillions, without a lot to show for it and massive mismanagement on funds, much of which ended up in the pockets of defence contractors….who just happen to be major donors to a lot of prominent members of congress. Then there’s the various money burning parties, such as the Littoral combat ship, the F-35 or the Zumwalt class (the gun cruisers….without working guns).

Then there’s the scandal surrounding Boeing, which is largely down to corruption, with congressmen who have received bribes campaign contributions from Boeing giving the company exceptions on rules regarding safety and sweetheart deals at the expense of its competitors (including those in the US). And this is something that is a fairly common occurrence. There’s an entire lobbying industry in DC whose sole purpose is to facilitate “campaign contributions” to politicians in exchange for political favours.

In another example, many were left scratching their heads after SpaceX was awarded the sole contract for the new lunar lander, despite having arguably the bid least likely to succeed (furthermore the 2nd stage of this contract was supposed to pick two contractors, not just one). Well the NASA official who picked SpaceX (and allegedly coached them as to what exactly they need to say in order to get the contract), retired from NASA. And, by remarkable coincidence, is now working for SpaceX…on Starship!

Plus I’d also point out to those Muskrats holding a circle jerk over Starship’s recent “success”, distributing space junk simultaneously to the gulf of Mexico and the Southern Indian Ocean (on a supposedly reusable system) is not something I would boast about. Its still unproven that Starship can even reach orbit (it was in a sub-orbital path, not an actual orbit) never mind deliver any payload (the weights for it include fuel and the empty mass, but no payload, normal protocol for this sort of test would be to include a tank of water or a block of concrete to simulate the payload mass), nor that its even person rated (that would mean proving it can land, or boost itself away from a failing BFR and make it down again safely). When its done all that and shown it can do so consistently, then you can cheer like a bunch of gormless half wits.

But I digress. Previously I talked before about how tipping is out of control in the US. I also mentioned how this is less of a problem in Europe, as we have better worker protections and a higher minimum wage (hence workers don’t need to depend on tips). Why hasn’t the US simply raised its minimum wage? Well because of lobbying from the very companies who benefit from the status quo. Why is it that thousands more American’s die of food poisoning each year than Europeans? Again, lobbying from an industry that puts profit ahead of people’s lives. Or there’s more gun deaths. Or a lack of affordable health care? Or an opioid epidemic? So this corruption is not a victimless crime, it literally kills thousands of Americans every year. Yet nobody does anything about it. Largely because so many Americans pretend it isn’t an issue, largely cos they can’t handle the truth.

We also have a US supreme court where’s its widely known that Justices are openly taking kickbacks and “hospitality” from wealthy republican donors (said justices then provide rulings that are beneficial to those donors). And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s been other cases where judges have gone out and bought shares in companies (or had their relatives do so) before making a favourable ruling. Or sending lots more people to prison to the benefit of their pals running a local private prison.

Certainly it has to be acknowledged that the republicans are often the worst offenders. During the Trump administration the US treasury was treated as his own personal piggy bank, with him and his cabinet using state assets for activities that were clearly not work related. Such as taking weekly trips to his own hotel in Florida, that the government then had to pay him for (or foreign diplomats renting out rooms in his hotels just to curry political patronage).

However, that doesn’t mean the democrats get a free pass. Case in point, Nancy Pelosi and her husband have an amazing lucky streak with their stock picks. So either she’s a financial genius, who should really quit politics and set up her own hedge fund. Or she’s misusing classified information to commit insider trading.

And the worst part is, all of the above (and I’ve only scratched the surface) is that its not even a secret. Its openly known. Its not being investigated because the mainstream media largely ignores it (or selectively reports it when they need to attack a particular politician or party). And there’s no agency tasked with the job of investigating politicians or judges. Nor is it even technically illegal for them to misuse public funds, or commit insider trading, or take bribes….sorry receive campaign contributions.

This is largely because the US system assumes any politician who wins an election must be a gentleman, a scholar and a good judge of whisky who will serve the people faithfully (ya sure, & I’ve got some magic beans I can sell you). By contrast, in many European countries its assumed that politicians can’t be trusted and the authorities are empowered to investigate them. Hence its not unheard of for former minsters or even prime minsters to end up in jail (not because Europe is more corrupt, but because they are more likely to get caught).

Also America’s two party system creates problems. It is inaccurate to describe the US as split between blue and red states (there’s plenty of republicans in California and plenty of liberals in Texas). However, drilling down into certain districts, you will often find some individual towns and counties that do lean strongly left or right. Hence, if you can get on the ballot in that area, for whichever party is dominant (which given the apathy towards local politics, can be a case of just getting all of your family and friends to vote for you), you have a very strong chance of being elected, regardless of ones suitability for office.

And given that in the US positions such as administrators, judges, prosecutors and sheriffs are often elected (rather than awarded on the basis of who is best qualified to do that job), it means a lot of people getting elected on the basis of how good they are at lying to people, rather than how good they are at actually doing their job. It also politicises these roles (this is one of the reasons for America’s dangerously flawed system of punitive justice, as they are constantly appealing to voters, rather than trying to fix a broken system). Meaning they toe the party line, or are beholden to those who got them in power (usually some juiced in local bigwig), rather than the serving the public trust.

In short this Dolton mayor is the tip of the iceberg. The only difference between her and the other politicians is that’s she’s a bit of an egomaniac and doesn’t seem to realise she should be keeping quiet (bit like that Hushpuppi hacker who took to flexing on Instagram, when should have kept a low profile). She’s a street hustler, running a shell game, shaking down her neighbours for their last dime. Meanwhile the rest of the politicians are running vast casino skim operations. Its regular crime, versus very well organised crime. If anything one has to wonder why the media is hyperfixating on her and not all these other cases of corruption (I don’t know maybe because she’s black?).

Now too be clear, two wrong’s don’t make a right. Just because all the others have their snout in the feeding trough doesn’t mean you can do the same. If these allegations are true then she’s exploiting her neighbours. Who, as previously noted, aren’t particularly well off. If so, she should be arrested and prosecuted. To paraphrase boondocks, just because the US justice system is institutionally racist and regularly persecutes minorities for the crime of not being white, doesn’t mean that everyone who is accused of a crime is Nelson Mandela. Even a stopped clock is still correct twice a day.

However, let’s not kid ourselves into believing that corruption in the US starts and ends with one dodgy village mayor.

Labour go full Judean people’s front…again!

So Starmer’s flagship policy was to root out antisemitism in labour, that he claims was largely the fault of Corbyn. And now his party is mired in several scandals over….antisemitism.

Two candidates from the party right have had to be suspended over remarks they made about the war in Gaza (one of whom is still running, as its too late to change candidates). However, the controversy was that initially Starmer tried to avoid suspending them. Its worth noting that previously several people on the left of the party were suspended, or even thrown out, not for things they said, but for simply standing on a platform next to someone who might have said something mean about Israel in the past. Think about that, you happen to sit next to someone in a meeting and then get fired over something he said, not to you, but to someone else years before. So unsurprisingly some are arguing that fairness dictates that he should suspend everyone in the room or within earshot of these remarks.

The Forde report (whose author is practically banging his head against his desk right now) specifically warned that antisemitism was being used as a factional weapon within the labour party and warned that this had to stop. Well instead team Starmer when into overdrive. Its pretty clear that they were just using antisemitism as an excuse to go after their political enemies within the party (too be clear I’m not saying there weren’t issues in labour, I’m saying that Starmer had ulterior motives for trying to do something about it).

As regards the specific comments, well firstly given that the ICJ, as well as US courts, now believe Israel is carrying out possible war crimes in Gaza. So letting the Israeli’s define what constitutes antisemitism is a bit naive. So far they’ve accused the Pope, the Irish president (a poet!), Elon Musk, South Africa, the head of the UN, Human rights watch, Amnesty intentional, and even Greta Thunberg. Not because they’ve said anything nice about Hamas, but because they were judged to be not suitably supportive of Israel.

In short, the Netanyahu government have nazi tourettes. As for these conspiracy theories regarding possible prior knowledge of the attacks by them, my two cents is never ascribe malice to that which can be more easily explained by incompetence and stupidity.

But why is it that criticising Israel is considered racist, yet criticising Iran or Saudi Arabia is okay? (both see themselves as the leaders of different branches of Islam). How about critcising Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is home to the Russian orthodox church, why is that allowed, but not crticism of Israel? And why is it okay for those on the right like Boris Johnson to get a free pass when they make antisemitic comments?

In a democracy you have to be able to have a conversation about things like this, not least in order to counter the aforementioned conspiracy theories (else they’ll just circulate on social media and snowball). In fact I’d argue this is a big part of the problem. Politicians in the west refuse to offer any sort of criticism, for fear of what Israel might say about them, even when they are literally committing war crimes on TV. Which, as you can imagine is going to look pretty weird and f*cked up to anyone in the Muslim world. Is it no wonder then that such conspiracy theories start circulating.

So what next for Starmer? Well this crisis in the middle east (which has by now spread beyond Palestine) isn’t going to end any time soon. Its also clear from how this story broke that either A) the Tory press have gone back to phone hacking or B) they have paid spies and informants within labour recording every conversation, in case anyone blurts out something juicy. So what’s he going to do? Tape all his MP’s mouths shut for the next 9 months until after the election! And what’s he going to do then? Inevitably labour will have to attend UN and NATO conferences, where this issue will come up. Is Starmer going to stick his fingers in his ears and go NANANAN not listening.

I’ve never really been much of a labour supporter myself. And its the same reason that, despite their being a natural left wing majority in the UK, the country tends to be under Tory rule. Its because of the extreme factionalism within labour and the UK left in general. Once when I was in Glasgow the hard left wingers fielded 4 candidates against one another in the same constituency. The end result was a Tory slipped in.

In the 2017 election, Corbyn was offered the option of an electoral deal by the greens and lib dems, which would see them withdraw from certain marginal seats if labour did the same for some seats where the other parties had a better chance of winning. He refused and as a result enough Tories slipped in, some by margins as tight as 50 votes, to keep May in power (yes Corbyn chose not being PM over doing a deal with others on the left).

In the 2019 election Corbyn spent most of his campaign screaming splitters at Blairites who’d left the party, or attacking others on the left, rather than fighting the Tories. I had a labour supporter try and argue that I should vote labour, even though I was in a seat that tends to swing between the Tories and SNP (so he wanted me to help the Tories win, but at least we’d get one over on the SNP). Oddly enough, the labour election literature that came through my letterbox did not mention Corbyn once (obviously the local candidate was from a different faction).

And having lost to the Tories by a historic margin, Corbyn declared victory, claiming he’d “won the argument”. In other words he’d poisoned the well and burnt the house down, insuring nobody else on the left, could get into government. Because that was his real goal, not to win the election, but stick it to the Blairites and get back at them for his isolation during the Blair/Brown government.

And once Starmer took over the Blairites goal seems to have been to get some payback, the public good be damned. I’ve been wondering about all those promises Starmer’s been ditching. Now he says its to make an airtight case for a labour government, which gives the Tory client media no avenue of attack. However, they’ll always find an excuse to attack labour. In fact, I’ve noticed they seem to be road testing the argument that he’s a flip flopper, largely down to all of those policies he’s ditched!

Let’s be honest, at this stage he could include a policy that says he’s going to go around the country hitting people in the groin with a pool cue and at least half the country would still vote for him, as they’d rather that than another 5 years of the Tories. I do wonder if the real reason for dropping these policies is to stick it to the Corbynites. Own the libs and all that. Either that or do his new buddy Rupert Murdoch a favour.

Meanwhile, if there’s anything everyone on the left seems to agree with its that they need to stop George Galloway winning this byelection. Well actually I disagree. Yes I’m aware he’s now just a hired gun, a spoiler candidate in the employment of dark money. The left’s equivalent of Lawrence Fox or Nigel Farage. But seriously, have you heard what some of the knuckle draggers in the Tory party have been saying recently. He can’t be that bad. And we’d only have to put up with him for a few months (case in point, we’ve had politicians in the Irish parliament who thought potholes on roads were caused by fairies). Plus Galloway would have to defend this Rochdale seat (or risk being seen doing a chicken run), which he has zero chance of winning in a fair contest. So winning this by-election could end his little junket.

Granted, I probably won’t vote for him myself (I’m assuming there’s got to be a green or lib dem candidate). But no, because he’s not “one of us” those on the left would rather risk a Tory getting in. So I’d say it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he won. It might actually scare the left straight and get them to stop this factional warfare and remember who the real enemy is.

Post Christmas news

Pints of brexit copium

So the brexiters have found a brexit benefit….pints of wine. Thanks to brexit we can enjoy french champagne by the pint with our lunch, just like Churchill….assuming we can convince the French to sell champagne & wine in pint bottles. Then again, I’m sure there’s a purveyor of English wines, aka du vin roast boeuf, who’ll produce it, if only to overcharge some dumb brexiters. Although in reality this is more bait and switch, since 99% of the public rejected the idea of going back to imperial units. So they threw in the Churchill & pints of wine stuff to distract from the real story.

Actually I suspect Churchill would be slightly more worried about the butchering of the UK’s human rights records, with the Tories undermining refugee and human rights conventions. He was a strong supporter of such projects, as he saw it as essential to preventing another Hitler (or at the very least limiting the damage one could do). Yet the Tories are crapping all over his legacy, as well as the legacy of Thatcher (who was in favour of the EU and the single market). Not that the tabloids are going to point any of this out.

Labour painted into a corner on brexit

A recent poll suggests that only 1 in 10 people in the UK see brexit as having had any real benefits (which also tells us that 1 in 10 are stark raving bonkers, hooked up to an IV drip Daily Fail copium). Another survey at the end of November found that only 12% think that brexit has gone well.

This is not really news as such. Since at least 2017 polls have shown the majority of UK voters think brexit was a mistake. And since 2022 support for rejoining has been consistently positive. Its just the main stream media haven’t really been reporting this, but alternative and social media sources have. And its now reached a point where them ignoring such a story is starting to look suspicious, so they have to cover it.

Obviously, the Tory position is to deny reality and gaslight (hence why they are suddenly talking about pints of champagne). However it presents a bit of a problem for labour. Starmer’s position has been to basically ignore brexit, because he’s afraid of a small number of labour voters who voted leave, who are such little snowflakes that if he even hints a the fact that they might have put the X in the wrong box, they’ll vote Tory out of spite (plus if they were dumb enough to fall for the brexit lies, they’ll definitely fall for whatever howlers the Tories roll out next election).

However, since brexit was always an exercise in denying reality, it was always going to be the case that support for brexit would eventually collapse (reality has a strongly pro-remain bias). The problem for labour now is, they can’t really exploit this shift in public opinion. As the obvious question will be asked, if you think brexit is such a bad idea, why didn’t you voice some concerns about it before?

Recall that labour voted in favour of Johnson’s withdrawal agreement and have supported numerous other brexit related bills (or at the least not opposed them). By contrast, the lib dems, Greens and SNP have opposed brexit and rubbed it in the Tories face every week at PMQ’s. So any talk about brexit during the election would just mean votes going from labour to these parties, rather than from the Tories to labour.

So this probably won’t play a huge role in the upcoming election, as neither party has anything to gain by bringing it up (and the Tory client media sure aren’t going to do so!). But its going to be major issue for the future labour government. Starmer’s economic policy is basically the same as the Tories (just a little less bonkers and sadistic), meaning he’s going to have trouble balancing the books. Its not like the economy is going to magically improve, just because labour are in charge (in fact a lot of the negative consequences of the Tories reign of error will likely hit around about then, so they can blame it all on labour). Either he’s got to grow the economy, which means strengthening ties with the EU, or he’ll have to raise taxes (both of which he’s promised not to do).

Meanwhile the Tory client media will be going all out to blame labour for brexit and every Tory screw-up made over the last 13 years. Why brexit was going fine until Starmer came along! We even brought back pints of wine! Hell I won’t be surprised if they do an about face and start supporting a customs union (purely because they know that Starmer can’t do that).

And he’s going to face a lot of opposition from within his own party. Labour is overwhelmingly pro-EU, its just that many in the party are keeping that quiet, as they are prioritising getting rid of the Tories over everything else. But that neutrality policy ends as soon as they are in government. Expect a lot of red on red activity afterwards. Defections to the lib dems or even a party split can’t be ruled out.

And recall that the only reason why the Tories still have a shot at a come back, is the UK’s first past the post system. As such a split in the vote, would open the door to another Tory government. Replacing FPTP with proportional representation would eliminate this threat, but again Starmer has also ruled that out.

In short Starmer has painted himself into a corner, largely because he’s too spineless and beholden to the Murdoch media to do anything meaningful. Plus he has, like Boris, prioritised becoming PM over the best interests of the country. The honeymoon period for labour is likely to be very short.

Climate change and wine

Speaking of British wine, while it generally been the butt of European jokes, this might not always be the case. Climate change is gradually moving the wine producing regions further north. This could wipe out some wine producing areas. While in theory, it would present an opportunity for other countries to exploit, that might be dependant on other factors.

For example, one of the reasons why they produce so much wine in France, Italy and Spain is because of high local demand. You will get some odd looks if you sit down to a meal in these countries and don’t order a bottle or two of wine with it (an actual bottle, not some pansy pint bottle). Many vineyards are centuries old, they have a substantial investment in infrastructure and have several generations of experience in wine production. That’s not something you can easily move or replicate in another country.

So if you are looking for a reason to do something about climate change, imagine Bordeaux wines being replaced by Chateau Vajazzle from Essex.

Rotting from within

It is is often said that all empires decay from within in the first instance, before collapsing due to outside pressures. And this is true for the UK, where local council’s are increasingly struggling to make ends meet with local services collapsing and many councils on the verge of bankruptcy.

It is often forgotten by many in the UK that a lot of the services they depend on are administered by local authorities, not central government. This includes things like child care, road maintenance, libraries, public transport, social care & some NHS services. However, the taxes that pay for those services are dependant on central government, with a 40% cut in funding since the Tories took power. Councils can’t even put up council tax, as central government sets those rates. About the only way mechanism they have to raise funds is things like speeding and parking fines (with the result that they’ve gotten really mercenary with these in recent years).

And the Tories are on record as not only failing to properly fund council’s, but even boasting about diverting money away from poorer labour voting areas towards wealthy Tory voting areas. They’ve also been cracking down on local democracy, threatening to overrule local councils on planning issues for example. This is very much contrary to the “take back control” mantra of brexit. Keeping in mind, that across the EU power is often heavily decentralised down to local government as a matter of policy.

So it just goes to highlight the enormous mess that labour will be inheriting. Unless they want to avoid repeating the mistakes of the Blair administration (and thus taking the blame for a Tory mess), labour needs a comprehensive plan for how to tackle these many issues, else they’ll just be changing the sign on the door.

Lie detectors used by UK police

A rather worrying story reveals the UK police are starting to increasingly rely on lie detectors to help solve cases. There’s just one small problem. LIE DETECTORS DON’T WORK, THEY ARE PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC NONSENSE. And that’s not even just my opinion, numerous studies have called their reliability into question. Even the original inventor of the lie detector disputed their use in criminal cases.

Recall that juries are often ignorant of these facts and may believe the results of such tests. Or not understand that someone refusing a lie detector isn’t proof of anything (other proving that he/she isn’t a moron). And there is good evidence that police in the US are well aware of the unreliable nature of lie detectors, but still use them anyways. So much as this has led to numerous miscarriages of justice in the US, we are likely to see much of the same here in the UK.

Sinn fein plays the race card

The populist party Sinn Fein is one I’ve always been reluctant to support, despite their left wing leanings. In part this is due to their links to the IRA, organised crime and even Putin’s Russia. But its also because they are political opportunists who will say and do whatever it takes to get into power, regardless of the impact that has on society.

For example, the reaction to the recent Dublin riot from the rest of the political parties was to circle the wagons, condemn the rioters and promises to take such matters more seriously. Sinn Fein choice to waste everyone’s time by calling a vote of no confidence, which they knew they’d lose (which required minsters to return from the Dubai climate conference). They’ve also recently begun questioning Ireland’s long standing position on immigration. Basically they’ve played the race card (which may have something to do with being behind in the polls).

This is why I don’t vote for Sinn Fein. We have no idea what their actual policies will be once in power. They might go down the hard left route, the far right, turn the country into a kleptocracy, or a Russian outpost, or perhaps all of the above. In fact, I don’t think they even know. They’ve not thought that far ahead. They are like the dog who barks at the postman and has no idea what he’s to do if he actually catches the postman.

Only teachers

Across the pond in America, a number of teachers have recently been caught out for having only fans pages. Given how conservative US school boards can be, this has led to a number of them loosing their jobs. However, I think the point being missed here is, if your teachers are having to do strip tease online to make ends meet, maybe you aren’t paying them enough? Or maybe they are sick of some busy body bible thumpers telling them how to teach biology.

Crying over spilt milk

So Argentina has a new mad king president, whose promised to turn the place into a libertarian paradise. How is that going? Well he’s just passed a law allowing companies to pay employees in milk, meat or bitcoin rather than regular currency. Well that’s encouraging! I mean if you want to buy a Christmas turkey I suppose you’ve just got to find a turkey farmer who really likes milkshakes. Not sure how you are supposed to settle the gas bill mind. Like I’ve said before, there will be only one beneficiary of his term in office, the wealthy and the powerful who bankrolled his campaign. Its disaster capitalism at its worst.

Tipping point

As I mentioned in a previous post, tipping in the US is now completely out of control. You have to now tip everyone for everything, even for online services or deliveries. And you have to tip at least 20-30%. And this applies regardless of the service provided. They could spill your soup or stomp on your luggage and they will still expect a tip of some kind (unless you want them to spill the soup again…over your crotch!…or set fire to your luggage!).

This is largely because many companies over covid switched to a tipping based model, which means staff pay is a pittance (I mean literally not enough to pay for the bus fare and buy lunch, i.e. they’d financially better off staying at home). So when we say they are relying on the tips to pay the rent, this is literally true. But why don’t restaurants just pay their staff a decent salary?

Well as someone pointed out to me over Christmas, that this isn’t necessarily so. Some business have tried this and in some cases have gone back to a tipping based model. Think about it, if you have a restaurant and the place across the road works on a tip based model, they can charge a lot less for their food and get more customers. Granted they’ll have to do some maths and face social pressure, but people don’t tend to think that far in advance when picking a restaurant.

Also one of the issues with tipping is that there is very little correlation between the quality of service and the level of tipping. Its often more down to other factors, some random (e.g. whether or not the tipper is in a good mood or not) and some related to how good the staff are at pressuring or guilt tripping customers into giving a large tip. So it can result in some push back from the staff who reckon they can do better out of a tipping model than a living wage (not all, but some).

In short, this is why we have minimum wage laws. The reason why you don’t run the risk of being stabbed with a fork if you don’t tip in Europe, is because workers are generally paid a lot better. Of course you propose that for the US and immediately they’ll say how this would make it impossible for family owned businesses to stay open.

But of course this ignores how there are far more family owned businesses in Europe. I celebrated Christmas in a Spanish town and there is literally not a single chain restaurant in the entire town (no Starbucks, no Mac Donald’s, no borders books). There are however plenty of really nice family owned restaurants….who also do way better coffee. And no tips are expected (although around Christmas time, bills are often rounded up to the nearest whole euro and the balance given to charity).

In reality, its all about ideology and control. If we pay the plebs a decent wage, they won’t need to grovel anymore and put up with our BS. And if they aren’t run off their feet they might find the time to go out and vote. Hell they might even join a union and we can’t let that happen!

The corrupt hypocrisy of the Tory cult

Pre-Christmas news

News Roundup

Fixing the pension time bomb

Fixing the pension time bomb

Right privilege

Right privilege

The cult of Trump and the dangerous hypocrisy of Republicans

So the Republicans are up in arms at the fact that Trump has been indicted 4 times now, facing dozens of counts. What you can’t talk to your friends or allies anymore, they ask. What happened to free speech? While free speech is protected, there is a difference between expressing your views e.g. “I think all banks are run by thieves” and conspiring to, or committing a crime. e.g. walking into a bank and saying “empty the register and put all the money in this bag or someone’s going to get hurt” is NOT protected free speech. Nor, for that matter, is “asking” a governor to “find” more votes so you can commit electoral fraud. Nor is it legal to impersonate electoral officials. If only there was a way to decide if someone was guilty or not? Oh, wait there is, its called a “trial“.

But the authorities are biased against Trump, his supporters say. Actually, its been quite apparent how he’s being treated like royalty, compared to your average American’s experience of the criminal justice system. For most suspects in the US, you are looking at being hauled in while cuffed (assuming the cops didn’t just shoot you), being booked into jail (strip searched, full cavity body search, put in an orange jump suit, locked up till your arraignment, etc.), finger printed and having your mug shot taken. In most cases he’s sailed through this process, or skipped large parts of it entirely. He’s also gotten bail, while many suspects (in particular those at the lower end of the income spectrum) end up incarcerated until trial. He still gets to plead not guilty, when many suspects get pressured into a plea deal. He’s got the presumption of innocence, when again many minority or poorer suspects are often treated as guilty from the point of arrest onwards.

For some interesting parallels, this same week a teenager was arrested & handcuffed in America while taking out the garbage (I think you can probably guess why that happened). And a few weeks ago police raided a newspaper office because they heard the paper was going to do a negative story about them (republicans being of course the ultimate snowflakes). And predictably, while everyone else was shocked by these stories, the Trumpers were saying, oh surely the police just made a mistake, no harm done. Republicans don’t understand the concept of hypocrisy. Trump’s arrest is the ultimate expression of white privilege.

Some on the left seem to think its a slam dunk. However, this ignores how US justice is very much a pay to win system. They also might not be considering the possibility that one of his fanatical supporters ends up on the Jury who then disrupts the process. Or a pro-Trump judge just gives him a free pass (as is happening in Florida). Never mind the possibility that he just throws his co-conspirators under the bus and they take the fall for him. You can’t be the cult of Trump without a Trump.

More worryingly is the racial charged attacks by Trump against court officials, the doxxing of grand jury members and how several leading republicans are talking up the idea of civil war, when they should be trying to calm things down. This is dangerous talk, given how well armed and crazy many of his supporters are. And its not just Trump supporters, many on the left or minorities have taken to arming themselves and forming their own militia since Trump took office. So its not too difficult to see how things could kick off.

Hence, one has to ask the question, why aren’t any of these provocateurs also being arrested? Why isn’t Trump being denied bail and issued with a gag order? After all, what would happen if Bernie or Ilhan Omar called for civil war?…how many seconds would go by before they got arrested by a hundred FBI agents? Why are republicans being given a free pass? And they have the nerve to claim the justice system is biased against them.

As for civil war, such a conflict would also be pointless. To what end are you going to fight a civil war? To ensure president’s are above the law and don’t have to suffer any consequences for their actions? Given the various hair-brained attempts by Republicans to impeach Biden, the Clintons & Obama, this would be the supreme irony. Are republicans going to apologise for wasting everyone’s time? How about reimbursing the rest of the country for the costs of those campaigns? And if president’s are effectively de-facto dictators from now on, let me know how that works out once a hard left president takes over (which actually becomes more likely in a post-civil war scenario).

And who are you proposing to fight? Biden? He’s got little to do with this, as these indictments are either a justice department issue, or have been issued at the state level. Even if you could overthrow Biden (you’ve got your AR-15’s, trouble is the US army have tanks, fighter aircraft and nuclear weapons), that won’t change anything. You could try overthrowing the entire US criminal justice system, but then who is going to enforce the law in the US? Are you just going to let all the other criminals and suspects (such as Hunter Biden) off the hook as well?

Then there’s the idea that the red states should just break away and form their own country….presumably called Jesusland (then again Jesus was kind of woke). Well aside from the fact that such a civil war would bankrupt America, as much of its wealth comes from overseas investors, who see America as a safe place to store their wealth (which would hurt pensioners & America’s wealthy the worst…i.e. the people who vote republican). But the real problem for Trumpers is that the bulk of America’s population is concentrated in blue states, which includes most of its wealth (specifically the wealth that can’t be easily moved out of the country). Indeed most blue states are net contributors to federal taxes (they send to DC more than they get back), while red states are net receivers of federal money (benefit’s scroungers to use republican terminology). In fact, even with in red states, many cities, which represent most of the wealth and tax revenue, lean left.

So such a split would leave Jesusland in a precarious financial situation, where they simply won’t be able to afford current spending commitments, requiring either massive tax increases, or significant spending cuts, or probably both. So you’d be fighting a war to abolish generous farm subsidies, state pensions, veteran benefits, medicare/medicaid, military spending, cut funding to police & prisons, while simultaneously pushing up taxes. And the bulk of what revenue and wealth that remained in Jesusland, would be dependant on those left leaning cities, who would literally control the purse strings. In short, for Trump supporters the world would suddenly become very fair very quickly. And that’s exactly what republicans don’t want to happen.

And least we forget, who is going to benefit the most from a civil unrest? Well, America’s enemies. Champagne corks will be flying in Moscow and Pyongyang if that ever happened. Hence why I’m totally sure they aren’t secretly manipulating things behind the scenes with their large armies of twitter trolls and bots.

Now I’d like to say it won’t happen, but we are in the post-truth and dark enlightenment era. Plenty of other train wrecks the right have pushed for have happened, be it brexit, Trump’s presidency, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, revoking Roe v Wade, all with predictable results. So unfortunately, I don’t think we can rule it out.

So this sort of dangerous rhetoric needs to have consequences (as in more republicans arrested). After all, we only got here thanks to Trump’s constant provocative, corrupt and illegal actions in office, without any push back. Republicans had the chance to impeach him after January 6th, bar him from office and draw a line under this, but they didn’t.

Largely because republican politicians don’t want to represent their constituents. They want to rule them. From their large mansions and secure gated communities, they see this whole circus as another manufactured controversy, like woke, anti-trans, Obamacare, etc. Its just a way to rile up the base. So what if people get hurt. So long as its not us or our wealthy donors, we don’t care. But its the sort of thing that could so easily run out of their control.

New labour – more of the same

In the UK its rare we get any good news these days. But with a worsening cost of brexit living crisis, it looks all but certain the Tories will lose the next election, as there’s no real way for them to fix the mess. But equally, there are some worrying signs from within labour, which suggest a labour government isn’t really going to make much of a difference, in fact it will probably be a short lived administration.

The main driver of this crisis is inflation, which is mostly driven by windfall profits for banks, energy & retail corporations (and not wages as the government claims). Indeed its getting so bad they are starting to call it greedflation. Hence raising interest rates or restricting wages isn’t going to do anything, other than hurt those who aren’t rich. On the other hand, a windfall tax or an increase in the top rate of tax (or perhaps a capital gains tax or a one off wealth tax) all probably would do the trick. But these are the things the Tories won’t do. They serve the wealthy & nobody else. If it means driving the economy into the ground, just so that the billionaire class can buy a new lambo, then so be it.

The end result is the Tories are tanking in the polls. The situation is so bad, there’s even talk of an early election. Yes the Tories would lose such an election, But if they wait until the impact of these interest rate hikes hit (meaning many will not be able to afford to refinance their mortgages once the fixed rate term ends, likely causing house prices to crash), they could be looking at a total wipe out.

Under Starmer, labour has been moving increasingly further and further to the right, to the point where its now questionable whether they still count as a centre left party anymore. He’s abandoned numerous promises he made to get elected as leader, such as abolishing tuition fees, scraping the de-humanising system of universal credit or increasing income tax on high earners. Labour have also made clear they have no plans of reversing Tory policies, even controversial policies such as their anti-strike laws, anti-demonstration laws), anti-migration rules (which likely breach human right legislation and aren’t actually reducing net migration in any way) nor will they reverse brexit (they’ve effectively ruled out even a customs union). They’ve even suggested there will be no substantial rise in public spending under a labour government (then how are they going to solve the cost of living crisis, organise a whip round?).

And they’ve also had many opportunities to thwart the Tories more unlawful and fascist policies. For example, the Greens in the house of lords, submitted a fatal motion against the Tories anti-protest legislation (a story that the BBC effectively censored). This would have likely succeeded had labour not blocked it (yes they helped the Tories get a fascist bill passed!), arguing that the lord’s shouldn’t be blocking common’s legislation. Actually this particular bill hadn’t been through the common’s (that was the point of trying to block it!). And if you think the Tories won’t use every dirty trick they can to block labour legislation, I’ve got some magic beans I can sell you.

They also failed to intervene as regards Johnson’s honours list. Promising to get rid of the house of lords if Johnson’s honours went through, would have forced Sunak to throw out the list (the Tories have been using the honours list to reward their cronies for years, its abolishment would mean hundreds of angry Tory donors, so Sunak won’t have much of a choice).

In short, what’s the point of a labour government if they aren’t going to actually change anything? Ultimate victory for the Tories is not to get their policies passed, but to get labour to adopt them. Not least because it allows the Tories and their client media to assign blame to labour for those policies. This was after all the fatal mistake of the Tony Blair government. He gets a lot stick these days (as does Clinton or Obama in the US), but often for policies that weren’t his idea in the first place. It was the Tories who deregulated the markets, turning once thriving working class communities into welfare colonies. And (ironically enough) it was the Tories who signed up to greater freedom of movement within the EU. Even the Iraq war wasn’t his idea (that was G. W. Bush).

The problem was Blair, despite having a massive majority in the commons, did very little to reverse these policies (he did something, just not enough), largely because he was terrified of being labelled “old labour” by the Tory press. Hence he adopted Tory policies, thus allowing the Tory media to blame his government for Tory mistakes, while also pouring poison into people’s ears regarding the EU and migrants. Hence many in the effected communities blamed labour (and the EU) for them being left behind. Which, alongside the austerity of the Tory coalition government (again nothing to do with labour), led to the strong leave vote in certain parts of the country (along side the actual Tories & the bigot brigade).

Starmer seems to be setting himself up to repeat Blair’s mistake (case in point, Starmer recently attended a party hosted by the Murdoch’s). He’s going to adopt a number of Tory policies even thought he knows they are deeply damaging and unsustainable long term, because he’s afraid of the media saying mean things about him. Well I hate to break it too you, the media are always going to be on the side of the Tories. While the briefly pretended to be on labours side in the run up to the 1997 election, this was merely a survival tactic (they knew labour were going to win anyways, so they wanted to reduce the chances of labour taking revenge on them for all the lies they’d spent the last few decades spreading).

The same is true today, the media will pretend to support labour once its clear Sunak’s goose is cooked, but only to placate Starmer. After that, they will quickly resume normal service, aiming that by the time the subsequent election rolls around everyone will be blaming Starmer for brexit, the costing of living crisis, the collapse of the NHS, the undermining of democracy, etc. And given that his plan seems to be to get elected and then put his trotter’s up, they’ll have a point.

Now there’s some in labour who will say, no this is all part of a big clever plan. We are playing drafts while Starmer is playing 3D chess. Well I doubt that. For example, if he is secretly planning on joining a customs union (as I’ve heard several suggest) he’d need to put that in the labour manifesto. Why? Because if he doesn’t the Tories can use their control of the lords, the courts, the civil service, the police, security services, banks and ultimately the Royals to block such legislation. And besides, the EU won’t give him the time of day without it being a campaign promise, as it will have no democratic mandate. The only way such a policy can become law (or anything else labour supporters want for that matter) is if he goes to the country and wins an electoral mandate for it.

There are three basically 3 ways to grow an economy and thus increase tax revenue – grow the workforce, grow your exports or encourage inward investment. With near full employment (many forced into the gig economy by the Tories, meaning they earn poverty wages and thus don’t pay alot in taxes), the only way to grow the workforce is through mass inward migration. In fact ironically, its probably the unchecked growth in this under the Tories which is keeping the UK economy out of recession (and can somebody explain to me how a few thousand desperate refugees coming across in small boats is a swarm, but hundreds of thousands of migrants, many from India like the PM, doesn’t count?).

Similarly, growing exports or inward investment would require better trade links with the UK’s primary trading partner….the EU. So adopting the Tories failed brexit policy just means inward investment and exports will continue to lag behind, meaning no growth in tax revenue. Starmer is setting labour up to fail.

Another common claim is that labour are trying to reconnect with working class voters. Many in labour have this vision of blue collar workers coming home from the mine, or the factory, to the tune of the music from the Hovis advert. Well between the Tories and Blair the UK working class ceased to exist. Those who used to belong to that class are now in their 60’s-70’s and retired (so they ain’t working and the main predictor for voting Tory is age).

I’m reminded of how the Bolshevik’s (or Maoists), who’d often never met a rural peasant in their life, had a sort of idealised vision of the peasant’s. They were unaware that most peasants were religious conservatives who were deeply suspicious of townies, especially Bolshevik’s. Hence they resisted Communist policies often leading to conflict, civil strife and ultimately genocide. Starmers master plan is much the same, go looking for votes in all the wrong places and impose policies that nobody wants.

By contrast there is a substantial number of millennial and generation Z’ voters who DO support labour and have been severely effected by Tory policies. They now have little chance of ever owning their own home and saving for retirement isn’t possible when you are living pay check to pay check. Yet these are the very people who Starmer is going to shaft once he gets into power. How do you think that’s going to work out? Likely by them feeling betrayed and they’ll go fishing for another party, likely the lib dems, greens or some hard left socialists….or perhaps fall into the same trap their parents did and back the far right.

And speaking of which, some division of votes on the left is always to be expected. Not least because that’s how the Tory media work. In the election they’ll try to sow discord, knowing that while they ain’t going to convince many to vote Tory, they might convince them to vote for another third party instead This is why it is essential labour does an election deal with the greens and lib dems.

And once the election is over, switch to proportional representation. Because while PR does make it harder for labour to win an out right majority, it does mean the Tories can’t get back into power without a majority of votes (they’ve never polled more than 45% since the 1920’s). Yes labour would have to share power with some of the smaller parties, but so what if they can get their policies passed and stay in power one election after another. But again Starmer has ruled this out.

Now to be clear, I’m not some salty Corbyn supporter, I was critical of him too. Indeed I predicted the likely outcome of Corbyn’s reign of error was a labour party that would lurch even further to the right (I’m only surprised it happened so quickly). That said, there’s been a purge of the left wing of the labour party using tactics which Stalin would approve of. For example, not only did Starmer expel Ken Loach (who directed the critically acclaimed film “I Daniel Blake“), but even kicked out a labour mayor for just showing up on a platform with Ken (worth noting Ken Loach was recently invited to the Sistine chapel by the Pope and praised for his fight against disinformation…so presumably the Pope is now going to be “cancelled” by Starmer too). This is allegedly due to his criticism of Israel, but on the other hand it is a proven fact that both sides within labour have been using anti-antisemitism as a factional weapon.

All in all, labour seem to be morphing into a centre right party. The UK equivalent of the democrats, who can’t find their ar$e with both hands. And are sitting by passively while the republicans turn the US into an autocratic neo-fascist Oligarchy. Or we have the equally ineffective Australian Labor party….aka the $hit lite party. And should you think the present Tory party is a bit too right wing for your liking, wait awhile. The one that comes to power in 5 years time will be many times worse (they are already talking about a referendum on withdrawing from the human rights convention). So its likely Starmer is putting at risk the very survival of British democracy, just so he can satisfy his ego.

Hence until I see some serious changes in labour policy, I won’t be voting labour. Granted I’m not in a marginal seat (mine is usually a toss up between the SNP and the Tories) and I’d understand why someone in such a seat would still vote labour. But I’d urge everyone else to vote against them and support a third party candidate. Its only when confronted with a threat to their potential majority will we see a panicked change of policy from Starmer.