If he gets immunity for official acts, so does she

I mentioned yesterday that the federal debt went up by $1 trillion in eight weeks in August and September. Three weeks ago Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported what the government is doing with our money can’t be determined. Neither budget experts nor Congressional appropriators can figure out the savings DOGE supposedly brought us, or probably cost us. There is supposed to be “savings” from canceled contracts, from money appropriated by Congress that the nasty guy has refused to spend, and from the salaries not paid out to employees who were fired or resigned (made more confusing by the need to rehire some of them). And there is supposed to be income from tariffs. So how did the national debt go up by $1 trillion in two months and by $1.8 trillion since he took the Oval Office? A week later Needham reported:

Trump is demanding that the Department of Justice give him $230 million as compensation for being the subject of past federal investigations, according to The New York Times. He’s reportedly submitted his claims through an administrative claim process, under the Federal Tort Claims Act, and he has apparently done a bit of back-of-the-envelope math to come up with the idea that the U.S. taxpayers owe him nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.

Since the people who need to authorize that payout are already in the nasty guy’s pocket or are highly ethically compromised they’re quite likely to approve it.

It should be a five-alarm fire that, in the middle of the GOP’s government shutdown, Trump is demanding taxpayers cough up hundreds of millions of dollars to slake his endless twin thirsts for grifting cash and airing his grievances. But these days? It’s just par for the course for a president who sees the federal government as his personal piggy bank.

Two weeks ago Emily Singer of Kos reported:

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has now been in recess for an entire month—and it's all because House Speaker Mike Johnson does not want to release the government’s files on accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. ... Yet, rather than bring the House back to negotiate with Democrats to reopen the government—much less pass individual appropriations bills to fund the government for longer than just a few weeks—Johnson has kept the House out of town. And it's all because bringing the House back would require Johnson to swear in Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, who is expected to be the final signature on a petition to force the House to vote on releasing the government’s files on Epstein.

As I’ve mentioned before Johnson’s reasons for not swearing in Grijalva have been shown to be bogus. Even a far-right Republican is criticizing Johnson.

“The House should be in session working,” far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote Monday in a post on X. “We should be finishing appropriations. Our committees should be working. We should be passing bills that make President Trump’s executive orders permanent. I have no respect for the decision to refuse to work.”

Two weeks later the House is still closed. Not everything is bad news. Two weeks ago Alex Samuels of Kos reported that House Democrat LaMonica McIver is claiming the same legal immunity the Supreme Court gave the nasty guy. She was indicted on charges that she “forcibly impeded” immigration officers outside a detention facility. She was there as part of the Congressional duty of oversight. An ICE agent shoved her. As part of a chaotic protest she pushed back. She was accused of assaulting and obstructing officers. Her lawyers say if the nasty guy gets immunity for “official acts,” she does too. And oversight of what ICE is doing is an official act. She is not charged with corruption or a financial crime, the usual indictment of members of Congress. There could be a cost to McIver. Samuels wrote, “Members of Congress cannot accept pro bono legal help, according to Politico, meaning an extended court battle could be financially devastating.” Bearing such costs could chill Congressional oversight. Last week Samuels reported that the nasty guy’s Justice Department announced it would send election monitors to several places in California and New Jersey. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, says this is groundwork to sow doubt in the election results and scare away voters. Monitoring is not necessary, but federal officials will be welcome. In response California will have monitors of the monitors to make sure they don’t interfere in the election. California may be receiving a lot of threats from the nasty guy, but it isn’t backing down. During the first week of September liberaldad2 of the Kos community shared an email from California Gov. Gavin Newsom touting some of the good things about his state. Here are a few of them.

Middle class families in California pay LESS in taxes than in states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. 50 million of the 52 million jobs created since the Cold War have been created in Democratic administrations. Republican presidents have one thing in common: recession. Life expectancy, infant mortality, deaths of despair, wages and uninsured rates are all worse off in red states. For Greg Abbott: California is the fourth largest economy in the WORLD. We contribute $83 billion to the federal government while Texas takes $71 billion.

Toonerman posted a cartoon from a year ago, though the incident that prompted it appears to be from four years ago.

Caption: (“See you in church on Sunday”) William Gallagher, Texas Christian talk radio host and author of “Jesus Christ, Money Master,” has been convicted to 30 years for ripping off old people with his Ponzi scheme. Toonerman’s dog: Really? ‘Jesus Christ, Money Master?’ Jesus (holding bags of money): Yep! It’s what I do! You can read about it in Denominations $100:10-50

This blog’s viewership for October is similar to what it was in June and July – and significantly down from what it was in September. The number of views in September was 163,988, prompting me to wonder if I was now famous. The total for October was 47,467 and for July was 48,646. After hitting 9K to 11K views per day in the last week of September, views dropped on October 1st to 1,600 views. That was when I reported September’s numbers. There were almost 5K views on October 8, but in the last two weeks the number of views in a day has been mostly under 300. That’s quite a drop from a month before. Fame is fleeting.