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Rant 846: Flushing America Down the Toilet

6/20/2025

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“Our Nation is staging one of the greatest and fastest comebacks in history. In just 4 short months, we are respected again, respected like never before.”
–Donald Trump, May 2025
 
NOT!
 
Despite EPA guidelines for toilet flushing, it did not take long for Donald Trump to sink America’s reputation and the esteem in which the rest of the world held it deep down into the sewer.

To hear Trump lie about it, he has restored America’s reputation globally. Like everything else that emanates from his hate-filled mouth and tiny hands on his Lies Anti-Social platform, he constantly returns to this theme with an assortment of outrageous falsehoods.

In fact, two recent polls show that America is now reviled by the rest of the world, revolted by Trump and his exceptionally evil and massively incompetent administration. The numbers are truly stunning.

The highly respected Pew Research Center has been taking foreign pulses regarding America for decades. No American President has ever scored as low as Trump, not even Trump 1.0 which, until this recent survey, was far and away the worst international reputational score ever recorded

Pew’s survey of 29 countries shows virtually no confidence in Trump or America to lead world affairs. It also shows that foreigners have little or no confidence in Trump’s ability to handle specific issues, including immigration, the Russia-Ukraine war, U.S.-China relations, global economic problems, conflicts between Israel and its neighbors, and climate change. Overwhelming majorities view him as arrogant, dishonest and dangerous.

Here’s a sampling of Trump’s approval ratings in specific countries:

                Canada                                    22%
                UK                                          37%
                Italy                                        32%
                Netherlands                             22%
                France                                     22%
                Spain                                     19%
               Germany                                  18%


It’s not only our (former) closest allies who see Trump as a total loser. His numbers are equally dismal in places like India, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Trump’s grades in the Pew poll make George W. Bush, even after his Iraq misadventure, Hurricane Katrina bungling, and his plunging the global economy into the Great Recession, look like a combination of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

It is stunning that it has taken only a few months for world opinion and trust in America to have dissipated. Trump has frittered away America’s reputation that took 80 years to construct.

Trump’s international poll numbers are likely to sink into single digits by the time his destruction is finished. Americans need to wake up and join our global counterparts in calling Trump out for the destruction he is raining down on the world.
​

​Corrupdate. Trump’s self-celebratory military parade was one of the most ho-hum events that Washington, DC ever had to suffer. It was totally overwhelmed by the horrific news about political assassinations in Minnesota stimulated by years of Trump’s incitements to violence, and more than 2,100 “No Kings” protests throughout the land, and neutralized by his Los Angeles Gestapo tactics involving ICE, the National Guard and U.S. Marines.
     The look of military hardware rumbling down Constitution Avenue in front of a supremely bored-looking Trump and a sparse crowd seemed fitting after his many years of disparaging the military—hiding behind alleged bone spurs to evade the draft; disrespecting John McCain; calling soldiers who gave their lives for this country “suckers and losers;” all the way up to his recent Fort Bragg braggadocio where attending soldiers were vetted for their appearance (no fatties allowed) and MAGA propensities.
 
Dick Hermann
June 20, 2025
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Rant 845: The Asymmetry Revolution

6/14/2025

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​Revolutions in military thinking are extremely rare. Not that long ago, West Point cadets were still studying the particulars of Hannibal’s strategy at the battles of Lake Trasimene and Cannae almost 2,500 years ago.
 
Today we are witnessing a major rethinking of military strategy and tactics without being aware of it.
 
Recently, Ukraine staged a hugely successful drone attack deep into Russia. Ukrainian drones destroyed 40 advanced Russian aircraft. Aside from the fact that this surprise attack succeeded despite Russian defenses, the most amazing thing about it is the asymmetry of its costs. Each Ukrainian drone cost a few hundred dollars. In contrast, each destroyed Russian airplane cost somewhere north of $40 million. This is a return on investment that even Nvidia would envy.
 
Drones are clearly now not only the future of warfare, but also the present. The future is now. Massively expensive “legacy” weapons, such as America’s F-35 Strikefighter, the current fifth generation of which costs $109 million per plane (total program cost: $2 trillion) may already be obsolete just a few years after they launched.
 
It’s not just jet fighters and bombers that drones are rendering obsolete. The U.S. Abrams tank is the most technologically advanced and sophisticated battle tank in the world. We have given a bunch of them to Ukraine. However, virtually every one of them has been destroyed by cheap Russian drones. 
 
The “drone revolution” is not limited to air and land warfare. Ukrainian drones have also decimated much of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Even highly advanced Russian warships, with all of their powerful anti-aircraft defenses, appear defenseless against dirt-cheap drones. America’s immense aircraft carrier fleet take note. We currently have 11 carriers deployed, the most powerful naval ships in the world. Each one of these behemoths cost billions of dollars. They may, however, be helpless against a handful of inexpensive drones. Perhaps the next one commissioned should be named the “U.S.S. Sitting Duck.”
 
China today produces around 100 times more drones than the U.S. and Europe combined. Should China move on Taiwan, America’s multi-trillion dollar fleets may be of little value if we come to Taiwan’s defense.
 
The drone revolution, as evidenced by the Russo-Ukraine War, should be a loud wake-up call to the Pentagon. But so far, all we see is America mired in planning to fight the last war. We continue to pour trillions into obsolete weapons systems that will do us little good against an enemy’s drones. That has to change. Our defense planning needs a mammoth overhaul.
 
There are also immense collateral benefits to changes in our defense posture and the level of expenditures needed to address this new asymmetry. The biggest is that our almost trillion-dollar annual defense budget could be dramatically reduced if reoriented to drone warfare and drone defense. This would mark a major assault on our out-of-control national debt at a time when such is desperately needed. Also, it would make  a real dent in the debt, unlike the fraud that Trump and his supine Republican Congress are currently engaged in, which will make the debt problem even worse.
 
However, the obstacles to instituting a sea-change in U.S. defense thinking are huge. Thousands of powerful and influential interest groups have an existential stake in maintaining the status quo. Like the oil and gas industry fighting tooth and nail to survive against any move to renewable energy, the military-industrial complex will do whatever it takes to keep its gravy train flowing, regardless of the adverse impact on U.S. national security.
 
This is a very serious matter that needs addressing immediately. Having the right people in charge at the top levels of the Pentagon is essential to seeing, understanding and taking the requisite actions to overhaul our national defense. Tragically, woefully inept Pete Hegseth and his cronies are not them.
 
Corrupdate. Trump’s corruption is not limited to financial grifting. It includes depravities far afield from mere greed. His rampant hypocrisy and double standard is one such example. He federalizes and deploys the California National Guard and the U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests against ICE Gestapo-like tactics despite the fact that local law enforcement had the situation under control and did not request federal assistance. This is the very same Trump who refused to federalize and deploy the Guard on January 6, 2021 when thousands of violent, traitorous insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol, beat up cops and attempted to hang his Vice President. His arguments for sending the military into LA can be summed up in one word: bullshit.
    There are three reasons why Trump is doing this: (1) He always wants to look like a tough guy, a reflection of his deep insecurities (see, e.g., the North Korea-style military parade on his birthday); (2) immigration is the issue on which he has pinned his entire political journey and where his across-the board dismal poll numbers, albeit feeble, are the best. (3) He needs distractions from his administration’s cruelty, chaos and incompetence: stupid, unnecessary tariffs that are ruining the economy; his disastrous Big Ugly Bill that would transfer billions of dollars from the middle class and poor to billionaires, deny health insurance to millions, and allow his legal minions to defy court orders without any consequences, among other atrocities; unceasing grifting; coddling of our enemies; and so much more, all of which are not playing well with the public.
 
Dick Hermann
June 14, 2025
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Rant 844: Democrats Need a Coherent Messaging Strategy

6/6/2025

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The Democratic Party is failing in its obligation to vigorously oppose Trump’s power grab, criminality, massive abuse of American norms, and the grievous damage these are causing to individuals, the nation and the world. It has a huge communications problem that, frankly, is a surprise because there are obvious solutions.
 
Trump provides the Dems with enough ammunition to bring him to account daily, but they seem reluctant to avail themselves of it. Their hesitation is baffling.
 
This is not a new challenge. During all four years of the Biden administration, communication was not a Democratic strong suit. In fact, poor messaging had much to do with the party’s electoral trouncing. They kept trying to convince voters that what they saw with their eyes wasn’t true. The economy was booming (it was) and “look at all the wonderful things we have done for you.” They failed completely to acknowledge that the high prices people were paying for basic goods—food, gasoline, car loans, mortgages—were as nothing compared to abstractions like GDP growth and low unemployment. They never aligned with the reality that people were suffering or talked about what they would and would do to improve lives. On top of that, they wanted credit for bringing the Southern border under control, even though they only did that in the eleventh hour of their administration after sweeping the problem under the rug for more than three-quarters of their White House term. All of this despite polls showing that inflation and the border were top of mind to voters.
 
Democrats during the Biden years operated in a self-created communications desert. They appear to have learned nothing from this and today are keeping that cluelessness going.
 
I’ve addressed this issue in past Rants, but Democratic lassitude prompts me to revisit it again, this time with a bit more granularity and reference to my personal experience:
 
Democrats need a well-planned, coordinated three-pronged effort to put forth party spokespersons from their congressional, gubernatorial, mayoral and state legislative ranks (Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow, for example) every single day to speak in opposition to the illegal and appalling actions and inactions Trump and his lackeys are undertaking to undermine the nation and the world. The messages should be simple, instructive and delivered succinctly They should speak directly to the problems Republicans are causing ordinary Americans and how Democrats would address them. Nothing fancy:
 
​
(1)   Daily news conferences.
 
Most voters don’t follow what is going on in Washington, DC very closely. A recent poll revealed that only 27 percent of respondents had even heard about Qatar’s gifting of a $400 million plane to Trump. They need to be told that Republicans are slashing school breakfast and lunch programs to the bone and what this means for millions of American families. They need to know that Democrats will fight to restore and expand these vital programs. They must be told that millions of people will lose their healthcare and why that’s a calamity for all of us who will be paying for them when they show up in emergency rooms. They need to know that tariffs are a tax and the specifics of how they harm consumers. And so forth.
 
An example of how to do this effectively derives from now discredited (for other reasons) former Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) who, during the Covid-19 pandemic, held daily news conferences reporting on what he was doing to combat the virus. These were widely covered and viewed and garnered a lot of positive feedback from the public. The contrast with Trump’s disjointed, bumbling daily Covid news conferences fraught with his customary chaos and dangerous advocacy of bonehead “cures” was well-noted by both press and public. Set aside from this analysis that Cuomo was not always honest about his actions. It was the medium and the messaging strategy that was brilliant.


(2)   Podcasts.

Although I still read newspapers and watch nightly news programs, I have tilted to where I get much of my news from…podcasts. I do this while going about my routine daily business—kitchen chores, cleaning up, showering, shaving, etc. I also stream podcasts while driving.
Judging by the data, I am not alone. The podcasting phenomenon is growing like topsy and, as an information medium, currently attracts more than 160 million American listeners. 55 percent of the U.S. population 12 years old and older listen to a podcast at least once a month. That number is increasing at a skyrocketing rate. The Pew Research Center reports that 34 percent of Americans listen to an average of 8.3 podcast episodes per week, and 23 percent spend over 10 hours listening weekly. Interestingly for an information medium, the percentages of listeners by age group vary very little. The elderly are just as committed listeners as younger folks. Podcasting has become so huge that it is overwhelming traditional broadcasting in terms of the number of eyes and ears it reaches.
 
The legacy media, newspapers and television to be more specific, is hemorrhaging eyeballs at an alarming rate. At this writing, it was just announced that cable network MSNBC experienced a day when only 38,000 viewers tuned in. In the aggregate, the three major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) nightly news programs reach only 18.5 million viewers. There are several hundred podcasts whose audiences far exceed that number.
 
YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts comprise almost two-thirds of the most popular podcast platforms. While it is difficult to pinpoint the number of listeners/viewers of a particular podcast, the general consensus is that the most popular podcasts dwarf the number of ears and eyeballs the legacy media attracts. Podcasts like the Meidas Touch, the Joe Rogan Experience, the Shawn Ryan Show, NPR News Now, Up First and Stuff You Should Know have huge audiences and should be ones Democrats target daily. It is not enough to go on podcasts like Pod Save America, which appeals only to a progressive audience, and conclude that they are making a dent in the public information space.


(3)   Social media.

More Americans get their news from social media than from any other source. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, and X dominate this realm, with close to 100 percent saturation of the U.S. public. Democrats must have a strategy for messaging here too on a daily basis.
This is not rocket science. Voters need to know that the Democratic opposition is robust and has a plan to make people’s lives better. They need to understand why what Trump and Republicans are doing in gutting social programs to transfer wealth from the poor and middle classes to the ultra-rich, flipping our loyal allies into adversaries and our enemies into allies, and assaulting the Constitution, are dangerous. They need to understand why Constitutional protections like Habeas Corpus and Due Process are fundamental protections of us all. Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem recently told a congressional committee that Habeas Corpus gives the President the right to deport people, a definition both absurdly wrong, a total perversion of its true purpose and completely out of touch with reality. Only a few Democrats during the committee hearing called her ignorance out. Otherwise, the party let it go. Stuff like this merits screaming to the rooftops.
 
Corrupdate. I have been pondering why Trump’s blatant, unprecedented, all in the open corruption has not yet broken through with the public. To the extent that his grift has been polled, it appears that voters just don’t seem to care about it. It’s just “ho-hum, what else is new?” to them. I suppose that, despite there being an abundance of sleaze during his first term, he was re-elected anyway, which showed that voters did not care about it.

This does not mean that Democrats and the media should stop talking about it. Perhaps, like Joseph Goebbels and his contemporary Republican imitators, if there is an incessant drumbeat from Dems and the media, at least some voters will believe that this is an issue that matters.
 
Dick Hermann
June 6, 2025
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Rant 843: An Appalling Contrast

5/23/2025

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On the same day that the Trump administration removed Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from 9,000+ Afghans and their families who had put their lives on the line working with U.S. forces against the Taliban, President Trump welcomed 59 white South African Afrikaners into the United States under the refugee program that he has closed to the rest of humanity.
 
Among the countless barbarities perpetrated by his repellent regime, this one is arguably even worse than pardoning 1,600 violent, traitorous insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 intent on overturning a free and fair election. Both are shameful, reprehensible and intolerable.
 
Trump claims, falsely, that white South Africans are suffering “genocide” in their home country, a lie of gargantuan proportions. They are not. Moreover, according to multiple sources, not a single square inch of white farmer-owned land has been confiscated by the South African government. What our racist dictator-wannabe President is really saying is that white Christians are welcome to come here; black and brown people “stay the Hell out.”
 
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem justified the removal of TPS from the Afghans by claiming that “Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country." This is total, complete and utter hogwash. If these people are forcibly returned to Afghanistan, their best hope is imprisonment and torture. Many will face death at the hands of the Taliban that Noem’s nonsense claims have suddenly been transformed into civilized beings sensitive to human rights. Some lies are just that. Some kill people.
 
We owe an enormous debt to these U.S. allies who opted to side with and help us during our 20-year war in Afghanistan. Allowing them admission to our country and help settling in is the least we can do for them. I suspect that Trump views their service and sacrifice in light of his contempt for our military as “suckers and losers,” not worthy of special consideration. Not to mention that they are the “wrong” color.
 
Taliban-run Afghanistan is a horror show of abuse. Women cannot leave their homes unaccompanied. Girls are barred from secondary and higher education. Women cannot go to parks or gyms. Free speech, fair trials and due process don’t exist. Religious minorities face violence and persecution. Afghans who worked with the U.S. but could not escape the Taliban are either in prison or have been murdered. The place is a Handmaid’s Tale of subjugation and horror. Trump and Noem, however, shut their eyes to this brutal reality and perpetrate the colossal falsehood that Afghanistan today is a garden of earthly delights.
 
Trump is rolling out the red carpet to assist his Afrikaner refugees, who hardly need any help. They are receiving expedited reviews for refugee status, allowing for quicker processing compared to the typical refugee. The government is assisting them in finding work, housing, and other essential services. They are immediately eligible for government benefits. They have already been granted a path to U.S. citizenship. Meanwhile, our Afghan allies are being sold down the river, a river of blood.
 
As with all Trump illegalities and norm-shattering, this too gets lost in the daily torrent of appalling issuances and outrageous behavior from the White House and uniquely unqualified cabinet heads. The fact that lives are at risk is also of no interest to congressional Republicans hot on the heels of wresting healthcare and SNAP food benefits from the most disadvantaged among us. What are a few white South Africans added to the American melting pot, or 9,000 Afghans facing deportation compared to prostrating themselves before Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill?
 
Meanwhile, both the media and Democrats have moved on to the next Trump transgression. The Afghan-Afrikaner story is already history.
 
One of the worst ironies of this disgusting display of favoring white supremacy over human decency was that the Afrikaners were greeted at Dulles Airport by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, who gushed over them with over-the-top shamelessness worthy of Trump. Landau’s father and grandfather were Austrian Jewish refugees who barely escaped the Holocaust with their lives and found a permanent haven in America.
 
The America that said to the world: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” has descended into a Hellscape of overt racism and naked cruelty. When my Austrian Jewish refugee father’s ship passed by the Statue of Liberty in 1938, he wept. Today he would be weeping for another reason.
 
Corrupdate (cont.)
 
House Speaker Mike Johnson, always in the forefront of creative weaseling, has now come up with an entirely new theory of criminal justice: When asked by a reporter if he was as concerned about Trump’s corruption as he was about his oft-stated allegations against Joe Biden, he responded that he is not because the “Biden crime family” did their dirty deeds behind closed doors, whereas Trump’s are all out in the open where everyone can see them. Prosecutors take note: It’s not a crime if you are openly shameless when you commit it.
 
Dick Hermann
May 23, 2025
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Rant 842: Corrupdate: The Criminal Enterprise Masquerading as a Presidential Administration

5/23/2025

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“…no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
                        
--Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8
 
“The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”
                         
--Donald Trump, June 2017

The most corrupt presidency in history, with hands down the highest corruption bar, just keeps on grifting. Now it’s a multi-million dollar luxury 747-8 to replace the existing Air Force One which apparently is not glitzy enough for Donald Trump. This flying palace, a gift to Trump personally from the Qatari royal family, is worth at least $400 million. It is for use during his presidency and for his personal use afterward. Trump has been salivating over the plane ever since he toured it a couple of months ago when it touched down at the Palm Beach airport. It’s newer and bigger than Air Force One and apparently opulent in a garish, tasteless Trump sort of way.

If this isn’t a foreign gift prohibited by the Constitution, then nothing is. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who must have skipped her law school ethics classes (instead practicing how to be a supine doormat), blessed this bribe, saying the whole shebang is perfectly legal, the Constitution be damned. Oh, and Bondi used to be a lobbyist for Qatar before signing on to be Trump’s pliant AG willing to endorse anything Trump says or does.
​

Current federal law limits the value of personal gifts a government official can receive to $480.

Why this particular bribe and why now? So that this miniscule Gulf state drowning in oil will continue on Trump’s most favored flatterer list. In return for its unprecedented largesse, Qatar, a Hamas haven and long-time terrorist funder, gets a Trump visit and a Trump golf course via a partnership with the royal family.

Qatar was just one of many stops Trump’s spawn made on their recent grift tour of the planet, paving the way for Daddy’s own personal enrichment visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. And they have the audacity to talk about the “Biden crime family.”

For all we know, this gift from a questionable oil state is dripping with electronic listening devices and assorted spy stuff. Cleansing every inch of it to make sure it is secure will cost taxpayers a fortune, assuming Trump cares a whit about exposing America’s secrets to our adversaries. His history indicates that he does not.

Trump also visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both the beneficiaries of Trump family business deals that will earn him and his family billions of dollars. Is there no end to the sleaze?

Trump’s exploitation of the White House as the ultimate grift machine isn’t even clandestine any more. It is all out in the open and done with impunity and disdain for the Constitution. He even boasts about it. In just three months, he has expanded his grift to levels unimagined even in his first term, when he squeezed foreign governments for millions funneled through his downtown Washington DC hotel and assorted golf courses.

This latest shiny object, which Trump will likely gild in gold plating like the now un-viewable Oval Office, is on top of the crypto currency scam he and his crooked seed are pulling off, also without bothering to hide their despicable activities. The Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced that its so-called “stablecoin”— with Trump’s likeness all over it — is going to be used by the UAE in a $2 billion business deal with Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world. The deal will generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family in addition to the estimated $2 billion they have already hauled in. Binance has been sued by the Securities & Exchange Commission for its questionable deals and behavior, but the lawsuit is now on hold because it could get in the way of Trump’s grift.

In 2021, Trump called crypto a “scam.” Now he is in on it.

Congress, wherefore art thou? The Trump scams are allowed to continue without a peep from the cowardly Republican Congress. The Reichstag rubber stampers are content to hide under their desks and allow this felonious lawbreaker to do whatever he pleases no matter how criminal. Congress’s conduct gives new meaning to CHECKS and balances, emphasis on the former.

Every new con Trump gets away with emboldens him for the next one. America’s Grifter-in-Chief knows no bounds. No telling what new scheme he will come up with next.

Trump 1.0 saw a number of Democrats sue Trump for his blatant violations of the Emoluments Clause. However, in 2021 the feckless Supreme Court dismissed these cases on the grounds that Trump had left office.

Say again? The Constitution says nothing about the tolling of Emoluments Clause violations when someone leaves office. This is yet another bending of the law by the Court’s reactionary wing to achieve a political result that flies in the face of the Constitution. Just another in the many missed opportunities to hold Trump accountable for his misdeeds.
​

​Timing is everything when trying to bring a presidential conman to account. Prospective plaintiffs should not delay filing new lawsuits claiming violations of the Emoluments Clause. If done early enough, maybe the Supremes will be backed into a corner, hoisted by their own irrational decision the first time around.
 
Dick Hermann
May 16, 2025
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Rant 841: Getting Out of DOGE

5/9/2025

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As he watches his Tesla revenues and profits sink like the Titanic, Elon Musk is slinking away from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in order to see if he can clean up this self-inflicted wound. DOGE will continue under new mis-management. This is a good time to assess its performance to date.

Saving $2 trillion. This was the publicly announced boast when DOGE launched. Once these inexperienced examiners and their leader realized how unrealistic this goal was, they quickly cut it back to $1 trillion. At this juncture, the Muskrats claim that they have saved $150 billion. That too is a ridiculously inflated figure. If you take a magnifier to their claims, you find numerous instances of double-counting (triple-counting in one case) as well as the addition of a bunch of zeros to certain numbers. One such claim of $8 billion turns out to actually be $8 million. Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, you come up with a bottom line substantially south of $150 billion from slashing approximately 200,000 federal jobs and decimating important agencies with impunity.

But, against these purported savings, outside organizations such as the non-partisan Yale Budget Lab have examined these claims and concluded they are bogus. Actual “savings” amount to $95 billion (probably less, say many of the outside experts). However, offsetting these alleged savings is the actual cost of implementing these job cuts and agency closures, which amount to $135 billion. Bottom line: DOGE’s reckless actions have cost the government $40 billion. Any so-called savings are a chimera.

Ferreting out fraud. This was the other primary goal of Musk’s and DOGE’s mission. Here this misguided enterprise does not even claim to have found anything. It is silent about its unearthing of anything remotely definable as fraud. Musk’s shouting about fraud at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was all just hot air. There wasn’t any. The corruption was all internal, at DOGE. Musk used this appalling vehicle to enhance his own companies “in” with the U.S. government. He and DOGE elevated the terms “conflict of interest” and “self-dealing” to new heights.

Even the lily-livered Republican Congress finds itself repulsed by DOGE’s own waste, fraud and abuse. So far, of course, they are treading lightly, terrified of being primaried by Musk money next year. Some few Reichstag Republicans, however, have retrieved a handful of vertebrae from the lockbox where their spines repose and meekly inched forward to whisper that all does not seem hunky-dory with DOGE. The jury remains out, however, when it comes to whether they will vote to endorse DOGE’s agency closures and federal job cuts. Don’t hold your breath.

So, all DOGE has been is yet another Trump performance art production, albeit one that has destroyed careers and lives around the world. Several hundred thousand government workers lost their jobs and incomes and must dramatically readjust to their strained circumstances and constrained future aspirations. Millions of desperate people around the world who depended on U.S aid in order to eat and be healthy now find themselves starving and dying. The daily food aid that kept them from starvation is gone. The HIV/AIDS drugs that kept them alive are gone. Already, babies born with HIV/AIDS have died due to the termination of this program that saved 25 million lives in the last 20 years. This is a human tragedy that Trump and his DOGE minions have purposely executed to their eternal condemnation and shame. Too bad that the shameless cannot be shamed.
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Dick Hermann
May 9, 2025
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Rant 840: The Threat

5/2/2025

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Russia acts with the same aggression towards its neighbors regardless of what regime or ideology happens to be in power in Moscow at any given time. This goes back hundreds of years to the Tsarist Empire predating the Romanovs. It continued without alteration throughout the 70+ year Bolshevik era, and is present again today in Vladimir Putin’s fascist kleptocracy. Unopposed, Russia will attempt to conquer Ukraine followed by all of the border states—Georgia, Moldova, the Baltic states, Poland et al.—that it has always viewed as a minimum within its sphere of influence if not an integral part of Mother Russia.

The only deterrent Russia respects is a show of strength. We realized this at the end of World War II, when our Soviet ally quickly crushed any democratic aspirations of Eastern European lands, imposed its own puppet regimes, and abruptly morphed into our global arch-rival and enemy. It took George Kennan’s 1946 “Long Telegram” to alert the President and State Department to this historical reality and to persuade them to craft a policy to counter it. The consequence was the Truman Doctrine, the NATO military alliance and the positioning of several hundred thousand American troops, missiles and nuclear weapons in Western Europe. These measures kept Western Europe free and kept the Soviet Union and its Russian successor state “contained” for eight decades. It, along with the Marshall Plan (1947), were arguably the best investments this country ever made.

It has taken only weeks for Donald Trump and his MAGA-addled national security minions to destroy this critical construct that has kept the peace between superpowers for 80 years. In the blink of an eye, they have abandoned our closest allies and embraced our enemy. Putin, the latest in a long line of Russian autocrats, realizes very well that this is his license to behave even worse than he has thus far. His naked aggressiveness will only accelerate. He must have to pinch himself to believe that his long-time U.S. adversary is dumb and inept enough to abandon what has worked so well.

Whether Trump and his band of national security numbskulls are so ignorant of what has guaranteed both our security and prosperity for the past 80 years, or they simply don’t care, sublimating our national interests to their obsessive lust for power, is irrelevant. What is most important is what this complete reversal of bedrock U.S. policy means for America and the free world going forward:
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  • It is destabilizing the entire world. By abandoning both hard and soft power, the U.S. is no longer viewed as the best defense and deterrent against aggression by Russia or China. Don’t think for a moment that nothing but U.S. posture has changed. Our about-face is encouraging countries throughout the world to seek accommodations with both of our former adversaries, at the same time distancing themselves from the suddenly unreliable U.S. Government. Key strategic allies like Japan, South Korea, India and Australia are rethinking their defense ties and strategic alliances, as well as their trade relations, with the U.S. and also with China and Russia. Europe, too, is rethinking its relations with Washington, Moscow and Beijing.
  • Trump’s Ukraine War peace proposal looks as if it was dictated by the Kremlin. It speaks to a Putin wish-list and implies that Trump may abandon Ukraine to Russia.
  • NATO absent U.S. participation is not likely to be much of a deterrent to a Trump-energized Russia.
  • Extreme right-wing European political parties partial to Russia have been emboldened by U.S. hostility to our traditional allies and warming relations with Putin. Trump manipulator Elon Musk and Toady-in-Chief JD Vance are strong and vocal supporters of Germany’s far right, neo-Nazi party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and huge admirers of Hungary’s despot, Viktor Orban.
  • Trump’s irrational and self-defeating trade policies, fomenting needless disputes where there were none before, have nations fleeing American investments, treasury securities that subsidize our out-of-control national debt, as well as the U.S. dollar, the world’s reserve currency for decades and an immense advantage now being frittered away by Trump and his hack-economists. Another downside for the U.S. is that American taxpayers will also be saddled with paying higher interest rates on treasuries necessary to get our foreign underwriters to buy them.
  • Isolating the U.S. will make it more difficult if not impossible to cobble together future alliances and international agreements.
  • The most difficult and valuable intangible commodity for any nation to attain and keep is trust. That is all gone now, and foreign nations will be wary of trusting the U.S. for a long time to come, if ever, even after Trump is no longer on the scene.
  • Trump has put China in a stronger position vis-à-vis the U.S. than vice versa. What happens when China decides that it will no longer buy our treasuries and underwrite our profligate spending? When cheap Chinese goods are no longer on our retail store shelves? When China, emboldened by our abandonment of Ukraine, views that as encouragement to invade Taiwan? When the world leaves the dollar and moves toward the renminbi as the reserve currency?

All of this puts U.S. national and economic security at enormous risk. We have ceded the 21st century to our two most dangerous adversaries, China and Russia.

I don’t think the American public fully understands what is happening, and how momentous and disastrous Trump’s upending of 80 years of institutions and policies that brought us relative peace and prosperity will be.
Dick Hermann
May 2, 2025
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Rant 839: Constitutional Crisis?

4/25/2025

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The question of this fraught moment appears to be: “Is the United States in the throes of a constitutional crisis?” You can hardly tune into cable news, broadcast news or the Internet, much less open newspaper op-ed pages, without running into a media maven posing this question. The answers from the punditocracy and Democratic elected officials asked this question range from “yes” to “not yet,” with the consensus favoring the latter.
​

For me, this question was answered weeks ago. We are long past something as vague and abstract as a “constitutional crisis.” What we have here instead, thanks to a rogue regime  doing anything and everything it can to amass supreme power, all other considerations be damned, is a “Constitutional Crime Wave.”

At this writing, there are 80 holds that courts have placed on Trump administration actions, either Temporary Restraining Orders or Preliminary Injunctions. At least one judge is very close to charging administration lawyers and functionaries with criminal contempt for defying judicial orders. The judges skeptical of Trump’s actions come from throughout the political spectrum, having been appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents, including Trump. Around 100 lawsuits against the administration have not yet reached any decisional stage.

Trump says that “tariff” is the “most beautiful word in the English language.” I say that the two most beautiful English words are “due process.” This hallowed phrase crops up in connection with the mass deportations of alleged gang members to an El Salvador torture prison, a gulag by any other name. These individuals are there, likely for life, absent any constitutional due process. Charged with nothing; convicted of nothing; yet consigned to oblivion.

Many Democratic elected officials appear reluctant to speak out on behalf of these victims because they feel that Trump’s overall immigration policies are popular. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and other Democrats even called this appalling imitation of Hitler/Stalin/Mao a “distraction” that should not get in the way of criticizing Trump’s disastrous tariffs and trade war.

Newsom and his ilk are dead wrong and completely miss the point for this reason: It is quite possible to walk and chew gum at the same time. One can speak out about multiple Trump transgressions and abuses without having to choose one at the expense of all the others. One can be all for deporting undocumented criminals while also criticizing the patently unconstitutional disregard of the 5th Amendment guarantee of due process of law. In addition, Trump’s mass deportation scheme violates the 6th Amendment’s collection of rights of an accused person, and the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

This all-out assault on the Constitution must be vigorously resisted at every turn. Moreover, it is not the only attack on our foundational document that Trump and his thugs are perpetrating. The mafia-like intimidation of our universities and law firms clearly tramples on First Amendment’s Free Speech rights of these institutions. The reprehensible challenge to birthright citizenship also needs to be resisted. The Constitution’s 14th Amendment language on this point could not be plainer: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” No ambiguity at all here.
At times such as these, real leaders step forward and act with boldness. The example of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Sens. Chris van Hollen (D-MD) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) should be a rallying cry to every elected Democrat. Clearly, Newsom is not up to the task and should forfeit his future aspirations to high office. A Constitutional Crime Wave deserves much more robust opposition.

Endnote: Trump’s deportation fever dreams now include sending U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to the El Salvador gulag. Perhaps someone convicted of 34 felonies should be first in line.
​

Dick Hermann
April 25, 2025
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Rant 838: Ways to Resist Trump

4/19/2025

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1.      Buy Only Non-Tariffed Goods
 
Fifty years ago, Ithaca, New York’s CO-OP Supermarket found a way to support Cesar Chavez’s United farmworkers Union (UFU) while still satisfying customers’ food and political preferences. It offered two bins of lettuce, one labeled  “Farmworkers Lettuce,” the other labeled “Teamster Lettuce.” The battle to unionize lettuce pickers was being waged between the UFU and the management-backed Teamsters Union.
 
A number of grocery stores around the country adopted the same approach. In one of the earliest manifestations of serious political polarization, Democrats tended to favor UFU lettuce while Republicans opted for the Teamsters’ variety.
 
Today, shaken as we are by Donald Trump’s lunatic, on-again, off-again tariff insanity and ensuing, self-defeating trade war with the rest of the world (notably excepting Vladimir Putin’s Russia), retailers across-the-board (both onsite and online) have an opportunity to reinvent the lettuce protests of the 1970s. They could label products as either “Tariffed goods” or “Non-Tariffed Goods” and let their customers choose which to purchase.
 
This is by no means a perfect analogy to what happened 50 years ago. My recollection was that UFU lettuce, like tariffed goods, was slightly more expensive than Teamster lettuce, reflecting the higher wages and superior benefits negotiated by the UFU for its members.
 
2.      Don’t Hire Law Firms That Kiss Trump’s…Whatever.
 
To date, Trump’s illegal executive orders singling out law firms for retribution because they “wronged” him in some way have succeeded to a much greater extent than I believed possible, given how vigorously they traditionally advocate on behalf of their clients. He has coerced many of his target firms, as well as others who have trampled all over one another in their eagerness to placate him, to abandon their equal opportunity hiring and promotional policies, and extorted more than a billion dollars in free legal services for the administration and him personally.
 
I wrote about this in Rant 836. Since then, however, Trump has expanded his mafia-like bullying of the legal community and the list of supine firms knuckling under to his blackmail tactics has expanded.
 
A few firms so far remain defiant and are fighting Trump’s intimidation in the courts. The law is on their side and they should prevail in their cases.
 
Firms willing to resist are the only ones businesses and individuals should consider engaging. If they are bold enough to go up against a wannabe totalitarian, you know that they will fight like hell for their clients. As for those firms that have given in to Trump’s terrorizing efforts, they are certainly not going to adequately represent their clients. Existing clients of these firms should sever their engagements with them. Prospective clients should look elsewhere for representation.
 
Georgetown University law students have compiled an extensive list of both the courageous firms and the feckless “Coalition of the Cowards” who have doormatted themselves to Trump. The list includes not only the most prominent firms (a.k.a., “BigLaw”), but also hundreds of smaller firms that cater to individual as well as corporate clients.
 
The link for the Georgetown list follows:
 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1J_bcoMqt46L05As7GN4ZqH4j6XKeI-Dm4ytJPRFtrwo/htmlview#gid=287708862
 
3.      Boycotts.
 
Add to this that we can boycott the products and service offerings of companies that have surrendered to any of Trump’s illegal demands.
 
While these three resistance suggestions are admittedly modest in scope and likely effect, they are at least something. They partially fill the vacuum caused by the Reichstag Republicans who don’t dare squeak a peep against the tyrant at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the perplexingly silent Democrats who flail aimlessly about without any coherent strategy for opposing the death of our republic.


Note. Today is the 250th anniversary of the "shot heard round the world" that was fired at Lexington Green. 
 
Dick Hermann
April 19, 2025
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Rant 837: The Kafka State

4/14/2025

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Picture
When I was in Prague several years ago, the most captivating tourist site for me was the statue of Franz Kafka, the great Austrian-Czech-Jewish writer who brilliantly chronicled the existential angst and anomie of the modern world and an individual’s helplessness in the face of the unfettered power of the state. This is the central theme of The Trial, where Josef K. is arrested and prosecuted by the all-powerful and inaccessible state, his alleged crime never revealed either to him or to the reader.
 
This is where we appear to be heading now in Donald Trump’s America, until so recently the shining star of democracy and the rule of law. We have our own Gestapo, called ICE, illegally yanking people off the streets for expressing their First Amendment free speech rights. These victims of Trump’s emerging police state have not been charged with anything, but are being punished nevertheless. Due process of law, arguably the most essential bulwark of democracy, has been swept aside by Trump’s forces of evil. Last week the Supreme Court issued a half-assed decision requiring that individuals facing deportation receive some level of due process. At the same time, however, they blessed Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, flying in the face of the Court conservatives’customary bow-down to “Originalism” and “Textualism.” Corruption of plain language appears to be the Roberts Court’s forte.
 
Trump’s invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act is an absurdly thin justification for these actions in contravention of the rule of law. This law, invoked only three times previously and then only in times of a declared war, has been stretched to an extreme by Trump and his band of thugs. If they can get away with ridding the country of people on the basis of tattoos, they can come for anyone of us next.
 
What is equally dispiriting is that polls show that the public generally supports Trump’s unlawful mass deportation policies. I am all for getting illegal alien criminals duly convicted of crimes committed here out of the country. But I want to see it done the right away. It is tragic to see that hallowed concepts such as due process mean so little to Americans. I suspect one reason for this is that so many people do not grasp its meaning and importance.
 
Immigration is the only issue where Trump’s otherwise tanking poll numbers are still above water. Americans quite rightly believe that (1) immigrants should come to this country legally, and (2) criminals should be deported. I would add, however, only after they have had their day in court.
 
It is crucial that we raise our voices against Gestapo tactics such as taking people off the streets and shipping them off to torture chambers in El Salvador without an opportunity to plead their case before a judge. Better keep your doors locked.
 
The demise of due process is only one facet of Trump’s attempt to transform America into a fascist state. Decimating the economy is another. Imposing tariffs should be something that only Congress can do. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution gives Congress the “power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among states, and with the Indian tribes.” In addition, it is Congress that has the power to impose taxes. A tariff is, of course, a tax. The President does not possess these authorities. Also, tariffs should be a highly selective weapon, not a blunderbuss. Trump is the poster child for the proposition that a Wharton education is not all that it’s cracked up to be.
 
Both of these capricious acts weaken America and cause delight in our enemies. Add to this the abrupt firing of the Director and Deputy Director of the National Security Agency and six other senior National Security Council officials because an extreme lunatic fringe conspiracy theorist tells Trump they are disloyal to him, and you have the ingredients for a nation rapidly going down the fascist toilet.
 
I cannot believe that even die-hard MAGAts voted for this.
 
Dick Hermann
March 14, 2025

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    Richard Hermann is the author of thirteen books, including Encounters: Ten Appointments with History and, most recently, Mother's Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times. Soon to be released is his upcoming Close Encounters with the Cold War, a personal reflection on growing up in the nuclear age. He is a former law professor and entrepreneur, and the founder and president of Federal Reports, Inc., a legal information and consulting firm that was sold in 2007. He has degrees from Yale University, the New School University, Cornell Law School and the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School. He lives with his wife, Anne, and extraordinary dog, Barkley, in Arlington, Virginia and Canandaigua, New York.

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