What if…terrorists targeted the mega wealthy?

Posted on September 24, 2023 by Jason O

The assassination of The Richest Man In The World™ (TRM) was the biggest story in the world. The clip of a bullet passing through his skull, caught on a bystander’s phone as he exited a building in San Francisco, instantly became one of the defining images of the 21st century. He was dead before he hit the ground. Interestingly, it was not even to be the most startling event of the day.

That came exactly two hours later, when a handsome AI generated man in a video took credit for the murder. He informed the rapidly increasing number of viewers that an email containing information about the murder had been sent directly to the FBI and would confirm his claim to be the voice of the assassins.

He then introduced himself as George, after “another great revolutionary” and said that he spoke for The 99, an organization dedicated to addressing the wealth imbalance between the mega wealthy and everyone else. He stressed that he was neither on the far right or far left, and that this was not an ideological matter. This was a simple matter of wealth transfer. The murder of TRM, he said, was a statement of intent, a proof of concept as to their seriousness. But no one else need die.

He then published a list of the world’s 200 richest individuals, and offered a deal. If they transferred 10% of their wealth to a stated list of popular banks and micro finance charities across the world, and ordered that the money be distributed equally among every account holder with less than $1000 in their account, they would be safe for one year. As would their families.

George finished by saying that they would act again soon if the individuals did not respond within 72 hours.

America through a cop show.

Posted on August 15, 2023 by Jason O

I have recently been watching the TV show “The Rookie” on Now TV. Now entering its sixth season, the show is about officer John Nolan (Nathan Fillion), a 45 year old construction contractor from Pennsylvania who becomes the oldest rookie in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department.

It’s a very entertaining police procedural with a light sprinkling of humour, and also, as one binge watches, an interesting insight into how America sees itself on TV.

One of the constant themes of the show is the need for people to be “held accountable”, or the attribution of blame, a theme which the show is very self aware about.

Episode after episode is about working people who end up breaking laws which they simply do not have the financial capacity to obey. Whether it is affording motor tax, or leaving an elderly relative unattended so that you can attend the job interview that will help pay for her care, the show often focusses on how Americans set themselves levels of rigidity and personal responsibility that their social and economic model conspires to prevent them reaching.

Another constant theme which will strike an Irish viewer is the lack of pragmatic approaches by the police officers in the show to problems compared to say, how an Irish Garda would approach it.

One episode sees a single father who has recently lost his wife commit an opportunistic crime (he steals money from bank robbers) to help alleviate his son’s situation. The episode ends with the father being arrested, and the son handed over to social services, an outcome which satisfies no one and results in huge taxpayer cost and the breakup of a struggling family with the social costs that will entail. Yet the officers have no choice: everything is measured by arrest and conviction, with a sprinkling of puritan judgementalism.

I’m aware, in writing this, that I’m an advocate of more robust policing in Ireland. But I still support the need for police officers, as members of society, to be able to exercise judgement and pursue the path of least harm, a policy that the characters of “The Rookie” often yearn for in their daily policing.

The other striking aspect, and I’ve no idea how realistic this is, or whether it is just Hollywood hype, is how nearly every episode has a normalised gun battle on public streets involving the use of military grade fully automatic weapons, with civilians fleeing streets as thousands of rounds of ammunition are expended.

Have a look: it’s a good show.

Pressure Point: A Romney/Obama Adventure. (repost from 2012)

Posted on March 18, 2023 by Jason O

Repost from 2012: The following post is an idea for a short story I had about Governor Romney and President Obama being locked in a room together. It’s a very long post. You have been warned!

The governor waved once more to the crowd in the Lynn University auditorium, and walked off the stage, Ann’s hand held firmly in his. In the wings, his campaign manager beamed his reaction to the governor’s performance in the final presidential debate with an enthusiastic two thumbs up.

“Governor, that was marvellous!” he said, with a wide grin. The governor raised an eyebrow. It had been the theme inside the campaign, his alleged 1950s style stiffness becoming a source of light ribbing from his campaign team. He actually found it quite funny, especially as his sons were very much the ringleaders.

The debate had been the hardest of the three, with the president holding his own and the governor having to tread very carefully, especially on Iran. His pollsters had been very clear: Defend Israel Yes, lead America into another Republican war, a big fat No. He felt he had kept the balance.

His sons were giving him firm handshakes and slapping his back when he noticed the head of his Secret Service detail speaking to another man he didn’t recognise. The agent walked over.

“Governor, the president has asked that you join him. A traditional matter, I’m told.”

The governor stiffened. It was not commonly known, and he had certainly not known until he had been informed on winning his party’s nomination, that a communications line between the sitting president and his likely opponent was agreed early in the campaign. If the candidate was informed of the phrase “a traditional matter” it meant that there was a national security issue he needed to be briefed on, off the record and not for campaign exploitation. It was a matter of pride to all in the know that the system had never been abused since it was set up by President Ford in the 1970s. Continue reading →

The US gun debate is missing a key point.

Posted on February 27, 2023 by Jason O

I recently finished “The second amendment: a biography” by Michael Waldman. It’s a very concise read and although it does come from a pro-gun control position, Waldman accepts that there is a considerable amount of ambiguity in both the US Constitution, Bill of Rights and indeed state legislation and precedent going back to the founding of the Republic. The truth is that one could argue both sides of the question: is there a right to bear arms for individuals in the United States?

A plain text reading of the second amendment taking into account the prevailing thought at the time probably leans against such a right existing. The reality is that the founding fathers were actually far more concerned with the possibility of a standing army existing, given their negative experiences of King George’s standing army, and therefore wished a militia made up of armed individuals to be willing and able to take the place of a standing army in the need of maintaining public order or the defence of the state.

It’s also worth noting that when Justice Antonin Scalia wrote his analysis in the 2008 Heller case which effectively created for the first time in US constitutional law a definitive right of an individual to own and bear arms, that Scalia was as engaged in the creative judicial activism which Conservatives so much complained about with regard to cases such as Roe Vs Wade.

The fact that the judge actually affectively ignored half the text of the amendment was as much an act of judicial adventurism as any act are carried out by a liberal judge seeking to find new rights in 200-year-old texts.

One thing that really comes out of the book, however, is the absolute danger of elevating a group of individual founding fathers a quarter of a millennium ago into holy men whose writings and thoughts are now treated as holy scripture.

It is a bizarre piece of American exceptionalism that the Constitution is held not just in reverence, as it should be, but almost like a golden calf to be grovelled before.

It is, of course, easy from an Irish perspective when we have a relatively young constitution by American standards to talk about the need for a constitution to be a living document that reflects the reality of the times in which it has been applied.

Indeed many of the American right object entirely to the idea of the living document instead seeking Safe-haven in the concept of Originalism and the parsing of a specific text for answers and meaning, again like clergy attempting to interpret scripture.

For that is the problem. The founding fathers were not better than today’s Americans and almost certainly would not have wanted themselves to be regarded as being better than today’s Americans, or having some access to some higher level of wisdom that all the Americans living in today’s America don’t have access to.

The truth is that the United States badly needs to hold a revising constitutional convention where it’s elected representatives, whilst respecting the existing text and the service it has given to the American people, recognising that something as important as the Constitution should be revised on a regular basis to reflect the reality of the times in which a delivery.

Not, by the way, that I’m holding my breath as to something like that happening because we know full well how difficult it is to amend the US Constitution. But also that, given the sharp partisan divisions in the American Republic today, any sort of attempt to take a good-faith approach to revising the governing document of the Republic will be regarded with deep suspicion especially from the right but equally probably from the left as well.

It’s a pity because the constant referring back to a document written in an age radically different from the America that Americans live in today is one of the great injustices being inflicted upon the citizens of one of the greatest nations on Earth.

Thank God for the Americans.

Posted on January 8, 2023 by Jason O

“Americans! They’re all thick!” is a common remark in Irish circles after the latest eye-rolling piece of news that comes from stateside. It’s not unique to the Irish either: the rest of the world has no shortage of superior notions on hearing the latest from President Trump or the millions of gun-toting paranoiacs who voted for him. It’s very easy to feel smarter than the Average American.

And yet: here’s the thing. The United States is not just another country. It is a country so powerful that it can supply Ukraine with enough weapons to paralyse its former superpower rival whilst utilising a mere 5% of its defence budget. And not just any old weapons either. Advanced missile systems that allow a single infantryman to destroy a Russian tank worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. HIMARS missile systems which allow Ukraine to devastate Russian forces. US satellites that provide incredibly accurate information on enemy forces to Ukraine. Sure, the UK and France and Germany are contributing in their own ways, but the reality is this: Ukraine is not defeated because the United States stepped in and equipped a brave but shockingly underequipped Ukrainian army with the arsenal of democracy. The US saved Ukraine.

Not only that, but the US also maintains a vast nuclear arsenal and air force and 12 aircraft carriers where the nearest rival has two. Could it suddenly fight China if it had to? Probably. It would almost certainly require the US economy to shift from its current consumer footing to a military manufacturing mode, but it could do that, and what’s more, that’s when, the US really shines.

People forget what defeated both Nazism and the Empire of Japan. Yes, British and especially Russian blood sacrifice, but what did it was the incomprehensible heft of sheer American economic power. It was American steel and Studebaker trucks that kept the Soviets in the fight.

If a giant asteroid was detected to be on an impact course with Earth, who would we all turn to? Beijing? Brussels? London? No. Even if the EU got 20 year notice that a giant meteorite was going to destroy, say, Poland, we’d still not get our act together. Once again, we’d assume that only one country would have the mix of resources, know-how and sheer willpower to actually save humanity. And after they did it, we’d bitch about their arrogance and lack of consultation.

Can we rely on them forever? Probably not. The US feels like it is turning in on itself, and not just on its right. If there was, say, an Ocasio-Cortez led liberal landslide, there’d be a huge focus on building a massively expanded (and expensive) US welfare state with an American NHS at its core.

As if that is depressing enough, just remember that there is only one country with a sniff at matching US power, and it is a brutal one party dictatorship that uses tanks against its own people.

As for Europe: we can’t even agree on a single currency.

What if…President Trump was convicted and jailed?

Posted on December 23, 2022 by Jason O

President Donald J. Trump

It had been the selection of a jury that had taken so much time. Trying to find twelve jurors plus substitutes who did not have a strong opinion on the former President of the United States took months, because even those who claimed little interest in politics were found to have made some political comment on social media at one time or another. The Trump legal team, funded at huge expense by the Republican National Committee, had even objected to the idea of registered Democrats being on the jury, and the federal prosecutor was not enamored with registered Republicans serving either. The judge, on the point of desperation, proposed a compromise: Each side could submit 20 names, and he would pick, at random, 20 names from a hat. Both sides objected, but he ruled, and told them that if either side refused to submit their 20 names from the available jury pool he would pick names at random to fill that side’s quota. Both sides informed the judge that they would be appealing his decision, which he told them was their right, and set a date for the trial.

Continue reading →

Life in the Constitutional States of America.

Posted on December 10, 2022 by Jason O

A political fantasy.

President Cruz looked out of the window of the New White House at the large crowds gathered in front of the building. The executive building, formally known as Mar a Lago had not been an ideal location for the new government of the CSA, but as with so many things, a Trump family tax shenanigan had led to it. The former president had “Gifted” it to the new nation, and the whole area had been designated a Constitutional District and so was now the capital. Somehow, of course, the Trumps had made money out of this, but not one member of the CS Senate had dared point this out. Cruz had read a piece in The Economist which had likened the Trumps to the Thai or Saudi Royal Families as the CSA’s “ruling family”. It wasn’t a million miles from the truth: the former president and now his children still had a bewitching power over voters in the Constitutional Republican primaries, and that was the only way into power in the CSA given that the more liberal urban areas were now gerrymandered and voter-harrassed into ineffectiveness.

The peaceful separation of the United States into the Federal States (mostly blue) and the Constitutional States (mostly red) had been a long and painfully negotiated process following the nightmare of the 2024 presidential election. Minnesota voted by a surprising margin to join the CSA whilst Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina all surprised pundits by voting to join the “blue US”. The United States continued to exist legally, as a common customs, currency and defence bloc, but within ten years of the “manifest divorce” clear differences were visible, and no more so than in the CSA.

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The politics of “Yellowstone”.

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Posted on November 25, 2022 by Jason O

If you haven’t been watching “Yellowstone” on Paramount Plus, which enters its fifth season, you’ve been missing a treat. A cross between “Sons of Anarchy” and “Falcon Crest”, the show features Kevin Costner (He of tongue in bottom lip fame) as John Dutton III, the patriarch of the vast 50,000 acre Yellowstone ranch in Montana his family founded and own since the 1880s. Created by Taylor Sheridan, the show has been labelled by some as a conservative or red state show, and superfically it could bear that label. The value of “keeping what’s ours” is one repeated by many characters throughout the series, and coupled with the constant resort to frontier justice, you can easily see why a certain type of conservative would like the show.

And yet, the politics of the show is much more blended with grey and subtlety.

Dutton is obviously a wealthy and politically powerful man in the state, practically handpicking certain state offices that matter to his business interests, including appointing himself state livestock commissioner, which allows him to have a de facto private police force. He uses a helicopter to both travel to the state capital but also to ranch. In one scene, whilst remonstrating with a Chinese tourist who complains about one man owning so much land, Dutton declares “This is America: we don’t share land.”

And yet, he’s not without money worries. It becomes apparent that whilst his land might be worth nearly half a billion dollars, his personal wealth is probably closer to $40m and he fears local development could sharply increase his property tax liabilities beyond his ability to pay.

Nor is he greedy: when he’s offered huge wealth in return for abandoning his family legacy he simply refuses, even though he knows he is fighting a losing battle against change. For him, legacy and family is everything, a value many Americans can see and respect very easily. He’s not without compassion either: intervening to help a widow deprive a bank of assets he feels her family needs more.

His various nemesis also have a political dimension: his ranch is bordered by a Native American reservation led by business savvy politician Thomas Rainwater (Gil Bermingham) who wants to retake the Yellowstone ranch because “for thousands of years our people hunted, fished and lived on that land: then John Dutton’s great grandfather built a house.” Rainwater supports development because it brings his tribe more revenue for public services. Yet he also shares, with Dutton, a desire for conservation and preserving as much of the valley they both share.

The show is also full of contradictions. Dutton sees the irony, in his family claiming the land in the 1880s from Native Americans, then having to face off against even more well-resourced developers who make the same point the Chinese tourist did, and marvel at the arrogance of one family blocking the creation of thousands of (low paying) jobs. Indeed, one developer, Dan Jenkins (Danny Houston) is genuinely outraged at Dutton’s belief that outsiders have no right to share in the beauty he owns except on his terms.

One other aspect of the show is the disparity in wealth on display: Dutton, Rainwater and the developers all live in relative opulence, whilst their employees and voters live in a world of precarious employment, threats of banks foreclosing, and the powerful pretty much deciding which candidates will be permitted even contest elections. Most of his employees live in a dormitory on the ranch. Many Europeans will look at Dutton paying for an employee’s medical expenses not as a sign of generosity but an indictment where vital medical treatment is only available on the whim of a wealthy employer. The occasional gun battle, normally led by Dutton’s ex-special forces (On USTV, there are no ex-military cooks or plumbers, only special forces) son Kayce in his guise as a Livestock Agent, tend to be against hired goons from developers muscling in on Dutton, or petty criminals trying to make a living in the hard scrabble society of modern-day America. And yet few complain: so inbred is that “Keeping what’s ours” mentality that far fewer people in the show question the morality of a single man owning a vast part of a state than applaud his son and shake his hand for machine gunning a petty cattle rustler and leaving his daughter an orphan.

If it has a political bias, Yellowstone is culturally liberal (recognizing the great crimes committed against Native Americans) whilst just shrugging its shoulders at economic disparity as if it is some form of natural phenomenon, like a tornado. That’s probably a mainstream view in America today.

Great books you should read: Boss by Mike Royko.

Posted on November 24, 2022 by Jason O

Mike Royko’s Boss is the definitive book on understanding Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago and how a man modern times sees as a thug and a racist won the genuine affections of thousands.

If you only read the opening chapter, Royko (Who was as much a character himself as Mayor Daley, and straight out of central casting as the hardbitten big city newsman.) paints a picture of a day in the life of Daley, and it is fascinating. Royko blamed Daley, by the way, for the 1968 debacle at the Democratic convention and Nixon’s narrow victory over Hubert Humphrey in the presidential election later that year.

Daley was the classic Democratic Big City Boss in a one party city where, in some elections, the Democratic machine handpicked the Republican opponent. Yet there is also the machine where political careers and places on the party slate are won or lost because someone happens to go for a piss at the wrong time.

You also get to see the city leader who knows that he has to deliver to the little guy (As long as he’s the right colour and ethnic background, of course.) and has guys on the city payroll manning automatic elevators. Why? Because as Mayor Daley said, elevators don’t vote.

A slim volume and an absolute classic, and not just a history of a time but a lesson in how raw politics works.

What if…the west armed the women of Afghanistan?

Posted on September 11, 2022 by Jason O

It had been the scene of a young Afghan woman being publicly beaten by a tribal elder for talking to a boy on her mobile phone that had done it. There had been those in the administration in DC who had already crafted plans, but the media response to the incident had finally convinced the president, a decent man and father of daughters, to support the plan.

The military had already selected the site in rural Afghanistan. Effectively a mountaintop fortress, accessible by air, but otherwise protected by sheer cliffs on nearly all sides, and with a ground access that could be transformed into a bloody killzone if needed. It had its own water source, grounds for crops and cattle, good solar power frontage and, the military reckoned, it could house up to 30,000 people if planned properly.

Its approach was constantly surveyed by drones and its own designated NSA satellite. Female NSA operatives volunteered their own free time to guard over the site.

It was called Operation Themyscira, after the fictional home of Wonder Woman. The name would become more and more appropriate as time moved on.

The US president was clear in his address. The US had left Afghanistan. But it was not abandoning the women of Afghanistan. There would be a refuge for them, defended firstly by the United States, where women could flee to, run by women, for women.