… otherwise the oligarchs win.

Lots of folks these days are giving up on the U.S. because of our current politics.  They see Trump and his minions attacking universities and the press, kidnapping and disappearing legal residents … you know the list; but they see these things as separate issues.  It seems to me that we have exactly one problem that takes a variety of forms:  the oligarcy trying, and so far succeeding, to divide us and to make us feel hopeless and just give up.

Don’t give up.  Stay aware of the crap that’s going on.  Get angry.  Even if you’re an old fart like me who can’t do much more than write angry blog posts, keep at it.  There are a few signs that things might turn around before long.

– Trump’s approval ratings are dropping, not among the MAGAts (racists are still cheering on his disappearing of people with darker complexions; he’s still the fundagelicals actual lord and savior), but among those who thought he’d lower egg prices.  There’s probably enough of them to swing an election as close as the recent ones.

– There will be some interesting cases before the Supreme Court some time this year.  It’s possible that at least two of the gang of six will be not entirely shameless.

– Democratic primaries will begin about a year from now, give or take; and they might be interesting.  For example, there’s talk of AOC going after Schumer.  That’ll be fun to watch if it happens.

– The midterms are coming up in about a year and a half, give or take; and I’m guessing that we won’t be having Russia-style elections that soon.  It’s possible that Democrats, more progressive candidates among them, will take control of one or both houses of Congress.

It probably won’t be the end of republican democracy until the 2028 general election, and only if nothing good happens before then.

We need to primary Democrats who are old rich guys and who are friends of the oligarcs, and do whatever we can to get them elected.  Let’s keep at it.

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I’ve been pretty depressed lately, and not only because of Trump.  I haven’t written much of anything in quite a while, and I think the post above shows it.  Indeed, it seems rather disjointed to me, and not something that would make me think that I’d learned anything.  I need to break out of this funk.  Is this a start at least?  We’ll see…

For the next three weeks or so, the news is likely to be all about one dead guy who, as Kristjan Wager put it, “represented a bigoted organization, covering up for child molesters”.  I now add to my current depression the worry about what the Trump/Musk regime and its gaggle of grifters will get away with while nobody is paying attention.

With any luck, I’m overreacting.

Update:  I haven’t been following Francis because I don’t really care; but I guess he was one of the good guys after all.  Robert Reich posted a eulogy on his substack; so I defer to Reich’s better knowledge of Francis himself; but I keep the same opinion of the Roman Catholic Church and the same worry about what more important news might be missed.

I heard on the news this morning that Trump has halted all military aid to Ukraine.  The “official” reason is that it’s a temporary halt to evaluate the effectiveness of the aid.  Bullshit.  The two purposes are to feel macho by punching down like bullies do and to give Putin time to take more territory before the Europeans get their aid packages ready.

Trump is giving his state of the union speech tonight.  What I fear is that Democrats will remain totally spineless; and I note that they’ve already selected a “moderate” to give the Democratic response.  (The Republicans will be utterly shameless, but that will come as no surprise.)

I’m beginning to lose all hope that America can avoid becoming a failed state.

I retired from the USPS about three years ago, but I still like to hear how my former colleagues are doing.  From a recent private e-mail [my own comments in italics in square brackets]:

… I fear the following:

1) A unilateral override of our remote work MOU [Memo of Understanding—a kind of addendum to the union contract].  Trump has recently declared that ONLY HE has the right to interpret the law for the executive branch, and this includes all labor laws.  The department of labor won’t matter, and he can just order the post office to ignore arbitration.  He’s made a power play to eliminate the independence of any agency.  This still has to be challenged in court, and I expect it will.  But he’s challenging the system in ways it has not been challenged before, and anything is possible.

2) A unilateral decision to ARBITRARILY FIRE all Probationary Employees.  This could involve those across all crafts, as well as those who recently promoted into management (and are going through their EAS [first level of management] probation).

3) A unilateral action by management to start using extreme productivity tracking to try and terminate us.  In the federal agencies, all computers are being ordered to be installed with key loggers to track productivity, as if the only method of tracking productivity is how many characters per minute you type, or how many mouse clicks you make.  These are not productivity trackers, but metrics designed to terminate people.

4) And if all 3 of these things are on the table, then everything else is as well – such as replacing postal IT with GSA IT.  He could try to replace our internal HR with OPM.  Anything is possible.  After all, he’s the sole arbitrator of the law in his estimation.

The USPS is required by law to deliver, at a uniform price and service level, to all locations in the United States and its territories.  How long will that continue if the Muskrats fire all the probationary rural carriers¹?  And what about delivering mail in Alaska where there are no roads²?  Does anybody seriously think that a private for-profit company will do that?

Trump can claim correctly, and probably will, that the Postal Service loses billions annually; but IIUC, that’s almost all due to a legal requirement to fully fund the retirement system for decades, something that no other company does.  My understanding is that they at least break even, on average, on actual services rendered; and IIRC, priority mail³ is actually quite profitable.

This is blantantly illegal; but Trump doesn’t care about the law.  Republican congresscritters won’t do anything to stop it (they’re all scared of getting primaried, and I’ve read that some of them have even gotten death threats); and SCOTUS’ Gang of Six have shown themselves to be utterly shameless; so we don’t have an effective separation of powers anymore.  I’m beginning to lose all hope.

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¹”Letter carrier” is the official term for the person who delivers mail to your home or P.O. box.

²Mail moves to and from small town post offices in Alaska in small aircraft.  Yes, really.  I was a programmer on a system that connects desired movements of the mail with available transportation, and “Alaska Contract” is one of the air transportation types.

³The marketeers’ term for what was called “parcel post” when I was growing up. 😎

Putin and Trump negotiating a Ukrainian peace deal with both Ukraine and Europe excluded, and not even pretending otherwise, gave me a possibly not so bright idea:  the next round of negotiations could be something like semi-finals.

Europe
--------|
        |________________
Ukraine |                |
--------|                |
                         |________________
 Putin                   |
--------|                |
        |________________|
 Trump  |
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I just found out from an e-mail list related to passenger rail that Amtrak will be rolling back its DEI initiatives.

I couldn’t find Amtrak mentioned in Project 2025.  There’s hardly anything about rail at all.  This smells like “obeying in advance”.

Ken Martin has been elected as the chair of the Democratic National Committee.  In his acceptance speech, he used “billionaires” several times, always in a perjorative sense.  Can we hope that the Democrats will no longer be content with enjoying the view out of the Overton window, but rather try to get the working-class vote back?  We’ll see…

I heard “out of the corner of my ear” on today’s Today show that Trump had fired several departments’ inspector generals.  I Googled for it; and it turns out to be true:  he did indeed fire 17 IGs overnight, presumably to replace them with the usual yes-men.  I won’t bother including any links since several stories from outlets like Reuters all the way to Bezos’ Washington Post showed up right at the top.

It turns out that there’s a 2020 law that says that the president must give Congress 30 days notice before such a firing; and several congresscritters (including Republicans like Grassley) have already opposed the move.  We’ll see whether there are enough principled Republicans for the Congress to say, “no, you can’t do that”.