A look back at Nixon.

     "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."

              President Richard Nixon

 

We each experience our own era. We awaken into our own status quo, our own era's initial condition.  People in my age cohort were introduced to government by watching Douglas Edwards and Walter Cronkite and the Apollo missions. We heard the soaring language of JFK's idealism, civil rights progress under Lyndon Johnson, then Nixon, Watergate, and then squeaky clean Jimmy Carter's reaction to Watergate. 

I was elected Jackson County commissioner in 1980, as the Jimmy Carter era closed out, but its values were still intact. It was the era of conspicuously clean hands. At no point in four years in office did anyone offer to buy me lunch. Or coffee. Or get me in on some development project that just needed a favorable land use decision to get going. Or contribute to a future campaign. That kind of thing wasn't done here.

Generation Z -- people born between about 1997 and 2012 -- people who are now in their formative young adult years are seeing an entirely different status quo from the one I experienced. Trump's first term was the era of "alternative facts," as one of his aides put it. This was no mere "credibility gap." Trump asserted his own reality and did so with joyous confidence; he claimed that he won the 2020 election by a landslide

Imagine what members of Gen Z saw when they looked at President Joe Biden. He was hopelessly old, older than any teacher they had had in school. As old or older than their grandparents. If their parents had Fox News on television, they heard about Hunter Biden's laptop. They heard President Biden be called the head of a "crime family" by Fox anchors. They learned that Hunter Biden had some sort of deal with Burisma, a Ukrainian oil company. They heard he earned money by dashing off paintings that rich friends of his father bought for $500,000 -- a sweet deal, and legal.

Their eyes opened up to politics in a world with news that members of Congress traded stocks based on information they got in committees -- something members of both parties did, and defended as OK. It is their status quo. 

Their eyes awakened to a political world in which Trump is the center-stage actor. Trump is normal. His merchandise, his hotel grift, his business deals with the Saudis, his meme-coin legal bribery, and his pay-to-play are all the status quo, the initial condition. Trump is simply better at self-serving grift than prior grifters, doing it at a hundred times Biden's scale, and proudly announcing it. It is the way things are. Extort law firms to do free legal work? Sure. Extract pay-to-play contributions for businesses with pending regulatory issues. Sure. Create a cryptocurrency that gives nearly dollar-for-dollar income to Trump? Sure. Invite those largest "investors" to announce themselves at Mar-a-Lago? Of course. Why else buy the created-from-thin-air crypto coin if not to show Trump who his friends are?

This is the world young people are seeing. As Walter Cronkite put it at the end of each night's broadcast, "That's the way it is." 

I was reminded of the extent of change when looking at this YouTube video of Richard Nixon's farewell speech to his staff. No need to watch it all. But click at minute 7:30 and watch two minutes of it. Observe the notion of public service. Observe Nixon's understanding of America's role in the world.  For people without the time and inclination to click, a transcript is below:

Click

As I pointed out last night, sure, we’ve done some things wrong in this administration, and the top man always takes the responsibility and I never got to, but I want to say one thing: No man or no woman came into this administration and left it with more of this world’s goods than when he came in. No man or no woman ever profited at the public expense or the public till. 

That tells something about you. Mistakes, yes, but for personal gain, never. You did what you believe in. Sometimes right, sometimes wrong. And I only wish that I were a wealthy man.  [Resigned laugh] At the present time I've got to find a way to pay my taxes. And if I were, I’d like to recompense you for the sacrifices you have made to serve in government. But you are getting something in government — and I want you to tell your children — and the nation’s children will hear it, too. Something in government service that is far more important than money. It’s a cause bigger than yourself. It’s the cause of making this the greatest nation in the world, the leader of the world. Because without our leadership, the world will know nothing but war, possibly starvation, or worse, in the years ahead. With our leadership it will know peace. It will know plenty. We have been generous, and we will be more generous in the future as we are able to. 

But most important, we will be strong here, strong in our hearts, strong in our souls, strong in our belief and strong in our willingness to sacrifice, as you have been willing to sacrifice in a pecuniary way to serve in government.

I have spent a lifetime thinking the worst of Nixon. In the context of a Trump presidency, he looks good. Honorable. Honest. He possesses some self-understanding and humility. I had underestimated him. 

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Guest Post: "A health care catastrophe"

Good health is 20 percent medical care, and 80 percent the social determinants of health.

      Jonathan Gell, M.D.

After four decades practicing medicine, Jonathan Gell concluded that the health of any one individual is a reflection on the whole society. It is a cultural issue. An economic issue. An infrastructure issue. It is public health in the broadest sense. As a physician in a hospital, he realized he was at the back end of a person's health outcome. He was the "last responder." And he told me that Donald Trump's approach to U.S. health care is a catastrophe.

Jonathan Gell shares his biography and thoughts on the politics of healthcare in his guest post.

Guest Post by Jonathan Gell                   

“You don’t miss your water ‘till the well runs dry”
         William Bell, 1961. Covered by the Byrds on Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 1968

Trump is a Health Catastrophe 

I spent 40-plus years in Southern Oregon's Rogue Valley as a healthcare professional. After 10 years in private practice in the 1980’s, I moved to an administrative position as medical director of both Providence Hospital and Asante, the two hospitals in Medford. Later, I worked in the hospital caring for sick adults, and later still in skilled-nursing homes. I learned where health comes from. About 20 percent of the health of a population derives from health care, that is the doctors and nurses and others working in clinics and hospitals. The other 80 percent comes from effective public health and the social determinants of health (SDH). SDH can be either positive or negative. Examples are:.

Peace or war
Food or famine and drought
Clean air and water or pollution and unsanitary water
Living wage or poverty
Education or poor educational access
Social order and tolerance or social chaos with intolerance
Access to effective healthcare or quackery

If I had to summarize my role in health care in two words, it would be “last responder." All homage to the first responders on the front lines: EMT’s, emergency room doctors and nurses, and even primary care providers assessing patient issues in their offices. But that was not my role; I saw patients when the assessments and treatments had not helped. 

 

Before embarking on a new treatment plan, which might well be onerous, it was incumbent on me ethically to explain the rationale for the plan, detail the risks and cover alternative approaches that could be taken, including no further treatment and comfort care only. It was also my responsibility to check that the patient understood this information and to give them the opportunity to ask questions or seek the advice of others.

Trump and his appointee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are embarking on a new plan for the health of our nation. They are arranging cuts to programs that help states address infectious disease, mental health, addiction and childhood vaccination. We are seeing plans for massive cuts in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation. Trump’s attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice have sent veiled-threat letters to multiple esteemed medical journals including NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine) and Chest, implying that the journals are partisan. Cuts to programs to curtail AIDS in Africa will likely kill millions, with the threat of resurgence here. Texas is already seeing rising mortality rates in pregnant women. Cuts to education, housing, food assistance and the other SDH are forthcoming.

RFK Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again urges improvement in American health with concerns about rates of chronic illness without acknowledging the reduction in mortality rates in cancer and heart disease over recent decades resulting from research and new treatments. If he had highlighted the continuing role of tobacco and alcohol, I would applaud. I have no problem with efforts to improve pesticide safety and making better food choices -- though this is hardly new information. Project 2025 notes excess influence of Big Pharma on the FDA; I have no disagreements there, but then they proceeded to cut the staff that oversees drug safety. Project 2025 was also highly critical of the CDC's having recommended closure of houses of worship during the pandemic. Project 2025 felt the CDC had no business deciding that saving lives trumped saving souls.

Has Trump explained the rationale of his plan for America’s health? Has he or RFK listed alternatives or possible negative results or side effects of their prescription for America? Are they answering questions coherently, focusing on known science? No. Trump feels his election was informed consent. 

Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex. There is a medical-industrial complex that needs much work. There are alternative approaches to how we are handling health care in the U.S.  But destroying public health, undermining the social determinants of health, cutting access to health care, and calling global warming fraudulent will create a catastrophic cascade of avoidable events. Rural hospitals and clinics are already stressed, and access to health care is one of those social determinants of health. They won’t survive cuts to Medicaid. The local veterans hospital provides essential services to the Rogue Valley, and cuts are expected there. Oregon Health Science University in Portland is currently losing about $8 million a month, and it is anticipating a $70 million cut in federal research funding. Will there even be a CDC to track and post the upcoming calamities?

 

Being healthy isn't what a physician does to you. It is what the society you live in does to you and for you, and what you do to yourself. During my medical training in the seventies, I was counseling a smoker with lung disease to quit. He retorted that there were more old smokers than old doctors. Doing the math, I realized that was numerically true (170 docs for 100,000 people versus 40-plus percent of adults who were smokers). I didn’t see him again, but likely his lungs did him in  Lung deterioration does stabilize in those who quit smoking. RFK reminds me of that old smoker, except he is deciding on your family and community’s future health.

We will sure miss the water.

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On the morality of hoping the economy crashes

Relax. 

Wish what you want. 

None of us are that important.

People of good conscience have shared with me a "guilty thought." They say they think Trump is crashing and burning the economy. And they admit that they welcome this. Maybe that will stop Trump.

Yes. Maybe it will. 

I have written that the worst and most consequential things Trump is doing to the U.S. are likely not the things that would cause him to lose popularity, get impeached, or keep a Trump-like successor from getting elected in 2028. I am disappointed to say it, but a significant number of Americans like -- or don't much mind -- some of the things Trump is doing that destroy the economic and moral basis for American democracy.

     *** The open pay-to-play grift, now performed in denominations of hundreds of millions of dollars, with Trump cryptocurrency serving as direct-deposit bribery.

    *** Centralization of power in the executive, with departments staffed on the basis of personal loyalty to the president.

     *** Breaking 80-year alliances with Western democracies to realign the U.S. with autocracies bent on territorial expansion.

     *** Reversing the inclusionary civil rights movements that expanded rights as regards race, women, gender preference, and gender expression. 

     *** Destroying the U.S. "brand" as the stable, reliable, trading partner and seat of the world's reserve currency -- a country that operated under the rule of law created and enforced by predictable, accountable process.

I think those are important. It turns out that most Americans -- including well-educated, upper-middle class Republicans -- don't care about them enough to intervene to stop Trump. They find something they like in Trump's bold action. They want what they want, including lower taxes for themselves. They want "immigrant-interlopers" out of the country. They want to re-establish a social order in which White men are the "normal" default leaders of the country, and Christianity is honored as the "normal" default religion. Trump speaks to a sentimental longing for the good old days, when America was great, at least for some people.

Trump revealed the power of shamelessness in political messaging. You can change every element of civics-lesson, good-government, pledge-of-allegiance patriotism if you do it openly, without the slightest hint of guilt. Just do it. Disobey courts and say that of course you are doing it, because they are dangerous traitors and you are saving America. If one announces a Trump-branded crypto currency proudly, as Trump did, the mass of people will accept it as an investment, not a bribe. Billionaires will see it as a bribe opportunity, and be happy for the transparency of the transaction.  

What will stop Trump's assault on democracy is hard times. Hard times will refocus Americans on the down side of Trump's histrionics and chaos. Just in time, Trump is likely tipping us into a recession.

Nothing any reader of this blog does will hasten or prevent that recession, so relax. Adam Smith's invisible hand -- the anonymous actions of each person pursuing one's own self-interest -- will bring recession, or not. I recently bought an electric Chevy Blazer, not a Tesla. I bought it when it was produced at pre-tariff-disruption prices. I thought I was being clever and prudent. It was a tiny market signal to GM to build more cars like it, and a tiny market signal to Elon Musk that he damaged the Tesla brand. Meanwhile, somewhere someone chose not to buy a car, fearing an economic slowdown. We are all part of the invisible-hand mix. 

Wishing the economy crashes and burns won't make it happen. Trump's on-again, off-again tariff bullying will have caused it. He purposely disrupted manufacturing and trade, and he spooked producers, consumers, and the transportation links between them.  

Trump did it. That is factually true, simple to express, and a strategically sound message to share -- a powerful combination. Don't make it complicated and don't suffer from liberal guilt for having welcomed the mess. Yes, people will suffer in a recession, which is bad, but it isn't your fault for having welcomed it. Live your life. Think your thoughts. If there is a recession, it is on Trump. Not Biden. Not the Fed. Not Hillary's emails.  And most certainly not on you and your guilty conscience.

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Easy Sunday: I am ready for Democratic leaders to emerge.

 Democrats let a problem get out of hand.

People crossed the southern border and were released. It caused problems.

People were so frustrated that they voted for a tax-cheating, sexual predator felon who attempted to overthrow an election to stay in power rather than voting for a Democrat who was tied to past neglect.

Voters are still angry enough that they tolerate a lawless, error-ridden, Constitution-busting process for addressing the immigration problem. Trump is screwing up everything else, but they are still okay with how Trump is handling removal of immigrants, the polls show.

Democrats will have learned nothing -- and will trudge deeper into the electoral wilderness of lost future elections -- if they don't face the reality that they ignored the problem of uncontrolled mass immigration at the southern border. Of course Republicans played it up and made it an issue. Democrats handed them the issue on a silver platter. 

Biden's various incapacities made it worse. His age, appearance, low energy and inarticulateness led the public to conclude that Biden didn't notice, didn't care, and was helpless to address a problem --  not until just before the election, when he woke up. Too late. 

I am an optimist. Democrats aren't stuck. The can fix this by getting right with the public. Admit that things got out of hand. Articulate policies that would allow immigration in quantities and in a manner that Americans want.

If there is a conflict between what is "right" and what is popular, the solution is not to complain that the public is selfish, stupid, racist, or otherwise deplorable. The solution is to sell. Get in the arena and explain what needs to be done, and do it with conviction. Selling is explaining with conviction.

The arc of history does not bend toward justice on its own. It bends because someone has the courage to make the case for sound policy. If we need five million new immigrants a year, and a system for evaluating asylum claims -- and I think we do -- then some Democrat needs to be up front saying so and becoming an alternative to Trump's own form of immigration control. His is haphazard and chaotic. Surely a Democrat can do better. Democrats don't need to wait for an election year to stand up and articulate solutions. Trump is showing us his way to deal with immigration, trade, and alliances. A Democrat -- or several of them -- should posit their own views. Don't leave Trump alone on the stage.

A Democrat who leads will be accused of speaking without proper authority -- speaking on behalf of his or her own authority as an American. Yes. That is what a leader does. 

It looks good. It looks courageous. It looks presidential.

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Time out. A vineyard in process

Grape vines don't know anything.

And yet they know exactly where they are, what time it is, and what they are supposed to do.  

April is a time to wake up, grow buds, start leaves, grow vines, and get ready to bear fruit.

 

The photo is a slightly better than average plant in a vineyard of about 6,000 plants. It happens to be one of about 3,000 Pinot Noir plants, which as a group look a little healthier than the 1,500 Cabernet Sauvignon and 1,500 Malbec plants. I am growing what a local winery, Valley View Vineyards, said they would be most likely to buy if I get harvestable grapes. This will be the third year, and I might get enough grapes for a small harvest. 

The plants went dormant in November. The field looked like this after a freezing rain.

Then, in late December, experienced pruners cut the plants down to a single stalk, which goes up vertically until it reaches the cane wire at 31 inches height. They then bend that stalk 90 degrees at the cane wire to look like this. It takes five or six ties to shape the plant.

Doing a single plant is easy, pleasant work. Being part of a crew doing 250 plants a day is hard work. It involves repeated bending down and getting up. I delegated that work to people who know what they are doing and whose backs don't start hurting after 30 minutes. 

Over the past ten days plants first grew buds, then leafed out. Look closely. The buds are a little bigger than a pencil eraser. This is how they looked a few days ago.

The primary task at hand for me is frost control. My vineyard is on a bench of pumice soil about 15 feet above the flood plain of the Rogue River. Cold air settles down, and, like water, cold air seeks the lowest spot. Cold air passes over my vineyard on the way to the lowest spot, the Rogue River itself. It means I get 30 degree frosts even when it is 36 degrees and higher in Medford. I attempt to protect these delicate buds by stirring up the air with these wind machines.

They had been set to turn on at 33 degrees. I reset them to turn on at 34 degrees. Cold frosty air seems to settle along the ground, so even when the air at a four-foot elevation, where the machine sensors are, measures 33.2 degrees, it doesn't trigger the machine to start.

White frost on the tilled ground

Frost control is tricky and uncertain. Wind machines work by mixing frosty air on the ground with the warmer air higher up. But if there is a genuine cold front, the machines are useless, because the air is cold all the way up. A frost would kill the buds.

Grapes are the opposite of melons in some ways. Melon plants are delicate. They want to die. The task is to nurture the delicate things, coax them to stay alive, grow big vines, and therefore get big beautiful melons come August. Grapes are different. Once started, they seem to want to grow vigorously, against nearly every injury. Most vineyard work is removal. Remove those suckers at the base of the plant (visible in the first photo), and keep doing it all summer. Keep removing the top growth and place the vines within the top double rows of wire at one foot and two feet above the cane wire. Prune. Shape. Prune again. There is lots of summer work.

I used to be okay bending over repeatedly. Not anymore. I stay busy doing weed control, which I can do partly with a tractor and tiller and partly by walking up and down the rows hoeing weeds around the plants, which I can do standing upright. 

A disease problem emerged within the Cabernet Sauvignons: crown gall. It is that brown woody swelling. It isn't good, but it isn't fatal, either. It complicates pruning because pruning clippers can spread the disease from one plant to another. At this point, I guess I just live with it. The plants do.  

I am doing a little to promote a bit of special-ness to this vineyard. It is on a unique soil type: ground-up pumice. Pumice soil drains rapidly. It is the consistency of ground sugar, and it does down 20 feet or more. When it is tilled it is as fine as powdered sugar or talc. It means the fine capillary roots of the plants will be able to absorb micronutrients and flavor tones that aren't available in heavier soils. I am making it a selling point for the grapes.

The farm reminds me of the big picture, far away from the noise of daily politics. Two centuries ago the land was an abundant home to local indigenous people. The salmon came to them. (My father said that in his boyhood in the 1920s he could catch them on the riffles with a pitchfork.) A hundred years ago it was home for my parents and grandparents. I am farming it now. A hundred years from now, the land will still be there and someone will be trying to coax something from it. April will come every year.

And the daily gyrations of this Era of Trump will be the fodder for historians. By then it will probably make sense in some bigger narrative. In the meantime, without the perspective of time, I am trying to give them a head start.

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Trump's "Cultural Revolution"

There is a method and purpose in Trump's second term. 

It is a multi-front war on the managerial and professional class. 

  ". . . we are shedding excess labor in the federal government and bringing down federal borrowings. And then on the other side of that, we will have the labor we need for new manufacturing."
            Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

The Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution of 1966-1975, a period that is described in English translations on public monuments in China as the "era of troubles," took place while my own generation was focused on the Vietnam War, hippie counterculture, the OPEC oil embargo, Watergate, and the greatest popular music of all time. Mao Zedong led a social revolution that parallels the one taking place now under President Trump. 

Mao's cult followers waving the Little Red Book

Re-education of elites by doing factory work

They had an enemy: intellectuals, whom Mao said embodied bad values and lifestyles. The class included professors, authors, artists, pundits, and teachers  but also physicians, engineers, and people with technical expertise. These elites were rounded up, sent to re-education camps where they were expected to confess their crimes of "improper thoughts," and then sent to the countryside to work as farm or factory labor. Agricultural and factory drudgery was both punishment and opportunity for them to reconnect with proletariat values.

It was an economic, public health, and political disaster for China. Modern economies need the skills of educated people. The disaster laid the groundwork for Deng Xiaoping's reversal into capitalism, pragmatism, and today's China. 

Donald Trump is carrying out a softer, Americanized version of China's cultural revolution. 

With the help of rally crowds who responded with unexpected enthusiasm to the "drain the swamp" phrase, Trump's 2016 campaign located an area of populist resentment symbolized by the person of Hillary Clinton. She represented the power and corruption of the elites. The swamp. She was Wellesley and Yale Law-educated, fluent in the values and vocabulary of the managerial class, and the archetype of the opinionated female boss. She and Bill hobnobbed with the wealthy, vacationed on Martha's Vineyard, and gave $300,000 speeches to Goldman Sachs clients. "But her emails" was a criticism of the entitlement of the elites. The fine-detail reality of what the emails meant or didn't mean wasn't important. Hillary had her own email server, whatever that was, and "regular people" do not. 

Trump's time out of office was spent nurturing resentments and making plans for his own Cultural Revolution. Elon Musk is taking a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy. Who needs all these bureaucrats with their supposed expertise? Trump cut funding for the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Research is a fancy form of waste, welfare for professional students. He fired meteorologists, air traffic controllers, foresters, health care workers, and data analysts. Cut first, add a few of them back if they are really, truly needed. Expert content review is censorship by experts. Let citizen-supplied information and misinformation fight it out while readers "do their own research." 

Universities are a prime target. Trump's lawsuit argues that hiring by fellow professors evaluating peer-reviewed academic work disfavors conservative Republican thinking. How likely is it that Harvard would hire an archaeologist, geologist, or biologist who believed the world was 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs lived on Noah's Ark, and that species are God-created and immutable? Yet millions of the 77-million Trump voters believe exactly that, and they are unrepresented. Why should such a biased university have tax-exempt status?

Hillary Clinton, and Democrats generally, represent the hegemony of the managerial class. These are people who work in air-conditioned offices. They are comfortable with the courtesies and language expected by H-R departments. They earn an upper-middle class income moving data around. There is a feminine quality to it. It doesn't exclude men, but it doesn't value masculine traits of upper-body strength, physical courage, and willingness to get dirty. Trump's huge margins came in rural areas among men who work growing things, fixing things, digging things, and moving things. Outdoor work. Men's work. 

I expect Harvard will win its lawsuits, but it may not win the larger political war. Trump is a morally flawed, narcissist demagogue, but he isn't stupid. He won't fight on the grounds of having cut funding for Alzheimer's disease research. He will find something said or written by a Harvard professor about gender fluidity or systemic racism, and it will sound foolish to nearly everyone. Trump will make that the example of wasteful elitist Harvard thinking. He will attack a straw man and look courageous and strong for doing so. After all, he will have taken on those Harvard snobs. 

Trump is leading a populist revolution against the privilege of elites who have designed an economy that rewards what intellectual elites are good at: manipulating symbols and data. In that sense, the elites did rig the system. 

It took 10 years for China to realize that it desperately needed those managerial and technical elites. 

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What is Trump afraid of?

Pundits search for metaphors:
          A mad king
          A bull in a china shop
          A willful spoiled child

What, if anything, are constraints on President Trump in this second term?

The Constitution isn't a constraint. The Constitution design presumed that ambition would check ambition. Power was divided. Of course the House would want to preserve its power of the purse and control spending. Of course the Senate would advise and consent on nominations. Of course congress would impeach and convict a president who blatantly lied about an election defeat and attempted to stay in office by sending a mob to break into the Capitol. No. Partisan loyalty is a stronger motivator than are congressional prerogatives. 

The judiciary isn't a constraint. The Supreme Court fears Trump will simply openly defy them, so it wants desperately to avoid a showdown. Trump is an existential threat to the power of the courts. Once Trump defies them and gets away with it -- and he would -- the courts are never again a co-equal branch of government. Trump can invent some pretense -- obvious in its dishonesty -- to pretend he is acting within Constitutional order, when he is not. He claims he has no influence whatever with El Salvador. 

There are, in fact, constraints on Trump. The bond market scares Trump. What Trump called "the yips" was an extraordinary move almost invisible to the general public, a move of two indexes that have moved in the same direction only twice in this century. Once was immediately after the 9/11 attack, and the other was just after the Lehman bankruptcy that triggered the Great Financial Crisis. Treasury bond yields went up sharply while at the same time the dollar fell sharply against other currencies. The two moves, happening together, threatened a reiteration of the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund collapse in 1998.

[Hedge funds make money using enormous leverage. They capture tiny price discrepancies which then resolve into equilibrium. They can be highly leveraged because they balance one position against another. Hedge funds relied on the idea that the U.S. was the move-to-safety trade, but then, briefly amid Trump's tariff talk, it wasn't. The counterweights moved together, putting hedge funds at risk. The price moves portended a dangerous short term crisis. It also portended a grim, expensive future for the U.S. as financing our debt at higher rates.]

Trump cares about the stock market. He treats it like an applause-meter at a rally. It plunged on talk of tariffs -- jeers! -- and it gyrates up on hints that he is just bluffing -- cheers! Trump's talk of firing the Fed chairman caused a stock market drop. Trump said he wouldn't fire him and the stock market rebounded. 

Trump fears Putin and Russia. There is something unknown transpiring behind the scenes in our relationship with Russia. Maybe Trump's real estate purchases and sales helped Russia launder money and someone holds proof of criminal acts, although I suspect Trump could talk and pardon his way out of trouble. Russia helped Trump get elected in 2016, as acknowledged by a Republican-led senate investigation, but Trump is adamant that any suggestion of Russia's help is a "hoax." It is a sensitive spot.

But maybe there is no dark secret. Maybe Trump just rationally and openly admires Putin's ability to rule a multi-ethnic polity for the benefit of its White Christian majority. Maybe he considers Russia the legitimate controller of a pan-Slavic people, which includes Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland, and Russia should be free to consolidate them without interference from others. For whatever reason, Trump doesn't want to confront Russia. 

Trump is acting toward Russia the way the Supreme Court is acting toward Trump: don't confront.

Trump doesn't fear losing his GOP majority. He knows he can persuade a majority of GOP voters to follow him anywhere. Where GOP voters go, GOP representatives and senators go. If we go into recession Trump's support will drop, but Trump will turn on the salesmanship. Blame Biden. Blame Obama. Blame the Fed. Blame the Chinese. Blame criminals. Blame immigrants. Trump will survive minor economic distress.

Trump is becoming the most consequential president of my lifetime, and not in a good way. I suspect that the only thing that will stop Trump is if he deeply injures the American economy. A financial crisis of the kind we experienced in 2008- 2011 would do it. Even Indiana voted for Obama in 2008. It takes a disaster so profound that even a master salesman cannot sell his way out of trouble. Trump fears a disaster of that scale. 

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"All children, except one, grow up."

     "I want never to be a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun!"
               Peter Pan

To title today's post, I used the opening words of the story of Peter Pan, written by J.M. Barrie in 1902. Peter Pan has been with us for a century, and now is in the public domain. 

People will be writing about Elon Musk a century from now. He has shaken up the auto industry, social media, space travel, satellites, artificial intelligence, robotics, and brain science. He, too, is a careless, imaginative, creative boy who never grew up.

Musk is acting like Trump's undisciplined id, the entitled child inside the already-entitled narcissist child that is Trump. Trump and his MAGA followers delight in "owning the libs." Trump has contempt for the people MAGA has contempt for.

Rachel Maddow expressed shock at Musk's latest flurry of insults. Musk said the Saturday afternoon protests in 50 states are carried out by paid losers feeding at the public trough. Here are quick screen shots:

Does this make your blood boil? 

That is the point. It displays Musk "not giving a F - - -," which Musk loves to do. The insult delights MAGA people who love owning the libs, and, who knows?, they can imagine some people really are paid; you can't prove a negative. The insult doesn't need to be even remotely true. It has "truthiness" to people who want to believe Democrats are lazy welfare cheats. It feels right, even if it isn't. So assert it. Let Democrats squirm at the insult!

Best of all, Musk's insults may provoke more vandalism. Musk needs that vandalism. Fox News is full of stories about intentional damage to Tesla vehicles and dealerships. It doesn't take many incidents to turn the story of mass protests into a story of Democratic vandalism. 

Musk is taunting Democrats. He wants to be the sympathetic victim in the grand political dramas of the spring of 2025. He and Trump are in competition for the role of Chief Victim. Trump blames economic distress on the Fed, on the cheating Chinese, on weak-kneed Republicans, on bond market participants with the "yips," on snobby woke Harvard, and on the media. So many enemies. Tesla sales plummeted. Musk also needs a villain. Musk's enemies are Democratic vandals, stock sellers, and critics of his excellent cars. So many enemies. 

Democrats need to be smart, not angry, but there is no practical way to control the odd vandal or arsonist. Democrats can condemn vandalism, and should, forcefully. In a matchup against Trump, the Democratic position is for the rule of law. Trump is the lawless one. Remember which side you are on. 

There is a bigger peril for Democrats. Abrego Garcia is certainly a victim, but not necessarily a hero.  Trump is taunting Democrats, showing off an image of Abrego Garcia's hand, with "MS-13" photoshopped in. It is dishonest, cynical, and manipulative. But Abrego Garcia-as-dangerous, or at least suspicious, fits the "truthiness" narrative for voters impatient with uncontrolled immigration. Trump knows what he is doing. He is daring Democrats to oversell him.

Democrats want this to be Trump's unjust effort to deport and imprison a good guy -- someone Americans can identify with. Arguments about "due process" have a sterile, academic feel. Our emotions lead us to care whether this is right or wrong, whether Abrego Garcia is safe to have as a neighbor or not, rather than whether it was procedurally correct or not. Trump will find something wrong with him even if he has to make it up, which he is already doing, joyfully and shamelessly. But he won't have to make it up. Everyone has something to criticize. 

Trump and Musk have a superpower.  We are fascinated by people who appear to act without the restraints and self-editing and conscience brought by adulthood. The richest man in the world and the most politically powerful man in the world can act out on personal will with no apparent concern about who they hurt and offend. They are free to be jerks. That is their power: They don't give a F - - -.

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Perspectives on "Big Law." Part two

     "Clients of law firms may well decide that a law firm that cannot defend itself from Trump cannot be trusted to defend its clients' interests either."

         John Shutkin

I have always been happy with the legal help I have received. It has been little things: a will, a business purchase, a property line easement, a couple of different living trust issues. The lawyers communicated that they understood themselves to be fiduciaries, people with professional ethics that guided their work. They did not communicate that they were factory owners who manufactured as much of a product as possible, the product being invoices charging clients for legal services. They each sent a bill, of course, but the bill seemed incidental to their primary task, which was solving my problem. The invoice wasn't the purpose of their work. 

We are a long way from Big Law here in small-city Medford, Oregon, but my personal experience is that lawyers were trying to serve my interests, not their own. But my experience isn't universal, even here. I spent eight days auditing a trial last year that focused on the issue of billing for legal services. 

Like Adolfo Garcia, who wrote yesterday's post, John Shutkin is a college classmate with first-hand experience with Big Law. He refers to himself as a "retired (recovering?) corporate attorney, with experience both at Big Law firms and as an in-house general counsel."

Guest Post by John Shutkin

Big Law in 2025: A Big Disappointment (Mainly)

Peter posed to me this question: "Do you have a perspective about Big Law and the incentive structure of the existence? I have a romanticized and naive view of law as a profession — officer of the court —ethics rules — duty to the profession — and am disappointed at their behavior.”

I share Peter’s disappointment. But, as with many things (though not Trump’s malevolence), it’s complicated. I joined my first law firm out of law school in 1974 because it had recently won the Pentagon Papers case for the New York Times. It got the case because the Times’ regular outside firm had refused to take it on. Ironically, though, that decision had itself been made as a matter of principle, not for fear of Nixon’s “Enemies List.” That firm’s senior partner (Herbert Brownell) had been an attorney general under Eisenhower and felt strongly that his firm should not be complicit in the publication of illegally released top secret government information. That decision cost it one of its largest and most prestigious clients. (Of course, the lawyers who worked on the Pentagon Papers case for my law firm did make the Enemies List – which they proudly proclaimed in future years.)

That said, it is not accurate to romanticize Big Law of yesteryear. Making the partners a lot of money was always the ruling principle, and I have many stories of utter ruthlessness towards that end from Back In The Day. But partners rarely moved from one firm to another then, both out of a sense of two-way loyalty and restrictions in their partnership agreements. However, recent interpretations of legal ethics rules to protect clients, given the law of unintended consequences, have meant that “rainmaker” partners can and do move from firm to firm as freely as free agent pro athletes do, and, perhaps more accurately, like managing directors at investment banks, who often search for an even better deal at another firm each year right after they receive their bonuses. Accordingly, the stress at Big Law firms is always on maximizing profits this year, because who knows what “team” you will have next year?

In theory, ethics is still there — I was later general counsel of a Big Law firm, so I know all about that — but client retention and partner compensation remain paramount. And, sadly, that is what has driven some formerly great Big Law firms to shamelessly sell their souls to Trump, despite having strong legal, ethical and moral grounds not to do so. As one of the resistant firms, Susman Godfrey, put it, deciding to resist was not, in fact, a hard decision; it was a very easy one.

But even soulless pragmatists can make the wrong business decisions. I'm hoping that enough clients decide to walk because they feel that a firm that can't defend itself can't defend them. I was a general counsel for large accounting firms with large outside counsel budgets, and I engaged lawyers at several of the surrendering law firms. I would have dropped them like a rock – and told them exactly why – and re-directed my business to Perkins Coie and King & Spalding (which is representing Harvard) -- firms I also happily used. I imagine other general counsel will be doing the same. I also sense and hope that many top law students/young lawyers won't apply to or will leave these weak-kneed firms. If so, these firms will have been made not richer but poorer in the only currency they seem to value. May the Trump Remorse begin!

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"Big Law" capitulated to Trump. It was a business decision. Big Law, Part One

     “Major law firms today may as well be investment banks.”
          Adolfo Garcia

Some of us made a category error. 

We thought lawyers were one kind of thing, when they were really another kind of thing. 

I had this idea that lawyers were part of a learned and honorable profession dedicated to delivering justice. The profession is a guild, with membership in the Bar that gives them the privilege to speak in court and to represent clients. They protect the rule of law by preserving the integrity and independence of their profession. They put their clients' interests -- and the interests of the legal profession and justice itself -- above their own. I experience this ethic among lawyers I encounter in my daily life in Medford, Oregon. I learned it was more complicated than that, and wrote about it last year.

But some lawyers and law firms have a national presence and reputation: Big Law, those giant law firms with familiar names. I see the names on court documents in nationally famous cases. They are known for hiring top graduates from top law schools. Those new hires receive stupendous first-year salaries. Being a partner at Big Law was a general-purpose qualifier for jobs of public trust. As someone capable of handling the largest, most complex business deals, a partner in such a firm would be suitable to do the most complex and demanding jobs in public service. I had some sense that those attorneys would represent the highest standards of professionalism.

College classmate Adolfo Garcia told me I had it wrong. 

Adolfo is in a position to know.  He spent his whole fifty-one-year career as a lawyer in Big Law with six firms that are all ranked in the AmLaw 200. He reminds me that his views are strictly and totally his personal views and are in no way connected to any firm or professional organization.

Guest Post by Adolfo Garcia

I have watched the complete transformation of law over my fifty one years of practice.  After graduation from Georgetown Law School I started practice in New York City and have been at "Big Law" practice from then to today, where I am still in practice as a partner in one of them. These are strictly and exclusively my personal views. 

My first job was with one of those leading so-called “Wall Street” firms that were focused on representing the major corporate enterprises and business interests, and probably were as focused as anyone in the profitability and thus partner and lawyer compensation. That mindset in the profession then was relatively small, in relation to the profession as a whole, and that money/profitability focus tended to be mostly among law firms in New York City, especially Wall Street and Midtown. It also showed up in the major politically-connected, politically-active firms in Washington, D.C., and top-end firms in the major cities. 

That is no longer the case today. Big Law, as it is called now, has become a much, much larger part of the overall legal business, extending far beyond New York and Washington, D.C. It now extends to every major city and even some secondary cities for the top components of the law business. The Big Law expectation was very intense, with very large hours and driven commitment effort of lawyers, including partners. But the expectations were low compared to today's. 

New York firms did not change and become more like the rest of the country. Instead, the rest of the country, certainly at high-end law practices, has become New York. The New York expectations of billable hours -- often well in excess of 2,000 billable hours a year, with many exceeding 2,500 hours --  has become the standard in Big Law. Big Law is no longer a profession. It is exclusively a business. All of the principles, norm, and strategies that drive Big Law are the same as the ones that drive big, successful, profitable businesses. Whatever there may have been of a profession in Big Law at one point, has disappeared. Major law firms today may as well be investment banks. This has created a climate of totally focused, bottom-line businesses driven by nothing but the bottom line, the profitability of the firms, and thus the resulting significant compensation of its partners. 

In my view, this total transformation from a profession to a business helps explain the reaction that you have seen by Big Law to the actions the Trump administration took against firms that had represented the interests of Trump opponents, and their capitulation to Trump's demands. If you understand Big Law today, you understand what they did. They weren't protecting a profession. They were protecting a business.

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