Cablization

If you rely on a cable company or satellite provider for your television programming, you start by paying for a basic package that includes the most popular, and innocuous, programming. If you want to add sports coverage, that’s extra. Movies, extra. And so on, to a very large bill if you want everything. And everything isn’t everything. With a full package, you still don’t have any alternative news sources. There is nothing comparable to this blog, or any other blog for that matter. There are no outlets for individual voices, because there is no money to be made from that, so the content providers believe. Even small record labels and distributors have no way to get word to you on cable or satellite about their artists.

Fortunately, for the moment, we have net neutrality. The term is intimidating, but what it means in plain terms is that all of the missing elements I mentioned above can be found on the internet. Unlike cable and satellite providers, internet providers are currently required to provide the entire internet, even the nooks and crannies that could never be profit centers for them. And that is really what the current struggle to save net neutrality is about. Donald Trump and his friends can talk all they want about the best way to promote innovation on the internet, but the truth is that they want to do away with net neutrality in order to allow large companies to monetize our online lives more effectively. That means having access only to websites they believe the can sell to large numbers of people. It means your preferred social network might become part of a premium package. It means you might lose access to Facebook for several months while they fight through a contract dispute with your provider. And it means that many independent musicians would lose their careers. That last one may be more important to me than to some of my readers, but it is part of a larger suppression of independent voices that would result from the loss of net neutrality. Many truly independent political websites would be lost, or at least lost to most people. Russian propaganda sites would not be lost, however, because they are well financed. They could meet the prices internet providers would ask to carry their services.

So far, I have only mentioned the natural consequences of the loss of net neutrality. By that, I mean the effects that accrue from the new financial model that would follow from a closed internet. This stifling of independent voices would happen for purely financial reasons, without any intent from internet service providers. But surely, there would also be intent. My current internet provider is Verizon, and they could decide that they will not allow access to any website whose politics they don’t like. There would be no way to stop them from doing this. Initially, there might arise new internet providers who fill the gaps by allowing access to these niche sites, but the financial aspects of doing so would make it hard to stay in business, while the Verizons of the world would be busy lobbying Congress to eliminate these competitors.

I hope my readers already know that I am writing this post now because Trump’s head of the FCC, Ajit Pai, has proposed eliminating net neutrality, and ushering in a new era of a fully monetized internet. The FCC has to allow public comments until December 14, and they will then make a final decision. During that time, we need to flood the FCC with our comments. We also need to pressure our Senators and Congressmen to go on record in opposition to Pai’s plan. We do not have to listen to any politician who wants to tell us what the new, monetized internet would look like. We already know. Almost all of us have cable or satellite television, so we’ve seen this show already. Fortunately, there are many links like this one that make it easy to send comments to the FCC. Please do so, and remember that adding your own comments counts for extra on the receiving end; it shows the FCC that you cared enough to personalize your response, and that it did not come from a bot.

My musical selection this week has to come from an independent band. Red Molly have self produced and released all of their albums. They have made a good career for themselves, using the strength of their performances, the occasional video like this one, their website, and online vendors for their CDs. One such vendor is CD Baby, and that is a site that would be hurt by the loss of net neutrality. So I would like to believe that artists like this would continue to be able to share their art with us even if we lose this fight, but surely their careers would suffer.

Paying at the Pump

I don’t want to see the economy collapse. I am not even wishing for a mild recession. But I watch as Wall Street continues to celebrate the Trump presidency, and I know this can not end well. I once worked as a financial advisor for Morgan Stanley. There are many reasons why it did not work out for me, but one was the toxic political environment I found there. There was a near religious belief in Republican policy prescriptions, despite the fact that the market had ultimately fallen in every Republican administration, and risen in every Democratic one, since World War II. That was in 2001, but even though it remains true today, Wall Street does not seem to have learned anything from this streak. I have talked about the reason for this disconnect before: the market is not the economy. Supporters of Donald Trump like to point to the Wall Street rally under his rule so far as evidence that the Republicans got it right this time, so let’s take a look at why the market, and corporate profits, are doing so well, and why that might not continue. I am not an economist, so I am going to focus on something most people aren’t talking about yet: the price of oil.

The price of oil is something anyone can see for themselves at the gas pump. It has a great impact on consumer spending. Far away from Wall Street or Capitol Hill, most Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, so more expensive oil means we must cut costs elsewhere in order to afford fill our tanks. When gas prices jump, there is a period of denial, in which Americans increase borrowing to make up the difference. We are in such a period now, but borrowing has its limits, so gas prices must come back down soon if consumer spending is to remain unaffected. Even now, Wall Street is being surprised by earnings reports in the retail sector. There are some exceptions, but the story these earnings reports are trying to tell is that Americans are downshifting their spending, so McDonalds and WalMart are doing well, but mid-range retailers and restaurants are not.

So what does Donald Trump have to do with the price of oil? Americans enjoyed a sharp drop in oil prices during the Obama administration. To give credit where it is due, this was partly due to a continuation of energy policies started in the administration of George W Bush that promoted and greatly expanded domestic oil production, and Trump is continuing this effort, possibly even expanding it by pushing for exploration and drilling on public lands. That’s bad news for the environment, but it helps keep prices lower at the pump. However, Obama also applied downward pressure on oil prices with his push for alternate energy, and here, Trump has completely dropped the ball. Trump has exerted upward pressure on oil prices by placing obstacles in the way of alternative energy development, thereby freezing our dependence on oil at current levels.

Less obvious but possibly more important is the conduct of foreign policy. Obama had a fully staffed State Department, and he understood the subtleties of diplomacy. While he was president, OPEC was knocked off balance, and it became harder for them to commit to unified actions to control the global market for oil. Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but Trump believes the State Department is wasteful, and he has deliberately left many key positions unfilled. He also appointed as Secretary of State former oil executive Rex Tillerson. Tillerson knows that more expensive oil globally means increased profits for companies like the one he used to lead. Just recently, OPEC seems to have recovered their balance: their recent agreement to lower production quotas has been the main driver behind the recent rise in oil prices.

There is one other driver to consider, and that is the Republican tax plan. Tax cuts and credits for the working poor and the middle class translate to consumer spending. But when you have all the money you need already, a big tax cut allows you to put more away for the purchase of stocks and more speculative investments. One of those speculative investments is oil futures. The price of oil on world markets includes a speculative premium. By that, I mean that investors buy oil futures, and those purchases translate into higher prices at the gas pump than you and I would otherwise pay. In normal times, this speculative premium is modest, and the sale of futures helps to stabilize prices. But now the Republican tax plan threatens to provide oil speculators with additional funds to play the futures market. No one wants to miss the party, and we have seen that other trends are favorable, so the speculative premium for oil is increasing in anticipation of the Trump tax cuts. This is true even if the tax cuts do not ultimately pass, because speculators do not want to wait to take their positions until the tax bill is law, for fear of missing the profits to be had in the meantime.

So I expect that oil prices will at least remain at their current elevated levels, and possibly go higher still from here. That will put pressure on consumer spending, as would any cuts to safety net programs that Republicans manage to pass. Eventually, even Wall Street will notice, and with stock prices already high by most historical measures, that won’t be pretty. It is notoriously difficult to predict the timing of the stock market, and I failed badly last December. So I will simply leave you with this meditation on oil, and a song about oil prices from forty years ago:

The Road to Impeachment

I have friends who have been calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump since the day he was elected. As a practical matter, impeachment would generally require a president to take office, and then commit an impeachable offense, in that order. Still, I share the sentiment. This is a man who settled fraud charges against himself out of court in December, without admitting wrongdoing, but still. This is also a man who had a twenty year old rape charge disappear when his accuser once again dropped the case when faced with new death threats. So I have believed since Election Day that Trump could not possibly finish his first term. He has a long history of contempt for our laws, suggesting that he is simply incapable of behaving as if they apply to him. He regards out of court settlements not as penalties for wrongdoing, but simply as costs of doing business. Having said all of that, there was still a certain sequence of events that would be needed to actually get us to an impeachment. The first of those events finally happened this week. Robert Mueller unveiled criminal charges against those in Trump’s orbit. So what has to happen to get us from here to the end of the Trump presidency?

First, let’s talk about the charges that were brought, and why. Paul Manafort and Rick Davis grabbed the headlines at first. They were jointly charged in an elaborate scheme that involved secretly working for foreign actors, and collaborating with them on a plan to evade paying US taxes on the income gained. That last bit, the collaboration with foreign actors to evade income tax, is the basis for the charge of conspiracy against the United States. The charge sounds spectacular, but it is a much lesser charge than treason, which is not indicated here. Trump was right when he said that there was nothing in these charges about collusion regarding the election, and that the events that gave rise to these charges began long before the campaign began. Any normal campaign would have discovered much of this, and never brought Manafort aboard, but a lack of proper vetting is not an impeachable offense. But here we should also remember that Al Capone finally went to jail for tax evasion. So the charges against Manafort and Davis that were filed this week do not tell us that they did not collude regarding the election; instead, they mean that these are the crimes Mueller feels he has enough evidence of to gain convictions. The plan now is to use a plea bargain process to get Davis, and especially Manafort, to testify about what they know. These are also just the federal crimes that Manafort and Davis may have committed, and Trump can only pardon potential federal offenses. Mueller is saving plenty of potential crimes for charges especially in New York State, in case Trump tries to protect his people with a pardon. Even so, Monday was not free of collusion. Later, Mueller revealed a guilty plea from George Papadopoulis. The charge here is lying to investigators, but the substance of the lies had to do with a Russian offer to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulis is cooperating with investigators, and what we know so far could form the basis of perjury charges against Jeff Sessions.

That’s how it is done. When Richard Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment, it was after months of watching associates being arrested, and turning state’s witness. We are only at the beginning of that process now, but it has begun, and there is every reason to think it will go further, involving people closer and closer to Trump’s direct orbit. Trump foolishly repeated his attempted command that Mueller must not investigate Trump’s business and financial dealings; this only serves to make the public wonder what we will find there. So the legal and investigative steps that could lead to impeachment are well under way. But more is needed.

Impeachment is the bringing of charges by the House of Reprsentatives, and the charges are then tried by the Senate. The Senate must vote to convict with a two thirds majority. The strongest possible criminal case must be backed up with a political climate that makes impeachment possible and successful. That climate is not in place now. Based on what we know now, the House as currently constituted is more interested in protecting Trump than impeaching him. Even if they did, there are not the votes in the Senate to convict. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was a sham trial, because the Republicans who brought it knew they could not get the votes to convict in the Senate. To get to impeachment as the evidence against Trump accumulates, we will also need changes in the political environment. We may well need the Republicans to lose a significant number of seats in both the House and the Senate in next year’s election. But even if that happens, we will still need to convince many Republicans that we the people will punish them for a failure to bring Donald Trump to justice. We must convince them that loyalty to a corrupt president from their own party will cost them enough votes to cost them their seats. We must make them choose between party loyalty and the good of the nation.

In order to force that choice, we must vote, and it can matter if we start doing so this coming Tuesday. If we make sure we go to the polls in large numbers in this odd year election, and we make sure that every possible member of the Republican Party is defeated, that would send a powerful message. For many years, the Republicans in general, and the Tea Party movement in particular, have been able to count on us staying home in off year elections. They have encouraged the idea that the two parties are the same, that your vote does not matter, and you have helped them immensely if you believed it. But, in direct contradiction to that, these same people have worked hard to create new obstacles to voting, especially for minorities who lean heavily Democratic. Clearly, your vote must make a difference, and your party preference must matter as well, if they are willing to work this hard to keep you home. So Tuesday’s election is mostly for local offices. Maybe there is someone you have known all your life and liked, maybe even given your trust to, and this year he is running for the proverbial dog catcher position as a Republican. Sorry, but we must make sure his Democratic opponent wins. If you are lucky enough to live in a place where an independent can win, more power to you, but please be careful with this one. The important thing is, this election can be a powerful rejection of the current path of the Republican Party, but only if we show up, and turn any and all Republicans out or away. That is how we can convince sitting Republicans in Washington to walk the road to impeachment with us.

I’m cheating a bit this week with my song choice, in order to share an old favorite. Only the title of the song really has anything to do with my subject. You may know The Road from Jackson Browne’s version, which is well worth hearing if you haven’t. But this is the original version, by an artist who deserves to be better known, Danny O’Keefe: