A little history of LGBT greatness in the Military History of the Western World

 When Pete Hegseth and his Right followers speak of war fighters mainly in the context of white heterosexual males, they demonstrate either their complete ignorance of history or their unwillingness to acknowledge it.  Although people who we describe today as LGBT often hid this fact in the ancient world, we do know or suspect some interesting things.

 

We begin with Alexander the Great which evidence shows liked it both ways.  In this he was not alone.  There were many gay men who served in the armies of various Greek city states and even served in the military of Sparta. 

 

Most scholars believe there was an elite band of gay lovers known as the Sacred Band of Thebes.  This band consisted of 150 pairs of male lovers.  They were the Seal Team 6 or British SAS of their time.  They were considered elite.  Founded in 378 BCE, they continued until they were defeated by Phillip of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father, in 338 BCE.  When Phillip discovered the 300 slain warriors locked together in a last embrace, he reportedly wept because of the loss of such valor.  The ancient Greeks did not consider homosexuality a problem at all, and some city states even encouraged it in their military.

 

Roman general and dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla fought hard and partied even harder.  He liked it both ways, but no one could argue against his ability as a general.  Those who did were generally massacred.  It is interesting that Elon Musk compares himself to Sulla.

 

As I said before, sometimes, people had to hide their sexuality just as they do today.  Of Julius Caesar it was reported that he was “every woman’s husband and every man’s wife.”  While this is obviously a very clever slur by his enemies, there were rumors that as a young man, he had an affair with Roman client king Nicomedes IV of Bithynia.  We do not know if the rumors are true, but the rumors have persisted.

 

I personally think King Richard the Lionheart, Richard I of England, married out of duty, but preferred men.  This cannot be proven of course, but it is something historians talk about.  This is a conclusion I have reached, but it is something others disagree with.

 

And then there is the real Cyrano de Bergerac (1628 – 1655).  Yes, there really was a real Cyrano.  He was a French writer, poet, soldier, and duelist who wrote hard, fought hard, dueled hard, and liked it both ways.  It appears Roxane was a creation of Edmond Rostand, the playwright who wrote the 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac.  For purposes of our discussion, the real Cyrano was admired for his fighting prowess, though it is greatly exaggerated in the play, as well as is literary acumen.  The real Cyrano does seem to have had a big nose though.

 

Chevalier d’Eon (1728 – 1810) was a person with serious gender identity issues.  Despite this, he was a famous and well-respected French diplomat and one of the greatest spies in European history, playing a large part in the dominance of 18^th century France.

 

When Pete Hegseth hosted his weekend Fox and Friends show, the reason he did not begin the show with “Guten Morgen, meine Damen und Herren.” Was because of a gay guy from England named Alan Turing.  In fact, were it not for Turing, this blog post might well be written in German.  Never forget that England stood virtually alone for over two years before it got help from the United States, and by saying this, I mean no disrespect to Canada, the French Resistance, and Norwegians and others who helped England.  Turing was one of the most important people of World War II and when Hegseth uses his smart phone, he might also want to reflect that Alan Turing laid the ground work which eventually led to the smart phone, and that actress Heddy Lamar invented the Wi-Fi that allows him to access the internet.

 

Heddy Lamar did not fight directly in World War II.  But she did invent the main technology of Wi-Fi, the close proximity torpedo, and the close proximity anti aircraft defenses used by the US Navy during World War II and then during the cold war.  Actress Heddy Lamar escaped from Austria and because of her husband, an Austrian arms dealer, she literally knew more about the weapons and defenses systems of Nazi Germany then any person in the United States.  Her information was invaluable.  She acted and looked beautiful by day (and she was beautiful beyond belief) while she invented interesting weapons and technology at night.

 

Of course, other women were instrumental in war throughout history.  Since Pete Hegseth is a born-again Christian, he might reflect on the biblical Deborah who saved Israel from 20 years of oppression by the Canaanites.  (Judges 4 and 5).  And of course, the fierce Canaanite general was killed by another woman.  He might also reflect on Queen Boudica, the East England warrior queen who kicked Roman butt for a while, even sacking London before she was finally defeated along with her army in a decisive battle.  Boudica united several tribes and had several victories over Rome.

 

Queen Elizabeth, I led the English against the invincible Spanish Armada in 1588.  And while one could argue, as historian J F C Fuller does, that she had brilliant military commanders, the nation was fearful and demoralized.  She went among her navy and inspired a nation to achieve a miracle to save England.

 

Courage, determination, fortitude, and brilliance are not confined to race, gender, or ideology.  If history shows us anything, it shows us that heroes can emerge from unexpected quarters.  Those like Pete Hegseth who scream against DEI and WOKEness either are ignorant of history or choose to ignore it.  I have never been in combat.  I do not know how LGBT people affect the morale and makeup of the modern American military.  But I suspect that a single and somewhat ignorant point of view is being hoisted on the military, and we would do well to learn the lessons of history.

 

 

Evangelical Christians Will Be the First to Follow the Antichrist

 For years, Evangelical Christians have railed against the cashless society, the overbearing potential of tech to prevent people from buying or selling unless they go along with the antichrist (See Revelation 13).  And yet the first time someone seizes control of government computer systems and threatens companies that unless they use X’s forthcoming payment platform he will put them out of business by criminalizing them, thereby preventing they and their customers from buying and selling, these same Evangelical Christians are like, great.  No problem.  So long as trans people are restricted we don’t care.

 

I do not believe Trump or Musk are the antichrist.  I have said this from 2016.  But I have also said I believe God gives us dress rehearsals so we can learn how we would react when the antichrist shows up.  I have long maintained that Evangelical Christians will be the first to follow the antichrist when he comes.  I am a Seventh-day Adventist.  During World War II, the German branch of the SDA church cooperated and collaborated with Nazi Germany, something the church regrets today.  The church even went so far as to tell the Nazis of an offshoot movement which was subsequently persecuted by Hitler. 

 

The reason why the German SDA church did this is interesting.  The main reason was because they felt prophecy did not show Hitler to be a problem to worry about.  But what the church forgot is that before prophecy, there is love expressed so beautifully by Christ in his Golden rule.  They forgot that the apostle Paul said:  “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:2).

 

Although I do not believe Trump is the antichrist, when someone talks like the antichrist, and acts like the antichrist, and exhibits the lawlessness which the bible specifically attributes to the antichrist, those who are deceived by the dress rehearsal antichrist are deceived because they forget that love is, and always has been, the founding and fundamental and central pillar of the teachings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

 

Note:  I was swept up by David Koresh.  I fell under his spell precisely because I did not realize what I have written here so I speak from experience.  I forgot Christ’s Golden rule.  I was able to get out of the cult specifically because one day I awoke and remembered Christ’s Golden rule and 1 Corinthians 13:2.  So understand I do not look down upon Evangelical Christians.  I am a sinner attempting to help fellow sinners not to make the same mistake I made.

The Big Difference between Private Enterprise and Government

 Contrary to what people on the Right tell you, our government is not a business although parts of it can be run like one.  Our government’s purpose is to “provide for the common defense” and “promote the general welfare,” and “Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”  Notice our constitution does not say “engage in being a profit center to make a lot of money.”  But today, there are myths that the Right perpetuates without actual proof.

 

But before I get to those, I want to focus on what it means to promote the general welfare.  Our tax dollars should be used to make our lives better.  This means that there might not be any profit involved.  Take the National Weather Service, for example.  This is a department the Right has wanted to privatize for years.  You only want to privatize something if you think you can make a lot of money from doing so.  But this service allows farmers to understand what growing season will look like, warning people ahead of time about impending storms, floods, and other potentially disastrous weather events.  In short, it provides a nationwide service to the American people.  The NWS did not come into existence to make a profit.  It came into existence to serve the public and by doing so, promote the general welfare.  The NWS is supposed to be a nationwide service that provides service to all without political bias.  It is free for Americans except for the fact our tax dollars pay for it.  But the vast majority of Americans do not mind paying for it because it promotes the general welfare in a real and tangible way. 

 

Another example of how the government promotes the general welfare is the National Library Service for the blind, a service dear to my heart since I have benefitted from it for 55 years.  This service provides blind people with a free library of books with over 150,000 audio titles, as well as tens of thousands of braille titles.  In the old days when these audio books, known as Talking Books, came first on records, then cassettes, then cartridges that housed books digitally, posting these media to and from the library was free, courtesy of the US postal service.  This service allowed a legally blind boy to read books ranging from a Johanna Lindsey romance novel to detailed books about quantum physics.  Educated people, especially blind people, have a much higher likelihood of getting a decent job than those who are not.  But no one conceived of the NLS as a profit center.  Instead, it promoted the general welfare of the blind, of their families, and of the hundreds of people who work for NLS.

 

Some government services are not designed to make money.  Instead, they are designed to spend our tax dollars on products and services that promote the general welfare.  And this brings me to some myths that the Right perpetuates.

 

Myth 1: There is a great deal of waste and fraud in the bureaucracy, and this exists in the form of too many workers doing too little work.

 

In his book The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy, bestselling author Michael Lewis dispels this myth better than I can in this short article.  He does this by describing how valuable the civil service really is, and imagining a world where this is undone.  Sadly, we no longer need to imagine this world.  He has also written a series of articles on this subject since his book.  Academic research shows that most layoffs for cost cutting reasons are done by new CEOS.  CEOs that have been associated with a company for a longer period of time tend to refrain from such layoffs.  The reason for this is simple.  In America, many CEOs are financial people with very little knowledge of the nuts and bolts of a business.  In Japan, the opposite is true.  CEOs are generally people who began at the bottom rung of the company they lead and worked their way up first as low level nonmanagerial workers.  They therefore acquire an intimate knowledge of their company, and the business it conducts.  Japan does not suffer from hack-and-slash cost cutting job losses.

 

There are three main reasons for the hack-and-slash approach.  First, the parent company wants to flip a company, much like some people flip houses.  They buy it in the hope of flipping in in five or ten years and making a massive profit.  One way to do this is to cut costs to make the business more attractive to future buyers.  A second reason for mass job cuts is to make the company look good on the balance sheet.  A company that looks good on the balance sheet has a chance of increasing its share price and since executive bonuses are tied to the share price, and since executives themselves receive shares, many executives are happy for the company to look good on the balance sheet for a short while, in order to maximize their bonuses and share packages.

 

And finally, a third reason applies to government departments.  By cutting jobs and reducing costs, the department looks more attractive to buyers and reduces the cost for buying the company.  Many executives look forward to nice jobs with the buying company.

 

And it is this third reason, with a little of the first two thrown in, that is what is really behind the first myth.  Massive job cuts have very little to do with making a company leaner and meaner but has everything to do with flipping the company or, in this case, a government department.  If a private company buys a government department for less, its balance sheet looks better.  Its executives get higher bonuses, and their share packages are worth more.  Many investors on Wall Street are only interested in the numbers and the bottom line.  Unlike value investor Warren Buffet, they are not interested in the intrinsic value of the business.

 

Myth 2:  A private company can run things much better than the government can.

 

Although government departments, like any company, have bloat, it is not as bad as the Right would have us believe.  People who are hired by government departments generally fill a need.  The picture of the lazy public service worker is overblown, though it is not 100% false.  There is scope for making a public service more efficient, but this almost always involves improving processes and managing better instead of job cuts.  Hack-and-slash methods do not make public services more efficient.  In fact, the opposite is true.  But targeted cuts can improve things.

 

But this dynamic is just as true for corporations as it is for government departments.  It is true that sometimes private companies can operate more efficiently, but can they operate nationwide?  This myth forgets that one of the purposes of our government is to promote the general welfare.

 

Take rural broadband for example.  The reason rural broadband is behind what you find in cities is because it is not profitable enough for companies like Verizon and AT&T to provide fast rural broadband.  And because it is not profitable, they do not go into really rural areas, and the people suffer.  But since the purpose of government is to promote the general welfare, our tax dollars should be spent to provide these Americans, who are just as American as those who live in the cities, what they need to operate in the information age.  It is precisely because it is not profitable that the government is the only entity who can promote the general welfare of people in rural areas.

 

The US Postal Service goes places that UPS or FedEx do not go.  Their reasons for not going there are the same telecommunication companies fail to provide decent rural broadband.  Setting up UPS delivery boxes in a rural area is not profitable, and since corporations have a fiduciary duty toward their shareholders, they do not go “the last mile.”  Only the US Postal Service can operate there, even though it may and probably does operate at a loss.  This is because it promotes the general welfare.  The founders believed the postal service was so important for promoting the general welfare that post offices are specifically mentioned in Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the Constitution. 

 

Another reason the government is often better than private industry is because its infrastructure gives it the ability to cover the entire nation better than private companies can.  Our government has a GPS system.  It has global satellites.  The US Geological Survey has stations in place to measure seismic events.  It is therefore in a far better position to monitor weather, earthquakes and volcanos far better than any private company can.  And furthermore, the government can provide these services when and where they are needed making it much easier for it to coordinate disaster relief and warnings.  Governments have far more ability to act in an emergency than any private company does.

 

America is beset by greedy entrepreneurs who believe that by looting the government, what they call hollowing out government, they can make vast fortunes for themselves by supposedly providing essential services for Americans.  But the primary purpose of private companies is profit.  The primary purpose for government agencies is service.  As it is, our government contracts many things out to private companies and this has generally proven to be a successful model, but with one caveat.

 

Government audits and academic research have shown that time and time again, the vast majority of government waste and fraud comes from private contractors charging far too much for goods and services, or private contractors involved in projects that run way over budget and end up costing the taxpayer huge sums of money.  These studies show that billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted every single year.  As an IT professional I can vouch for this as I have seen both the US and Australian governments ripped off repeatedly by tendering processes that are broken and by projects gone off the financial rails.  The bulk of waste does not come from too many workers.  It comes from the interaction between our government and private contractors.  If the Trump Administration or congress were truly serious about cutting costs, this should be the first, and I would say, only place they should look.

 

Americans should never forget that promoting the general welfare is a driving principle of our constitution.  The driving principle of private enterprise is to turn a profit.  If these can exist hand in hand, so much the better.  But our government is not, nor should it ever be run, like a corporation.

No Reason for total Access

 I know CNN wants to get both sides of an issue but many of the Republican sympathizers downright lie.  Today some clown on the Situation room claimed Elon Musk has the same level of access everyone else at his level does.  BS.  What DOGE demands is read/write access to all of the real data.  In tech world we call real data Production data.  No one has read/write access to all of the data with the possible exception of database administrators (DBA).  People have access to individual records.  We have all phoned a government department and once we prove we are who we say we are someone brings our record up and deals with the issue.  But having access to individual records is a far cry from having access to all of the records for everyone.  No one has that, not even the head of the IRS or SSA or anyone.  The President of the United States does not have this access.  But Elon Musk tells the American people they need access to all of the data so they can look for fraud and waste.  How can you do that without having access to all of the data?

 

1.       Random audits.  The IRS and other organizations use random audits.  I got audited by the IRS once and they found I had made a mistake in my tax return (which I still fill in despite living in Australia) and they had made a mistake as well, so we sorted it out without difficulty.

2.      Transaction algorithms.  Fraud detection software looks for unusual patterns of transactions.  For example, if someone switches credit cards multiple times in a short span of time (5 credit card changes in September) this is flagged as a possible problem.  One method the IRS used to use is a Benford’s Law test.  Look that up.  It’s bizarre but it works.  The key thing to know about this type of search is initially, you don’t care who the people are.  You just look for patterns and these are just numbers.  If something is flagged, then you can find out who the human is, but you only look at that one individual’s record.

3.      Anti money laundering.  The US government publishes a blacklist that is updated regularly, and transactions can be matched against the blacklist.  This is published throughout the world.  I have used the US list myself.  But again, you initially only look for matches without caring who people are.  It’s only when there is a match that you look more closely into the individual account.

 

Then there is analytics and aggregation.  You might want to know, for example, how many Latino men over 45 years old and earning more than $70K/year file their tax returns late.  This sort of query is useful, and we call this business intelligence data or aggregated data.  There are two ways to do this.  One is to copy the Production data but de-identify it so you cannot know who an individual is.  The other more common way is to create business intelligence data models and copy in only those fields you aggregate on.  So in my example above, you would not have the person’s name, but a routine that guesses ethnicity or there’s probably an actual data field that captures this.  So you migrate only the data you need.  The result is data you can do all kinds of querying on without knowing a single individual.  Thus my birth date is part of the aggregated data, but no one knows it is my birth date.  They simply know someone was born on that date.  Social security numbers have no use for aggregation as far as I know, so would not be copied over.

 

The point to all this is that analytics, fraud detection, and audits can be done without giving a single human being on planet earth full access to all of the data.  It is never granted.  In my years working on stuff like this I have never once had access to all Production data and certainly never read/write.  I have had access to individual records to analyze why there was an error but that’s it.

 

Production systems and databases is granted, but this is strictly monitored.  You only get access to production for two reasons: to implement a change, or to fix a problem.  In either case, what you do and when you do it is strictly monitored and audited.  Having access to all data is never permitted, not even read-only access. 

 

When a change is made to production, you go through the Change Advisory Board (CAB) before anything gets done.  Each change is specifically detailed.  The exact time you make the change is detailed.  Who makes what change and in what order is detailed.  Error checking is detailed along with a rollback plan and possible shakedown testing after Production has been changed.  In this case a DBA does have access to the Production database, but what he is authorized to do is spelled out in excruciating detail and there are people on hand to monitor so that we can make sure what is in the change request goes in exactly.  If you do not include all of these things in your change request, the CAB will reject your change.

 

CAB is a pain in the butt.  I hated everyone of them.  But they are absolutely necessary.

 

So, when Elon Musk and the GOP tell you that read/write access to all data is required to search for fraud, they are lying.  Banks and other institutions have been fighting fraud exactly as I outlined for decades without granting anyone full access to all of the data.  IT professionals take data security and privacy seriously.  One screw up can result in getting fired, and the company paying big fines.  The American people are being conned again and again by Trump and Musk.

 

NOTE:  As part of the Whitewater investigation of the Clintons, the IRS ran a Benford’s Law test over all of the Clinton transactions.  The Clintons passed.  What that means is that filter showed there was no fraud or wrongdoing.  It’s not the only filter that is used, but since I mentioned it above, I thought I would add in this tidbit.  

Lodge Your Tax Return with Paper Forms

 With tax time approaching for Americans, and I filed my IRS 1040 and other forms yesterday, my advice is to use paper forms and not electronic lodgment.  Here is why.  When Musk gets read/write access it means he will have direct control over each and every record in the IRS databases.  This includes the forms you filed.  Normally, staff go through programs that bring up one person at a time and changes or additions are made.  When you press Save there is an audit trail that says that at 02/20/2025 14:36.44 operator 1234 Added Marc Breault’s 1040 form.  At 02/20/2025 a4:36.59 operator 1234 added Marc Breault’s 2555 form.  In this instance, the operator is probably a scanning system.  In the case of a modification, the same thing happens but each field change is recorded.

 

With direct read/write access to the database, all that auditing disappears.  Changes can be made directly to the data itself.  For example, Musk can change what I declared.  When I lodged electronically, I might have declared X as my taxable income.  But they can change it to X/3 and then scream what a tax cheat I am.  The audit trail has disappeared.  With this access Musk can extort any judge, member of congress, or you and me.  If you lodge by paper forms, keep a copy and get it certified if you can because that could be your only recourse.

 

Of course, I’m too unimportant for Musk to take note of me, but you never know.  Read/write access is unheard of, and America has taken its first major step toward an American Gestapo, a police state that can alter records and punish you simply for opposing them. 

Why People are 150 years old in SSA systems

 When Elon Musk said some people were 150 years old in the social security system I immediately understood what the reason was and after consulting some tech boards, my suspicion is realized.  The system is written in COBOL and a farily old version.  Many older systems use impossible dates to indicate dates that are unknown or blank.  A few years ago, I worked on a system where the date was 01/01/01.  Apparently, the old coders many years ago decided 1875 was the impossible date they wanted.  Why would they do this?

 

Back in the old days, data quality was not that great and there were a lot of blank birth dates or mistyped birthdates.  There are many reasons for this which I won’t go into.  Systems with a null birthdate tended to crash.  For example, if you had something like this:

 

       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.

       PROGRAM-ID. DATE-CHECK.

 

       DATA DIVISION.

       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.

       01 INPUT-DATE        PIC 9(8).

       01 BIRTH-DATE        PIC 9(8) VALUE 19900101.  *> Assume birth date is retrieved from the system

 

       PROCEDURE DIVISION.

       MAIN-PROCEDURE.

           DISPLAY "Enter the input date (YYYYMMDD): ".

           ACCEPT INPUT-DATE.

 

           IF INPUT-DATE < BIRTH-DATE THEN

               DISPLAY "Error, wrong birth date".

 

           STOP RUN.

This is what COBOL looks like assuming birth_date has been retrieved from the system.  Now if birth_date is null (blank) it’s crash time.  So rather than put check for null code everywhere, coders used to put impossible dates so the code would not crash and so users would know that birth_date was not reliable.  This is a problem with ALL older systems that deal with people, and not a result of government incompitence.

 

Elon should know this so I can only think he is deceiving everyone.  Any programmer who has worked on older systems knew immediately why 150 year old people were in the system.  Americans need to understand they are being misled and lied to.

 

Oh and I am thankful to the Almighty that I do not have to write COBOL.In the very old days, you had to position each line of code in the right spot.  You didn’t just write code in lines but certain syntax had to start from position 10, others from position 4.  That was a throwback to punch cards.  If government employees have to work with that, they deserve our compassion, not our ridicule.

 

 

I thought I would write a little more about the dates in the social security system.  Social Security was first introduced in the US in 1935.  We got the idea from Bismarck, but that’s another story.  There were no computer systems then.  It was all done on paper.  In 1956, the SSA bought an IBM 705 mainframe and computerization began with the technology known as magnetic tape.  In the 1960’s, the SSA got more updated IBM computers.  In the 1960’s, SSA began using IBM System/360 and IBM system/370 computers.  I cut my programming teeth on the IBM System/370 165 computer in the 1970’s.  With those computers, card punch was king.  Data entry and some programs were written on card punch machines.  Thus, between the manual processing at the beginning, and the gradual transfer to computers and the use of magnetic tape (paper tape) and card punch, there were a lot of errors in the data.  Keep in mind too that databases as we know them today did not exist.

 

The relational database was invented in 1969 by Edgar F. Codd who was a researcher for IBM.  But IBM did not take him seriously because they had what we used to call hierarchical database models back then.  It was not until 1979 that Oracle introduced a commercial relational database (RDBMS) and the decade of the 80’s saw its nearly universal adoption.  IBM did not release one until 1983, 14 years after their own researcher came up with the idea.

 

As I said, this meant that the data quality was poor to adequate.  This is the problem with any old computer system because the original data was imported from paper, or keyed in one record at a time.  The language of choice for businesses in the 60’s and 70’s on IBM system/360 and System/370 computers was COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language).  Many banks today still have COBOL programs running.

 

I was shocked to learn, but not really, that SSA continued using IBM system/360 and System/370 computers up to 1982.  Wow, talk about antiquated.  They desperately needed to upgrade but doing that without disrupting SS payments to millions of Americans proved really difficult as it would be for any system.  One company I worked for was in the same position in 2006.  They went bankrupt after I left because they could not maintain functionality for their customers while upgrading from older computers.

The old COBOL language for the IBM computers did not have exception handling.  Modern languages do.  Modern languages have code like this:

 

Try

{

                //Some code

}

Catch (Exception ex)

{

                //error handling code

}

 

Or if you are bored, your catch clause might look like this.

Catch (Exception wtf)

{

                //Error handling code

}

 

The purpose for code like this is to catch an error and do something about it so the program does not crash.  Those familiar with the old blue screen of death know all too well what happens when errors are not caught properly.  Well, old COBAL did not have catch code so if there was an error, it was crashville.  As I said in my previous post, null date fields were a common cause of crashes and still plague IT today. 

 

My understanding from the tech boards is the impossible date people put in to avoid crashes was 5/20/1875.  I don’t know why that date was chosen.  But when I used to put in impossible dates, I celebrated my birthday and put in 9/20/1635 or something like that. 

 

The fact that SSA still has COBOL code lines them up with many banks.  Upgrading IT systems, especially ones that go way back, is hard and expensive.  If anything, this shows that the US has let its systems run down and has not committed enough money to upgrade them properly.  Join the club.  This happens in private companies all the time.  Just ask Southwest Airlines how that’s working out for them.              

Letter to California Senator Adam Schiff expressing concerns about Elon Musk and his bogus search for fraud.

 Dear Senator Schiff:

I am an American citizen residing in Australia.  I vote in the state of California, Los Angeles district.  This is why my address looks weird on your contact form.  I have worked in IT for 40 years and have done a lot of work for financial institutions in their fraud and anti-money laundering (AML) departments.  The idea Elon Musk et. al. requires read access, let alone read/write access to government systems is completely wrong.  This is a con job against America.  Here is roughly how fraud and AML work.

 

There is so much data that no human can go through it all so there are various software products that do this.  The software is treated like a person and given login credentials.  For software that listens to real-time transactions, access is given to production systems, production systems are the systems where real things happen.  For fraud or AML that looks through data but not in real time, you usually have a database copy that is refreshed daily.  This allows such products to do their analysis without slowing down real systems.

 

At no time does any human have any access to any real data.  No read only, and certainly no read/write access is given.  The software does its thing and flags anything which it deems suspicious.  Then there are a whole bunch of processes that happen which may lead to individuals getting access to individual records, but only those records.  Elon and the Republicans are lying to the American people when they claim DOGE needs access to systems.  They certainly do not.  As an IT specialist I have NEVER once had access to production data in the pursuit of fraud or AML. 

 

I would like to know what software Musk uses to look for fraud and waste.  If it is AI, who trained it?  How was it trained?  How were weights assigned to cases of waste or fraud?  If their AI came up with the $100 million in condoms for Gaza, their AI is hallucinating. 

 

I suggest you find IT experts and get them to make a video you put on to social media which explains to Americans how real fraud and AML detection happens.  Thank you for your time.

Here is the reply from Senator Schiff.

Dear Mr. Breault: Thank you for contacting me regarding your concerns with Elon Musk. I appreciate hearing from you and welcome the opportunity to respond.     I am deeply alarmed that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who has been given broad access to the resources of the American people without election, vetting, or confirmation by anyone, has reportedly gained access to the Treasury Department's payments system. This access could potentially give him control of the funds Congress has appropriated for healthcare, for housing, for child care, for small businesses, and for students. Through his fealty to President Trump, Musk is gaining control of high-level, classified information that will advance his own business interests and that of his billionaire friends.      Additionally, Musk is attempting to eliminate the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and end its life-saving work. Pausing USAID's work, which includes providing health services, humanitarian relief, and anti-poverty initiatives globally, will cost untold lives around the world. Moreover, this move will devastate our standing around the globe and our longstanding alliances where we need them most. I am deeply concerned that in a global struggle for influence, Musk’s actions will empower China and other countries to step into the geopolitical power vacuum this could create. No President can eliminate USAID without an act of Congress, and I am committed to joining my Democratic colleagues to use every lever at our disposal to block this illegal takeover and shutdown of this government agency. If Trump and Musk can illegally shut down this agency and get away with it, they can illegally shut down anything.     Please know that, as President Trump and his allies continue to try to take away the rights and freedoms of the American people, I will stand up to him and defend our country and our Constitution in every way possible. And I am. Every single day of his Presidency, I will hold him and his administration accountable and be a constant check on any and every abuse of power.    Transparency has been a goal of mine throughout my time in Congress. You can find detailed information on every bill introduced in the Senate on Congress.gov, including the summary and full text of the legislation, which Senators have co-sponsored it, and the most recent action taken by Congress.  An ongoing job of a Senator is to help constituents solve problems with federal agencies, access services, and get their questions answered promptly. On my website, I offer a guide to the services my office can provide, as well as a contact form where you can share your priorities with me. You can also connect with me online via Facebook or Twitter, and you can always reach my office by phone at (202) 224-3841. Thank you again for your thoughts. I hope you will continue to share your views and ideas with me. Sincerely, Adam B. Schiff  UNITED STATES SENATOR

The Strategic Case for USAID

 There are many Americans who believe we should look after ourselves first, before we look after others.  I have heard this argument all of my life.  While I acknowledge that balance is required and that our government does need to look after its citizens, people who have this argument are generally unfamiliar with the poor we help in foreign countries and are also unaware of the strategic advantages of foreign aid.

 

Since many supporters of President Musk and his side-kick trump don’t concern themselves with core Christian values such as mercy, compassion, love and giving despite the fact many go to church each week, I will focus on the strategic importance of foreign aid.

 

When USAID was founded by Kennedy in 1961 to counter the Soviet Union, Kennedy realized that the Soviet Union and Communism was gaining traction in poorer countries.  This is because the philosophy of Marxism appealed to the poor, just as it had in Russia and China.  Communism appeared to offer a political movement that cared for the poor and which aimed to raise the living standards of the poor.  At the time, this traction was so great, it seemed to many that the red tide, as it was called, was unstoppable and inevitable.  Back then, we saw insurgencies in poorer countries such as the Shining path in Peru, MPLA in Angola which eventually ruled the country, Khmer Rouge in Cambodia which led to the Pol Pot massacres, and of course Cuba.  Their big brothers of China and Russia promised the poor in those countries a paradise of equality and the poor fell for it.  These movements all have one thing in common, which is that the people who ruled in these countries did not pay enough attention to their poor and did not provide their poor with the basic necessities of life.  And so their poor gravitated toward these leftist movements.

 

But Communism was not alone.  Osama bin-Laden was involved in building infrastructure projects in Sudan as well as some hospitals.  Al-Qaeda gained a foothold precisely because the rulers were unable or unwilling to adequately look after their poor.

 

And let me tell you, if you knew how poor the people in the Sudan in general are, you would understand.  I can say with confidence there is not a single one of the 334 million Americans who is as poor as they are.  Whether it is the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution of 1917, or the Chinese revolution run by Chairman Mao, the seeds of these revolutions stem from the unwillingness or inability to attend to the poor.

 

Thus, when we have boots on the ground, and care for the poor, we not only alleviate their suffering, but we highlight a system of government that is able to care for its own and reach out to help others.  Most of the people we help wish they were as lucky as us.  They wished they lived in a land governed by a system that provides for its people, and provides some type of stability and provides pathways of opportunity for themselves or their children to rise out of the poverty that surround them.  Foreign aid is about promoting an ideology.  The fulfilment of that ideology may prove elusive, but it points people in the direction we want them to go.  And because the poor look upon us with more favor than they might otherwise have toward us, it allows us to invest in their countries and gain strategic footholds.

 

Closing down USAID works against this.  China is now in a position to move in and gain all of these things so that the people of those lands will soon believe that a strong authoritarian government like that led by President Xi is a better way forward.  And when this happens, we have returned to square one, back to 1961 when Kennedy sought to counter this very thing.

 

Has the FAA Changed Standards During Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations?

 As far as I can tell, there have been two major updates to FAA standards during the Obama, Trump, Biden administrations.

1.      2016- replace Practical Test Standards (PTS) With Airmen Certification Standards (ACS).  Airman Certification Standards.  Please note this is not called Airpersons Certification Standards.

2.      2024 – Mandated that air traffic controllers increase their mandatory minimum rest hours to 10 hours before they can work again.  That is, it was increased to 10 hours between shifts.

 

The differences between the PTS and the replacement ACS are: Under PTS, pilots could pass by performing mechanical maneuvers.  With ACS, pilots also have to pass scenarios with risk to see how well they apply the aviation theory they also have to know.  So it is not just mechanical movements, but scenario-based testing to see how pilots handle potentially dangerous situations.  The other main difference is that pilots were memorizing answers probably on internet dumps with PTS, so ACS integrates flying with the written exams.  I dealt with the same issue with IT.  It was also felt the PTS hadn’t been updated in years so did not reflect modern aircraft.  In 2024, the ACS was updated further to make sure the tests remained in line with modern aircraft.

 

It should be noted that at no time during Trump’s first administration did he demand a reversion back to PTS.  Trump did not uplift the ACS standards.  Trump did not mandate increased rest hours between shifts.  Trump did not issue any new qualitative standards.  Trump claims he raised standards that Obama lowered and if he did what he claims, then he would have made changes to the ACS.

 

The move to ACS happened under Obama.  The increase in rest hours happened under Biden.

 

  

The Exodus Story is a Story About Migrants and Native Backlash

 I want to add to Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s extraordinary appeal for mercy to President Trump by reminding Christians about the book of Exodus.  You see, the Exodus story is a story of immigrants.  At the end of Genesis, we learn why Israel migrated.  It was because of climate change.  OK, I’m being a little cheeky as famines were fairly common in Canaan.  But Israel was faced with a choice:  migrate or die.  Ironically, many migrants from Central America’s Northern Triangle migrate for exactly the same reason.  According to Genesis, one foreigner (Joseph) gained considerable power and influence in Egypt and introduced taxation.  While Joseph’s taxation might have been popular during the time of the famine, it no doubt declined in popularity if Egyptians hate taxes like everyone else does. :-)  We also learn from Genesis that the Israelites did work the Egyptians considered abhorrent.  In Genesis 46:34, Joseph advises his brothers to be honest with Pharaoh and tell him all they know is the life of livestock nomads.  Genesis tells us this was an abomination to the Egyptians.  I believe this is because the Egyptians were agriculturalists and may have viewed nomadic pastoralists as beneath them.

 

This resulted in the Israelites being given the land of Goshen which was suitable for grazing.  Archaeology tells us clearly that the Hebrews were not the sole migrants.  There were many others, and the migrants began to integrate into Egyptian society and prosper.  Ezekiel 20 tells us that Israelites forgot many of their ancestral traditions and customs but did retain some cultural identity.

 

The book of Exodus opens with a nativist Egyptian backlash against the migrants that archaeologists tell us poured over Egypt’s northern border.  The Egyptian Pharaoh of Exodus decided he needed to secure his northern border and deployed the military to do just that.  He also enslaved the Israelites.  The Israelites still owned cattle and sheep, however, and the Egyptians permitted this presumably because they liked pastoral products.  The Egyptians used an argument I have often heard by white people that goes something like this.  “These <insert migrants’ or ‘Muslims’> breed like rabbits.  If we’re not careful, they will outnumber us and displace us.”  If you think I’m kidding, read Exodus 1 for yourselves.  The Egyptian nativists became more and more oppressive, and their propaganda said that the Israelites were now so numerous, they represented a threat to national security.  They declared a national emergency and even went so far as to order all male Israelite babies be killed by the midwives.

 

It should be noted that when the midwives refused and were confronted by Pharaoh, they lied to his face and were commended by God for doing so.  We then have the dramatic birth of Moses, followed by the rest of the Exodus story which tells of the migrants returning to their homeland which is no longer their homeland and which they have to fight to possess.  This is why the Law of Moses contains many passages like Exodus 22:21

 

You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (New Revised Standard Version).

 

Like the extraordinary Bishop Budde, I too understand America needs an immigration policy that works.  But I am frankly appalled and ashamed that so many of my fellow Christian brothers and sisters have so much hatred and vitriol toward not only resident aliens but undocumented aliens as well.  If people understand that one of the greatest stories in the Bible is one about migrants and native backlash against migrants, perhaps it will be easier for them to find the mercy Bishop Budde so respectfully asked for and remember that most of our ancestors were also migrants.

 

The True Value of tikTok

 In case any of you are still wondering why tiktok has not been sold yet, Uncle Marc, the IT professional, will fill you in.

The problem can be summarized with one word: algorithms. You see, if ByteDance (a fantastic company name by the way) sells Tiktok, they have to sell the algorithms that run its engine. That means an American company will have that intellectual property, which is generally considered one of the most prized IT possessions. ByteDance's algorithms are generally considered superior to any social media algorithms we have.

Byte Dance does not want to sell those algorithms and there is no way in hell China wants ByteDance to sell them either. What they actually want is for King Trump to sweep away the congressional law so they continue to own tikTok and make some sort of sham agreement to make us think the national security problems have been solved. If the US government owns half of tikTok the only way ByteDance and China will agree to this is if it does not have access to the algorithms.

When Trump says we create their value he is full of shit. The value of tiktok lies in its algorithms and TikTok makes money all around the world. the law says that the banning can be delayed if there is evidence that a deal is likely. We are about 0% to a deal which means congress is letting Trump walk all over them. He is breaking the law.

Europe's VAT is not a Tariff

 Today while discussing Tariffs, Trump said Europe imposes tariffs on us in the form of VAT (Value Added Tax) so we should do the same to them. And the press sat their like statues saying nothing to the liar. VAT is a consumption tax. Here is how it works. Suppose I am French and I have a company that sells cars. I buy some parts from Hungary. I pay VAT tax which goes to the Hungarian government. Now I sell my car to someone in France. The car buyer pays me VAT tax which goes to the French government. But because I paid VAT tax to Hungary for the car parts, I can deduct what I pay the French government. So if I charge 100000 Euros for my car and pay 15000 of VAT, but I paid 5000 for the car parts, I only pay 10000 to the French government.

American companies DO NOT pay VAT. If a Mercedes dealership buys Mercedes cars for sale in the US, the VAT does not apply. Only tariffs are paid. Mercedes has to show to the German government the cars are for export and no VAT applies. VAT applies within Europe’s borders while tariffs apply across borders.

Thus, Trump either has no idea what he is talking about, or is outright lying. And the White House press corps said nothing. Australia also has a consumption tax called GST (goods and services tax) which works exactly the same way as VAT with the above. Since I have a business, I need to know all about GST so if Facebook had fact-checkers, they would have no issue with what I have said. When an American beef importer buys Australian beef, they DO NOT pay Australia’s GST which is 10% because like VAT, the tax does not apply to exports.

In short, VAT has nothing whatsoever in common with tariffs.

World Braces for US Trade War with the North Pole

 

Picture taken by D. J. Warren, Washington Post

WASHINGTON POST – They say there are decades in which nothing happens, and there are weeks in which decades happen.  The sudden escalation between Donald Trump’s transition team and the North Pole is an example of the latter.  The world is on edge tonight after the war of words between Donald Trump and Santa Claus reached new levels of hostility.  Earlier today. Donald Trump posted on Truth Social “The North Pole has been ripping off America ever since we were America.  They dump goods on our children that are free, and this has ruined American businesses and our economy.  On Day One, I will impose a 250% tariff on all goods entering the United States from the North Pole unless Santa Claus agrees to very stringent restrictions on his activities.  Make America Great Again!”

In fact, Trump echoes a long simmering bone of contention between the United States and Santa Claus.  Some years ago, a number of toy manufacturers joined a number of tech companies in a lawsuit against the North Pole.  This lawsuit proved fruitless, however, when the International Court of Arbitration ruled that it did not have any jurisdiction over the North Pole because the North Pole was not a signatory to any international body including the United Nations.

Santa Claus responded to Trump’s Truth Social message with “whatever” followed by a sighing emoji.  This sent Donald Trump into a rage.  He immediately ordered congress to pass a law banning Christmas unless Santa Claus “comes to the table.”  Responding to the Democratic Party’s outrage over Trump’s orders, speaker of the house Mike Johnson reminded Americans that Christmas had been banned in the US before.  Evangelical Christians who supported Donald Trump immediately rallied behind Trump and Speaker Johnson and called for the immediate banning of Christmas.

Experts consulted by the Washington Post, however, point out that Christmas was only banned by the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1659 to 1681 because it promoted traditions that were not found in the bible.  Anyone who celebrated Christmas was fined 5 shillings, which is about $1,000 in today’s money.  The United States proper has never banned Christmas.  When the Washington Post asked Speaker Johnson what penalties would fall on anyone who celebrated Christmas under Trump’s proposal, speaker Johnson declined comment.  Since Joe Biden is still president, Trump’s bluster amounts to an empty threat.  Christmas has no chance of being banned in the US.

A snap pole of 750 economists reveal that 94% of them believe tariffs of any sort are useless against the North Pole because no technology that we have, or have ever had, has been shown to be effective in preventing Santa from delivering presents to US children and tariffs only have any effect if they are enforced at the border.  Trump called for an immediate border bill he dubbed the “Santa’s Sleigh Prevention Act” to be passed by congress.  Trump seems to have forgotten that we still have a senate controlled by Democrats, as well as a Democrat president.

In a bizarre twist, Dwayne (the Rock) Johnson tweeted his opposition to Trump’s proposal tweeting: “If you think my latest movie Red One is pure fiction, think again.  Santa gave us unprecedented access into the inner workings of his overall North Pole Security including his cyber security department.  There is no way we can effectively impose any tariff on Red One, I mean Santa.”

As a result of this tweet, governments all over the world have increased their alert status fearing reprisals from the North Pole.  There has also been a sudden rush on streaming Red One.  National Security Advisor jake Sullivan had no comment when the Post asked him about The Rock’s tweet.  But when David Dadi, director of Israel’s Mossad tweeted: “Hey rock, you’re not the first to have access,” the Middle East and Russia went into meltdown.

Despite the pervasive belief that Trump’s threatened tariffs against the North Pole have no power, many nations are not sure.  Canada’s Justin Trudeau reached out to Santa Claus immediately after Trump’s threat.  According to Trudeau’s office, The North Pole agreed to doubling presents delivered to Canada over the next three years as a way to help insulate Canada against Trump’s proposed 25% tariff against Canada.  According to Trudeau, the North Pole also agreed to purchase Canadian crude and deliver it for free to needy countries.  “While Santa does not like using fossil fuels,” said a spokesman for Trudeau,” he understands the devastating effect Trump tariffs can have on Canada.”  When asked what currency the North Pole would use to purchase Canadian crude oil, the spokesman for the Canadian Prime Minister smiled and said “bitcoin of course.  Apparently, the North Pole does not need to mine bitcoin.  It simply creates as much as it wants.”

The Washington Post has not been able to verify this last comment, but Bitcoin fell 90% on the news causing market turmoil unlike anything we have ever seen.  Other crypto currencies also fell sharply.  There are rumors that Donald Trump plans to remove crypto loyalists from his cabinet as a result.  Co-president Elect Elon Musk shut down his account on X, and has given no indication as to if or when he will reopen it.

Meanwhile, China’s president Xi Jinping announced that as a hedge against a likely trade war with the US as a result of Trump’s tariff threats, China will introduce Christian Indoctrination Camps” designed to teach all Chinese children about the virtues of Christianity.  It is hoped this will cause a massive delivery of presents to Chinese children thereby saving Chinese consumers millions in toys.  Since China manufactures most of the world’s toys anyway, losses by these companies to the Chinese domestic market will be offset by increased exports to countries which do not replicate Trump’s tariffs against China, which is all other countries.

When asked who would run these indoctrination camps, President Xi said that China has a sizeable Christian population which has endured persecution for years, but which is deeply committed to their faith despite this.  President Xi lifted all proscriptions against Christianity in China and is in the midst of opening formal diplomatic relations with the North Pole.  Santa is said to be overjoyed by China’s newfound love for Christianity although he admonished China not to go too heavy on indoctrination.  Santa believes Christianity is meant to be a gentle religion relying on persuasion through gentle preaching and loving works for humanity and the animals.

And so the world sits on a knife’s edge.  Donald Trump is reportedly furious with Justin Trudeau, but he was already mad at him.  Perhaps this is why Trudeau tweeted “whatever, followed by a sighing emoji” when asked for his comments on Trump’s tirade against him.

Author’s Note.  I would like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas.  Indeed, China has a very strong and committed Christian community which has withstood decades of persecution and hardship.  My prayers go out to them this Christmas and every day.

D. J. Warren, who is given credit for the picture in this post, is a fictitious person.  The picture was actually generated by DALL-E 3.  I simply asked the AI tool to pretend Santa was real and depict a scene showing a trade war with the US.  I thought it did a great job.

Christmas really was banned by the Puritans who governed the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  The law came into effect in 1659 and was repealed in 1681. The main reason for the law was that Christmas was associated with both Roman Catholic and non-Christian beliefs.

William McKenley or Herbert Hoover? Examining the Trump tariff proposal.

 Amid all the garbage Trump spews out I was stunned when Trump articulated a reasonable economic justification for his position on tariffs.  Just to be clear, Trump has said he will impose a 60% tariff on everything coming in from China, and from 10-20% from everywhere else, along with targeted higher tariffs to prevent American companies from moving offshore.  Trump said he models his views after the successful presidency of William McKinley (1896-1901).  This is reasonable.  And so, for the purposes of this policy only, I will state why I respectfully disagree with Trump.

 

Let’s get some context first.  America had a Great Depression before the Great Depression.  Our first Great Depression occurred in 1893, and we did not really start to recover until 1897.  The cause for this depression, which is known as The Great Panic, was a railroad bubble.  People built railroad lines everywhere and a lot of them were not profitable, so a lot of people lost a lot of money.  There was heavy European investment in American railroads, so Europe crashed and burned.  This led to a drastic decreased in foreign investment in America as well as a drastic decrease in international trade.  American industry was just kicking into gear.  William McKinley believed in strong tariffs, and he imposed big tariffs across the board.  However, most American companies had very little international market exposure.  The vast majority of the American market was domestic.  Thus, tariffs really had very little effect internationally, and of course, they did not apply domestically.  The tariffs had such a small effect internationally that other countries did not bother to retaliate.  American exports were not really much of a big deal.  However, American industry grew because of a growing domestic market fueled mostly by immigration to America.  This influx of migrants created increased demand which allowed American companies to grow without worrying to much about international sales.

 

Federal income tax did not exist then.  The federal government used tariffs, excise tax, postal service revenue, and the sale of public lands, much of which were gained through conquest, for revenue sources. 

 

Once the Great Panic was left in the rear-view mirror, global trade opened up once more so that by the outbreak of World War I, American tariffs had lessened, and free trade was the order of the day.  By 1929. America was very much involved in international trade.  Speculation in the American stock market ran wild until the bubble burst on Black Tuesday October 29, 1929.  The stock market rallied after the great crash by 48% reaching a post 1929 crash high in April of 1930.  Then the bottom fell gradually until we reached rock bottom in July of 1932 and the Great Depression was well underway.

 

One of the causes of the crash of 1929 was over supply.  America made too much stuff and short of dumping on to world markets, that supply had nowhere to go.  Because of over supply, companies cut back on workers because they did not need to produce as much.  This caused a decrease in demand that led to even more over supply and the panic was on.  Combine this with over speculation in the stock market fueled by margin loans, and it was all a big disaster waiting to happen.  It happened from October 1929 to July of 1932.

 

Here is where tariffs come into the picture.  Herbert Hoover did what Trump proposes to do now, adopt the William McKinley tariff policies during the late 1890’s.  He worked with congress to pass the Smoot-Hawley tariff Act of 1930.  Keep in mind the stock market had rallied after Black Tuesday and optimism was back in vogue.  Hoover wanted to deal with high unemployment by protecting American industries and so he went back to McKinley’s successful tariff policies. 

 

But times had changed.  America had two things working against it.  First, global markets were now a big part of American company portfolios whereas during McKinley’s era, international trade was only a tiny part of American companies.  The second problem was over supply.  America had too much stuff it could not get rid of.  Europe also had over supply issues.  Both America and Europe had made too much stuff because modern industrial technology was kicking in and the world did not quite know how to deal with that yet.  Industrial technology was to the 1920’s what .com was to the 1990’s.  Thus, when Hoover imposed universal tariffs, other countries retaliated whereas this did not happen under McKinley.  These disastrous tariffs meant that America had even less opportunity to sell its over supply of goods, leaving stockpiles in warehouses.  Our agricultural sector went into the tank.  The Smoot-Hawley Act was a disaster piled on the earlier Black Tuesday disaster and the Great Depression resulted.  It is also noteworthy that Herbert Hoover’s tariffs amounted to a massive tax increase on the middle class which was too much for them to bear.  Rampant poverty was the result.

 

This leads us back to Trump’s tariff proposal.  For the sake of this discussion, let us assume a 60% tariff on Chinese imports and a 10% worldwide tariff on all other imports.  Trump has promised special high tariffs as well.  What we need to ask ourselves is whether our world is more like it was during McKinley’s time, or during Hoover’s time?  If our world is more similar to McKinley’s time, then Trump’s tariffs might yield some measure of prosperity.  If not, disaster awaits.

 

America is very much part of international global trade today.  This alone means our world is more similar to that under Herbert Hoover, than it was under William McKinley.  International imports and exports dominate the American economic landscape today.  This means that the Trump tariffs will cause retaliation by other countries which will lead to a massive trade war.  America also has an oversupply of manufactured goods in many areas.  But even areas where this is not the case would be affected because American export markets will disappear meaning American companies will lay off workers because domestic demand won’t be enough to fuel these companies.  Profits will decrease, which means share prices will decrease, which means 401K’s will decrease.  Meanwhile GDP will also decrease while unemployment will increase.  This will lead to lesser demand which continues the spiral downward because now domestic demand will fall away joining international demand decreases.  American companies will fail along with the banks that loan money to those companies.

 

This is why I believe Trump is wrong to use William McKinley as a role model.  His tariff policies will mimic what happened under Herbert Hoover instead.  Congress has largely allowed presidents to enact tariffs on their own so trump will not need congress to enact his proposals.

 

Make no mistake, the Trump tariffs are a disaster waiting in the wings.  We cannot allow these to be implemented.

 

 

Why I Believe Trump is Guilty in the Hush Money Case

 Now that both sides have presented their case, here is why I believe Trump is guilty in the Hush Money case.  There are three things the prosecution must do.  First, they must show that the $130K payment to Stormy Daniels was done for campaign reasons.  The prosecution has proven this beyond doubt.  The only alternate explanation the defense provided is Trump wanted to protect is marriage.  Both can be true but in addition to Cohan’s damning testimony, there is Corroboration by other witnesses, phone records, and documentation.

 

Second, the prosecution must show that records were falsified to conceal the payment.  This has also been shown beyond doubt.  We have 12 invoices and checks claiming legal services and retainer fees.  Cohan was an in-house lawyer and a direct employee of Trump.  There is no such thing as a retainer fee for that type of lawyer nor would you claim legal services.  Cohan’s legal services are provided as part of his daily job.  He would not present invoices with billable hours as he would if he were part of an external law firm.  This was also put down as a campaign expense (legal services as part of the campaign) which is false because the invoices were charged to the Trump organization.  This false scheme was hatched prior to the election.  The fact Cohan stole from Trump is irrelevant because that happened well after the election.  Cohan saw an opportunity to skim money off Trump and he took it well after the initial scheme prior to the election had been hatched.  In my opinion, this is slam dunk stuff.  The defense has provided no alternate explanation for these legal expenses.  All they have done is say Cohan is a liar, but the corroborating documents do not lie here and there is no other explanation for why an employee lawyer would be paid retainer and legal expenses.  Trump has never once said what legal services Cohan provided in addition to what he provided as an employee.  There is therefore no reasonable doubt with regard to falsification of documents.

 

And finally, the prosecution must show beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knew that falsification of records was going on and approved it.  It is true that no letter, email, or phone call from Trump in which he admits to this has been presented.  We have suspect phone records but nothing in print.  This is normal for concealing crimes.  We do not, for example, have a letter from Al Capone admitting to tax evasion or ordering the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre.  It is still possible to show beyond reasonable doubt Trump knew what was going on.  But first, let me just say America is tired of spoiled rich people claiming ignorance of their companies when things go wrong, but claiming credit when things go right.  Trump has been shown to be a micro manager out of his own words, from his book the Art of the Deal as well as corroborating testimony from a number of sources.  But the defense has shot itself in the foot.  They have gone out of their way to paint Cohan as a rat bag lying SOB.  Cohan himself admits this is what he was.  So then, why would such a SOB take out a home equity loan against his own house, conceal this from his wife, and pay Stormy Daniels $130K?  That Cohan did this is beyond dispute.  Would such a SOB do so without any expectation of being paid back from Trump?  He would not.  Cohan also knew Trump was a miser who regularly dodged paying people for legitimate work, so much so that no American bank does business with him now.  The SOB Michael Cohan would not sacrifice $130K out of his own pocket, then steel from Trump.  Cohan needed to be paid back.  That Cohan took out the home loan shows the desperation he and everyone else was in two weeks from the election to make Stormy go away.  The fact Cohan was a SOB at that time only enhances the credibility of this story.  The prosecution showed a total of $420K.  They showed that 8 of the 12 checks were signed by Trump and that they were signed in the White House even though Trump was supposed to relinquish running the company as President, and which Trump said ye would do.  This was obviously not the case.  There can be no reasonable doubt Trump knew concealment was going on.  Trump does not have to be an expert accountant of CFO and it is probable Trump did not design the scheme himself.  He got his expert CFO to do that for him and was therefore complicit. 

 

As I said earlier, Trump has provided no alternative explanation.  Cohan was not going to mortgage his house without being paid back, no matter how loyal he was to Trump.  No wonder Cohan was livid when Trump took most of his bonus away.  Cohan put his own marriage and financial stability on the line for Trump going far beyond what any employee should do.  How many of us would take out a home loan to conceal our boss’s affair?

 

There is no reasonable doubt here.  Trump is guilty and should go to the Bigg House along with his CFO, and several of his loyalists who are already there.

How a $130K Stormy Daniels payment became $420K in total payment

As a public service, here is a plausible explanation for why the Stormy Daniels checks and invoices amount to $420K when the payout was only 130K.  I believe there were 12 monthly payments of $35K which totals $420K.

•  Cohan took out a home equity loan for $130000.  At the time the average interest rate was 3.5%.  For Cohan to pay back the bank with 12 payments meant a total payout of $132,477.74.  I have no idea what the loan fees would have been but this does not throw out the calculations by much so lets go with this.
• 2.      Cohan needed to pay tax on the $130K he received so Trump would have had to pay more because Cohan needed to clear $130K after tax.  The tax rate at his estimated salary at that time was 33% if he filed jointly with his wife which I’m assuming he did.  This meant that Trump would have had to pay Cohan an additional $64,029.85 on top of the $130K.
• 3.       So far Trump’s total payout is $196,507.59.
• 4.       Cohan still needs to be paid his annual salary and bonus so this has to be thrown into the mix.  The average bonus for in-house lawyers is from 20% to 29% of base salary.  Since Trump was a known tight person, let’s assume the bottom range of 20%.  This would mean that:
• 5.       Cohan’s base salary comes in at around $186,243.67.
• 6.       If Cohan received a 20% bonus, he would receive $37,248.73. 
• 7.       When you add all this together, you get $420K spaced out with 12 payments of $35K.

 

 These numbers are not only plausible, they are downright reasonable.  My estimated base salary of $186,243.67 is perfectly reasonable for Trump’s personal lawyer.  If Trump paid less than a 20% bonus, then Cohan’s salary would be higher but well within reasonable range.  In 2017, which is when these payments began, the average salary of an in-house lawyer in New York city was $192,060.  I did the above calculations without knowing this so you can see my variables are quite reasonable.

 

So where is the crime here?

• 1.       Trump marked these down as legal expenses and retainer fees even though Cohan was an employee or in-house lawyer.  In-house lawyers are NEVER given retainer fees.
• 2.       You cannot double-dip for tax purposes.  You either post legal expenses or salary, not both.  In this case, Cohan’s salary was disguised as legal expenses, but Trump got tax deductions of $420K of legal expenses, plus roughly $223,492.41 on top of that for salary and bonuses.  This is tax fraud plain and simple every day of the week.
• 3.       For legal expenses to be legitimate, Michael Cohan would have had to be doing legal services above and beyond what he normally did as an in-house lawyer.  There were no such services.
• 4.       The checks were paid to a bogus company fronting as a legal consulting firm but which performed no legal consultation.

 

Unless trump can explain this, he is guilty regardless of who lied when.  This is the smoking gun which Trump’s team has failed to explain so far.  And trust me, this is a smoking gun!