Month: October 2023

It seems as though events have confirmed that virtually everything, no matter how seemingly hyperbolic, you’ve heard Benjamin Netanyahu say about the threat and intentions of Hamas turned out to be true. But do you know what Netanyahu said about Hamas that you didn’t hear?

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

The most important part of that quote is actually his clear expression of intent “to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state.” But the means by which he attempted to thwart that aspiration were stunningly cynical.

“The modus vivendi was that Hamas takes care of Gaza, Israel allows it to prosper, with the relatively small price that Israel paid every so often, with a round of violence in which Israel would kill thousands of Palestinians and Palestinians would kill dozens of Israelis — that was considered the best Israel could hope for,” said Eran Etzion, former deputy head of Israel’s national security council. “Now that strategic equation has been completely violated.”

Netanyahu’s policy was to “bolster” Hamas, “transfer money” to Hamas, and allow Hamas “to prosper” in Gaza. Their predictably violent and appalling behavior could be used as proof that peace was impossible, and the inability of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to unite behind one set of leaders assured there was no negotiating partner. For anyone pushing for peace, this was checkmate.

Meanwhile, as Zack Beauchamp points out, the idea was to expand settlements in the West Bank until no one could even imagine a future without them.

In 2017, Israeli far-right parliamentarian Bezalel Smotrich proposed what he termed a “decisive plan” to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Smotrich, who is now serving as finance minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet, argued (correctly) that the root of the conflict was competing claims to the same land from two distinct national groups. But, unlike his centrist peers, Smotrich claimed that these ambitions were incommensurable: that no territorial compromise could ever be reached between Israelis and Palestinians. In such a zero-sum conflict, one side has to win and the other has to lose.

The key to Israel winning such a total victory, he wrote, is simple: Break the Palestinians’ spirit.

“Terrorism derives from hope — a hope to weaken us,” Smotrich argued. “The statement that the Arab yearning for national expression in the Land of Israel cannot be ‘repressed’ is incorrect.”

Doing this, he continued, begins by annexing the West Bank and rapidly expanding Jewish settlements there. Once Israel has declared its intention to never let that land go, and created realities on the ground that make its withdrawal unimaginable, the Palestinians will reconcile themselves to the new reality — accept a second-class form of citizenship, leave voluntarily, or attempt violent resistance and be crushed.

Smotrich has used his time in Netanyahu’s cabinet to try to implement this plan — working both to de facto annex the West Bank and to rapidly expand Jewish settlement.

Intertwined in all of this was the basic idea that Netanyahu was “Mr. Security,” and whatever his other faults, ethical and otherwise, he would at least keep Israelis safe. But he has failed miserably even at this, as his West Bank policies caused predictable unrest which required a heavy military presence to manage. That left the border with Gaza undermanned and made the stunning slaughter at the hands of Hamas possible.

Failure on this level is all-encompassing, and I haven’t even mentioned the chaos and division Netanyahu has caused with his attacks on the Israeli judiciary which badly distracted the country and left it vulnerable. And to little other purpose than to help him avoid accountability for his criminal behavior.

All of this has been wrong from the beginning, and Israelis were wrong to vote for it and to enable it. They realize now that they misplaced their trust, but to what degree they understand the comprehensiveness of the error, I do not know.

I think it’s critically important to understand that Netanyahu wanted Gaza to be run by Hamas. This was a critical component of his plan to avoid having to make any territorial concessions for peace. He wanted Hamas strong and well-funded. And he thought he could protect Israel from the threat of Hamas even as his other policies gave them oxygen.

Whatever Israel does now to try to recover from these mistakes, it must do with new leadership.

I try to be guarded about my private/family affairs, so you may not know much about my upbringing and early life.  I was raised as a protestant, but that in itself was a close call. My mother’s father was born Italian Catholic but married a protestant and eventually left the church. My father’s father was an atheist, but my father had a religious experience in college and joined my mother in the Episcopalian Church.

I could a see parallel life in the family of my mother’s brother. He married a Hungarian Catholic and converted to Catholicism, so my five cousins on that side of the family are all Catholics. I don’t know exactly what I took from this beyond the fact that there are options, and not a lot is riding on your choice. Good people take different spiritual roads and there’s no reason to get exercised about it if they take a different one from your own. I guess perhaps the most unique thing about my experience is that I never got the sense that you’re simply born into a religion and stuck with it. But that’s probably the case for most human beings, at least if we’re being honest about it. There are usually severely high prices to pay for straying from the path of your family.

My childhood friendships were equally unusual. My next door neighbors were Irish Catholic and I was close to the three kids, but of the lasting friendships I made growing up, almost all of them involved kids with one Jewish parent and one Christian parent. One of my dearest friends had two Jewish parents but he tragically he took his own life, so it didn’t turn into a lifelong friendship. The one lifelong fully protestant friend I made had an English father and a Swedish mother, so his family was not like mine at all. Plus, his parents were atheists.

And my adult friendships followed a similar pattern. My podcast partner Brendan has a Jewish father and a Christian mother. Most of my other adults friends are fully Jewish. And the thing about this is that it’s the kind of thing you don’t even realize as it’s happening. It’s only afterwards that you look back at it and realize, “Hey, I guess there’s just a certain kind of person that I’m drawn to or that is drawn to me.” And then maybe you try to figure out if it has any kind of meaning.

But I know there’s at least one consequence. Because almost everyone I’m close to has at least some connection to Israel, I take an interest in what goes on there that is more personal than almost any other foreign country. And it’s complicated. It’s complicated for one thing because some of the harshest criticism I have ever heard of Israel has been uttered by my Jewish or half-Jewish friends. They are definitely not in the Israel right-or-wrong camp, and their feelings are all over the place…a mix of contradictions and sadness, anger, worry, torment and love.

I don’t have any friends who would support Benjamin Netanyahu or his political movement. I don’t have any friends who have hate in their heart for Palestinians. I believe most of them blame Netanyahu for destroying the chances for peace.

I’ve watched things deteriorate in Israel with great sadness, hoping against reason that the rightward shift would halt and reverse, but I think demographics are driving things there more than reason. I’ve found less and less in their political culture that I can support, and while the particulars of Hamas’s attack surprised me, I’ve been concerned for a long time that Israel’s hardline policies were creating a powder keg and Israelis were suffering under a delusion of security.

But I’m not in a told-you-so mood. I’m not in the mood to pile on blame. I’m also not a kneejerk person, and so much of the early analysis I’ve seen is so predictable as to be boring. There are the people on the left who defend Hamas because of the conditions Palestinians are living under in the Gaza Strip where their children don’t get to dance carelessly in the desert at all-night raves. And, yeah, I can see the disparity there. But how can you excuse the slaughter and rape of concert-goers?

On the right, this behavior justifies the most brutal violence and retaliation imaginable, including the death of millions of Gazans. Introspection is weakness and appeasement, and thinking about an end-game is for nerds when we need men of action.

Of course, the end game is the first thing people should think about before they start shooting. One thing almost everyone seems to agree about is that Hamas was motivated by a desire to derail any deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia to normalize relations. I think they’ll be successful in that because I can’t imagine a response from Israel that won’t outrage the Muslim world and make it impossible for the Saudis to continue negotiations.

Still, much like America after 9/11, the main thing Israel has in their favor right now is sympathy from much of the world, including many erstwhile critics. America foolishly squandered that good will, and Israel should be mindful not to senselessly repeat the mistake. I know they will want to deter a repeat attack of this nature, and they think a disproportionate response is the only way to accomplish that. I also know that concessions in the near term are both politically difficult and run counter to deterrence. But cool heads are needed.

Israel has to shore up its border and defenses, and it has to see about getting the hostages back. But it should realize that a time will come when the path they were on needs to be reassessed. And it is going to need some good will and some allies, so the response now has to allow for that. They should not go out and do things that perhaps are justified to them but are indefensible to everyone else.

As an American, I struggle with my government’s right-or-wrong support of Israel, and I know I have my personal limits. I understand there will be a violent response to these attacks, but it still has to be humane. And it has to be smart, which is probably asking too much.

I worry that anything I say about this tragic situation will offend people I care about, which is a strong incentive to be silent. I hope I’ve conveyed my thoughts in a way that avoids that, but probably not. I’m just tremendously sad about what’s happened and what’s going to happen in response, and I wish I could wish it all away.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Jerome, Arizona scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have now painted the sky. More to come next week.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

I am going to describe a game to you to assist you in understanding what is really going in the U.S. House of Representative and in Washington, DC, more broadly. This is my way of explaining why we cannot simultaneously avoid a government shutdown and have a partisan Republican Speaker of the House. If Kevin McCarthy’s demise didn’t convince you, maybe this will help you understand the math that is driving everything behind the scenes. Because math is at the root of the problem, along with some arbitrary rules.

Our game has three players, two measuring scales attached to a water dispenser, and two empty eight ounce drinking glasses.

The first scale comes with 221 red marbles, 212 blue marbles and one green marble. For some reason one red and one blue marble were missing from the box when we opened the game.

The second scale comes with 51 blue marbles and 49 red marbles. There is also one orange marble.

Marbles are placed on the respective scales and, if they are unbalanced, water is dispensed into the respective glasses. The objective is for player one and two to pour the exact same amount of water into the glasses they control, and for player three to agree both that they are equal and that they chose the right amount to pour.

Here are the rules:

Player one controls scale one. Before he or she can start, one of their 433 marbles must be swapped out for the green marble. All marbles are eligible but these are sentient marbles and a majority of them have to agree with the choice. Until we have a green marble, we cannot proceed.

Once a green marble is selected, it then chooses a number between 1 and 8, standing for how many ounces of water it thinks should go in the glass. A majority has to agree with this choice or we cannot proceed. If a majority does agree, the majority-marbles are placed on one side of the scale, the minority-marbles are placed on the other side, and the agreed amount of the water dispenses into the glass.

Player two controls scale two. A blue marble is selected to pick a number between 1 and 8 and ask the other marbles if they approve. If they approve, the majority-marbles are placed on one side of the scale and the minority-marbles are placed on the other side. In the case of a tie, the orange marble must approve the choice. If this doesn’t work, the blue marble must pick a different number and try again.

Once player one and player two have both succeeded in securing a majority for their number and water has dispensed into their glasses, we check to see if the glasses have an equal amount of water. If they do not, player one and player two must work together to fix the problem. Perhaps player one chose four and player two chose six, and they can agree to meet in the middle at five ounces. If they cannot agree, the game is over and everyone loses.

Once they’ve filled both glasses with the same amount of water, player three enters the game. If player three does not agree they’ve chosen the right amount, the game resets to the beginning. If player three agrees with the amount and judges that both glasses have the correct amount of water, then the game is over and everyone wins.

A lot has to happen right to win the game but there are many ways to lose.

For example, if player one cannot get a majority to agree on who should be the green marble, the game is lost. If player one cannot get a majority to agree on a number, the game is lost. If player two cannot get a majority to agree on a number, the game is lost. If player one and player two cannot agree on a number, the game is lost. If player three doesn’t agree with the number players one and two have agreed to, the game is lost.

Now imagine the following scenario.

Player three picks six and can accept nothing lower than five.
Player two also picks six and can accept nothing lower than five.
Player one is okay with five but is prohibited from picking anything higher than three.

The game is unwinnable, right?

Well, yes, but why is player one stuck on three?

It’s because they made their own arbitrary rule that’s not part of the game. They decided that if a red marble becomes a green marble, it cannot go higher than three or it will immediately cease being green. They placed no such restriction on the blue marbles, but they refuse to pick a blue marble to make the choice.

Now, this might make sense if a majority of the marbles didn’t agree that the number five would be fine. But they’re totally okay with five. Five is the number all three players can agree on. Five ounces of water in each glass wins the game. When the red marbles insist on choosing one of their own to be the green marble it’s an instant loser because of their arbitrary self-imposed three percent rule that is not even in the rulebook.

If you’re having trouble following along, Player one is the House of Representatives, Player two is the Senate, Player three is the president, red marbles are Republican lawmakers, blue marbles are Democratic lawmakers, the green marble is the Speaker of the House, the orange marble is the vice-president, and the glasses of water are the respective House and Senate bills that fund the government and avoid a November shutdown.

In mid-November, our country is going to play this game. We will try to fund the government using these unwinnable rules. Jim Jordan might be the green marble. Maybe Steve Scalise will be the green marble. Could be some other red marble that gets a shot. There is no way they can succeed.

But I have a secret. This isn’t actually a game that can be lost. I didn’t tell you, but the glasses are guaranteed to get filled in exact equal measure and win the approval of the president. There may be a delay of weeks or even months. It may be that player one has to bypass the rule about not proceeding without the green marble’s approval. They can use a discharge petition to force a funding bill onto the floor that meets the five ounce requirement. But the government will eventually get funded and it will be the House that makes the concessions because the House is the only holdout, and there’s an actual majority in the House for five ounces.

The only question is how much turbulence and nonsense will go on getting from here to there.

And the simplest solution is staring everyone in the face. The red marbles have to do one of three things. They can get rid of the arbitrary three percent rule that keeps the glass emptier than anyone else wants. This means allowing their green marble to do what McCarthy did without removing it from power. This appears beyond their capabilities.

Or they can elect a red marble but immediately ignore them by using a discharge petition to force a higher spending package on the floor. That makes little sense. Why elect a floor leader and then take away their power to lead the floor?

The last option is actually a hybrid. They could just choose a blue marble to be Speaker. More plausibly, a few red marbles could negotiate with the blue marbles to create a bipartisan majority that will agree to fund the government at five ounces. One of these red marbles would become green but the blue marbles would get to share power with them, including on the House committees.

I can almost assure you that they will first attempt the second “impotent floor leader” option here, assuming they can even agree on a green marble amongst themselves. But the last option makes the most sense, because it allows the people who can win the game to be in charge of playing it.

The result winds up being the same anyway. Remember, the game cannot be lost and the people willing to fund the government, which I call “the functional majority,” are guaranteed to have their way. Why not have them govern the rest of the House’s business, too?

Now, I can see you shaking your head saying to yourself that this is not going to happen. But, you know what else is guaranteed? Before long, we’re guaranteed to have a new Speaker of the House. And if the Republicans can’t get a majority using only their own marbles, then they will need Democratic marbles. And if they need Democratic marbles to pick a Speaker, then it will be someone the Democrats can work with and who will share power with them.

Now, the House can’t do anything without a Speaker, so the pressure will be massive to choose one. And the Republicans will probably find a way to choose one without Democratic votes. But then the government funding will run out in mid-November and we’ll get to the real logical driver of all of this, which is the absolute necessity to fund the government. A shutdown can’t last long, either.

The math drives this. The functional majority is the group that pays our bills on time and funds the government, and it’s made up of mostly blue marbles. The green marble can be in that group or outside that group. Other than for timing purposes, the distinction hardly matters. We can scrape by with discharge petition after discharge petition, or have the Republicans continuously defenestrate their own leadership for avoiding or ending a shutdown.

It all gets to the same end. But how much better to just make the House work by having a governing coalition that actually represents what the majority wants on spending?

So, why did I choose to use the marble analogy to explain all this?

Because people are so accustomed to thinking in strictly partisan terms that I wanted to make it more objective. What matters is who funds the government. Whether the votes are blue or red is irrelevant. You will always have enough marbles. All that changes is the mix of marbles, or how many are red and how many are blue. The majority in Congress can be any mix at all, and that’s also true of picking a Speaker. It is the Speaker of the House, not the Speaker of the Republicans or the Speaker of the Democrats.

Here’s the last math fact. The Republicans have 221 members in a (currently) 433-member body, but they don’t have a functional majority and so really have no right to act as if they’re in the majority. The sooner moderate Republicans figure this out, the better. But they’ll have to be hit over the head many times before they think objectively about this situation. After all, the media cannot seem to understand it either.

Howdy! I do a bit of carpooling with my youngest daughter these days. It’s a good thing. One of the things she does is turn me on to artists I might not have known of before. So, this is Aurora, who hails from Norway. I thought this song would be suitable for this blog.

Her work, what I’ve heard so far, is interesting. She was one of a number of people who lost a loved one when that terrorist opened fire at a Social Democratic retreat last decade. One of the songs my daughter played for me is dedicated to this tragedy. She’s no stranger to social commentary, and her voice reminds me a bit of Elizabeth Fraser.

Cheers, everyone.

As I predicted, as soon as Kevin McCarthy decided to use mostly Democratic votes to avoid a government shutdown, he was ousted from power. It briefly looked like he might try to strike a deal with the Democrats again to survive, but he blew that idea up on the morning of the vote to vacate the Speaker’s chair: “They haven’t asked for anything, and I’m not going to provide anything.”

Without support from Democrats, McCarthy’s position was doomed. It was the same situation that John Boehner faced in 2015 and he resigned rather than suffering the indignity of making major concessions to the Democrats or losing his position on a floor vote. McCarthy, being the stupidest man in Washington, waddled into the threshing blades instead.

I need emphasize that McCarthy claims he offered the Democrats nothing. Zip. Nada. Remember that when you see hand-wringers question the Democrats’ decision not to save him.

And remember, too, that both during the debt ceiling crisis in May/June and during the government shutdown crisis at the end September, the Democrats provided the votes to help McCarthy get out of a fix. Passing spending bills and paying our debts on time are the two absolutely indispensable jobs that the House of Representatives must perform. Everything else can get bogged down in gelatinous gridlock, but we must fund the government and preserve our nation’s credit. And whatever grouping of members perform those two tasks is the true functional majority in the House. In this case, it has been amply demonstrated that not only is this grouping made up mostly of Democrats but that the Republicans are literally incapable of doing the job themselves.

What this means is that there is no good reason for the Democrats to collectively suffer in the minority. They serve in the functional majority, the only majority that is essential, and they should share some of the power in the House. That should be reflected in committee assignments. It should should be reflected in the rules that govern what can come to the floor for a vote. It should be reflected in the body’s top priorities.

In mid-November, funding will run out again and the Republicans will still be incapable of keeping the government open and operational. It will again be up to the Democrats to join with at least a few Republicans to solve the problem. This might have to happen through a discharge petition where a majority of (mostly Democratic) members force a bill to the floor over the objections of the House leadership, but it will eventually happen because the government cannot remain shut down in perpetuity.

Remember that when you hear hand-wringers worry that the next Speaker will be worse than McCarthy. Perhaps they will be, but only if the Republicans do something really stupid and repeat the mistake they made by electing McCarthy after 15 votes in January.

It solves nothing to elect another Speaker who has no support from Democrats. There is a divided government in Washington, with the Democrats in control of the White House and the Senate, and the government can only be funded through either compromise or continuous continuing resolutions like the one McCarthy passed which cost him his job. As I’ve already said, the remaining alternative is funding through discharge petitions which is when the Speaker loses control of what comes to the floor.

You can count on the Republicans to try every other option or even to repeat options before doing the right thing, and right now their focus is all wrong. The Republican members of the functional majority that pays our debts and keeps the government operational will do the right thing again, eventually, but they’re currently focusing on revenge. Take, for example, the centrist Problem Solvers caucus which is made up of moderate Republicans and Democrats. It may get dissolved because Republicans are bent on punishing the Democrats for McCarthy’s demise.

Rep. Nick LaLota (R., N.Y.) said at least five or 10 Republicans in the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, including himself, are considering breaking up the group in frustration, after centrist Democrats declined to help Kevin McCarthy hang on to the speakership.

“This was supposed to be a time when Problem Solvers were supposed to drop their partisanship and do what’s right for America,” LaLota said. “I’m tremendously disappointed that nobody – no Democrat Problem Solver – stepped up to do so, and I’m reassessing if I’ll remain a member of that caucus.”

“There was little or no effort to actually solve the problem,” added Rep. Marc Molinaro (R., N.Y.).

Reps. LaLota and Molinaro should keep in mind that McCarthy, by his own admission, made no effort to court Democrats, including Democratic members of the Problem Solvers Caucus. The Republican Problem Solvers are part of the functional majority and they should get enhanced power in any new bipartisan coalition to elect a Speaker who will fund the government and pay our bills on time. But they expected the Democrats to continue suffering in the minority while performing the essential duties of the chamber.

The Republicans will try to elect a new Speaker with just Republican votes, but the same members who extracted impossible conditions from McCarthy and then ousted him for not keeping them will have the same demands for a new Speaker. And then the government will shut down again. It’s basic math.

So, eventually, the anger at the Democrats will subside and reality will begin to come into focus. I have absolutely nailed this whole situation from the start, predicting back in December and January exactly what would happen to McCarthy and why. But we are now in a turbulent period and I cannot make accurate short-term predictions. The influence of Trump in this cannot be overestimated, because he makes it almost impossible for Republicans to seek compromise or operate in a logical and self-protecting manner.

So, the Republicans may rally around a new Speaker in short order or they may struggle through dozens of ballots before realizing that the next Speaker must represent the functional rather than the partisan majority. What we know from McCarthy’s experience is that a partisan Speaker will fail. The best they can do is struggle through to the next elections allowing the functional majority to govern through discharge petition after discharge petition. As that’s the least functional and most humiliating for the Speaker, it’s what I expect the Republicans to attempt. They may tire of it, however.

The Democrats will be waiting.

A lot of the reporting I saw about the first day of Donald Trump’s financial fraud civil case in New York on Monday argued that the disgraced ex-president seems more concerned about this trial than any of the four criminal trials he’s facing. This morning, I saw a clip from Monday’s Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC of a segment she did on the same theme.

And I am not saying this reporting is wrong but if it is right it it’s just one more example of how very unstable and sick Trump has become. He stands accused in Washington, DC and Georgia of plotting a coup. He’s facing hard time for his behavior in the Florida classified documents case. The evidence against him is overwhelming, and unless he gets holdout jurors to cause mistrials, he could die in prison if convicted in any one of those cases. At the least, he could be stuck in some kind of home confinement for the rest of his life. Only in the New York Stormy Daniels hush money case is he unlikely to get a harsh sentence if found guilty. And if he cares about his reputation at all, he’d probably prefer not to found liable a second time for defaming E. Jean Carrol by denying he raped her.

Ask yourself, if you were accused of all these things, where would a trial about financial fraud land on your list of concerns? It’s true that the current case has already resulted in the so-called “death sentence” for Trump’s New York businesses, and it could come with massive, ruinous financial penalties. But what good is money to someone who will never know freedom again? And, besides, Trump has many businesses in other states and his millions of followers constantly fill his coffers with free cash.

If we’re talking about reputation, I’d first not like to be thought of as a seditious traitor. To me, that’s even worse than being a rapist, but I’d be absolutely gutted to be thought of as a rapist. I definitely wouldn’t want to be considered a business fraud, but I’d take that any day over people knowing I cheated on my nursing wife with a porn star and a Playboy bunny. If I were someone who had once been rich and wielded political authority, I’d rather be known as a tax cheat than someone who couldn’t be trusted with our nation’s classified information.

And, I’m being completely honest, I would not take on those reputations for any amount of money or adoration or potential power.

So, if it is true that Trump is most concerned about the financial fraud case, it means he cares what people think of him, but he’s most threatened by the idea that they won’t think he’s a business success. He showed up for the first two days of the case, while he never showed up to defend against rape charges, so maybe this is just how Trump thinks. But it’s basically insane. On a basic risk basis, the civil case is small potatoes. And any morally grounded person would choose something else as a biggest worry.

I’m going to rely on reporting from The Messenger in telling you this. I’ve seen a bunch of reporting that Trump’s financial fraud trial in New York is being decided by a judge rather than a jury because no one on Trump’s defense team requested a jury trial. I think that is partially accurate, at best. New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the charges under New York Executive Law 63(12) which doesn’t provide for jury trials.

12. Whenever any person shall engage in repeated fraudulent or illegal acts or otherwise demonstrate persistent fraud or illegality in the carrying on, conducting or transaction of business, the attorney general may apply, in the name of the people of the state of New York, to the supreme court of the state of New York, on notice of five days, for an order enjoining the continuance of such business activity or of any fraudulent or illegal acts, directing restitution and damages and, in an appropriate case, cancelling any certificate filed under and by virtue of the provisions of section four hundred forty of the former penal law or section one hundred thirty of the general business law, and the court may award the relief applied for or so much thereof as it may deem proper.  The word “fraud” or “fraudulent” as used herein shall include any device, scheme or artifice to defraud and any deception, misrepresentation, concealment, suppression, false pretense, false promise or unconscionable contractual provisions.  The term “persistent fraud” or “illegality” as used herein shall include continuance or carrying on of any fraudulent or illegal act or conduct.  The term “repeated” as used herein shall include repetition of any separate and distinct fraudulent or illegal act, or conduct which affects more than one person.

However, it’s true that Trump’s attorney’s could have and definitely should have requested a trial by jury. They probably would have lost the challenge but we’ll never know for sure because, as Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron noted in court today, they didn’t even try. Chalk it up to Trump hiring cut-rate attorneys.

Judge Engoron has already ruled that Trump and his elder sons engaged in “repeated fraudulent or illegal acts,” and he already canceled Trump’s certificates to do business in the state. What remains is really just to determine “restitution and damages” or whatever “relief” Engoron might “deem proper.”

Trump’s New York businesses will go into a kind of receivership, somewhat similar to what happens in a bankruptcy.

The judge also ordered Trump’s attorneys to identify potential candidates to serve as a receiver in the case and “manage the dissolution of the canceled LLCs,” or limited liability corporations. In the Wednesday court appearance, Trump attorney Christopher Kise asked for clarity, saying there are 400 or 500 entities that could possibly be affected by that order, including LLCs that might own the homes of Trump’s sons. “Are they covered?” he asked Engoron, who did not provide an answer.

But that’s not the end of it. After the trial, which began with opening statements and the first witness on Monday…

…Engoron will consider even bigger penalties that James has requested, among them $250 million in fines; a prohibition on Trump and the company from obtaining new loans by any bank chartered in New York for five years; and a ban on Trump, his adult sons and executives from operating or owning businesses in the state in the future.

Naturally, Trump can appeal whatever is decided in this case, but it’s obvious that things can get worse for him, so it’s crazy to relentlessly antagonize Engoron. Yet, despite his lawyers entreaties that he stop, Trump can’t help himself.

“We’re going to be here for months with a judge that already made up his mind. It’s ridiculous,” Trump complained to reporters during the lunch break, amping up his attacks on Engoron, whose rulings could cost Trump’s company hundreds of millions of dollars and affect its ability to do business in New York.

“This is a judge that should be disbarred. This is a judge that should be out of office. This is a judge that some people say could be charged criminally for what he’s doing. He’s interfering with an election, and it’s a disgrace,” Trump said.

He’s clearly inciting people to do harm to Judge Engoron, and his comments about Attorney General Letitia James were even more ominous. And that’s probably relevant to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s January 6 coup-plotting case in Washington DC, because U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is considering putting a gag order on Trump. She will preside over a hearing on the issue on October 16th.

Prosecutors and attorneys for Donald Trump will debate a proposed “narrow” gag order that would limit the former president’s speech regarding his criminal case tied to trying to overturn the 2020 election at a hearing on Oct. 16, a federal judge ordered on Friday.

Among other public statements by Trump, Smith’s office cited the former president’s Aug. 4 post to his Truth Social platform just three days after his indictment in the case: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

Smith’s proposed order would bar “statements regarding the identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses” and “statements about any party, witness, attorney, court personnel, or potential jurors that are disparaging and inflammatory, or intimidating.”

The more Trump misbehaves with respect to charges he’s facing in Florida, Georgia and New York, the more likely Judge Chutkan is to put some kind of muzzle on him. If her persists, she could even revoke his bail and let him stew in prison.

I don’t think she’ll leap to that decision lightly or immediately, but I can see it coming. I can see it very clearly. He was seething today, as angry as I’ve ever seen him, and he’s getting desperate. I don’t think he can restrain himself and he’s going to cross the line.

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When you look at the image below, I want you take note of a few things. First, note the date, which is Nov. 16, 2020, a period in time in which Donald Trump had lost his bid for reelection and was beginning to plot a coup to stay in power. Second, note that it is a withdrawal of a previous petition to challenge the Palm Beach County assessment of the value of the Mar-a-Lago estate. Third, note the checked box which reveals the reason for the withdrawal: “the petitioner agrees with the determination of the property appraiser or tax collector.”

At that time, the agreed assessment was $26.6 million. The 2023 appraisal is $37 million.

According to the Palm Beach Daily News, the petition was an effort to lower Trump’s tax bill by arguing that the $26.6 million appraisal was too high, but Trump argues now (with some support) that it was actually too low. It’s unclear why the effort was dropped.

Of course, Trump is on trial in New York precisely for arguing is some contexts that his property has a high value and in other contexts that it has low value depending on which would benefit his bottom line. This includes his portrayal of the value of Mar-a-Lago, which we see here he agreed for tax purposes (after dropping a challenge that it was actually lower) was worth $26.6 million in 2020, but for securing a loan purposes argued at the time was worth between $427 million and $612 million. Now he’s arguing it’s actually worth $1.5 billion. 

If you’re curious, one of the reasons there’s so much dispute about Mar-a-Lago’s true value is that it’s not supposed to be a private residence, and that substantially lowers its value. Trump argues that he can get that restriction lifted but the judge in New York noted that it’s fraud to treat it as if it has been lifted when it hasn’t.

That’s a legal point that might trip up your average MAGA supporter, but it’s key to why Trump is on trial and may lose much of his real estate empire. And every time he goes before a camera and says Mar-a-Lago is worth more than a billion dollars, he’s strengthening the case against him. Because the basic charge is that he inflates the value when it suits him and deflates it when it doesn’t suit him, and when you do that on official banking and tax documents, it’s against the law.

Now, just in case you’re slow, back in 2020 Trump owed $511,673 in property taxes on Mar-a-Lago. He thought that was too high so he challenged the $26.6 million dollar assessment. For unknown reasons, he dropped that challenge. But imagine how he would have felt about his tax bill if it was based on an assessment of $1.5 billion? In that case, by my estimates, his tax bill would have been almost $29 million instead of $511,673.

In other words, his tax bill would have been higher than the assessment he challenged.

That kind of staggering difference is the problem. We can argue about what Mar-a-Lago is worth, but whatever it is worth that number has to remain the same for both banking and tax purposes.

If you listened to Progress Pondcast Episode 4: Boneheads & Bigots, you know that I predicted that a coalition would emerge in the House of Representatives that is willing to fund the government and pay our bills on time. And you also know that I predicted that Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, if he chose to be the leader of such a coalition, would immediately cease being the leader of the Republicans in the House.

In truth, I began predicting this before McCarthy even won the speakership and wondered why he wanted the job in the first place. Throughout the year, I’ve laid out all the reasons why we would inevitably arrive at this place and also what I thought the Democrats should do when we got here.

Before I review, however, where are we right now?

Speaker McCarthy gave up control of his own Rules Committee as a condition of becoming Speaker. He can’t bring bills to the floor without the consent of some hardline MAGA members he agreed to put on the Rules Committee. But, wait, that’s not true is it? He just brought a bill to floor without their consent yesterday, and it funds the government for 45 days. So, how did that happen?

Well, the bill bypassed the Rules Committee because it was brought under a suspension of the rules, which meant it could only pass with a two-thirds supermajority. That meant he needed Democratic votes, and a lot of them.  In the end, 209 of the 210 Democrats who cast votes, voted in favor of McCarthy’s continuing resolution which avoided a government shutdown at the last second before the money ran out at the end of September. Among Republicans, the vote was 126-90, meaning that about 40 percent of McCarthy’s caucus voted against his bill.

So, now we can clearly see the true functional majority in the House, and it has more Democrats than Republicans. For the moment, McCarthy’s new coalition is heavily bipartisan and tilted significantly to the left. This is a problem.

“You can’t form a coalition of more Democrats than you have Republicans who you’re supposed to be the leader of, and not think that there’s going to be serious, serious fallout,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) said. He confirmed that after Saturday’s spending vote, they would start discussions about ousting the speaker.

If you think about it, though, the Speaker is elected by a vote of the whole House, not just members of his or her own party. McCarthy isn’t “supposed” to be the leader of the Republicans and his position isn’t called Speaker of the Republicans. But Rep. Rosendale is correct that this is an unusual situation. The governing coalition isn’t partisan at all, and therefore the power-sharing in the House shouldn’t be partisan either.

Unsurprisingly, there are many Republicans who don’t think McCarthy acted as party leader and want to oust him from that position, but they’re also a bit confused. They are going to make a motion to vacate the chair, which is a term for trying to remove the Speaker of the House from power. The Republicans are free to choose a new leader, but the Democrats have a say over who serves as Speaker.

This is particularly true because the Republicans are divided, and most support McCarthy. When a vote comes on whether McCarthy remains Speaker, the result will turn on what the Democrats do. They could save McCarthy by joining with his supporters in the Republican caucus, but they have little reason to go that route unless McCarthy recognizes that they make up the larger half of the functional governing coalition that funds the government and pays its bills on time.

Back in 2015, Speaker John Boehner faced the same choice and chose to retire rather than seek Democratic support and make the concessions that would go along with that. McCarthy, however, looks like he intends to continue, which means he will have to go hat in hand to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the House Democrats.

What should Jeffries demand?

Well, for starters, funding for Ukraine. That money was stripped out of the continuing resolution despite having support in both chambers of Congress. Secondly, an end to the impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, which is a naked sham and pet project of people now outside the governing coalition. Third, some representation in power, which means at a minimum, a reshuffling of the committees with at least a few chairs going to the Democrats. Fourth, probably a seat at the table in the House leadership, meaning that Jeffries or some other designee would become House Majority Leader or House Majority Whip.

If these terms are too onerous, then McCarthy can lose his gavel and the functional majority can negotiate a new Speaker and new committee and leadership arrangements among themselves.

When I suggested this be done prior to the vote for Speaker in January, I mentioned that it would almost certainly not happen until a crisis hit, either over the debt ceiling in May or when the money ran out at the end of September. It probably seemed like an insane proposal to most of you, but it was dictated by math. Because there was no red wave in the midterm elections, there never was a functional partisan Republican majority to do the basics, pay our bills and fund the government, and so it was inevitable that a partisan Speaker would fail. I thought a lot of pain could be avoided by acknowledging this up front, but it is being acknowledged now.

My only concern is that the Democrats fail to drive a hard bargain and win the power they clearly deserve.