Aquarian Weekly
6/6/18

THE UNITED TRUMP OF TRUMP
All of a Sudden We’re Citizens of Trump Enterprises

Not sure if you’ve noticed but the current president of the United States has been using his post as a personal vendetta machine. He has also begun very haphazardly to drag the country into a mid-80s Trump business model known to insiders as the “Atlantic City Kamikaze”. This is when all of his fabricated bravado and complete disregard for anything resembling rationality crumbles beneath the weight of his transcendent bullshit. To those who were suckered into voting for this idiot the signs may look like a cornered animal or a man showing signs of descending into madness. Those who ignore this will see him as a champion of something or other or whatever they tell themselves to make excuses for what is turning into a car wreck of a presidency. Either way it is happening and to bear witness is a fine thing. Historians will marvel that we made it through it all. But we will. Because we are Americans. We have survived worse. Not as stupid, mind you, but worse.

Although that last sentence is getting harder to write as the days mount in the political abortion Trump is performing on this nation.

I was moved last week to point out this kamikaze routine taking the government into some half-bent form of a banana republic. The greatest example, among many, is Trump’s continued threatening of the justice department and the rule of law. Last week members of congress, most pointedly his puppet, Devin Nunez of California, who purportedly recused himself from the farcical “intelligence committee investigation” for running under the cover of night to the White House in March of last year to brief the president on evidence, met with Trump and justice department heads to mull over (get this) even more evidence.

Let me write this out clearly: Trump feels the need to use his executive power to control a national security investigation, of which he is an ongoing suspect.

What kind of goofy dictatorship does Trump think he’s running?

He presumes, as was expected, that the United States has been transformed by his magnetic personality into Trump Enterprises, and that all must flow through him. And in a way it is kind of what he told everyone he would do if we were dumb and desperate enough to put him in charge and yet people who claim to love the concept of America (whatever the hell that is, they seem to know, they’re always shouting it in cute chants and making songs about it) and still voted for him have to endure the fact that his very presence is a mockery of the whole goddamn thing.

Recently Trump bemoaned the rigors of the U.S. Constitution as a weird albatross, not unlike Manhattan zoning laws or women’s rights, a bland document that’s just getting in the way of his greatness. He believes, as he believes in the infallibility of his mentor Vladimir Putin, that the Russian form of government is superior to all these annoying parameters he’s forced to endure. Putin gets to do what he wants, why can’t he?

This is why half the White House staff contradicts his tweets daily and there are meetings with foreign leaders planned, then cancelled, then planned, then changed. This is why half the state department is missing. This is why he continues to feel no heat over bitching that his attorney general should have “protected him” and the director of the FBI should have taken a “loyalty oath”.

We are Americans. We have survived worse. Not as stupid, mind you, but worse.

In a way, Trump is turning into King George III. He has not lost his nut, he is merely expressing his need to rule completely and fuck-all about anything else. And I love when he holds his Nuremberg-esque rallies and stands there with his jaw out with a grimace and asks the great unwashed if he is right about all this and they cheer like bleating goats.

Those who defend Trump’s bull-in-China-shop machinations believe his actions against the highest law offices in the land and his own justice department are somehow justified because he keeps calling the massive investigation he himself launched due to his “What me worry?” kamikaze stylings a “witch hunt”, even though he fired the man investigating him and then went on NBC to tell everyone it was because of the Russia investigation – something he now predictably and laughably denies. This, not some left-wing cabal, is what led to a special counsel. Just like the FBI telling Trump and his campaign staff in August, 2016 that the Russians were interacting with ancillary figures around his campaign, which led to a planted informant that Trump now calls “Spygate”, because some half-witted rodeo clown on FOX News made it up to sell Emergency Alert Bracelets to its elderly viewers.

But how do they explain his plans on pardoning “obstruction of justice” clarions like Rod Blagojevich and Martha Stewart, because his sacked FBI Director James Comey, who just wrote a book making Trump look like a foul-mouthed fascist paranoiac, put them in jail?

How do they explain his imbecilic war on Amazon, and more specifically its founder and chairman, Jeff Bezos?

Bezos is everything Trump is not. A truly successful business mogul. He has foresight and can communicate ideas above a fifth-grade level. His anger is in check. He does not brag about abusing women or agreeing with Howard Stern that his daughter is “a piece of ass”. He has never been sued and paid out millions for fraud and has not endured several bankruptcies. His baby, Amazon, is arguably the greatest single economic shape-shifter since the cotton gin. It is not the ashes of the USFL, another Trump kamikaze move, or whatever the fuck Trump University was. So Trump hates him. He also hates that he owns the Washington Post, which has does its finest work in four decades using eager White House sources and incredible investigative journalism to uncover the criminal charade Trumps’ cronies are perpetuating on this republic.

Trump bellows hard and loud about Amazon ripping Americans off through the U.S. Post Office, when in reality it is enterprises like Amazon that keep the USPS off life support.

Take Trump’s “Mexico pays for the wall” nonsense that was as silly as those who believed it and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto laughing in his face and extrapolate that out to this completely moronic and dangerous trade war no one with any idea how economics works thinks is remotely a good idea.

Trump doesn’t “like” the WTO, so he ignores it. Trump doesn’t like the Iran Nuclear Deal because it was Barack Obama’s idea, so even though he shows a spectacular inability to understand a scintilla of it, he bags it.

There are too many of these Trump vendettas to cover in a mere one-thousand or so words. Every day there is some bizarre shit our president thinks is owed to him on our account. He is his own granny state of wining, foot-stomping immaturity. And damn if we didn’t give this game show host the keys to the kingdom.

America is just another piece of gaudy property Trump is turning into a sinking Atlantic City casino boondoggle.

God bless that.

Aquarian Weekly
5/30/18

THE FIGHT TO LEGALIZE WEED IN NJ CONTINUES

There’s no reason to believe we can’t get there. This is not a rolling-off-the-log one, though. This is not one you get overnight. This takes time. We’re in that process right now.
– NJ Governor Phil Murphy, NJ 2019 Budget Address, May 8, 2018

Unlike the clown boy we have in the White House who is doing his illegal best to turn this damaged nation into a full-blown banana republic, we here in NJ hold our officials to a higher standard. Actually, we don’t. This place is a cesspool and has been for decades. The last guy here, you know, Chris Christie, was so spectacularly corrupt his record-low polling became legend. It led to the successful run by uber-progressive, Phil Murphy. As stated by Mr. Murphy throughout his campaign, the linchpin/cornerstone/foundation of his economic agenda and outlook for the Garden State leaned heavily on the rightful legalization of marijuana for sale, growth, and industry. The American way. Private sector growth and ingenuity free from government intercedence (especially this draconian federal government – that’s right Jeff Sessions, we mean you).

In other words: Don’t Tread on Us!

And while it is true that Murphy surfed into office on an anti-Trump wave last November, a wave growing by the month, the results of which will be evident this fall or not – we’ll see – there was no doubt his forward-thinking and fresh take on this issue was key to the resurgence of this state. It certainly was key to this space’s rousing endorsement of Mr. Murphy. This came, of course, with a caveat: Murphy had to get on this. Has it happened yet? Nope.

As I write this, Murphy’s party has total dominance in the state legislature, a body that had already drafted a bill to legalize marijuana when Christie was still limping around Trenton trying to avoid tomatoes being thrown at him by wandering urchins, which was duly supported by our new governor, who, once again, stomped to victory.

But it has been over the requisite 100 days – a mark that is common for government executives – of this administration and we have seen nothing but muckraking, filibustering, the usual religious, voodoo science and morality cries against legalization. This is the kind of cheap political nonsense that kept slavery alive for well over a century, massacred, then “relocated” native Americans, kept women from voting for 140 years, battled against civil rights, marriage equality, and on and on. It should be beyond our scope in the 21st century. This is not Alabama or anywhere near the god-forsaken South. This is New Jersey. Enough of this shit. Let’s get down to brass tacks and stop acting like it’s 1888, despite the old-fart, stuck in the 19th century national administration run by a guy who should be on a porch screaming at kids to get off his lawn.

Prohibition never works. Never will.

Based on several April polls conducted by NJ.com, half the citizens of our weird state are in favor of legalizing weed. And these are people over 45. People under that and especially people under 40 – in other words the future of this country, not fossils like this bleating troll of an attorney general, Jefferson Sessions, who is so goddamn out of it he still thinks Reefer Madness is a documentary and considers “high-tea” a code for shooting up, support this measure. Also, six out of ten NJ residents believe (and they are very correct) that bringing a new industry into the state will not only help with infrastructure (have you seen some of these byways around here?) and assist in funding schools and valued civil servants like firemen and police, etc.

And this is a majority. Murphy won with 55 percent of the vote. The current president of the U.S. didn’t get 50 percent of the electorate and he was duly slaughtered in the raw democratic vote by a woman who was generally despised. We have a true executive here. Not some also-ran pulled in by frightened steel worker union types. This is what democracy has wrought. Murphy has a mandate. Let’s get to it.

A few months back, I published a list of your representatives and their phone numbers for those like-minded free-thinkers and true free-market champions to pepper them with reason. That time has passed. It is time to begin to berate and cajole. We pay their salaries and it is time they begin to understand this, and to also understand one key element of what has changed around here in the past month.

Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court correctly lifted an imbecilic ban on sport book in this country – another in a long line of ridiculous Judeo-Christian edicts on “sin” versus “law”, as if nine-tenths of nearly everything humans do for money or sport is not a sin. Sin is how you make a buck and keep the trains rolling, move merchandise and get along. Again, if we were to base everything on morality we would have no business in this country, or really a country. Come on. Gambling, like recreational drugs – booze, coffee, etc –and even killing machines like guns – is big business. Where is the morality there? It is not there. So shove it.

What was the highest court in the land’s argument for legalizing the betting on sporting events nationwide? It’s kind of crazy to allow one state the right to supply something to its citizenry and another a different set of criteria, or as Justice Samuel Alito reasoned:
“The legalization of sports gambling requires an important policy choice, but the choice is not ours to make. Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each state is free to act on its own.”

The key word there is “regulate”. Now apparently those who oppose the legalization are also the same ones who are anti-regulation. The EPA currently is a gutted joke run by a corrupt psychopath who believes the entire operation has less to do with the government preventing dangerous attacks on our environment and the general health than it is to get him swanky hotel rooms and free jet rides. So don’t give me any of your regulatory nonsense. Congress shall make no laws infringing upon our freedom. State rights! All that shit. Whatever hook you want to hang your tired ideology on it is time to couple the plant with the wager. There is no difference. Get off your high (pun intended) horse and dig on the reality of this.

I am not sure I can write anything more on the details of this. It is all out there. Some of our legislators have reportedly checked out the industry of what has turned Colorado’s economy around and they are starting to waver, because money makes the world go ‘round and because marijuana is less harmful to the human body and mind than alcohol, so it is time to stop pretending we’re God, or whatever, and begin to see clearly the path that is open to us. Let the Volstead Act, a crazy attempt at morally adjudicating our behavior, be your guide. Prohibition never works. Never will. Like supply-side economics and leech bloodletting.

This is the last time I shall persuade Mr. Murphy to come through with his campaign promise. This ain’t no mythical wall some real estate game show host made up because daddy didn’t love him. This is sound policy and I expect the governor to find a way to make it happen. The next words that come from here will be filled with vitriol and rage and the excuses will not be tolerated, nor should they by you.

Get to work.

Aquarian Weekly
5/2/18

IT’S UNCLE RUDY TIME…IT’S UNCLE RUDY TIME!
(Sung to The Tune of the “Howdy Doody” Theme)

As I have written dozens of times in this space over the span of these 20 years, Rudolf William Louis Giuliani is by far the best politician of my lifetime, certainly in the time I have covered politics. He said if he were elected mayor he would clean up the cesspool of violence, crime and degradation that was New York City, bring back businesses and all that. He was elected in 1993 and he did. I was there the night he defeated David Dinkins; crammed into the New York Hilton on Sixth Avenue across from the Ziegfeld Theater around two in the morning, the returns rolling in slowly, and then it was over. Giuliani, looking haggard but defiant with his 50.7 percent of the vote, said the usual shit about law and order, as those of us in press row laughed. Oh, how we laughed. Clean up New York City?

Back then Donald Trump was a whore real estate junkie, and also a Democrat. His only stumble into politics was his full page Daily News ad calling for the hanging of the Central Park Five, all of whom were eventually found not guilty for raping a woman in 1989. It seemed like a pathetically transparent grandstand by another vacuous celebrity who knew nothing about the facts but needed to “weigh in”, a kneejerk reaction that he thought would play well as the tough guy to whatever suckers he was trying to roll somewhere on the island of Manhattan. In other words, Classic Donald Trump.

Back then Giuliani was the voice of the law in the most powerful legal team in the nexus of American street justice in the Southern District of New York, busting Wall St. fraud and mobsters. He was fond of referring to The Donald, as we called him back then, as a “two-bit hustler” around the main office building downtown. He said it more than once to one of his rising stars, James Comey, because Uncle Rudy (as I started dubbing him eventually) had no use for Donald Trump and lord knows any officer of the law busting money men for fraud was no ally of Trump’s.

But in 2016, there was no one more vociferous cheerleader for Donald Trump’s campaign for president than Rudy Giuliani, Mr. 9/11, America’s Mayor and a FOX News regular. No one could figure it out. Everyone in the know had a ton of stories of Giuliani openly mocking Trump as far back as when Uncle Rudy pulled out of a race against Hillary Clinton for NY Senate in 2000, when Trump dumped millions into a winning Clinton campaign. Four years later, the Clintons would be there to celebrate Trumps’ third marriage.

Even when Trump was reeling from the Access Hollywood tape a month before Election Day, Giuliani ran to any microphone he could find – one of the great quips of the 1990s around the press corps for years was “The most dangerous place in New York is between Rudy Giuliani and a hot mic” – to defend the candidate. He then began showing up to Trump’s rabid rallies, firing up the crowd with demented, almost fascistic nonsense that many considered the final nails in the credibility of a man who once spent $3.6 million to gather one delegate for an ill-fated run for president in 2008.

It was, in the end, vengeance for Uncle Rudy, who despised Hillary Clinton more than he could stomach standing next to Trump, who he knew was a corrupt liberal phony, who would likely destroy the Republican Party before he would get a niff at the White House. Clinton, as Uncle Rudy recalls it, mocked his pulling out of the 2000 rumble for senate because of health reasons as some kind of wimpy slink away. He did not forget it and he went hard after her, accusing her of every known crime since the dawn of civilization.

And then Giuliani did something quite interesting. He went on FOX News and started telling everyone that he had it cold from deep sources inside the FBI that the Hillary email stuff was not over. “Big news,” he grinned like the Cheshire Cat a day or so before his old buddy, James Comey re-opened the investigation publicly and to this day is cited (wrongly, mind you) in the half-assed liberal excuse-mill as the beginning of the end for Hillary Clinton. However, it was another appearance on the goofy “news’ channel that eventually alerted the FBI that something funky was going on within the Trump campaign and Wikileaks and the Russian government when Giuliani again promised more bad news for his enemy. He knew, he said, that the Russians had Clinton emails and soon they will be released.

What he has to do now may be tougher; keep himself and the president of the United States out of deep shit.

Trump, for his part, went on television that night and begged the Russian government to steal more Clinton emails. This, and not the alleged dossier and all the other Trump excuse-mill crap, was what put the tail on Trump that consequently led to Comey’s firing, the recusal of the Attorney General on the Russia case and the appointment of the special counsel.

James Comey, you may have heard, has laid this entire timeline out in his new book that doesn’t need any further publicity – if I see Comey’s mug on my TV again I may throw up. Suffice to say, within days of the Comey run on all-things media, Giuliani decided to “get involved”. He is now part of the crumbling, bumbling, completely ineffectual Trump Legal Team that has been unable to control its client. And there really isn’t any reason to ask why.

Before the Comey book release, Trump’s private lawyer, Michael Cohen, who has been his “fixer” for decades, was raided and picked up by the FBI with, allegedly reams of material that no one with half a brain doesn’t think is loaded with criminal activity, suddenly tossing a critical part of this investigation into the Southern District of New York, Uncle Rudy’s old stomping grounds.

Giuliani, a man who lived on the edge of the organized crime and Wall St. cartels knows when someone is about to cough it up. And it will not go down with his name attached to it. Because that is exactly what is transpiring, and all that talk about how supportive America’s Mayor was in 2016 is about to go out the window. Hillary Clinton is in the rearview mirror and the only thing keeping Giuliani out of this investigation is his contacts and his moxie, which he will use with every last breath.

And then, with Shakespearean type tragedy, Donald Trump put in a call to his favorite FOX morning show and went on a non sequitur rant to beat all of them for 30 uninterrupted minutes of what can only be described as abject lunacy, no less than eight times implicating himself in several open cases and contradicting Cohen’s lawyers’ plea to keep the cache of documents and emails that may implicate the president in dozens of crimes out of the government’s hands.

Rudy Giuliani is a quarter century older than he was that early morning in 1993 when he set forth to become what I still believe is one of the most impressive jobs in the history of governance. But what he has to do now may be tougher; keep himself and the president of the United States out of deep shit.

Good luck.

Aquarian Weekly
4/18/18

EXIT STAGE RYAN

I was waiting in the modest airport in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic with my family finishing up a wonderful new book on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and peeling pieces of my burnt skin from my wrist when I saw Paul Ryan appear on CNN and say, after weeks of vehemently denying credible news reports, that he is no longer seeking re-election for the United States Congress. He’s handing in his speakership. For all intents and purposes, with the heat rising to dangerous levels in and around his party and its president, he is getting the fuck out of Dodge.

With the entire federal government in his party’s hands, the third most powerful figure in the United States government is quitting. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has seen the writing on the wall and it is not good. Internal Republican polling strongly indicates there is a political Blue Tsunami coming in six months and he wants no part of it.

Like athletes who take the millions to play in a new city and then have the balls to tell you it’s because of their family, Ryan is wheeling out the usual tropes. Anti-Trump Republicans and conservative columnists and the predictable wave of liberal analysis have wrongly interpreted this slipping out the back door as a clear sign of Ryan’s exhaustion of working for and a general disgust in the behavior of our game show president. That, of course, is utter nonsense. There are more pictures of Paul Ryan smiling while standing or sitting or signing bills with Donald Trump aka David Dennison (Warning: That ain’t ever getting old around here) than there is of Melania Trump, who looks in every White House photo op like she’s been kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

You see, when it suited his agenda (and I am seriously not sure what the hell that is anymore), Ryan ate Donald Trump’s shit, carried his water and spent more press conferences playfully dodging questions about his angry, off-the-hinge tweets. Even when he was uncomfortable with the president of the United States providing cover for marauding Nazi marchers, one of which murdered a protester with his car, there was something of an embrace of Trump.

Ryan told CNN their “differences” were merely “style” and geographic origins, that only lunatics are from New York City and not sweet, homey, down-to-earth Wisconsin, where paying porn stars to sleep with you and then shut-up and personal lawyers being raided by the FBI is unfamiliar cosmopolitan shenanigans. He was apparently the one person who missed the Netflix Making of a Murderer series, which makes his home state appear as some backwater third-world desert of kill-crazed hicks, corrupt police and a government asleep at the wheel.

What Ryan is most of all is a quitter and he is running from this rat-infested sinking vessel as fast as you can imagine

Despite his purported Ayn Randian roots, his long-rumored ideological fiscally conservative bent and the rest of what he tells girls and Wall Street hucksters at DC cocktail parties, Ryan sold his soul to Trumpism, with its empty promises, bloated deficits, and anti-trade, barely coherent nationalistic claptrap. Ryan is just another hack like Gerald Ford, who wanted everyone on his golf outings to think he wasn’t ruined by the pardoning of Nixon and some far-fetched palaver about “healing the nation” when he took one for the party and then went out and lost the presidency to a peanut farmer.

What Ryan is most of all is a quitter and he is running from this rat-infested sinking vessel as fast as you can imagine, despite there being zero chance, even in a year where most Republicans would be lucky to not be tarred and feathered in town squares, to be re-elected. According to the numbers’ geeks over at Five Thirty-Eight, Wisconsin’s 1st district, or what Ryan has been representing now since 2011, is 11.3 percentage points more Republican than the nation as a whole. Even in the current and climbing seven-to-ten-point Democratic advantage nationally, Ryan, with nearly $10 million in his coffers, would retain his seat, with the ignominious chore of handing the gavel back over to Nancy Pelosi, if she survives a fervent progressive insurrection, of course. But Ryan has endured worse. He ran on the doomed Mitt Romney ticket and once even tried to fake like he didn’t want to endorse Trump over moral reasons, which he soon found out was not his thing. Fuck morals. We got tax cuts to get to.

And all of that is fine. I expect politicians to smear their rhetoric with hard-ons for morality and then trolling for teenage interns or turn the EPA into a private resort for friends and family, but Ryan wants you to think otherwise. He plays the whole this-and-that game as well as any of them. And this way leads to the exit, before he is fully blamed for kowtowing to and enabling what appears to be on a daily basis some kind of ridiculous parody of a frat house administration being run by a sloppy con artist and a bunch of people profiting off the idea of governance.

Thirty-eight House Republicans, including Ryan, have decided to not run for re-election this year, and twenty-five of them are through with the whole concept of politics as a viable vocation for people who thought Jesus had something to do with the founding of this nation built on free labor and land grabs. That is the greatest mass exodus in civic duty since World War II, according to the Brookings Institution. That is 75 years of politicians sucking it up against all odds being bested by a year in which just saying you belong to this party is as if you are pleased to be taking a dump on all that is decent and upstanding in the national fabric.

Paul Ryan thinks by quitting he gets to escape all that. And sure, I guess, he does. Pretty soon his corporate benefactors, whom he handed the candy store with that monstrous “tax reform” boondoggle last year, will pay him Clinton money to laugh about how silly this Trump idiot is, followed by a Comey-styled, “Can you believe Trump said this about that?” book.

Next!

Aquarian Weekly

I’M OFFICIALLY BORED OF CRAZY TRUMP

Donald Trump, aka El Douche, aka David Dennison aka Twitter Boy, our game show president, needs new material.

I was frankly psyched for this run since it purported to be rife with intrigue, goofiness, abject megalomania and off-the-charts WTF. For columnists with a penchant to choose anarchy over actual governance and for someone whose love for this country expands only about six feet outside my door, a Trump presidency was supposed to be entertaining. And although for a while it was, it appears now to have a shelf life.

I believe this whole Trump thing has jumped the shark.

Crazy tweets about celebrities and half-baked conspiracy theories and campaign rallies and hookers and Russians and knee-jerk racist rants and random firings of lunatics from every angle in jobs they have no business having and fucking up all over the joint was amusing for a while, but save for this idiot yanking his pants down at the U.N. or flailing his cock at a festival audience ala his mentor, the ghost of Jim Morrison, this has become tiresome.

This whole thing has devolved into Trump’s old NYC 1980s routine of calling up Page Six of the NY Post and telling the staff who he’s sleeping with to close a deal on a swamp in Jersey. It is One Trick Pony land. He’s got one bit, it is stale, and it needs to change.

Hell, I honestly don’t know what to write anymore about this buffoon. Over sixty major contributors to the administration have either left in ignominious shame, quit under extreme pressure or were sacked on Twitter. Some of them have either publicly or privately mocked him as a child wracked with ADD with the inability to concentrate on anything other than what people say about him. A dozen or more of the campaign to elect El Douche are either under investigation or indicted, arrested or turning state’s evidence for something to do with colluding with Russia. There are what, now, 20 to 30 women either accusing this pig of sexual harassment or assault and still others, one most infamously, revealing massive pay-offs to keep affairs quiet. There is a trade war with China to save 300 steel jobs for another 16 months, which is turning the stock market into a cartoonish rollercoaster, hundreds of thousands of children are being turned from citizens into criminals as he and congress dither over DACA, and most recently in a fit of stroke or a doped-up rage he appointed John Bolton, an onerously psychopathic TV personality with a hard-on for invading 16 different countries, his third (Third!) national security advisor.

Fun fact: Bolton found out about the gig while on Fox News ranting about invading North Korea.

Hell, Trump’s lawyer had to get a lawyer.

But this ain’t cutting it for me.

In order to get me going here, he has to be waaaaay crazier.

Let’s face it kids, the funny has gone out of this thing. It is a TV show that needs to be cancelled, but it won’t.

And even if it did (Trump’s most brilliant move) we would be stuck with a man who thinks Jesus tells him what kind of shirt to wear every day and strives daily to spread the word that homosexuals are agents of Satan, while he can’t apparently be at a lunch alone with a woman for fear he might glance at her cleavage and Moses will yank him into a closet and make him look at pictures of Marylyn Manson jacking off to mutilation videos.

Mike Pence is Trump’s great equalizer, and something the Democrats should think about if they take back the House this fall, because there is enough evidence of the president committing six counts of obstruction of justice (most of it coming from either Trump’s TV appearances, speeches or twitter), to impeach him. But while Trump is like a sloppy dog that shits on your couch twice a day, Pence is a starving Rottweiler headed for your throat.

Be that as it may, Trump needs new material. Yesterday, at the time of this writing, he held another in a long, tedious stream of press conferences where he claimed for the billionth time that the 2016 presidential election, an election he won by a perfect storm, was rigged and fraudulent and that millions, not forty or a couple of hundred, millions of people voted illegally. This is so December, 2016. In fact, Trump himself – he probably forgot, what is he 75?, disbanded a special team to investigate voter fraud after it had the audacity to tell him the truth; he’s nuts, there is no voter fraud, and that he actually won the election and that maybe this whole paranoia is a sign of deeper issues, because, um, he is already the leader of the free world, so what the fuck is wrong with him?

In the same off-the-cuff riffing, as if some kind of blandly presented homage to the corpse of Robin Williams (he literally showed the speech prepared for him and flipped it away like it was a 1971 Johnny Carson appearance – I have seen about two dozen people do that in cheap comedy clubs, come on) he wheeled out the same exhausted, “Mexicans are the worst” shit, blathering something about “more rapes than ever”. I am not sure what this creep’s fascination is with rape except that he has been accused of just about everything egregious you can do to a woman, including marrying them, (rim shot!), so maybe this is his next move.

Soon after this standard, almost word-for-word greatest-hits of the kind of submental Citizen Trump performance he has cranked out a thousand times since late 2015, he gets on Air Force One and claims that the $130,000 paid to a porn star to shut-up had nothing to do with him, despite it being faxed and signed on Trump Administration paperwork, negotiated by his personal lawyer, and paid to a woman who went on 60 Minutes and said she got it for enduring what sounded like reluctantly mechanical sex with a fat old man.

Ugh, man that was a waste of our time. This Stormy Daniels may be more desperate for attention and even stupider than Trump; a spectacular feat in itself.

All I am saying is if this show is going to run for another two and a half years, it has to step it up. He is all talk, no action, except for perpetuating the rote Republican stuff that has failed miserably for years. He needs to take this mania to another level. We need better crazy, because this crazy is repeating itself.

I think it’s time he brings in pros to advise him; Charlie Sheen or Bill O’Reilly or Iggy Pop, real loons, who know how to change it up to keep the ratings going. I mean, this might fly for Johnny Lunch Pail and Mom & Pop Idaho, but this is the big stage. I don’t expect him to rise to the level of Andrew Jackson, but at least spice it up, get beyond the tweets and the Mexicans nonsense.

Trump has become an over-used catch phrase, a bubble gum pop song you can’t get out of your head.

If he is going to suck this badly at being president, he has to be more hilarious and outrageous.

This crap might get the liberals over at MSNBC lathered, but radicals need this moron to kick into a higher register and fast.

Let’s go Dennison, make with the pants-dropping.

Aquarian Weekly
3/14/18

THE HALF-ASSED STEEL TARIFF

Man, I was all prepared to crank out another two-way column that would upset everyone who loves and hates the president simultaneously, but after that noodle proclamation or whatever that was David Dennison aka Donald Trump signed into whatever it is he signed it into I’ve got nothing.

What I was going to write is that it should come as no surprise to anyone that Dennison aka Trump has been saying since, I don’t know, the late 1990s that he despises trade deficits and believes the U.S. is getting ripped off. He is partially right about this, which was ostensibly the foundation of Senator Bernie Sanders run, and that is why Dennison aka Trump was elected president by a thin margin of 77,000 voters in the Rust Belt in November of 2016. Beyond quasi-racism, name-calling, and fending off sexual assault and harassment claims, this was the core of his campaign. Dennison (Trump) would have been right to pay back those who put him in the White House, even if it plunged the rest of us into a possible trade war and jacked up the price of cars (steel) and beer (aluminum), among other goods. This idea, though, that just because the president is under siege from porn stars and a special counsel that he’s trying to change the narrative (while theoretically could be true) should not be deemed as the normal Trumpian aka Dennisonesque “shoot-from-the-hip” stuff. This is why is he president.

However, this week El Douche only went half-way – and some with a grasp of the facts and statistics could argue no-way – to end with any strong measure the true trade deficit for the steel and aluminum industries. By exempting Canada and Mexico from his half-assed edict, the president is barely throwing a cup of water on what he and the unions believe is a raging fire. It is symbolic, like most things Dennison (Trump) says or does. He is our most “How Does This Look?” president. He waves his hands a lot to make you think he’s pulling a rabbit out of a hat, when it isn’t really a hat and there was never actually going to be a rabbit.

To be fair, this is politics as usual, but this was supposed to not be that this time, right?

If Dennison (Trump) was to do what he boldly claimed a week earlier before the markets tumbled and nearly every member of his pro-trade/antiunion party starting to cry foul, then there could have been real teeth to this, and with it, part of the doom that I would have loved to predict here. But like Mexico paying for the border wall, branding China as currency manipulators, wiping out the ACA in his first week, revealing his tax returns, suing the 19 women accusing him of all measures of sexual improprieties, signing any DACA bill sent to his desk, outlawing bump stocks, signing the “largest tax cut in history”, growing the economy by four-percent, appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton, eliminate Common Core, (fuck it, I’m exhausted, you get it) he failed to either do anything or went to the edge and pulled back.

Let’s see how Americans like paying more for stuff to save a few thousand jobs in three states.

Don’t get me wrong, what our game show president doesn’t know about trade you could barely squeeze into Yankee Stadium. He infamously blurted out recently when pressed on this idea; “Trade wars are easy to win”, despite U.S. going oh-fer in every instance, most disastrously the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff that expedited the Great Depression or the fabulous 18 months when George W. Bush tried to save the steel industry in 2002 by raising tariffs on selected steel products that tanked more jobs than were saved and plunged the very states it was to “save” into economic crisis.

I was actually looking forward to a real biting trade tariff to prove AGAIN this nonsense about U.S. jobs being mostly eliminated from trade and how if it were implemented they would suddenly return. Then in another generation some other blowhard will promise to fix it and make jobs come back and some new suckers will buy it. But alas, none of that will happen, because in order of annual percentage, here are the top ten countries importing steel into this country, all of which have been sighted by the United Steel Workers Union as “cheating” by dumping unfairly underpriced product into this country – which by the way is the case with nearly every product that enters this country or is made by manufacturers abroad to keep prices down in places nearly 80-percent of the country shops at like Walmart and Target – but that is another cogent argument in the face of hysteria for another day:

1. Canada 16.7 percent
2. Brazil 13.2 percent
3. South Korea 9.7 percent
4. Mexico 9.4 percent
5. Russia 8.1 percent
6. Turkey 5.6 percent
7. Japan 4.9 percent
8. Germany 3.7 percent
9. Taiwan 3.2 percent
10. China 2.9 percent

And this is according to Reuters. In other estimations China is farther down the list, but definitely farther down than Canada and Mexico, who have been exempt from these tariffs. And this is a good thing if you care about unwinnable trade wars and paying more for goods, but it is really just a Band-Aid on a gaping wound if you voted for David Dennison aka Donald Trump and you expected results.

Listen, I get the steel and aluminum lobby has this coming every ten years or so. Someone has to pay lip service to these voters. However, why is the president choosing winners and losers here? Why is this socialist edict of saving a few thousand jobs more important than costing thousands or more of other jobs that may and would disappear as a result of a true tariff with real teeth. And what of these other countries that are not Canada and Mexico? Do they, especially allies like Brazil, Germany, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea (who at the time of this writing is working its ass off trying to avoid a nuclear war between ego-mad sociopaths) view this as a hostile gesture borne of capitalist cronyism and retaliate in kind?

A Symbolic gesture to the voter base is as old as the concept of politics, and thank goodness someone got to this nut job before he made a sweeping 25 percent/10 percent tariff on key trade partners like Canada and Mexico, which by treaty, must not be fucked with. If Dennison aka Trump really wanted to enact his belief and if we are truly to see this fail miserably, then why half-ass it. Why not just go after the WTO as he has NAFTA?

Show some guts and do what you say, for once.

Let’s see how Americans like paying more for stuff to save a few thousand jobs in three states.

That would be worth writing about.

Aquarian Weekly
3/7/18

THE FIGHT FOR LEGAL MARIJUANA
Voting is Not Enough – Time to Get Involved

In a not-too-shocking twist, a formally bold New Jersey Senate, pummeled by misinformation, illogical panic and religious idiocy, is beginning to show signs of cracking on one of the key issues of the 2017 gubernatorial election, the legalization of marijuana. Our new governor, Phil Murphy was elected this past November with 56% of the vote on the force of this promise. This space fully endorsed his candidacy – only done maybe twice in two decades here – for this issue based on last summer’s details of the N.J. Senate’s proposed bill to do so, which Murphy then used as one of his campaign platforms. The economic and legal ramifications of this vote is, in my humble opinion and backed with strong data from states who have gone this route, important for the money desperately needed for education, infrastructure and to finally deal with a state that is taxed higher than almost every other in the union. Plus, it is stupid to make a vice that is scientifically less damaging than alcohol illegal, allowing only drug dealers to profit from its overwhelming use.

It is simple common sense, reality, statistics and economic solvency we are discussing here. And it must be done by this governor within the first 100 days, as promised, or the shit will come down.

The support for legalizing marijuana in New Jersey currently is around 42%, so it is not as important an issue for as many as it is here, but for those who understand how important this will be for the region (New York has suddenly begun discussions long overdue in legalizing it and seeing the same positive economic indicators if they do), it is paramount.

I implore Senate President Stephen Sweney, a fellow architect and strong proponent of this bill, to stand strong and get your constituents in line. Many Democrats, of course, have been besieged with the usual nonsense that has no basis in reality to thwart this effort; preachers, knee-jerk lazy cops, who cannot help but whine about adding freedoms, and those who are afraid to make this kind of political leap. Republicans too are split, but if they are truly for state’s rights, free-market control beyond government regulation and economic sanity, then the choice is easy.

The real indicator that this is on the cusp of happening is the panic among the opponents of the bill, who suddenly, after years of fear-mongering and draconian crap from the former governor, are pitching the always half-assed decriminalization concept along with expanding medicinal marijuana.

It is simple common sense, reality, statistics and economic solvency we are discussing here.

Fuck that. They had their chance, and with no prior support for an economically sound and legally binding push for legalization, they wish to water it down to appease pot heads and liberals. This is NOT about that. This is about pulling the dumb and scared into the 21st century. It is about stopping the cuts on our already razor-thin educations budget, our crumbling infrastructure and what is likely to be escalating taxes thanks to the ridiculously irresponsible and possibly unconstitutional federal government tax reform that puts limits on our write-offs here. Not to mention the way the economic structure of the Western Hemisphere will crumble if this idiotic trade war the president of the United States wants to embroil us in which will raise the price of automobiles, canned goods, etc.

If you support this bill and the idea of legalizing weed you must contact your state legislator, and for that I provide a handy little list. Find yours and call them and tell them to be brave and stand up for the electorate and do the right thing for the state.

Dawn Marie Addiego (R) – Medford, NJ 08055 (609) 654-1498

Christopher Bateman (R) – Somerville, NJ 08876 (908) 526-3600

James Beach (D) – Cherry Hill, NJ 08002 (856) 429-1572

Chris A. Brown (R) – Linwood, NJ 08221 (609) 677-8266

Anthony R. Bucco (R) – Denville, NJ 07834 (973) 627-9700

Gerald Cardinale (R) – Cresskill, NJ 07626 (201) 567-2324

Richard J. Codey (D) – Livingston, NJ 07039 (973) 535-5017

Christopher J. Connors (R) – Forked River, NJ 08731 (609) 693-6700

Kristin M. Corrado (R) – Wayne, NJ 07470 (973) 237-1360

Nilsa Cruz-Perez (D) – Camden, NJ 08102 (856) 541-1251

Joseph P. Cryan (D) – Union, NJ 07083 (908) 624-0880

Sandra B. Cunningham (D) – Jersey City, NJ 07305 (201) 451-5100

Patrick J. Diegnan, Jr. (D) – South Plainfield, NJ 07080 (908) 757-1677

Michael J. Doherty (R) – Washington, NJ 07882 (908) 835-0552

Nia H. Gill, Esq. (D) – Montclair, NJ 07042 (973) 509-0388

Vin Gopal (D) – Ocean Twp., NJ 07712 (732) 695-3371

Robert M. Gordon (D) – Fair Lawn, NJ 07410 (201) 703-9779

Linda R. Greenstein (D) – Cranbury, NJ 08512 (609) 395-9911

James W. Holzapfel (R) – Brick, NJ 08724 (732) 840-9028

Thomas H. Kean, Jr. (R) – Westfield, NJ 07090 (908) 232-3673

Fred H. Madden, Jr. (D) – Turnersville, NJ 08012 (856) 232-6700

Declan J. O’Scanlon, Jr. (R) – Red Bank, NJ 07701 (732) 933-1591

Steven V. Oroho (R) – Sparta, NJ 07871 (973) 300-0200

Joseph Pennacchio (R) – Montville, NJ 07045 (973) 227-4012

Nellie Pou (D) – Paterson, NJ 07505 (973) 247-1555

Ronald L. Rice (D) – Newark, NJ 07106 (973) 371-5665

M. Teresa Ruiz (D) – Newark, NJ 07104 (973) 484-1000

Nicholas J. Sacco (D) – North Bergen, NJ 07047 (201) 295-0200

Paul A. Sarlo – Wood-Ridge, NJ 07075 (201) 804-8118

Nicholas P. Scutari (D) – Linden, NJ 07036 (908) 587-0404

Robert W. Singer (R) – Lakewood, NJ 08701 (732) 987-5669

Troy Singleton (D) – Moorestown, NJ 08057 (856) 234-2790

Bob Smith (D) – Piscataway, NJ 08854 (732) 752-0770

Brian P. Stack (D) – Jersey City, NJ 07307 (201) 721-5263

Stephen M. Sweeney (D) – West Deptford, NJ 08086 (856) 251-9801

Samuel D. Thompson (R) – Old Bridge, NJ 08857 (732) 607-7580

Shirley K. Turner (D) – Ewing Twp., NJ 08628 (609) 323-7239

Jeff Van Drew (D) – Cape May Court House, NJ 08210 (609) 465-0700

Joseph F. Vitale (D) – Woodbridge, NJ 07095 (732) 855-7441

Loretta Weinberg (D) – Teaneck, NJ 07666 (201) 928-0100

Aquarian Weekly
2/7/18

RUSSIA IS WINNING

No matter where you fall on the President Trump/Russian Collusion or Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Theories, it isn’t hard to argue that Russia, clearly an enemy of these United States, is a big winner in this.

Currently, because of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign, and the White House (for reasons that you can decide fits – I subscribe to Donald Trump is an egomaniac who would rather see the entire structure of the American electoral system be destroyed to make the point that his election was the best ever, since…well…let’s leave it at best ever) continues to battle against it. The argument is fluid; it never happened at all or is overrated or is Fake News or Hillary did it or whatever dime-store, half-assed bullshit passes for a defense in the last fifteen minutes.

Want more?

There are three separate investigations going on in the House of Representatives, the Senate and a Special Counsel appointed by the Justice Department. The aforementioned Justice Department is simultaneously at war with congress, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the White House. The previously noted FBI is at war with the White House and the House and the White House has gone far out of its way to attack the integrity of the FBI since January of last year, including the firing of its director (“Over the Russian thing” – Trump to NBC Nightly News), then the Twitter tirades that led to another chief FBI official to quit, and now is seriously deconstructing The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) authorities, which was bloated by the fancy Patriot Act (remember that, fans?) to greatly assist, no, provides unchecked power to the executive branch to curtail spying, the type of spying that led to the Russian meddling in the first place.

Need more?

Right now, the co-chair of the House Intelligence Committee David Nunez, who tried to sell some ruse to the press last year after sneaking into the White House to get approval or talking points or a sack full of money, is poised, against legal and security advisors, to release a top-secret FBI memo for blatant political purposes.

The very structure of the federal government hangs in the balance.

This may worry you if you give a shit about America, but it is by far the greatest victory of a foreign power against the United States since the Chinese kicked General Douglas MacArthur’s overwhelmed troops across the 38th Parallel in the late autumn of 1950.

It is an ass-kicking of epic proportions that must have people in the Kremlin, never mind Trump’s boss Vladimir Putin, dancing in the aisles.

I have not seen this kind of pummeling since Mike Tyson’s mid-1980s bouts. It is so lopsided and sad there has to be a referee somewhere that can stop it.

The kicker, and this is my favorite; the Senate this week voted 98-2 (talk about ass-kicking) to impose new and stricter sanctions on Russia, which is openly mocking our very institutions right under our noses.

And…wait for it…

President Donald Trump refused to sign it.

Game. Set. Match.

Why doesn’t Trump just hand the whole thing over to Putin right now? In fact, when he’s done with his insufferably ponderous State of the Union Address, which I think may be entering its 60th hour, he can call up Putin and end the charade of his actually running things. Heck, it might be fun for a while. Get monosyllabic bigotry in a more exotic language for a change, instead of Queens-dumb. Listening to Trump massacre the English language was entertaining for a bit, but it’s time for new blood.

At least Putin is in shape.

Mind you, this is a president that has picked a fight with every human you can name. Go ahead, name them: He is fighting them.

Putin?

Nope.

And what this tells you is that in some way, and I have no idea why, although the infamous Dossier does give us some clue, the Russians have our president by the balls.

Why doesn’t Trump just hand the whole thing over to Putin right now?

The final indignation to all this, again, if you give a shit about America, is not only are the Trump lawyers – wholly expected and understandable – whipping up the Johnny Cochran “O.J. Defense” of going after the cops and make it about them, but so is the entirety of one of our only two major parties; and the one that is in power. Nearly every breathing Republican in the legislative branch has not only gone out of their way to make this about the FBI and kowtow to the brainless at FOX News, but are ignoring the real crime to expand the jury’s (the American public’s) opinion that if the law is corrupt, which we all know it is, then the accused did nothing wrong.

The two are mutually exclusive crimes. Lawyers know this. It is called muddying the waters. It is a distraction tactic, and quite effective if done right. Cochran was a master at it.

O.J. murdered two people and got off. Even people rooting for O.J. to get off understood this. They just didn’t like cops.

Donald Trump did something wrong here; collude with Russians to meddle with an election he would win or obstruct the investigation into it because it makes him look bad. Either way, he and Republicans suddenly don’t like federal cops.

And once that goes bye-bye, then the Russians win.

The Russians are winning.

Aquarian Weekly
1/10/18

TIME FOR ATLAS TO SHRUG
Federal Government’s Attack on American Progress, Technology, Ingenuity & Creativity

Money is made possible only by the men who produce.
– Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

The abomination peddled to the American people as a tax cut at the end of 2017 by the anti-progress, anti-metropolis, socialist, redistribution-of-wealth Republican corporate puppets that handed a bill to the most productive and creative regions of this nation to pay for nanny-state corporate handouts is a blight on not only our economic freedoms but an outright attack on the true power centers of this republic. Piled high on their submental propaganda that technology and international trade is a modern evil intent on destroying the free enterprise of the 21st century, this law is antithetical to its authors’ purported ideology that was tossed where all ideologies go whence power calls, in the trash bin of history.

By handing over a shameless gift to the largest corporations in America while ignoring smaller ones – I am the proud owner of a corporation, Vincary Media, which will not be seeing any trimming of my tax rate from 35 to 21 percent as the multi-billion dollar ones are – what will be forever known as the draconian Trump Tax Hike of 2018 penalizes those who live in the highest tax brackets; in other words the greatest achievers, most productive cities, the media and technology centers, the bastions of trade and commerce that prop up the rest of this nation internally rotting from atavistic energy concerns to a barely breathing manufacturing (and I use that term as loosely as one can muster without bursting into paroxysms of laughter) hub.

Simply put; this ten-thousand dollar cap on state and local tax deductions, is in effect a discriminatory double-tax on the most important regions of the United States; more particularly New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, or to bang this point home ever more succinctly, the nation’s largest, most productive, creative and thus cutting-edge centers.

I live in one of those centers.

For the first time since writing this column (est.1997), and certainly the first time since having incorporated as a free-lancer (est. 2003), I was informed by my accountant that I will be paying more taxes this year. Not during two Democratic administrations and a Republican two-term one did I receive this call. I am going to pay more taxes. Let that sink in if you voted for any Republican (fiscal conservatives my ass) at any point over the past decade. Thank you. Appreciate it. Excuse me while I go kick Rush Limbaugh in his drug-addled balls.

Of course, this is the culmination of the sophomoric economic idiocy of our game show president, but really that drooling moron is window dressing compared to a congress that has previously been hijacked by self-styled tax guru, Grover Norquist, who somehow (Good for him) got these dinks to sign a pledge to “never raise taxes”, but is now clearly sucking at the teat of big business that would make the ghost of Calvin Coolidge wish he were a whore at the Mardi Gras parade. By the way, Norquist, like me, who lives in high-rent Washington D.C., is going to pay more taxes this year (Good for him).

The abomination peddled to the American people as a tax cut at the end of 2017… is a blight on not only our economic freedoms but an outright attack on the true power centers of this republic.

Everything that keeps this nation alive economically comes from urban centers. Even the preponderance of cash that is sent to farmers all over the fruited plain, as everything grown in this country is subsidized by tax money, and where does all that come from? You and me, well more like me since I live in a higher taxed area, but it sure ain’t corporations with their off-shore bank accounts and massive write-offs (corporations never paid 35 percent taxes, on average is was 14 percent and soon it will be in the single digits), while the rest of us suckers continue to fork over basically the same rates, which will rise in a decade but remain cut for corporations.

You want to know how funny this all is; Donald Trump’s precious Twitter was invented and founded in San Francisco, one of the highest taxed cities in America. Those people are F-U-C-K-E-D.

The queer aspect of this is it began under the watch of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who has claimed in the past that he was inspired by Ayn Rand’s hoary screeds on the injustices of laws created by governments to support weakness, usually reserved for economics, as a result of ingenuity and creativity. Rand’s novels, most notably, The Fountainhead (wildly overrated combination of penis envy meets a preternatural industrial revolution jones) and Atlas Shrugged (painfully underrated ode to individualism and the bloated natural order of exceptionalism), deal with the intervention of government against the will of man, or the private state, which looks, by nature (according to Rand, and a theory of which I enthusiastically subscribe, Objectivism) runs counter to the tenets of a free society.

Once you single out one economic swath of the collective field to bear the burden, you are slanting it, or in more legal terms, practicing cronyism or racketeering. In a very binding way (and a tax law is as binding as it gets, bubba) what this congress and our president did was take away the motivation for the centers of our commerce, education, art and ingenuity to continue its greatness in order to prop up what Rand calls (and I am sure Ryan, when he was all cool in his, “Hey I’m a young conservative, look at my pecs,” period) moochers.

Rand’s novel proffers that the best and brightest protest by removing their minds and talents from this mooching society obsessed with ancient rituals like coal mining and Catholicism (Rand was card-carrying atheist, who thought Jesus was a sucker, something Republicans always fail to point out) and see how the rest of society fares. Spoiler alert, it crumbles.

Fun Ayn Rand fact, she scrapped her screeds and went for the real money in Hollywood writing banal scripts for B-movies, another place that will be fist-raped by this tax law.

And lest anyone use the pointed argument that my beef is with my absurdly high state tax, I remind you that if I go to Cabo San Lucas and choose a hotel on the beach, and then a room facing the ocean, I expect to pay more. I expect that being 34 miles from the greatest city on planet earth, with access to the best education, art, industry, technology etc., to pay more, but I also expect to have the write-offs commensurate with the rest of the country in which the property values are equal to the less than ideal area in which they find themselves.

Now those who choose cynicism and paranoia as a hobby, and I am all for that, may say this is Republicans and Trump penalizing states, especially urban and suburban (educated, cultured, high-level-producers), social progressive thinkers, media centers, and those who openly mock their knuckle-dragging bullshit, to pay for not supporting them. They will never pay the political price for having screwed us. And they are right.

But I say to them and you and all Americans; remember that waaaaayyyy more people died, it’s like ten-to-one in almost all calculations, in WWII (and every ensuing war for that matter) in New York, New Jersey and California. We have sacrificed and created enough.

Time for Atlas to Shrug.

Aquarian Weekly
12/20/17

WELCOME BACK TO CORPORATE LAND
Net Neutrality, Tax Rates and Deregulation A-Go-Go

It is an interesting plan devised by a man who has bankrupted more businesses than anyone in the history of modern American entrepreneurship, and backed by dinosaurs from the Industrial Revolution run under the guise of some Eisenhower-era dream of the old, America First, anti-global economic structure that has zero chance of working in the current 21st century landscape.

But okay.

The main goal of this Republican-controlled federal government has been to deregulate everything in sight, cede the entire ecological, moral and structural game to not the private sector, but the corporate-level powerbrokers. The idea is to make things so easy for multi-billion dollar businesses they will rush back to this country and provide jobs. This, as stated many times in this space, has never worked in a long-term growth of the economy. I am not going to bore everyone with details, but it can be verified by simply doing the research and crunching the numbers. I invite you to do it.

Having said that, it is important to point out that my criticism of this does not mean I support the complete government-controlled regulation-happy opposite argument. There is free market and then there is fixing the game for corporations. The latter is what we discuss here today.

So far Republicans have done next to nothing in the way of legislation. There is no administration that I can find, at least in the 20th century, that has gone a calendar year having done nothing with or without control of the entire government. Aside from an alarming spate of executive orders, which have purportedly moved the unemployment rate from 4.8 to 4.5 since Donald Trump has taken office, and the continued spike in the stock market, which today, as for the past eight years under the previous administration, means less than it did a half-century ago, because the main percentage of trading is done by the famed one-percent of the citizenry.

It is important to note that I write “purportedly” on these figures, because normally unless a major law is enacted, like say the 2001 Bush tax cuts or the 2009 Obama stimulus package – both passed by single-party control in the first year of those presidents – the economic indicators in the first year of any administration is the result of the previous one’s agenda. This is especially prevalent among two-term presidents, as George H. W. Bush found out in his first term after eight years of Reagonomics.

Either way you stand on this issue, it is easy to see that Trump and the Republicans mean to hand over all control of the American economy to the most powerful corporations, first and foremost through the language in the current tax bill before congress, which has a 29 percent approval of the American electorate. Not that polling or even popularity means anything. It is only illuminating when viewed through the lens of those polled that voted for the Donald Trump that ran as a populist, forgotten-man candidate. Despite being crushed in the popular vote, the president carried the Rust Belt to electoral college victory due to this weak Huey Long charade, which has now emerged as the predictable land-baron, big business stooge he truly is and has always been. The whole “con job” thing Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio bitched about in the primaries is coming home to roost.

There is free market and then there is fixing the game for corporations. The latter is what we discuss here today.

But again, if honey deals to the one-percent and corporations in the current language of the proposed tax bill, as covered in this space a few weeks ago, was not enough of a sign that Citizen Trump, The Voice of Johnny Lunch Pail, was a ruse, then the repeal of Net Neutrality by the always upstanding FCC (someone should have sacked this nonsense in the 1970s, but that is a column I have written too many times to fathom, so let’s leave it at that) seals it.

This repeal is the government’s gift to gargantuan service providers to decide the economic structure of the Internet, where, the entire country and really the world lives and breathes. Whether they pledge to or not, your service provider can now gauge consumers, block content they do not have complete or part ownership of, and dismantle any even playing field for start-ups, free-lance users or anyone not a massive, faceless conglomerate.

The chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai says this will free the internet for investment and innovation, as if this is a new thing. Never happened before. There was no 1990s boom, which was the last strong economic period. Everything that has transformed the brick-and-mortar economy into the cyber one never happened, according to Pai, who was an attorney for (ha!) Verizon and has railed against Net Neutrality from the second he took this unelected office in 2012.

No matter where you stand on your economic theories and principles, how exactly is Net Neutrality bad, unless you have the strings of providing access to the Internet.

It reads: “Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. For instance, under these principles, Internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and online content.”

You want to pay more money for what you already can do now and/or have your service provider decide what you can and can’t see, to allow only those with more money than you to have better, more complete access to the Internet? Then this is a fantastic ruling.

Again, no matter where you stand on this, we are in a new era of a complete corporate take-over of the American economic landscape. This was mostly true under every previous administration dating back to the earliest days of the American Century, but now it is unashamedly absolute. For the results of this, immediate and long-reaching, we will see whom it benefits.

But make no mistake, we are back in Corporate Land.