RISE Law Group clarifiction

An Oregon Bar adjudicator recommended a 120-day suspension of attorney Maryanne Pitcher. 

The suspension is not yet in effect. 

I had used the present tense in my previous post.

Ms. Pitcher is eligible to appeal the Bar decision to the Oregon Supreme Court. They can sustain the Bar recommendation, increase the sanction, or decrease it.

The Bar originally recommended a 90-day suspension, but the Bar adjudicator, after review of aggravating and minimizing evidence, concluded that Ms. Pitcher lied under oath at the Bar hearings, and therefore added 30 days to the penalty for a total of 120 days.

I have received comments expressing surprise that the penalty assessed by a Bar adjudicator who concluded that Ms. Pitcher lied to him under oath merited only an additional 30-days of suspension. Isn't lying under oath perjury? Isn't that a prosecutable crime? Doesn't lying in a forum about attorney ethics seem especially misplaced and wrong? I have to wonder: Have attorneys become so inured to dishonesty that a Bar official considers the suitable penalty for lying under oath is to add 30 days of enforced vacation? 

Lawyers take care of their own.

But to clarify my previous post: Maryanne Pitcher's suspension is pending, is not in effect, and she has the right to appeal the penalty, and the Supreme Court may decide that no penalty or sanction is necessary.

 

RISE Law Group trouble.

      "Peter, whatever happened to that Medford law firm you wrote about last year? The one where you watched an eight-day trial about excessive legal fees."

The law firm is the Rise Law Group. 

They have had some trouble since I last wrote.

Amid news of national and worldwide import, I am taking a day to look at something hyper-local, the operations of the Jackson County, Oregon, courts. Why? Because most of the "liberty and justice for all" that we acknowledge in the Pledge of Allegiance takes place in local state courts like the ones here. Dysfunction at the U.S. Supreme Court gets examined; dysfunction at local courts and within a local legal community is not, yet problems there affect thousands of people. 

Eighteen months ago I heard there were problems at the Jackson County courts. Divorce cases were slow to be processed. Judges were avoiding serving in front of certain lawyers. Judges were being taken off cases. Clients were filing bar complaints. The same name kept coming up: the RISE Law Group.

The RISE Law Group has a reputation for being very aggressive in their litigation strategy and in their billing practices, which ran up costs for their divorce clients. The firm has a practice of suing former clients for unpaid bills, which leads to a high volume of client complaints to the state Bar. A client with modest income and assets, plus very limited English, had a legal bill from RISE of some $50,000. She sued RISE. The case went to trial. I spent eight days viewing that trial. I wrote about it in a March, 2024, post titled "Trouble in the Jackson County Courts." 

My blog post quoted Maryanne Pitcher, a partner in the firm, saying she knew she was unpopular, but she contended that the firm was worth the money they charge clients and that they had good reason to force judges off their cases. 

The result of that case was mixed. The jury told me after the trial that they thought the firm was more billing-focused than client-focused, but they awarded no money to the client who protested the firm's fees. That was a win for RISE. Still, the trial turned out to be costly for RISE. Because they lost on some points, they owed attorney fees to the attorneys representing the former client. Judge Charles Kochlacs, the judge in that case, determined that they owed Matthew Sutton, the lead opposing counsel, about $111,000. (That was far less than he requested, but more than RISE wanted to pay.) When the RISE Law Group went to court again, this time to protest the attorney fee judgment, it took Sutton more time and money to defend that fee, which he did successfully. This week he was awarded about $15,000 more to cover that defense. 

There is more news this week on the RISE group, this time from the Oregon Bar. The Bar announced they suspended Maryanne Pitcher from the practice of law for 120 days. [Note, see below. The suspension is pending and not now in effect.] Pitcher resisted the suspension. She claimed some of her actions at issue were affected by a mental freeze from a limbic system that "hijacks the brain," following a mental health treatment called rapid transformational therapy. The adjudicator was not persuaded. He wrote:

I find that Respondent’s claim that she suffered a medical or emotional reaction during the courtroom incident is clearly and convincingly contradicted by the video evidence. Respondent was lucid and appeared at all times to be in control of her behavior while she was in the courtroom. . . .

Further, I find that Respondent’s credibility is irreparably damaged by the fact that she offered deceptive and misleading expert testimony to support her claim. A party that is complicit in such a charade is inherently untrustworthy. 

The Bar originally suggested a 90-day suspension, but following evidence of aggravating circumstances, the Bar's adjudicator, Mark A. Turner, added another 30 days. He concluded that she had "offered a false narrative" about one of the charges and "did so knowing they were material to the Bar's investigation" and then "repeated her false assertions under oath." 

That is the fresh news from the Jackson County courts.

Yesterday I posted about filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals, saying that Trump is breaking the law and he is getting bolder about it. That is controversy on a large scale. Now this, with a post about client complaints, legal fees, and 120-day bar suspensions. What small potatoes. Why bother with this? Here is why. This week's posts are all part of the same justice system, with rules that allow our complex society to function. It is good to see rules enforced up and down the justice system. Dysfunction at any level reduces confidence in the courts, and I see that taking place across the U.S. I would like to reverse that.

Sometimes our justice system gets out of whack. But sometimes the system takes steps to repair itself. I consider it reason for optimism in a tough time for justice in America.

Update and correction:  The Bar adjudicator announced a recommendation of a 120 day suspension after a review of the evidence, but the penalty does not go into effect for 30 days. Ms. Pitcher has the right to appeal the penalty to the Oregon Supreme Court. If it is appealed, they can ratify the decision of the Bar adjudicator of a 120 day suspension, or either increase or decrease the penalty.  

[Note: These are my opinions; no one else’s. My wife is an attorney. She is the Executive Director of the Center for Nonprofit Legal Services. Neither she nor CNPLS has anything to do with my blog. She doesn't even read it. She is busy providing access to justice for people in need.]

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Domino theory: Trump's overreach is metastasizing.

 "Give him an inch and he'll take a mile."

The burden of the amicus curiae brief my attorney filed is that President Trump is out of control, a flagrant scofflaw.

And that he's getting worse.

Today's news makes my point for me. 

Wall Street Journal: Trump and Bolsonaro

Trump is using the threat of a punitive, trade-killing tariff as a lever to bully Brazil into not prosecuting a former president, Jair Bolsonaro, who, like Trump, attempted unsuccessfully to stay in power after having lost a presidential election. Trump sympathizes with Bolisaro and wants the U.S., via our trade policy, to give him a boost.

Attorney Thad Guyer prepared the brief. It combines three examples of Trump's overreach:

  -- Trump's claim that he has the power to set tariffs on a whim;

  -- the claim that he can ignore laws passed by Congress to ensure a professional, merit-based Civil Service;

  -- his lawsuit against every federal district court judge in Maryland, for having insisted on due process on deportations.

The point of the brief is that Americans need to hold the line, stopping Trump on tariffs, because if he gets away with ignoring clear Constitutional separation of powers here, there is no stopping him. The cancer is metastasizing. 

The authors of the Constitution had good reason to want Congress, not the Executive, to set tariffs. They were attempting to keep unified a set of former colonies with very different interests, and Congress is set up to broker those conflicts. Cloth manufacturers in mill towns in New England would want tariffs on foreign cloth. Southern tobacco and cotton farmers would want the cheapest and best cloth, wherever made. Congress, with representatives giving voice and power to everyone, kept tariff policy from exploding the country -- a difficult task at a time when tariffs were a primary source of national income. A president -- John Adams from Massachusetts, for example -- if left alone to set tariffs might please textile manufacturers of his acquaintance in Massachusetts with tariffs, convinced he was serving the national interest, putting a burden on people in southern states -- who were not likely to vote for Adams, anyway -- who paid higher prices because of the tariffs. A president couldn't be trusted with that power.

In the case of southern Oregon wine, the premise behind my interest in the case, tariffs on China matter. In stores like Costco, where margins are tiny, a rise in wine bottle prices from 90 cents to $1.75 squeezes out all the margin in competition with Spanish wines. Senator Jeff Merkley has visited my farm, and Senator Ron Wyden and I have discussed the economics of grapes and melons multiple times. I may not get the tariff policy that pleases me -- indeed, I expect I would not under any circumstance -- but at least I have representation and a voice.

The worst fears of the authors of the Constitution are being played out today, with Trump exercising his personal agenda supporting a fellow election-denying incumbent president, who, like Trump, encouraged rioters to attempt to stop the vote count. In a formal White House letter to Brazil, Trump openly linked Brazil's tariff with Trump's support for their disgraced president. This letter, dated yesterday, embeds an open presumption that the American public would tolerate its president using U.S. tariff policy in flagrant service of Trump's personal political agenda:

Political columnist Paul Krugman said this letter alone should be the basis for impeachment. If impeachment would lead to conviction, I would agree. But it wouldn't. Trump has already moved the norms so far that there isn't a two-thirds majority to convict him, even for this flagrant misuse of his office.

The amicus brief with my name on it argues that a version of the "domino theory" is underway. One overreach leads to an even greater one. It is out there in the open for all to see: Trump dangling, taking away, then dangling again a tariff to extract a political benefit is one domino. Hold the line. 

[Note, in future blog posts I will summarize the arguments made by other amicus filers. Each focuses on different reasons to oppose Trump's overreach. Coming soon, the brief by The Goldwater Institute, a conservative legal advocacy group.]

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Amicus curiae: I am a friend of the court

Attorney Thad Guyer filed on my behalf an amicus curiae brief to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The brief, submitted yesterday, argues that Trump is acting unconstitutionally in claiming power to set tariffs. 

Congress, not the president, has the power to establish tariffs.

Normal practice is for a "friend of the court" to be a high-profile, high-prestige organization or person, perhaps the ACLU,  NAACP, The Heritage Foundation, or The New York Times. I am very much the opposite, a relative nobody, making my claim from the perspective of an individual citizen, a retiree, and a small farmer. 

Thad Guyer wrote the brief, cited the cases, made the legal and historical arguments. As we all learned in school, there are branches of government. Each has a role. The checks and balances protect us against tyranny.

A "friend of the court" filing begins with a statement of interest. I have an interest in tariffs being set by Congress, as the Constitution directs, where I have access to representatives who know the problems of vineyard owners in Southern Oregon. The tariff issue is just one of the places President Trump has overstepped, and it establishes a pattern that is metastasizing.  He ignores Congress' power of the purse. He attacks judges and ignores their rulings. He freezes funds and closes departments authorized by Congress. He uses federal agencies to extort money and to punish critics. If we can enforce the law on tariffs, it may reaffirm that the checks and balances that protect the republic are still in place. We are drawing a line.

I wrote one section of the brief, the statement of interest. Under the rules of the court, these statements are expressed in the third person, voiced by my attorney on my behalf. Here is what I wrote:

STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE

Peter W. Sage, age 75, is a retired professional who operates a small farm and vineyard in Southern Oregon. He lives primarily on Social Security and modest personal investments, along with the hope of future income from his vineyard. He is financially vulnerable to costs imposed by tariffs affecting the equipment and supplies necessary to develop and operate his vineyard, as well as the risk of losing access to foreign markets for his wine in the event of retaliatory tariffs. 

Mr. Sage depends on a competent, merit-based federal civil service to safeguard his well-being and that of his community. He relies on the National Weather Service for accurate forecasts to protect his crops from frost damage and to provide critical data for managing and responding to regional forest fires, which at times leave his region immersed in hazardous smoke for weeks. He depends on career professionals at the Department of Health and Human Services to administer his Social Security and Medicare benefits fairly and accurately. He also relies on the integrity of financial regulators, including the SEC and the Treasury Department, to protect his investments from fraud, bank failures, and market instability. Political interference in these agencies and the courts threatens Mr. Sage’s livelihood and erodes public trust in essential governmental functions.

 

Mr. Sage relies on the constitutional structure of the United States, specifically on the separation of powers and Congress’s exclusive authority to impose tariffs, to protect his financial interests. He depends on the stability of congressional action, rather than the unilateral deal-making of an executive, to ensure a reliable supply chain and stable markets for his vineyard’s products. Congressional authority over tariffs provides him with practical access to decision makers in the House and Senate who understand and represent the needs of small agricultural producers in Southern Oregon like himself.

 

In addition to these concrete economic concerns, Mr. Sage has, for almost a decade, written about executive overreach in his political blog, Up Close with Peter Sage,* where he reports on in-person interactions with presidential candidates in New Hampshire and Iowa. Until recently, Mr. Sage’s warnings about unchecked executive power were largely theoretical. However, he now fears targeted retaliation by the President of the United States, including politically motivated IRS audits, placement on a no-fly list, interference with the naturalization status of family members, and harassment of lawfully present Hispanic workers at his vineyard. These are no longer abstract possibilities; they

have become tangible concerns in light of recent examples of executive retaliation against critics.

 

Mr. Sage notes with alarm that the Executive Department recently filed lawsuits against every District Court judge in the state of Maryland — an act that is unprecedented and demonstrates a shocking lack of respect for judicial review of executive actions. He is concerned about the erosion of boundaries and the dismantling of checks and balances. These threats are manifesting now, in real time. Each breach of constitutional boundaries, including, in this case, the circumvention of Congress’s authority over tariffs, normalizes further encroachments and weakens the framework of limited government.

Mr. Sage’s experience underscores the broader constitutional principle at stake: no individual, including the President, is above the law. When executive power is exercised without accountability, it jeopardizes not only national governance but also the personal freedoms, safety, and economic stability of ordinary Americans. For these reasons, Mr. Sage respectfully urges the Court to reaffirm the separation of powers and the foundational principle that the President is subject to the law.

* https://peterwsage.blogspot.com 

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Paradox: Not wanting what you want. ("Did you ever have to make up your mind.")

"Did you ever have to make up your mind?
You pick up on one and leave the other behind
It's not often easy and not often kind
Did you ever have to make up your mind?"
          John Sebastian, The Loving Spoonful, 1965

It happens in life. It happens in politics. You don't really want what you want.

Republicans have that problem with immigration. 

Trump understood the frustration felt by Americans on immigration. Too many. Too fast. Too foreign. Too unregulated. Too many people in a permanent gray-area state, semi-legal, here legally awaiting a hearing where they would be sent back. People were angry with Democrats for dithering.  Enough voters decided that since Democrats won't handle immigration, Trump would. So Americans elected Trump.

[A quick aside to Democrats. I don't acknowledge Trump's strengths because I like and admire him. He is vile, crass, dishonest, authoritarian. But he is president because Democrats screwed up some things, including immigration enforcement, and because Trump better understood American voters anger at cultural elites. Democrats need to understand why Trump won, or our fellow Americans will keep electing him or people like him.]

The One Big Beautiful Bill had lots of moving parts. One part was a giant increase in the budget for ICE -- Immigration Control and Enforcement. The new overall budget is $170 billion, up from about $9 billion -- an extraordinary refocus of resources. The new law includes $45 billion for immigration detention centers and $30 billion to hire more ICE personnel. It will fund at least 116,000 beds, according to the American Immigration Council. These beds are temporary for that time between arrest and deportation, so people will be moving in and out of them. That is a huge capacity for mass deportation.

This isn't pussyfooting around. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson said, “One of President Trump’s biggest campaign promises was to secure the border and execute the largest mass deportation operation in history." There is a purpose: "The more beds we have, the more bad guys we arrest," border czar Tom Homan said. And everyone here in the U.S. illegally deserves deportation. 

Trump's base voters tell pollsters they want people here illegally sent back. Don't be a dithering Hamlet. Take arms against a sea of troubles and clean house.  As this blog reported on July 1, 59 percent of Republicans tell the Pew poll they want deportation of people here illegally; 66 percent of "conservatives" feel the same. After all, illegal is illegal. If they were gone, then social service agencies would save money, schools and hospitals would save money, crime rates would go down, and Americans would get off their butts and do jobs currently done by immigrants working under the table. There is an emotional element of invasion, one that Trump and Fox exploit successfully. They insult us by flouting our laws. How dare they? Get out.

The Big Bill did not gear up for "pick and choose" deportation. It geared up for Steven Miller's policy of mass deportation. Pick-and-choose doesn't solve the problem of too many of the wrong people in the wrong spots taking up money and space and jobs. Democrats perceive Miller as a vile racist with a snake-like head, but their disgust with him blinds them to the fact that Republican voters generally agree with his policy. 

Here is the rub: Most of those Republicans don't really want what they think they want. They want both mass deportation but also pick-and-choose deportation. The Trump policy of deporting people at apparent random, including highly-visible people with long-standing connections to the community, has an intended and perverse effect. The intended effect is that immigrants see that anyone can be deported. Illegal immigration has slowed and across America, and people here illegally are rethinking their risks. Maybe they should leave so they can leave on their own terms, not in shackles and sent God-knows-where. The perverse effect is that people with mixed-status families, people who own property, people with long-standing jobs, and people best assimilated into America's melting pot are the ones with the most to lose in this current policy of high visibility deportations of "good" people. The dread from the potential of being picked up in the mass deportation effort is unsettling immigrant communities. Stores are empty; workplaces are missing key employees; people are staying away from churches, sporting events, restaurants. We are seeing a kind of strike, and it it is bad for business and communities.

Trump and the GOP created a dilemma for themselves. They defined the problem of immigration as one of mass invasion and substitution of real Americans (i.e. White native-born) for the new people Trump said are mostly bad people, not Mexico's best. Trump said, "They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Some. But most aren't, and all of them are mocking our laws by being here. Trump can only do pick-and-choose deportations by denying the original premise of the need for bold action. We are entering an era of contradiction. Trump's voters are already getting uneasy about this.

Trump has one very valuable tool for a politician. He has no sense of obligation to his own past and to people who counted on him. He is willing to change positions without any apparent feeling of guilt or embarrassment for misleading people, and then assert against all evidence that he is being 100-percent consistent. Anyone else would try to explain. He simply pushes ahead with the new position.  He will respond to his supporters' contradictory feelings. He will relax enforcement of deportations in red states. It is really what they wanted all along -- a sense that we were making the rules, not the scofflaw immigrants. He will concentrate strict enforcement -- perhaps even punitive and intentionally cruel enforcement -- in blue cities. His supporters will get to keep the immigrants they wanted all along, and his blue-city opponents will cry liberal tears. His supporters will love that. Meanwhile, Democratic mayors and governors will position themselves as supporters of Mexican-flag-waving scofflaws. Better yet for Trump. 

Watch. It is already starting to happen. 

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ABC: Always Be Closing

     "A-B-C. A-always, B-be, C-closing. Always be closing! Always be closing!! A-I-D-A. Attention, Interest, Decision, Action. Attention -- do I have your attention? Interest -- are you interested? I know you are because it's fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks!"

Blake, played by Alex Baldwin, Glengarry Glen Ross, 1992

"First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired."

Millions of Americans got the Social Security letter last week.

Maybe we were shocked by it. So blatantly political. Wow. Has it come to this?

Yes. It has come to this.

Here is my copy of the letter, along with the subject line heading. This was official business from the government's website.

By now most readers will have read enough commentary to know that the letter is deeply misleading. The Big Beautiful Bill doesn't eliminate taxes on Social Security, as Trump claims and campaigned. The letter writes, 

"By significantly reducing the tax burden on benefits, this legislation reaffirms President Trump’s promise to protect Social Security and helps ensure that seniors can better enjoy the retirement they’ve earned."

Coming from Social Security, this implies that there was some change to taxation of Social Security benefits. Not so. The new law does change the standard deduction amount for seniors, which in a few cases, if people are on an income margin, will drop people from paying taxes to not paying them, but the new law doesn't change Social Security taxation or provide "meaningful and immediate relief" for anything involving Social Security.

The big effects of the law are elsewhere. If the $150 billion in new money for immigration control is spent effectively, then there will be dramatic reshaping of our population through deportations. The tax cuts for top earners have become permanent. Some people will lose Medicaid access, which will be catastrophic for some of them. The deficit will rise and the debt grow.

The Trump administration broke through a new boundary on the politicization of the federal government's agencies. Traditionally politicians sell, but government agencies describe, and do so in a neutral way. Government reports are dry -- boring even -- but reliable as information without "spin." This letter is something new. Jeff Nesbit, the former deputy commissioner of the SSA under President Joe Biden, said "The agency has never issued such a blatant political statement.The fact that Trump and his minion running SSA has done this is unconscionable." Unconscionable, maybe, but not clearly illegal, and in any case no inspector general or ethics official in the Department of Justice is going to raise a fuss. Trump is getting away with this.

Trump is a transformative president. The executive departments are now part of the overt political and communication apparatus of the incumbent president. They spin. They sell. Now that Trump has done it and gotten away with it, the changes will likely persist after he leaves office. The incentives to use executive department credibility to cheerlead for incumbent presidents and their party are enormous, but only if the public tolerates it and perceives it as the new normal, and that is the case. There is no objection from any group with the power to do anything. Within the suite of Trump sales-oriented activities, from shoes, watches, real estate deals, lawsuit settlements with media companies, Melania's payment for a documentary, and meme crypto coins, the distinctions and prohibitions against of self-dealing financially or politically have eroded away. 

Democrats are so disgusted by Trump's crassness, dishonesty, cruelty, and selfishness that they have underestimated the power of relentless salesmanship. President Biden was a miserable salesman, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is little better. Democrats tolerate that. Democrats in leadership positions act as if features and benefits sell themselves. Trump knows better.

Trump gets away with outrageous behavior because he is selling all the time, using every tool at his command. He commands the executive department. He just commandeered Social Security.

The Blake character in Glengarry Glen Ross was a vulgar, bullying, unappealing character, but he was a "winner." He brags to the workers that he made almost a million dollars in 1992, drives a hundred thousand dollar car, and has a big gold watch. He was disgusting all the way to the bank. He was always closing.

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Easy Sunday: I don't use Artificial Intelligence to write my blog

The blog is all me. 

I don't use AI.

Maybe my sense of superiority over AI-generated text stems from the fact that I don't know how to use it very well.

I could analogize to a novice driver who doesn't realize that he needs to shift the automatic transmission out of the gear marked "1" into the gear marked "D." He thinks the car can go only 15 miles per hour, so is unimpressed with this newfangled  automatic transmission. 

I experimented by asking Chat-GPT to write a short blog post that sounded like me. It made a stab at it, bluffing that it was writing in my style. I asked it if it had any access whatever to my posts. It responded that it was inferring it from a general idea of what it probably was, but admitted, that, no, it had never seen one word of mine.  

Chat-GPT is a confident bullshitter. It sometimes substitutes a matter-of fact tone, excellent grammar, and all-around good sense for actual knowledge. That is deceptive. I liken it to a smart and articulate student who didn't do the assigned reading of To Kill a Mockingbird, who is asked by a teacher to describe the story. He confidently and elequently says it is a nuanced and superbly-described story of hunting songbirds.

I uploaded 10 recent blog posts to "train" Chat-GPT. The application told me it was delighted to read this material.  I got feedback like this:

Thank you for sharing Sample Number 5. This one highlights a reflective, personal storytelling style combined with sharp observations about political presentation and charisma. It balances nostalgic reflection with political critique, emphasizing the importance of personality, stamina, and persuasion in leadership. The tone is conversational, candid, and often introspective, encouraging readers to think beyond policies to the human elements of leadership.

"Sharp observations." I liked that. It seems to approve of me. Chat-GPT is a likeable friend.

I asked it to write a short blog post warning Democrats not to be over-confident that the Big Beautiful Bill would be a political disaster for Trump. Readers who bathe in MSNBC's cocoon are inundated with commentary saying how terrible and unpopular the bill is. Don't be so sure. The good stuff --  tax cuts -- comes now. The bad stuff -- Medicaid cuts that will hurt some MAGA voters -- comes later, after the midterms. And Trump will make this all about stopping "criminal illegals.")

I asked Chat-GPT if it could prepare about 250 words for me:

Absolutely! Here's a short political piece in the style of Peter Sage, warning Democrats not to underestimate Trump's ability to sell even his most unpopular ideas:

---

Don’t Underestimate Trump’s Selling Power

Democrats beware: don’t fall into the trap of thinking the public automatically dislikes Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Because here’s the truth: Trump can sell ice to an Eskimo — and he knows it.

Look past the obvious. The bill isn’t popular—who truly benefits from more chaos and division? Yet, Trump’s genius (or madness, depending on your point of view) is in his ability to frame himself as the only “decisive” leader, the “tough guy” cutting through the bureaucratic clutter to get the job done. That’s a narrative that resonates with a sizable chunk of voters — especially those tired of “business as usual.”

The media and Democrats tend to dismiss Trump’s selling skills as bluster or demagoguery. But that’s a mistake. The man’s entire career is proof: he’s a master salesman who’s convinced millions that he’s the only one who can “fix” things, no matter how broken things actually are. The fact that he can spin even his most unpopular policies into a badge of honor is no accident.

Think about the “Big Beautiful Bill” and how he could reframe it. He can declare it a “bold stand against woke liberal corruption,” rallying his base with tales of fighting the establishment. And, make no mistake, many swing voters still see him as a figure of strength — not compromise.

Democrats should remember: polling isn’t persuasion. The House and Senate majorities might slip away if they underestimate the emotional power Trump wields. He may be many things — impulsive, dishonest, divisive — but he’s also a salesman who always finds a way to turn the tide. The lesson? Never count him out until the votes are counted, because in politics, perception is often reality.

There is a readable, self-confident style, and it followed my prompt. It said anodyne, commonplace things in good, vernacular English. But notice something: Chat-GPT writes that Democrats have House and Senate majorities that will slip away under Trump's salesmanship. It is factually mistaken. Republicans have the majority which might slip away, but not if the premise of the blog is correct, which is that the bill is not as unpopular as Democrats think. AI hallucinated that falsehood and got things backwards.

AI presents itself as having consciousness and personality. That is seductive. It leads you to think it is trying to take care of you, and therefore it is conscientious and trustworthy, like a reliable and tireless employee. 

That would be a mistake. It is a willful and overconfident employee, at least for me, a novice, looking at the transmission display stuck on "1."

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Canada: Ploughshares into Swords.

"He who troubleth his own house inherits the wind."

     Proverbs 11:29

Canada is treating the U.S. like a threat, not an ally.

Well, of course.

Canadians are just being realistic.

It is possible that Donald Trump really does want to annex Canada. Canada, plus Greenland and the "Gulf of America," would round out some pieces on a map of North America. Trump is a builder and he sees these places as underdeveloped land. His strategy isn't courtship. It's pain. If Canada is miserable enough being our neighbor and ally, maybe it will join us. It might be voluntary -- or not. A bold president might decide it is a military necessity, a matter of "self-defense" for us. That's how Trump would sell it to the world, and Americans might buy it. Canadians wouldn't, but what does Trump care? How many divisions does Canada have on the border?

Canada is responding to this new era.

Classmate Sandford Borins is Canadian. He regularly shares his understanding of the Canadian perspective on events in the USA. He is Professor of Public Management, Emeritus, at the University of Toronto. He writes and posts regularly at www.sandfordborins.com, where this comment first appeared yesterday. This photo, with the class-deprecating T-shirt, refers to a comment by Harvard's president about our class, spoken amid the turbulent times on college campuses during the Vietnam War. Borins, photographed here among some of his awards and diplomas, recently received the King Charles III Coronation Medal, in honor of his public service.

Guest Post by Sandford Borins

Beating our Ploughshares into Swords

I was surprised to see that NATO so readily embraced the target of member nations spending five percent of GDP on defence and defence infrastructure and that Canada was part of this consensus. And there does not appear to be much public debate here as to whether this is an appropriate goal. By inverting the prophet Isaiah’s vision of the messianic age, I want to raise questions about NATO’s new vision.

The US and NATO

The impetus for the increase from a target of two percent of GDP to five percent of GDP came from US President Donald Trump’s call on NATO members to increase their defence spending as well as his veiled threat that the US would reduce its spending on European defence, for example by withdrawing its troops. Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine is also an implicit threat against the sovereignty of NATO members contiguous to it. (If quoting scripture, we could set Ecclesiastes against Isaiah: “to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven … a time of war and a time of peace.”)

Trump’s 5 percent target was not the product of any comprehensive analysis, but, as is always the case with him, an eye-catching number. Trump has long argued that other NATO members have “ripped off” the US by spending a smaller share of GDP on defence. While the stationing of US troops in Europe has substituted for European troops, the US has benefited from its large defence budget by developing advanced technologies that enabled it to be a prime supplier of weapons to other NATO members. In addition, US military technology has often been transferred to US-based businesses. Thus, the US’s leading role in NATO has given it substantial industrial benefits in defence and other sectors of its economy.

Perhaps Trump’s call on other NATO members to increase their defence spending is an attempt to reap double benefits: first, from a reduction in the cost of US troops stationed in Europe, and second from other NATO members purchasing more US military equipment and technology. If this was Trump’s thinking, he immediately undermined it by expressing his lust for the territory of NATO members Canada and Denmark. Given the complexity and ongoing maintenance requirements of military equipment, Trump’s avarice is making the US an untrustworthy supplier of military equipment. Other NATO members are working to increase their own defence production capacity, not only to avoid relying on the US but perhaps even to defend themselves against the US.

Negotiating Sovereignty

A dramatic increase in defence spending in Canada will involve difficult tradeoffs. I don’t think the Government of Canada and Canadian society are so inefficient that increased defence spending will be funded simply by cutting waste. More defence spending will involve less spending on health, on housing, on education, on culture, and on support for other Canadian industries. Or it may involve a huge increase in the government’s deficits and debt, which only delays the tradeoff. Perhaps the increase in direct defence spending to 3.5 percent of GDP (and defence infrastructure spending to 1.5 percent of GDP) will be phased in gradually over 10 years, even backend-loaded, so that the current commitment can be revisited after the Trump presidency ends on January 20, 2029.

But “Liberation Day” is more than three years away. The renegotiation of Canada’s economic and security relationship, which is intended to produce an agreement, or at least a framework, in three weeks poses stark challenges to our government and society. I assume the worst about the Trump Administration, namely that they want to weaken us, with a long-term goal of absorbing Canada. From this perspective, tariffs and defence spending are two arms of a pincer. Tariffs are intended to weaken the Canadian economy by shifting industrial production — particularly autos, steel, and aluminum – to the US. Pressuring us to increase defence spending – especially if it involves procurement from the US – is intended to weaken us by forcing our public sector to reduce spending in other areas. (A recent historical analogy is the Reagan Administration’s enthusiastic commitment to an arms race that ultimately bankrupted and destroyed the Soviet Union.) Two hugely expensive military systems – completing the contract to purchase 88 F-35s and participating in the Golden Dome missile defence system – contribute to the Trump Administration’s objective of putting financial pressure on Canada and ultimately undermining our sovereignty.

If Canada is to dramatically increase defence spending, we need a careful study of the objectives we want to achieve and the best systems to achieve them. One important objective would be to maximize defence production in Canada. The war between Russia and Ukraine has demonstrated the importance of warfare using inexpensive drones, and Canada should be able to produce its own.

I await the results of the current negotiations with deep concern. The Canada Day celebrations are over. The battle for our sovereignty against our formerly closest ally continues.

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July 4th at the Vineyard

Happy Independence Day.

I am celebrating it by being at the vineyard at 5:30 a.m. to join farmworkers pruning grape plants.

There is life outside of politics.

Yesterday my nephew and I finished pruning the two acres of Cabernets.

Liam Flenniken, age 17. He did most of the work. He will be a  senior at Lincoln High School in Portland this fall.

I grow a few melons out of love and inertia. Here is what a cantaloupe vine looks like at age four weeks. The vine will double in size every five days.  By the end of July it will be a thick mass of vines.

Cantaloupe: two feet across

Watermelon: two feet across Those tendrils extend several inches a day.

The big job today is pruning the suckers out of the base of the grape vines. and getting the vines secure between the two sets of upper wires. With melons, big, lush vines mean healthy melons. With grapes, lush vines mean more work.  One builds a healthy grape plant by what one removes.

This is a very healthy pinot noir, in need of pruning. 

Adelbert Paz 

He is fast. He pulls and snaps off the suckers and cleans up with clippers.

Finished

Vines off that plant

I am still doing some jobs at the vineyard: planting replacement grape vines, hoeing weeds, moving pipes, walking the field to check the irrigation drips. I prune some, but pruning means getting down low onto one's knees to trim suckers and then getting up to go to the next plant. Doing a few is easy, but there are 2,000 Cabernets, 2,000 Malbecs, and 4,000 Pinot Noirs. The hundredth time -- one long row -- getting up is too hard. 

The vineyard is on the part of the farm with deep pumice soil. It is very fine-grained, and when tilled it is the consistency of powder snow or powdered sugar. You can see the deep footprints in the photos. The grape roots should find it easy to extract the unique characteristics of the terroir.  Ideally, it will make excellent wine. Next year, when I will have grapes to sell in quantity, I will water less to get less foliage and to make the grape vines struggle more, toward the goal of richer, more concentrated grape flavor.

Happy July 4th.

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Immigrants don't sponge off us. We sponge off them.

     "The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits. The OBBB fixes this problem. And therefore it must pass."
          JD Vance, on Twitter/X

JD Vance is wrong.

Immigrants aren't lavished with benefits. They don't come here to loaf. They come here to work their butts off.

Do a thought experiment. Think of three parallel families.

First, imagine Joe and Mary Doe, both born in Medford, Oregon. They marry and have a baby. The baby, call him Robert, goes to public schools and an Oregon college, which costs taxpayers money, then maybe serves in the military, marries and has two kids of his own. Let's imagine Robert finds his way into a career installing and servicing heating and air conditioning systems for homes and commercial buildings, and does pretty well. He earns money, pays taxes, eventually retires and collects Social Security and moves to Sun City, Florida where he dies. A full and productive all-American life, we would say. He was both a producer and a consumer, and the country is stronger because of citizens like him. JD Vance says there aren't enough of those baby Roberts and maybe women should stay home and be a homemaker and make three or more little Roberts. Don't be a "cat lady," he said. 

Now let's imagine a second family, Jose and Maria Garcia, again both born in Medford, same everything except they name their baby Roberto, who goes to school and college and the military and ends up working alongside Robert operating the "Two Bobs" Heating and Air Conditioning business. Both families are assets to America, right?  

Now imagine a third couple, Ricardo and Rosa Lopez, who crossed the U.S. border from Mexico or Cuba, having fled from drug gangs or communism. They are immigrants, considered illegal now that Trump disallows amnesty claims. They bring a baby in arms, Juan. This third couple finds work, pays income taxes and into Social Security, and enrolls Juan in school. Unlike the other families, the Lopez family isn't eligible for most safety net services, even ones they pay taxes to support. But whatever his birthplace, Juan is a new baby here. If he is allowed to live here legally, out of the shadows, he has equal potential to be valuable to the U.S. over a lifetime of work and paying taxes, both producing and consuming. If the Doe family is an asset to America, and we need more of their baby Roberts, isn't Juan equally valuable? 

As regards the financial cost to society -- cited by Vance and other Republican politicians as the real benefit of the OBBB because it funds ICE so it can better deport the Lopez family -- the three families are not the same. The immigrant family, including baby Juan, is the better deal for American taxpayers. People here without documentation are almost certainly working, and most are paying into Social Security for a benefit they cannot collect. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculated that in 2022 undocumented people paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes.

The image and headline below is from Fox News. Yes, Fox.

Fox News built a story around statistics cited by Unleash Prosperity, a conservative policy group. Unleash Prosperity said that undocumented workers are helping keep Social Security solvent. Fox reports:

"Immigrants tend to be net contributors to the public fiscal because they pay payroll taxes but they don't have parents who collect benefits," Unleash Prosperity co-founder and economist Steven Moore told FOX Business. "Their children pay for their benefits."

There are good reasons for the U.S. to control immigration. Disorder disrupted communities. Life in the gray area incentivizes illegal, under-the-table employment. But Republicans are trying to save the Big Beautiful Bill by claiming that we will save money by deporting immigrants. We won't.  

A Norwegian baby

The real issue for Trump isn't immigration. It is what kind of people are the real Americans. Do Americans feel differently because that second family -- also born in the USA -- is Hispanic and therefore "less American."  Are their children less welcome to be the future of our country?

The immigration issue isn't about money. The money issue cuts in the other direction. The issue is about blood, language, and ethnicity. Most Republican politicians are reluctant to say it aloud because it sounds racist. Trump says what his supporters think, but are embarrassed to say. That is part of his political appeal. Trump said he wants immigrants to come from Norway.

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Extortion

Paramount, parent of CBS, settles a lawsuit with Trump. It is a win for Trump. 

One could call it use of leverage. Or hardball. Or sharp business. I think the most honest word for it is extortion. 

It sends a chilling message. That is the point.

Trump accused the TV show 60 Minutes of unfairly editing an interview with then-candidate Kamala Harris. He sued for $10 billion, then changed it to $20 billion. The lawsuit was ridiculous on its merits, and easily defendable as a matter of First Amendment free speech and freedom of the press. The Freedom of the Press Foundation called Trump's lawsuit "beyond frivolous." But after his election, Trump appointed a new head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brenden Carr, who promptly announced a probe of a CBS-owned New York affiliate TV station. That probe gummed up the works of a multi-billion dollar planned sale of Paramount, the corporate parent of CBS and 60 Minutes, to Skydance Media.

That was the squeeze. 

Paramount capitulated. Settling the lawsuit had nothing to do with the merits of the case. It had everything to do with Trump using the government regulatory power to interfere with the planned sale of the parent company. The extortion was so naked, and Trump's legal claim so weak, that the payment was widely described as a simple bribe, a $16 million payment to Trump for nothing other than an action by his government. 

This billboard ran in Times Square, depicting Paramount owner Shari Redstone, handing cash to Trump.

A deal this flagrant needs a perfunctory cleanup. Paramount issued a statement claiming the settlement was "completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process." No one believes that. The bribe issue was addressed by making the settlement checks to Trump's attorneys and to the Trump presidential library. See? No money to Trump, at least not directly. Trump's spokespeople helped with a pretext of their own: "CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle." No one believes that, but we aren't supposed to believe it. It is just for show.

This is a big win for Trump in the form of money for the Trump presidential library, but more importantly for the precedent and chilling effect. Every media organization intersects with government regulators somewhere -- in TV licensing, in financial transactions, in antitrust matters -- so everyone is vulnerable. Trump demonstrated that he will make pretextual claims backed by the power of the federal government. The fact that Trump's 60 Minutes claim was frivolous is a feature, not a bug. It shows that there is no "safe harbor." Trump could strike anywhere and over nothing, and he has the tools of the Justice Department and cooperation of the regulatory agencies. 

We see a pattern here. Random, pretextual, apparently arbitrary use of presidential power is a feature. In immigration detention, ICE picks up and in a single day deports a long-standing,well-behaved resident who is thoroughly integrated into her community. Why her? It sends a message that no one is exempt. There is no safe harbor. 

With universities, the sudden announcement of cuts of medical research grants sends a message. There is no university program so valuable and popular in the public mind that cutting it is beyond Trump. So, universities need quick action: Examine your systems and clean them up. Rename and cut programs that mention diversity or inclusion. There is no safe harbor. If Trump will try to squash Harvard and medical research he would go after anyone.

Federal employees -- even already understaffed FAA flight controllers and forest fire fighters -- can suffer instant new reduction-in-force orders. One need not have done something controversial like enforce an environmental rule or deny a drilling permit or perform an IRS audit on a friend of Trump. Anyone can be fired. Keep your head down. Don't risk coming to Trump's attention. His department heads are on the lookout and they want to be pro-active. There is no safe harbor. 

Cruelty, fear, and arbitrariness are features. Even if it is an admitted mistake of identity or guilt, you might get sent to a hellhole in El Salvador or Alligator Alcatraz, and Trump will try to keep you here under some sort of colorable pretext. He will claim whatever he wants, and there will be hell to pay.

Don't disappoint him. Anticipate his whims.

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