Protest events in Russia are a warning to Trumpists updated March 1.2021 and April 6, 2021

So, lovers of autocracy and anti-Constitutionalist, haters of peaceful transfers of power in government, here is what happens when the economy cools, disillusionment sets in and there is no way to oust a dictator/autocrat. except to take to the streets. Protest events in Russia are a warning. Careful what you wish, aiders and abetters of Trumpism. What you support now, may come back and bite you where it hurts later This is kind of regime change attempts we see in Russia is particularly difficult to accomplish when the dictator controls media and lies through his teeth about election outcomes, Trump wanted to take us there.

Even in April, 51% of Republicans were sure the Jan.6 riots in DC were mostly peaceful. Their attitudes represent the greatest threat to democracy. Half of Republicans believe false narratives about the Capitol riot, poll says | Business Insider India

Update March 1, 2021

Here is what happens in an autocracy. today.. when the dear leader controls the press, judiciary, legislature, and power. This is a message to devotees of Trumpism and those excusing Jan 6, a power takeover attempt by Trump and his militia/domestic terrorists of the government to remain in power in spite of a popular vote against him. Those who have a beef against the autocrat for whatever reason, in this case, leaders of corruption charges against Putin, get either poisoned or sent to a gulag. In Navalny's case: both. In olden days, we called such leaders fascists if they came from the right-wing of the political spectrum and communist dictators if they came from the far left. In any case, once the autocrat consolidates power, they are nearly impossible to unseat peacefully. Trump wanted a second term to complete his consolidation of power in the judiciary, legislative, and law enforcement power centers...he began it in his first term, but he had not yet finished the task of setting up the kind of government he advocated and so admired, one which more resembled Putin's. The followers to which he appealed shared his goals are equally responsible for an attempt to replace government by the people and the rule of law with rule by a person, Trump, who thumbed his nose at the Constitution and the popular vote.

THEDAILYBEAST.COM

Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny Sent to Notorious Prison Camp

Alexei Navalny was sent to a “red zone” detention camp about 60 miles from Moscow known for its harsh conditions and brutal manual labor punishment.

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Trump made a beginning down that path with lies about election fraud and convincing a major part of the country that all reports except FOX and Murdoch funded media were fake news. His and his attorney's stated goal post-November 3 was to overturn the election so he could have a second term. He tried to reverse the election first through court action (losing all but one court case), and then through violent intimidation with the help of what the FBI called domestic terrorists, organizations which he had often called "patriots" and "some fine people". He urged those actors on January 6 to march on the Capitol and" fight" at the very moment Congress was voting on validating certification of the election. His election fraud lies gave fuel, rationale, or pretense to " stop the steal" for the violent insurgents to act as they did. Letting him off the hook without any significant repercussions will only encourage future, more clever wannabe dictators to try it again. Democracy just survived a close call. If we have learned anything from January 6 and the Russian experience, we cannot just assume it will go on automatically forever. Once lost, it is hard to get back.

The protests in Russia are more than about "free Navalny", but wider issues are also sparking the demonstrators. Russia’s Economic Slump Erodes Consensus That Shielded Putin - The New York Times (nytimes.com  While the Russian constitution permits peaceful protests, and it appears this was, the police crackdown on them was violent. Without an independent judiciary to enforce the provisions of a constitution, rights have little meaning in a dictatorship. Without investigative reporters and a media controlled by Putin and friends, Navalny assumed that role of investigation and exposed epic corruption. The Putin palace was documented on film by Navalny's associates. That is the kind of sin that nearly got him killed by poison and now has landed him in jail, sparking the demonstrations. Demonstrators waved toilet bowl brushes as a symbol of Putin's corruption since Navalny's expose of the extravagant lifestyle of oligarchs and Putin per Navalny was the ultra-expensive brushes Navalny pictured. ..  Without the Navalny's in this world, the absolute power of a dictator corrupts absolutely and the people governed would have no idea. 

Russia | Country Page | World | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)

The Inside Story of How Alexey Navalny Uncovered Putin's $1.3 Billion Palace (msn.com)

Russian President Vladimir Putin, After 20 Years of Rule (foreignpolicy.com)

Protests in Russia - United States Department of State

Navalny protests: Kremlin meets Russian demonstrators with fiercest crackdown in years - CNN

The moral hazards nonesense in bailouts of unemployed workers and small business

The nonsense of moral hazards created in COVID 19 bailouts of small businesses and unemployed workers
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/30/senate-gop-unemployment-extension-388170

 Some GOP senators approved large bailouts for business and did not complain if it ran up the federal deficit, or even if it created a moral hazard making it easy for a business to cheat and giving them the temptation to do it.. However, when it came to the low wage earners, all of a sudden it became a moral hazard discouraging them from getting a job and it was too bad if these workers could not pay their rent or mortgage or buy food because their jobs had evaporated in the COVID depression. .  These GOP senators, standing in the way of enhanced unemployment payments are a moral issue unto themselves. It is a " let them eat cake" attitude that long ago became the symbol of class deafness and ignorance, over which many of the elite lost their heads in the French Revolution.  The Heroes act passed by the Democrats in the House includes a bipartisan agreement  on the PPP act extension (aid to small business second round and for PPP aid to small business in the first round that has not been spent yet.   The Cares act passage is being held up as of 8/5 by refusal of some GOP Senators to support it.  Support of small business in the relief package has  bipartisan support.  

 The hardest hit by COVID 19  are restaurants and even some we consider successful are facing tough times.  This from The Colorado Sun tells why some well-known ones are on the edge.  I am a restaurant fan loyalist and I am selfish. I do not want to see my favorites not make it through COVID 19 because going to them is one of my beloved joys in life. However, every one of my children has at one time or another, and likewise, some of my grandchildren, have worked for restaurants. One made the food industry her career; another almost did.  One of the problems is that being a server, a cook, a hotel bar manager has been underpaid and they have moved on to get more education and earn a living wage in another industry.  The question is then why should there be a labor shortage and few want to work? It is because welfare...increased unemployment insurance..pays more than they earned eeking out a living in lower-rung food jobs and restaurants have made ends meet with paying their workers so little even tips cannot make up the difference.  These low paid workers rarely have employer-provided health insurance and Obamacare has been a godsend.  However, the Trump administration is attempting to kill it via a lawsuit that will be heard by the Supreme Court this fall and be ruled upon in the spring.   What it may also mean that to pay a living wage after COVID, restaurants my have to raise their prices and pay their workers better.  The genie of what is a living wage is out of the bottle and starvation wages will no longer be tolerated.  Also, being a food service waiter or cashier or even a busser has the same perils as a grocery store clerk that comes in contact with the public and the self-serving anti maskers who thumb their nose at being responsible for their own health as well as others. There is a risk of catching the virus is a hazard involved in being a server. The other reason is the loss of jobs to even return to since so many restaurants have closed their doors and there is not a job to return to or one within commuting distance.  So much of the problem above and beyond other areas in the country is that so many of them depend on tourist business for customers since tourism is Colorado is one of our major industries.

Miller Hudson writing in the Colorado Statesman addressed the unmotivated worker myth: "The notion that indolent workers can be incentivized to return to jobs that no longer exist before we bring COVID-19 under control is absurd. Until then, keeping those who have lost their paychecks housed and out of soup kitchens will prove cheaper than flooding our streets with an avalanche of homelessness and misery. Colorado’s second bout of economic peristalsis is likely to bring on evictions and a run on MEDICAID, as employer-based insurance coverage expires, threatening the rickety structure of a health system approaching collapse. It’s not a propitious time to be serving as governor." 

If making it possible for the unemployed to survive COVID with an extra $600 is a moral hazard, the small business loans made to restaurants could also be a moral hazard that could come back to haunt them if they were not honest about the jobs they created. Why that was made a loan instead of a cash grant is a mystery to me if there was no accountability now.  If in the future, an audit shows the business lied about maintaining their payroll, rent or utilities comprising 70% of the loan,  and they are forced to pay back the loans, there could be another wave of restaurant closures. The interest rates were so low and the loans were over a 2 years period, there may be defaults, not just in the restaurant sector but in many small businesses.. Auditing all of that is going to be crazy so expect many loans will just be written off a loss to taxpayers and a low-cost  2% loan will be a gift to franchises and small businesses.  The result is those many of those business owners may get away with not providing jobs which was one of the rationales for the bailout loans.  We would just have been better off by making it a smaller grant to small business, a percentage of past income,  than going through this brain damage and future bureaucratic gobbledegook that created a moral hazard, a temptation to cheat.  Why not just consider all of this an economic stimulus

and a humanitarian necessity that puts money back into the economy during the worst economic times since the great depression. States cannot do it because they have balanced budget requirements and the only entity that can is the federal government. 

Response to Facebook Friend who opposed the $600 on the basis it would discourage people from working:

How does that work if there is no job to go back to even if they wanted..50 million jobs have been lost in the US... My guess after this people realize that it takes $15 per hour to not live in poverty or qualify for food stamps. That may be a bad thing if you are an employer, and consumer prices may have to rise, but I think it did give an impetus to legislation. Lucky for me as a rental complex owner my tenants have paid their rent..these are truly tough times. Landlords will be suffering, too. Another legislative impetus will be to either protect Obamacare and expand it or to adopt some other method of making healthcare affordable  It became abundantly clear that insurance tied to employment is not wise..

 https://www.coloradopolitics.com/opinion/hudson-transportation-health-care-issues-loom/article_8dbb0dc6-d544-11ea-9e5f-4bb5388ab2b2.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=user-share&fbclid=IwAR1PywVvFKFVhscPeAOB9gmRLcqtwWExab0ZyFNrCKxO2ShDB1Uvz2h_EeU 

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ttps://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/30/senate-gop-unemployment-extension-388170

 https://coloradosun.com/2020/08/04/colorado-restaurant-coronavirus-recovery-limbo/?utm_source=The+Colorado+Sun&utm_campaign=66ce910095-Sun-Up&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2e5f9a0f1b-66ce910095-66573438&mc_cid=66ce910095&mc_eid=9f829b87ca

We were warned. What our founders feared is happening

A condensed and update version of this can be found in a later blog to be posted in late May or June:  Trump and the GOP congress are what Madison warned us about

From the Federalist papers:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

― James Madison, Federalist Papers

What we are witnessing now is the very thing  founding father Madison warned our new country about.  The separation of powers to protect us from tyrants is being corrupted now.
The writers of our constitution tried to establish a form of government that would make it difficult for a tyrant to take control of our country. They divided  the power centers of government into three, executive, legislative, and judicial, each with a check on the other. Madison knew there was a way to undermine their checks and balances. What was not yet on the horizon when he wrote this were political parties, but he described them above as “accumulation of all powers in ...the same hands”, " of many or a few." The "few" today is one party in control of all three branches of government with members unwilling to exercise their Constitutional power to check actions of one another.

There are various ways to define a tyrant using 20th and 21st century terms . Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, called a form of it fascism in her recent book and op ed pieces.  She identifies a movement on many countries to embrace fascism. She sees President Trump as admiring them, aspiring, and instinctively using similar techniques to gain and to consolidate power, from attacking opposition media, promoting racial and ethnic scapegoats, and demanding a judiciary and law enforcers loyal to him instead of to the rule of law. Former FBI James Comey's bitter book that fires back at the President for firing him, compares Trump to a mob boss he once prosecuted, complete with using loyalty oaths.

Paul Ryan is  leaving Congress.  He is the leader of  the House, one of the legislative branches, the House of Representatives. His leaving  demonstrates if anything is that a legislative check on a president who is a wannabe "strong leader" demanding personal loyalty to him instead of the rule of law has not happened . That the  only party in control of both Houses of Congress and the White House, and working to control the judicial branch, is one, the Republican Party. The GOP is now the Trump party, with adherents willing to excuse any of the President's shortcomings so long as he supports their agenda. Polls show 80% of Republican voters approve of him, unshaken by any reports of immoral behavior in his private life or questionable character traits, or they agree the Mueller probe is just a witch hunt in spite of indictments to date and before a tight lipped Mueller releases his reports of his findings.

Respect of the rule of law is jeopardized. GOP House members believe that law enforcement, the FBI, Justice or the Mueller special counsel, should be staffed by only those loyal to the president to be credible, and that party affiliation of FBI or the Department of Justice leaders and key staff (all Republicans) is not enough. They demand the Department of Justice investigate investigators investigating Trump. Recently they forced the Department of Justice to turn over fired FBI Director James Comey's notes of his meeting with Donald Trump, key to an obstruction of justice case. That is an unprecedented interference by Congress to out evidence of an on-going criminal investigation.

The Senate is a profile in cowardice, like House members afraid of being primaried for being disloyal to the President. With few exceptions, voices raised against Trump by GOP Senators are those who are not standing for election soon or ever. The Senate is currently engaged in fast track approving appointments to the federal judiciary loyal to the president. The suspicion is they are so far refusing to pass legislation to protect  Special Counsel Mueller from the president firing him because they do not want their names to go on record. Their rationale, Trump would veto their bills anyway and they could not imagine Trump would fire Mueller or his boss Rod Rosenstein. Oh really?

There are two other checks to prevent  a breakdown of our form of government. Voters have a chance to do that in November 2018 electing others to Congress.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/president-donald-j-trump-proclaims-may-1-2018-loyalty-day/

The other check is a free press with a wide varieties of opinions and presenting facts as they discover and present evidence of  them. Trump's bias in favor of Fox News, Breitbart, and Sinclair Media , who often convey his message and support him, is hardly a secret. Trump calls reports that paint him in a bad light as "fake news" from "failing" media. Mueller’s investigation will be issuing a report on the Trump campaign’s coordination with the Russians in the 2016 race, followed by reports on financial crimes. Trump is acting like he fears the report will hurt him and has been vigorously attacking the credibility of the Russian connection DOJ investigators and threatening he will fire them. It appears Trump is taking  preemptive measures to destroy the credibility of the FBI as a "deep state" full of partisans against him so that supporters do not take Mueller’s findings as fact. Recently, he tried to punish the owner of the “opposition press”, the Washington Post, by attacking the other business the paper owner has, Amazon , using easily disproved lies.

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-promotes-hannity-episode-describes-mueller-mob-boss-deep-state-crime-883075

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-apos-retail-website-only-031557195.html

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/paul-ryan-warns-if-dems-win-theyll-hold-trump-accountable?cid=sm_fb_maddow

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/opinion/sunday/trump-fascism-madeleine-albright.html?smid=fb-share

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/05/trump-tweets-fifth-amazon-attack-in-a-week-hits-washington-post.html

https://www.vox.com/2017/12/29/16830128/amazon-trump-twitter-postal-service-feud
https://nypost.com/2018/04/12/comey-says-trump-reminded-him-of-gambino-mob-boss/