Political Fix (5 July, 2018)

The Blue Wave Just Got a Few Feet Higher.

A group of Democrats are hoping to flip Republican districts and take over the House and Senate this November.

Things weren’t looking so great after the primary.

But that was before Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy stepped down.

Justice Kennedy is a Republican and was appointed by a Republican President, Ronald Reagan. But Mr. Kennedy turned out to make decisions based on upholding the constitution and not the Republican agenda. He was the swing vote in 76% his decisions.

Two of Mr. Kennedy’s most notable decisions were upholding Roe vs. Wade in 1992 and making gay marriage legal. He not only cast the pivotal votes but wrote the majority opinion for marriage equality and was one of three justices to write the opinion for keeping abortion legal.

But he also was the swing vote concerning conservative issues such as voting rights, gun control, the Muslim Ban and Citizens United, which allowed for SuperPacs. He was also the deciding vote that made George Bush president in 2000.

On an interesting note, Kennedy voted against the constitutionality of Obamacare, and it was Justice John Roberts who voted with the more liberal justices to say the health care bill was constitutional.

Mr. Kennedy, who grew up in Sacramento, was appointed to fill an open seat after Robert Bork’s failed nomination and Douglas Ginsberg’s withdrawal of nomination because he smoked pot.

At 81, he’s the longest-serving member of the court at 30 years, and is the fourteenth longest-serving justice of the 114 who have sat on the bench.

Mr. Trump’s candidates to replace Mr. Kennedy come from a previously released list of 25 potential Supreme Court nominees put together by the Federalist Society. The candidates are young, conservative and have records of being steadfastly anti-abortion, LGBTQ rights and voting rights.

According to a Pew poll, 57% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 40% say it should be illegal in all or most cases. So for those 40% the Federalist Society is doing a good job advising the president.

Mr. Trump has stated that he will not ask the abortion question while interviewing his candidates, but he doesn’t have to. It’s already been asked.

After Mr. Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee after Justice Neil Gorsuch was approved, Americans have about 18 months before abortion is illegal in the United States. And that means all states, because Supreme Court decisions are Federal.

So it won’t matter if someone lives in Oklahoma or California. Abortion will be illegal.

The Women’s March on Washington is considered the largest single-day demonstration in recorded U.S. history. In addition there were Women’s Marches across the country with the total number of marchers being four million.

And that was just to protest the Trump Presidency.

Any guesses on how many women will be protesting when their right to choose is taken away?

Soon after abortion is made illegal the Supreme Court will then be deciding on gay marriage.

And thus the reason why Evangelicals made their Faustian Deal with Mr. Trump. He personifies everything they hate, but he promised them he would appoint justices that will get rid of abortion and gay rights and he is making good on those promises.

“Let’s Make America Great Again” is really Mr. Trump’s longing for a return to the 1950’s, an era to where straight, old, white men ruled the world.

And they are getting their wish.

Welcome MS-13 Class of 2026 to 2035!

Under President Trump’s “Zero Tolerance Policy,” 2,000 children were separated from their parents during the last few months and possibly 2000 more were taken during a trial period of his policy between October and December of last year.

No system was put in place to reunite children with their parents so the ones too young to know that “Mama” isn’t really their mother’s name, or the ones too small to talk, might never see their parents again.

Even if and when the children are reunited, they are still going to be damaged humans, making the zero tolerance policy the perfect foundation for the next generation of gang members.

If the most vulnerable of these kids is from two to eleven years old, 2026 should be the first class of MS-13 gang members to graduate into adulthood.

Mr. Trump’s and Attorney General Sessions’ tweets and policies don’t express an understanding of the history of gangs and how the MS-13 and other Central American gangs formed in the U.S.

It was not lax immigration policies, rather, these criminal groups spread largely in response to failed U.S. anti-crime policies in the 1980s. The street gang Mara Salvatrucha 13 was born in the United States and developed in the streets of Los Angeles during that time.

Mr. Trump’s demonizing the immigrant population may recreate the conditions that ruptured communities and increased violence in the past. The family separations are going to make it worse.

These kids will not just be gang members but psychopaths.

Migrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are fleeing persecution, violence, and death threats. What these children have experienced in their native countries, their difficult journeys here, and early separations from their parents will have a profound effect on their ability to function in normal society.

According to the Washington Post, “If you take the moral, spiritual, even political aspect out of it, from a strictly medical and scientific point of view, what we as a country are doing to these children at the border is unconscionable,” said Luis H. Zayas, a psychiatry professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “The harm our government is now causing will take a lifetime to undo.”

There is a human cost to Mr. Trump’s zero tolerance policy, and it will be felt by all Americans, not just the kids.

It’s all an illusion

Remember during the economic meltdown in the fall of 2008? I remember the news being so dire that even I couldn’t watch it. The only relief was when former Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, with his huge head of hair, was caught selling President Barrack Obama’s former senate seat.

Mr. Blagojevich solicited bribes for the seat after Mr. Obama was elected president in 2008. He was taped by the FBI saying “I’ve got this thing, and it’s f**king golden. I’m just not giving it up for f**king nothing.”

I could have listened to that secret tape 1000 times rather than hear about the current state of the economy.

That’s when it hit home that not just the United States’, but the world economy, was built on a house of cards and now our day of reckoning had arrived.

Somehow the world economy was coaxed off the cliff, but it was just a bunch of fancy foot work.

Banks don’t actually have money, Wall Street transactions are just on paper, home mortgages are not based on real income. Everything is leveraged, on credit, sub-primed or on the razors edge of default.

Don’t believe me? Let’s see what would happen if everyone decided one day to go to the bank and withdraw their money.

Another illusion is the fact that we live in a society of law and order.

What have I learned being sued five times in last four years? That people break the law every day and with impunity.

And who is going to stop them? Lawyers?

Violent crimes and grand theft is pretty well covered. We don’t live in chaos.

But people commit financial elder abuse, conduct scams, violate their fiduciary duty, damage or steel property, and lie under oath, just to name a few, knowing nothing will happen as a result.

Most of these infractions would have to be prosecuted by the district attorney. But we only have one District Attorney in Tim Ward, and we would need 20 Tim Wards and 10 court houses just in Tulare County to handle all the laws being broken.

Now I just laugh when people say “Isn’t that illegal?”

The lessons I have learned tuning middle aged have been the similar to the lessons learned leaving adolescence.

Life isn’t what everyone tells you it is.

The same is true for the all those professional organizations like the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association, whose so called mission is to protect the public. Their real mission is to protect the lawyers and doctors who pay the organization’s dues.

Lawyers do not get disbarred for breaking the law or abusing their clients, and doctors don’t lose their licenses for killing their patients. Besides a few exceptions, the only time a lawyer gets disbarred or a doctor losses their license is if they go to jail.

When billionaire Mr. Trump said the system is rigged, he was right. What he doesn’t tell his cheering blue collar base is that the system is rigged to his advantage and against them.

So after shattering all sense of economic, legal, and professional security, I have one last institution to debunk – our Democracy.

Incumbents, even unpopular ones, win election about 85% of the time. Entrenched incumbents are even harder to beat. Because they get free publicity while in office and have a huge fundraising advantage with PAC money, incumbents almost always win, making it hard to consider it a free election.

Congressman Devin Nunes, who wins by a landslide, is a good example of just how few people control one district. Congressional District 22 has a population of about780,000, and 158,000 voted for him. Of course not all residents are old enough to vote, but that means Mr. Nunes represents a district where only 20% of the residents cast their ballot for him.

Just like the banks, what would happen if everyone voted? The world would look much different.

In the presidential election, Mr. Trump lost by three million votes. Is this what we now call a democratic election?

Russian President Vladimir Putin was “democratically” elected and has been president since 2000, with a puppet president from 2008 – 2012. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey was elected president in 2014, but changed his country’s constitution so he might be in power until 2034.

President Trump called Mr. Putin and Mr. Erdogan, congratulating them on their electoral victories and changing the constitution, while the international community has condemned them both as mocking Democracy and being autocrats.

Some people feel American Democracy is headed in the same direction.

If Mr. Trump does not get impeached he will be eligible to be president until 2024. But as Mr. Trump likes to say, “We’ll see.”

It might be longer.