Reserve currency

The Big, Beautiful Bill will increase the deficit. 

The national debt will keep growing.

National debt calculator as of 4:53 p.m. PDT yesterday.

Click on this link to see what it is right now. 

Republicans are adamant that the Trump tax cuts of 2017 stay in place. The new Big, Beautiful Bill has a lot of moving parts, but the net effect is to reduce taxes on the top one percent of taxpayers and to reduce benefits and services for Americans in the bottom 40 percent of income. Democrats will try to restore services. Republicans will want to preserve tax cuts. We will continue to have a deficit and the debt will grow.

The debt matters. We pay interest on that debt, and if the world loses confidence in our ability to repay it, the rate of interest will go up, which increases the deficit and therefore raises the debt, which increases the deficit: a death spiral. Since the dollar is the world's reserve currency, other countries bank their money by buying U.S. treasury debt. Most world trade -- even between two countries far from the U.S. such as Bolivians buying Turkish pistachios -- is denominated in U.S. dollars; and then the seller's money is banked using dollars, which might then be used to buy Saudi oil. The "extraordinary privilege" of having our dollar serve as the world's reserve currency means our interest rates are lower than they would otherwise be.

That creates a dilemma. The world needs our debt. We need to avoid being buried in interest payments.

Classmate Jim Stodder taught economics and securities regulation at Boston University. In his early 20s he knocked around as a roughneck in the oil fields. Then he returned to formal studies and received a Ph.D. in economics from Yale. 

Guest Post by Jim Stodder

Trump both wants the U.S. dollar to be dominant and decries the logical consequence. It is impossible for most countries in the world to acquire reserves of U.S. dollars without running current account surpluses with us.

Trump says this means they are ripping us off. High enough tariffs could reduce these trade deficits, but they would also mean the end of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. It is impossible for the rest of the world to maintain large U.S. dollar reserves without the U.S. running persistent deficits on its current account. (The current account is mostly the trade balance on goods and services, but includes profits and interest payments for the 'service' of borrowed money, and unilateral transfers.)

This is known as the Triffin Dilemma. The U.S. can have a current account surplus, OR the U.S. dollar can be the world's reserve currency -- bringing us lower interest rates and cheaper imports from a strong dollar. But we cannot have both.

One attempt to square this circle is to "tax" countries on their U.S. dollar holdings, which are largely in the form of interest-bearing U.S. Treasuries. This has been seriously suggested in a paper by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

As The Economist magazine notes, the world will regard this as a "default" since it amounts to paying less than the agreed-upon interest on U.S. debt. No one would want to hold large dollar reserves, and we are back to square one.

JD Vance has explicitly decried our reserve currency status -- which he is smart enough to understand -- because it means we are at an international disadvantage in our exports. He is particularly worried about the loss of U.S. manufacturing, since he sees it as creating real jobs for real men who can raise a family as the sole breadwinner.

Only Trump's extraordinary ignorance and the cowardice of the Republican Party cringing before him have allowed our government to demand two impossible things before breakfast. But that is where we are.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com/ Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]

Whatabout, whatabout, whatabout Biden?

President Trump's pardons are a slap in the face of the law and justice. 

Yeah, but whatabout President Biden?

I received this comment from a reader whose pen name is Low Dudgeon:

Biden's statement in the final minutes of his presidency (per BBC reporting 1/20/25) assured Americans that his pardons should "not be mistaken as an acknowledgement" that any of those covered "engaged in any wrongdoing." That included son Hunter, unfairly awaiting sentencing for two federal felony counts.

After all, Hunter was the victim of an overzealous, politicized Department of Justice and doesn't deserve to spend a single day in jail. He is a wonderful person, who was persecuted by far-right radicals. Other members of the Biden Family got special consideration, but that too was just and appropriate. It was right.

Sarcasm is often misunderstood when it is written. Were it spoken we would hear the sneer and the "gotcha" in the tone of voice. This was sarcasm. Low Dudgeon is making a point I am reluctant to acknowledge, but must. He is right.

Joe Biden made petty, self-serving decisions that blur the distinction with Trump. It gives Trump and MAGA true-believers a basis for saying that Trump is only doing what Biden did.

Joe Biden was bad at grift.  Hunter Biden was minor league -- just everyday D.C. influence-peddling by nepo children -- while Trump is blasting through norms and ignoring laws. The Trump family is demonstrating how to do corruption in the big leagues. 

Republican committees attempted to find clear evidence of "Biden crime family" bribery, and came up empty except for testimony that the accuser then recanted and admitted he invented. Hunter Biden is a mess. One can feel sorry for the problems in his life, but the result is a person with major addictions and compulsions, poorly hidden, and a willingness to trade on his father's offices. Hunter Biden received $50,000/month income from Burisma by sitting on its board, an obvious case of a company trying to buy access and influence. Friends of Joe Biden bought paintings by Hunter for $500,000 each. Buying a painting from Hunter Biden is the equivalent of buying NFTs and the $TRUMP cryptocurrency from the Trump family. One buys imaginary value of something created at near-zero cost for the purpose of buying influence. Trump is so much better at this. Hunter got $500,000. The Trump family stake in $TRUMP, invented out of this air, is some $2 billion.

Ivanka Trump's husband, Jared Kushner, establishes a hedge fund with no experience, no track record, and no basis for a sovereign wealth fund to entrust him with money other than buying influence with Trump. The Saudi professional staff recommended against an investment. The Saudis overruled the recommendation and invested $2 billion at a negotiated fee of 1.25%/year, or $25 million a year. Jared Kushner was getting over $2 million a month.

But Democrats need to admit the simple truth. Joe Biden did not stop Hunter from muddling the issue of family grift. Biden did it small time. Trump does it big.

 And then, in the final days of his term of office, Joe Biden pardoned Hunter from the two felonies that Hunter admitted to. A precedent was set. I hear Democrat say, "Well, a father loves his son. . . " as a way of excusing this decision. 

I take a different view of it.  A president tells Americans in the military that their duty is to do something hard and life-threatening. Those service members have fathers and mothers. We ask people to do hard things for the good of the country. It is their patriotic duty. In reality, Hunter would have gotten the first-offense slap on the wrist that we give white-collar criminals, a little time in a country club prison. It is not a hard thing, not compared to what a commander in chief asks other people's sons and daughters to do: face an enemy in battle. Joe Biden could have stood for duty and respect for the law. He didn't. He copped out.

That sends a message: that we don't really value law and duty. We value connections. And that is the message Trump is sending with his pardons: connections.

I get it. I can hear the "but, but, but" from readers. Biden's sins are small compared to Trump's. After all, Hunter Biden's Burisma deal and his getting pardoned did not endanger the republic, not like Trump's corruption does. Well, maybe Biden's indulgences did endanger the republic. President Biden obliterated the clear distinction between Democrats and Trump. Biden needed to set a standard that was counterpoint to Trump. He didn't.

So we have Trump.

Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com/ Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be

Bribery

Washington, D.C. is a swamp.

Trump loves it.

Remember a decade ago, when Trump said he was "really rich" and therefore wasn't beholden to anyone? He could "drain the swamp."

Now he is the swamp.

The Trump crypto dinner for the top 220 holders of the $TRUMP crypto coin set a new standard of influence-buying. The $TRUMP buyers support the price and the Trump family owns 75 percent of the $TRUMP "coins." What Trump is doing is legal. Handing him a paper bag of currency would not be legal. Theoretically, it was a financial investment for the buyers. In fact, it is a political investment.

College classmates Erich and his wife Cynthia Blanton worked for many years in Canada, then chose to retire in Mexico at San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He has written guest posts here about his experience living as an expat.

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

Bribery sounds nasty, which may explain why it is often bundled with the word “corruption.” In fourth-century BCE Greece, political bribery was so commonplace that when Pericles ran for office, he had to explain to voters that he did not take bribes. In ancient Rome, corporations were formed to bribe senators and could even take out loans to raise funds.

Republicans seem more likely to be bribers and bribees, possibly due to their having more past presidential administrations than Democrats, 20 to 15. Republicans also lead in members of Congress being accused of bribery by about three to one. Many of the elected accused avoided imprisonment by resigning their seats, and many more were pardoned after the fact.

Bribery has caused major inflections in American politics, and key incidents have become significant parts of American history:

*** The Republican administration of Ulysses S. Grant was guilty of numerous major corruption scandals tainting the legacy of an otherwise honorable man and great general. With the connivance of Grant’s brother-in-law and his treasury secretary, financiers James Fisk and Jay Gould tried to corner the gold market. They plunged the economy into recession on what became Black Friday. Various “rings” (Custom House, Star Route, Trader Post, and Whisky) bribed and stole taxes and customs fees with impunity during Grant's administration. His Interior Department was riddled with corruption, stealing land, and embezzling from Indian tribes.

Teapot Dome, in Wyoming

*** The most infamous bribery scandals occurred during President Warren G. Harding's Republican administration. A cabinet known as the “Ohio Gang” took the idea of cronyism to new heights with widespread bribery, including the attorney general selling pardons. The Teapot Dome scandal topped off this skullduggery. Interior Secretary Albert Fall leased federal oil lands at low prices without competitive bidding.

Nixon: "Come before the American people with a full financial statement. . . ."

*** While running as Eisenhower’s vice-presidential candidate, Richard Nixon gave his most famous speech, denying that an $18,000 contribution was a bribe. He stated that he was "proud of the fact that Pat Nixon wears a good Republican cloth coat.” He insisted that his family would not return the constituent gift of his dog Checkers because his daughters loved it. His speech saved his candidacy, changing history.

Ironically, eight years later, Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s chief of staff and campaign manager, was forced to resign because he accepted an expensive vicuna coat for his wife.

The vicuna coat. A vicuna is a South American camelid

*** During Nixon’s administration, his vice president, Spiro Agnew, was confronted with evidence that he had been offered bribes while serving as governor of Maryland. Agnew disputed the claim by saying, “Nobody sat down in front of me with a suitcase of money.” It was later revealed that he had indeed received bribes, even while vice president. In paper bags! He resigned, and Gerald Ford replaced him. When the Watergate scandal led to Nixon's resignation the next year, Ford became an unelected President.

FBI video recording of ABSCAM payoff

*** The Republican president and icon, Ronald Reagan, presided over an even more tarnished administration: Iran-Contra gun-running and bribery; HUD grant rigging; EPA bribes; Operation Ill Wind investigation into military contractor bribes; an ABSCAM FBI sting involving an Arab sheikh that caught five Democrats and one Republican; and the Keating Five Savings and Loan scandal that cost American taxpayers $160 billion (in 1990 dollars). Most of the Republicans sentenced were later pardoned.

Despite the odious nature of bribery, it has had its lighter moments:

*** Simon Cameron, Abraham Lincoln’s first secretary of war, was so corrupt that Representative Thaddeus Stevens, when asked if there was anything Cameron would not steal, told Lincoln, “I don’t think he would steal a red-hot stove.” Cameron demanded that the statement be retracted, whereupon Stevens told Lincoln, “I believe I told you he would not steal a red-hot stove. I will now take that back.”

 *** In 1935, Judge Joseph Buffington, appointed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, was determined to be “aged, senile, and nearly blind.” It was discovered that many of his rulings on the Court of Appeals had been written by Judge John Warren Davis, who received bribes for them.

Traficant, with his famously bad toupe

*** In 2002, Ohio Democratic Representative Jim Traficant was entrapped by an FBI sting when he verbally accepted a bribe of $50,000 from an Arab sheikh (Are you seeing a pattern here?). Traficant nearly persuaded the jury at his trial that he thought it was a joke.

Cash in paper bags in Menendez home

*** And this year, New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez was sentenced to eleven years in prison for his part in a bribery and influence-peddling scheme involving Egypt. The trial devolved into farce as Menendez and his wife jointly accused each other, and it was revealed that he had insisted on payment in gold bars, which proved hard to hide from authorities.

Can we learn lessons from this history of malfeasance? Maybe one. Beware of Middle Easterners bearing gifts.

Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com/ Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.

Normalizing corruption

Ed Martin, President Trump's new pardon attorney's tweet on Twitter/X: 

"No MAGA left behind."

By today most readers will have heard of Scott Jenkins, Ed Martin, and the pardon. 

The news still has the power to disappoint. But not to surprise.

Scott Jenkins is the sheriff found guilty of accepting $75,000 in secret payoffs in a cash-for-badges arrangement. People would pay him in cash to be appointed a special deputy, a no-show job that allowed them to be treated as law enforcement officers, and therefore carry guns, breeze through TSA lines, and avoid speeding tickets. Two of the people who paid him were undercover FBI agents. Three others were people who paid Jenkins and pled guilty to it. There is videotape of the cash exchange. He was scheduled to enter federal prison on charges of bribery and public corruption.

Scott Jenkins, the now-former sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia

Ed Martin is President Trump's new head of the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the Department of Justice. He organized Stop the Steal rallies and was the attorney for the January 6 defendants. Trump had appointed him the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. He was too controversial to get Senate approval for that job. His current job does not require Senate approval.

President Trump pardoned Jenkins, just before he was scheduled to start a 10-year sentence.

Jenkins is a public supporter of Donald Trump. He refused to enforce Covid mask rules. He is a vocal supporter of gun rights and said he would defend his county against any effort by the state of Virginia to regulate guns. He was noteworthy for being on Team Trump.

Ed Martin explained the pardon. “He’s a guy that was on the right side of a lot of issues and a lot of public service. He looked like a really good candidate [for a pardon.]” 

Martin said he would be looking over instances of prosecution of  people that Trump would consider victims of unfair or unnecessary prosecution. “The message should be clear that we’re sticking by people that do good things and the right things,” he said.

He said his message aloud: People on Team Trump get special consideration. 

This pardon comes amid other high-profile ones. The crimes are varied. Sometimes pardons absolves political activity, like those carried out by Roger Stone and the January 6 Capitol rioters. Sometimes it is bank fraud, by people like reality-TV stars Todd Chrisley and Julie Chrisley. They were sentenced in 2022 for conspiracy to defraud banks out of more than $30 million. Their daughter, Savannah, spoke at the RNC convention that nominated Trump in 2024. It might be a crypto crime, like that done by Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road marketplace which facilitated drug transactions. His mother donated money to Trump. 

In the Watergate era, it wasn't the crime itself that would be the problem; it is the cover-up of the crime. In this new Trump era, one covers up nothing. Trump uses the power of government to reward his friends and punish his enemies. He does it openly and proudly, so it must not be shameful or wrong. You can be videotaped stuffing fat envelopes of cash into someone's pocket and get away with it. Sheriff Jenkins did. It isn't about the crime. It is about whether one is on Team Trump. He has the back of his friends.

Trump does it while blaming his opponents for being the real criminal. He posted this "Truth" on his media site:

This Sheriff is a victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice and doesn't deserve to spend a single da in jail. He is a wonderful person, who was persecuted by the Radical Left "monsters," and "left for dead.

Conservative media -- Fox, One America News, Epoch Times -- cover the stories entirely from the point of view of people grateful for the merciful intervention of Trump -- not from the fact of criminal behavior or the victims of it. 

Viewers of mainstream news see repeated instances of this corruption. Democrats cannot stop it. The Constitution allows it. It is done openly. It must be normal and therefore somehow OK.

It isn't OK. 

It is unequal, unlawful, and unjust. It is the opposite of the words inscribed above of institutions of justice. We shouldn't get accustomed to it. We should recognize it for what it is. It is open corruption. It is wrong.

Equal Justice Under Law

Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com/ Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.

An International student considers Harvard

Kristi Noem to Harvard:

“I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked.”

Maybe it's a negotiating point, soon to be dropped, like tariff threats to Europe. Maybe it is real. Unlike admissions and faculty hiring, issuing visas for foreign entry is a place where the federal government has full authority to tell Harvard how things are going to be. Trump could do this, and stick with it.

It is hugely disruptive to Harvard. 

Its students make plans far in advance as they negotiate a delicate network of admissions, programs, faculty relationships, and finances. Now everything is up in the air, their futures like that of a spider hanging over a fire dangling on a tiny strand of web held by the arbitrary hand of Donald Trump. [This is the image of souls dangling over the fires of Hell, at the whim of almighty God, in the famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Jonathan Edwards. The image was intended to demonstrate your helplessness and God's power. Trump has power here.]

Sandford Borins is Canadian. He was a "foreign student" while  a classmate at college, although then and now Canada barely seems "foreign" to me, which is why Trump's tariffs on Canadian goods seems so wrongheaded. Borins is an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto, where he taught public management. He maintains his own website, https://sandfordborins.com, where this commentary appeared this morning. In his guest post he explains the shirt he is wearing. I will add that it is taken in the same room, diplomas over his shoulder, where readers of this blog saw a photo of Borins wearing the high honor of the King Charles III Coronation Medal, in honor of Borins' public service.

Guest Post by Sandford Borins

Will I be deported?

I graduated from Harvard College in 1971, a member of what Harvard’s then-President Nathan Pusey called the “worst class ever,” because so many of us were radical in our politics. As an international student from Canada, it took me some time to find my place in this political world. I was radicalized by the Johnson Administration’s escalation of the Vietnam War, the Democratic Party’s selection of Hubert Humphrey as its candidate in 1968, and the policies of the Nixon Administration.

First Amendment Rights

I worked for Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 Massachusetts primary, canvassing in a working-class Boston neighbourhood, but with little success. I went to more than a few teach-ins and protest marches, and for a while identified with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and attended some of their meetings. As SDS grew more extreme and violent, I parted company with it.

I was a reporter for WHRB, the student radio station, and I covered a meeting of the SDS Weather Underground, held in a basement auditorium at Boston University, intended to find recruits for the “Days of Rage” in Chicago in October 1969. The featured speaker was national president Mark Rudd, who came out of hiding. His followers paraded around the room, brandishing furniture legs (their weapon of choice for smashing capitalism), and chanting from Black poet Amiri Baraka’s protest song “Who will survive, America? Very few niggers and no crackers at all [sic].” At some point they barricaded the doors to fight off an attack from the archenemy, the Progressive Labor Party. I was taking notes covertly, then snuck out to a payphone, from which I filed a very skeptical story, all the while glancing anxiously over my shoulder.

The zenith of radicalism at Harvard was the occupation of University Hall in April 1969, which led to arrests and academic discipline for the student occupiers. As an international student with a visa that needed to be renewed each academic year, my sense of self-preservation led me to skip the occupation. The distinction I drew was between exercising First Amendment rights – political advocacy, peaceful protest, and journalism – and breaking the law. While classmates argued that the occupation of a building constituted civil disobedience and should be treated leniently, I did not want to test this argument with the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Jewish Journalism

Over time I found my voice in the nascent Jewish student movement. We attempted to combine radical domestic politics with support for Israel (which put us at odds with the New Left) and a commitment to freedom for Soviet Jews. Jewish students were starting newspapers throughout the U.S. and Canada, as discussed in a 1971 article in The New York Times. In my senior year and into graduate school, I was an editor of Genesis 2, the Boston paper. In 1972, I interviewed Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern during the New Hampshire primary and ultimately wrote the editorial endorsing him for the presidency. I tried to refute the argument Jewish conservatives were already making that the Democrats’ affirmative action proposals would limit opportunities for Jews.

These experiences were seminal and an essential component of my postsecondary education. Under the protection of the First Amendment, I was defining my values and learning how to act in the arena of public advocacy.

The Situation Today

As a thought experiment, consider someone just like me, an international student at Harvard (or indeed any other U.S. university today) interested in public affairs. I’m sure I would have posted opinions on social media, an affordance that did not exist fifty years ago. My presence at protest demonstrations would have been preserved on video, either surveillance or cellphone. Government policy has also changed. My social media footprint and video captures would provide enough information for the Trump Administration to arrest, detain, and possibly deport me.

What would I do in this difficult situation? Go silent, to avoid creating fresh evidence to be used against me? If arrested, use the courts to fight deportation, either as an individual case or part of a class action? Leave the U.S. altogether, to avoid either of these unpalatable alternatives?

If I was not already enrolled and was contemplating where to study, I would only go to a society that gives international students basic democratic rights, such as freedom of speech and assembly. For me, that would eliminate the U.S. under the Trump Administration, just as it would eliminate autocratic states such as Turkey.

The mere fact of writing this blog post and others, for example one discussing Trump’s tyranny as a set of innovations in American government, has likely ensured that I am now inadmissible as a visitor to the U.S. But I will not keep silent.

Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com/ Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.

Senator Ron WydenTown Hall

Ron Wyden has been to this rodeo before. 1,120 times, in fact.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden met with voters yesterday afternoon. 

It is 200 people seeing a U.S. Senator in person and hearing him respond directly to their questions. It is something special. It is a public demonstration of representative democracy

He visits each of Oregon's 36 counties for an open meeting with constituents every year. Voters ask any question they want. He responds. 

Wyden's town halls bring disproportionate contact with the rural parts of the state. Wyden is from Portland and he has a home there. He represented a Portland district in Congress before moving to the Senate. It would be easy to peg Wyden as a creature of Portland, and now with his long tenure in the Senate, of Washington, D.C. There is a widespread suspicion in southern and eastern Oregon that the state is Portland-centric in its politics. It is a reasonable suspicion. All statewide elected officials are Democrats. Public officials elected statewide need to win votes in bright blue Portland, and Wyden does.

The city of Portland is in Multnomah County. The county has a population of 780,000 people. The median county, number 19, Clatsop County, has 32,000 people. The smallest counties, numbers 20 through 36, have a total population of about 270,000. Some are as small as a population of 2,000 in Sherman County, and 1,400 in Wheeler. 

Amazon

Wyden is best described as "center left" in his politics. Wyden's new book, It takes Chutzpah, describes the intricacies of legislative committees and inside-baseball politics, but there is none of that in his town halls. Instead, it is a back and forth of a voter voicing a concern and Wyden describing what he supports and what he would do about it. 

At this town hall he may have mentioned forest, water and other natural resource issues briefly -- he has in other town halls -- but yesterday he kept coming back to the threats to Medicaid in the "big, beautiful bill" which just passed the House of Representatives. Access to health care is a rural-America issue. Rural Oregonians are disproportionately eligible for Medicaid, Medicaid keeps rural hospitals alive because otherwise much of the costs hospitals bear providing emergency care would be uncollectible. Rural Oregonians need the Medicaid expansion, but don't appear to appreciate Democrats fighting to protect it. Southern and eastern Oregon counties overwhelmingly support their Republican congressman, Cliff Bentz, who just voted to cut Medicaid. 

Counties representing about half the land area of the state have voted to become part of Idaho

Counties in the eastern part of the state requested to move the state boundary to make themselves part of Idaho. It is not a serious effort -- a boundary change won't happen -- but it is a demonstration of their feeling of estrangement from real influence and representation. They voted overwhelmingly against Wyden, too. Wyden still shows up year after year.

The town hall meeting audience was self-selected. Town hall participants were given a ticket, and if their ticket number is drawn they can ask a question. None of the questions asked by the 17 people whose tickets were drawn came from a MAGA, anti-immigration, anti-Medicaid, pro-tariff point of view. Instead, the questioners asked, in different ways, "what can we do to stop the Trump disaster." These are fair questions, but not representative of the Jackson County voters, who voted for Trump 52-45 over Harris. 

Wyden did get confronted at the meeting. It came from shouted questions and accusations accusing Wyden of being too friendly to Israel, and for failing to protect Palestinians in Gaza. Wyden said he supported both Israelis and Palestinians who supported peaceful efforts to protect innocent lives. Wyden, like most Americans, says he wants a two-state solution. The problem is than neither Israelis nor Palestinians want it.

The town hall lasted almost 90 minutes. Then Wyden stood and took informal questions from a cluster of people who wanted more. 

People looking for a dramatic "Breaking News!" headline to come out of the event might feel disappointed. This is democracy in America in 2025. It isn't blood, explosions, or gunshots. Its representative democracy, live and in person.

Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com/ Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.

Easy Sunday: Corruption beyond parody

     "This is the crypto corruption club. This is like the Mount Everest of corruption."
             Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, outside the dinner where Trump recognized and thanked the largest purchasers of Trump's meme cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency is a marketable entity looking for a legitimate use.

They are a "collectable," like baseball cards, rare stamps and coins, limited-edition Beanie Babies, numbered art prints, tulip bulbs, and NFTs. NFTs are non-fungible-tokens, i.e., a specific digital reproduction of something, most famously of the face of a gorilla.

What is useful about cryptocurrencies is that there is a market for them. A person can profit if one can sell the collectable for more money than one paid to buy it. There had been one giant use for crypto currencies. As a secret digital market, they facilitate tax cheating, money laundering, drug trafficking, and other financial transactions that are best done secretly.  

Trump created a second use case, and he deserves recognition as an innovator. He monetized his shamelessness. Trump created a perfect vehicle for giving a government official a bribe. It is a way to buy influence, a 21st-century version of 16th-century papal indulgence, something good to have in the favor bank. Trump created his own branded cryptocurrency, the Trump coin, and he made it available for sale. Like a ticket to heaven, Trump's cryptocurrency was created at a marginal cost of zero. Trump fans bought them, pushed the price up, and created a chance for the Trump family and friends to profit on day one. That was use number one: quick money. Use number two is that now foreign and domestic countries, businesses, and individuals can buy the tokens and support the price. There is no use bribing Trump if he doesn't know you bribed him. A bribed politician needs to communicate that he knows you made the bribe and that he appreciates you. The recognition dinner serves a purpose for both sides of the deal.

This is a nice clean transaction, but the corruption of government is not complete without the corruption of truth. You are not seeing what you are seeing. Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt held a news conference on Thursday. She said, “It’s absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency."

Yes. Not just incorrect. Absurd. 

She says this on us. If we see corruption right in front of our eyes, then we must be deranged.

Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com/ Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.

Guest Post: Advice for Oregon's governor.

What's Oregon to do?

Rebate tax money to Oregonians, via the wildly popular "kicker?"

Or set money aside as a contingency to fight forest fires?

KGW

There are so many unknowns facing Oregon's governor and legislature. Will Oregon and the country face a recession, thus reducing future income tax receipts? Will the federal government pay for forest fire suppression at the same level as in the past? Will there be new, hotter, bigger, and more expensive forest fires this summer and next?

And then the political question: Will Oregonians tolerate not getting all their potential income tax rebate, even if the money they don't get is diverted to the good and necessary cause of putting out fires?

Tam Moore is a lifelong journalist, who worked in television in his early days and then in print, writing for the Capital Press, a regional newspaper focusing on the agricultural industry. In the mid-1970’s, Moore served a term as a Republican Jackson county commissioner in southern Oregon. He was elected in 1974, when Oregon Republicans were progressive on civil rights, when there were pro-choice Republicans elected locally and statewide, and when Republicans supported cleaning up the environment.

Tam Moore

Guest Post by Tam Moore

Oregon’s governor came to our town this week, fretting about the uncertainty we face with a wildfire season almost upon us and our major partner in wildfire suppression, the federal government in turmoil as the new administration and a troubled, factionalized Congress send mixed messages -- none reassuring to recipients of federal assistance.

Gov. Tina Kotek, near Ashland, Oregon

On top of that, here in Oregon the state’s economist gave the Legislature the final revenue estimate for the biennial budget that will take effect on July 1. That estimate has the potential to be wrong, big time. Oregon’s largest single source of state-generated revenue is an income tax. Uncertain economic signals make predicting income tax revenue problematic for two years down the road.

So, If I were governor, when I got back to the Capitol in Salem, and my political party controlled the Legislature -- which it does -- I would ask the Joint Ways and Means Committee to build a huge contingency fund into the budget they are preparing, with authority given the Legislative Emergency Board to dip into the fund as these uncertain times unfold.

To put real money in that contingency fund, I would be asking Legislative leaders to hold a vote on a one-time override of Oregon’s tax “kicker.” The Constitution says it will take a two-thirds majority in both houses to make it legal. The state economist predicts that a whopping $1.7 billion will be in that kicker pot when it would otherwise be returned to taxpayers.

The kicker was birthed by tax foes as a 1979 law. The kicker requires that any time biennial receipts exceed the budget estimate by two percent, the difference is refunded to taxpayers. Voters liked it so well that in 2000 they made it section 14 of Article IX of the state Constitution.

This may sound counterintuitive to fiscal conservatives. But it’s a way to ensure that we have some reserves. And in my day-dreaming about what I’d do as governor for a day, I’d also tell the chair of the Senate Rules Committee to keep SJR 15 right where it is – on the inactive list of bills trapped in rules destined to never see further action this session. SJR 15, for those who don’t follow those things, would refer to voters repeal of the kicker.

These are not the times for political sideshows on election day. We’ve got more important issues needing attention.

 

Further reading: 

     KGW: Showdown in the legislature

     OPB: Gov. Kotek says federal firefighting help uncertain

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com/ Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]

"Birthright citizenship" wasn't an accident

The 14th Amendment "fixed" Dred Scott.

We all know that.

But the authors of the 14th Amendment knew what they were doing when they wrote the amendment making people -- all people -- who were born in the United States citizens of the United States and the state where they resided.

Reason.com

Trump's team argued at the Supreme Court that the 14th Amendment had a narrow purpose, to extend citizenship to the children of former slaves, but not to people who are unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States.

America has always had tension among different immigrant groups. There were New England Congregational descendants of Puritans, Pennsylvania Quakers, and Maryland Catholics. The righteous people of Boston had hanged Mary Dyer for the crime of being a Quaker. 

A familiar part of American history is the prejudice against the Irish.

"The Irish way of doing things," Thomas Nast, Harpers Magazine, 1871

The Ku Klux Klan is famous now for anti-Black sentiment but its original animus was opposition to Catholic immigration. The political party with the famous name, the "Know Nothing Party," officially the American Party, was a nativist party opposed to immigration generally, but especially by Catholics. 

In 1868, amid a Republican majority big enough to override vetoes from President Andrew Johnson, Congress passed civil rights legislation. Congress proposed the 14th Amendment, with language that declared citizenship for people born here.  

 

In Senate debate on the issue, Edgar Cowan, a Republican from Pennsylvania  complained that the amendment went too far. It would offer citizenship to children of Chinese immigrants. He asked his colleagues, "Is it proposed that the people of California are to remain quiescent while they are overrun by a flood of immigration of the Mongol race? Are they to be immigrated out of house and home by Chinese." He also opposed "Gypsies" who he said were present in Pennsylvania. "These people live in the country and are born in the country. They infest society. If the mere fact of being born in the country confers that right [ of citizenship], then they will have it, and I think it will be mischievous."

A senator from California, also a Republican, said, "I beg my honorable friend from Pennsylvania to give himself no further trouble on account of the Chinese in California or on the Pacific coast. We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and equal protection before the law with others."

Both sides understood what it meant: Being born in America bestowed citizenship.

Chinese immigration -- and birthright citizenship for children of Chinese extraction -- was the "hard" case at that time, the one that best tested the scope of the 14th Amendment. Chinese immigration was unpopular in California. Sixteen years later, in 1882, agitation out of California got Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act. But birthright citizenship extended even to the Chinese. There wasn't a carve out or exception, even though it would have had popular support. 

There is an element of quaintness to the changing targets of anti-immigrant focus over the generations. Quakers. Irish, Catholics, Chinese. In World War I it was Germans. In World War II it was the Japanese. People hated Quakers??? People on the outs cycle into becoming part of the new majority.

The constant is that someone is on the outs. President Trump is riding this recurring American unease about immigration. He takes a broad brush, first focusing on Mexicans ("They don't send their best,") and now people from Latin America generally (except Cubans, a Trump-friendly constituency in south Florida). He wants to exclude Muslims, Haitians and people from "shithole countries," and Blacks (but not Whites) from South Africa. He wants to stop people from unpopular, undesirable ethnicities from joining the melting pot. He wants a carve out for the 14th Amendment.

If he creates one, it will be new. Both opponents and supporters of it understood what the law said: People born here, even if from unpopular ethnicities, are citizens. 

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com/ Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]