Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

The Oligarchy Moves on Platner’s Voters, Donors and Consultants

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On July 12, 2026

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Cross posted at Nat Wilson Turner

“…the timing of the politically fatal accusation against Graham Platner stinks. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the successful campaign to force Platner to give up his Senate bid was not about his character but his politics.” Yves Smith

After Graham Platner was forced from the Maine US Senate race — not because of the allegations printed in Politico, but rather because the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and Maine Democratic Party announced they were withdrawing their financial and technical support from the campaign — centrists have launched a campaign to purge the party of Platner’s voters, donors and key consultants.

Before we start…

I’ve already covered the machinery that forced Platner out of the race so this post will look at forces that are contending to capitalize on his campaign’s failure to punish political enemies or just boost their own clout.

I also covered the role of parasocial relationships, aka “stan culture,” in this situation in the previous piece. In short, I’m against cults of personality whether they’re built around putative progressives, fake-ass centrists, or reactionary fascists.

With that out of the way, let’s get into the current round of the Democratic Establishment vs. Progressive Populists. Go team!

If He’s So Innocent Why Is He Dropping Out?

From Platner’s video statement announcing the end of his campaign:

The brutal political reality is that they are going to take everything away from us. Those in power who have the ability to do so are using these allegations as an excuse to take away all of the things that we need to run a campaign.

We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function.

Larger organizations. The national level party. The bigger donor networks. They have all committed to spending no money in this race if I’m in it.

They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine.

In short, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), headed up by New York’s dynamic duo of genocide enthusiast Chuck Schumer and the astoundingly corrupt Kirsten Gillibrand (who also played a leading role in the defenestration of Al Franken), announced it “will not invest in the Maine Senate race if Platner remains on the ballot.”

Given that both Schumer and Gillibrand were Cuomo dead-enders in last year’s New York City Mayoral election — despite Cuomo having resigned from the Governor’s office after facing “credible accusations” from over a dozen women that Joe Biden’s Department of Justice confirmed — neither of them is a credible advocate against sexual violence and exploitation.

And as Ian Welsh pointed out a very long month ago in his prescient piece “Establishment Attacks On Platner Are Classic Woke Attacks On The Populist Left”, it was pretty gross that Cuomo was forced out of office for being a sex pest but no one seemed to care about the 12,000+ of New Yorkers who died directly as a result of his corrupt COVID policy decisions.

But let’s get to the fight for power.

Reminder: The GOP Incumbent Is A Disney Villain

Forbes: More Than 100 Billionaires Have Backed This Moderate Maine Republican Democrats see the Maine U.S. Senate race as a place where they could flip the seat but as their nominee faces pressure to withdraw, these billionaires see something else: a Republican moderate worth keeping in D.C..

This woman has done and will harm more women from Maine to Palestine than Platner could do in 100 years

From the archived piece:

Collins is not showing up to the fight empty-pocketed. According to federal campaign filings for the 2025-2026 election cycle, updated through June 7, at least 111 billionaires and their spouses from across the country gave just shy of $10 million to help her keep the seat.

These donations include direct campaign contributions–which are capped at $7,000 per cycle–as well as contributions to other PACs supporting her bid. Among these, Pine Tree Results, the main pro-Collins super PAC, has raised over $16 million and has already spent nearly $4 million opposing Platner.

But the Democratic establishment has other priorities than winning a Senate majority. There’s a populist uprising to nip in the bud!

Open Secrets points out what a deep deep hole the loss of Platner puts any Democrat challenging Collins in:

Platner’s withdrawal … exposed a deeper problem – a financial crater left behind in a pivotal race Democrats view as central to their hopes of regaining control of the chamber.

Before his populist campaign unraveled, the 41-year-old combat veteran and oysterman raised $16.3 million through May 20 and held nearly $2.2 million in cash on hand, according to filings his campaign submitted to the Federal Election Commission before the June 9 primary. While that cash total falls well short of the $10 million banked by Republican incumbent Susan Collins – who in 2020 kept her seat even though Democratic challenger Sarah Gideon outraised her by more than $45 million – it nevertheless dwarfs every potential Platner successor.

Send the Hordes Home In Their Hundred Thousands, 600 Insiders Will Choose

So here’s how the Maine Democratic Party intends to decide who the party’s official nominee for US Senate will be — this after overruling the wishes of a record 156,000 who voted for Platner in the June 9 primary — per the WaPo:

Since Platner suspended his campaign, a half-dozen Maine Democrats have announced they would run to replace him. On Thursday, the Maine Democratic Party said those candidates would need to submit a declaration of intent to run at a nominating convention, including a 300-word statement outlining their campaign vision and at least 500 signatures from registered Democratic voters in Maine.

Hours after Platner’s withdrawal, the Maine party announced it would hold a nominating convention July 25 with 601 voting delegates — 101 who are members of the Democratic State Committee and 500 who will be appointed at nominating meetings in each of the state’s 16 counties. The voting will be conducted in rounds, with the five highest vote-getters advancing to the second round and the candidate with the fewest votes eliminated in subsequent rounds until one remains. Only registered Democrats will be allowed to participate, the party said, citing Maine law.

“We are proud that this is one of the most open and inclusive processes that any state party has ever undertaken to replace a Senate nominee,” said Charlie Dingman, chair of the Maine Democratic Party.

Yea right.

There are many ways to organize far more representative caucuses which could engage far more than 0.002% of the 216,000 Mainers who voted in the June 9 primary — over 156,000 for Platner.

Call me crazy, but I really think an actually-democratic Democratic Party would have some kind of mechanism to remove a nominee through a vote of the electorate, but trial by social media followed by judgment by arbitrary elites is the system we’ve got instead, I guess.

Do the Mainers Even Buy This?

Morning Joe claims that Maine voters are not happy:

Joe Scarborough: I will say this, and this is just a word of warning to Democrats in Washington, D.C. Graham Platner was losing support with independents, no doubt about it. But I will tell you, me and [Mika?] have heard nothing — let me underline that, nothing but support from Maine Democrats on the ground for Platner.

Platner campaign signs are still up. They think that this is Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the Washington establishment coming to get him.

They all have the same story. They started hearing 10 days ago that people were coming up to Maine and they were desperate to try to get Platner off the ballot because they thought Susan Collins had too much on him and would destroy him.

I will tell you, without revealing any names, that we have been bombarded by phone calls and text messages from people who want Graham Platner off the ballot, who are high up in Maine politics. And we’ve been getting that for the last two weeks.

So why do I say this? Because there’s a conspiracy? No, not at all.

Go back to what I said at the beginning — a warning to Washington Democrats. You do need to listen to Graham Platner, because whether it’s true or not just as Caddy said about her son who has been working on this campaign, rank-and-file Democrats who have been supporting Platner from the very beginning think that this was cooked up in Washington, D.C. with a lot of money behind it to find anything that could be found to get Graham Platner off the ballot.

And I will say, we know nothing about that. We just — [Mika] and I have been scratching our heads for the last couple of weeks going, why are we getting all these calls about Graham Platner needing to be off the ballot?

It’s almost like the last thing the Democratic establishment wants to do is engage an unruly, unusual coalition of real people.

At least that’s my inference based on this representative tirade from Dem “strategist” Karen Finney on CNN’s The Source:

Karen Finney: I think the the Democratic primary voters owe the rest of the Mainers an apology. Democrat primary voters knew Graham Platner was awful the whole time. They knew that he said society should be disrupted if you didn’t agree with him. They knew that women had credibly accused him of physical abuse. They knew that, in fact, Graham Platner said that he had a very flexible moral compass. The badness is why Democrat primary voters picked him, and they’re the ones that foisted this problem on us. Don’t just blame Graham Platner. Blame, blame Maine Democrats.

It’s hard to imagine why her MSNBC show Disrupt With Karen Finney was cancelled after less than a year.

With the Dem establishment having dismissed the vast majority of Maine voters, the right-wing decided to go full witch hunt.

Going After the Donors?

The right-wing Leadership Institute’s website Campus Reform immediately tried to relive the good old days of the Fall 2023 witch hunt on pro-Palestinian activists.

Campus Reform asks "Did your University empoloyees contribute to Graham Platner?"

Progressives should remember that they’re always in the gunsights of the right and that the centrist Democrats do NOT have their back.

Regardless, this attack is weaker than pressing criminal charges on people who mocked the martyred Charlie Kirk.

Let’s look at another story that isn’t as scary as it seemed from a glance at the headlines.

Next, Let’s Kill All the Consultants

(I’m alluding to Shakespeare, not claiming anyone is advocating actual violence)

As annoying as that kind of contempt for the will of the voters is and as scary as GOP witch hunts are, the forces of reaction weren’t done yet, or maybe this one was just Left factionalism, the ol’ circular firing squad.

Turns out some members of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) — the organization behind much of Zohran Mamdani and company’s success in New York City — have signed a letter calling for Platner and Mamdani consultant to no longer be hired by DSA affiliated candidates.

Here’s from The Intercept:

“We, the undersigned, call on DSA candidates and elected officials to no longer contract or work with Morris Katz or Fight Agency, his political consulting firm,” the letter reads.

Katz is not a member of DSA.

The letter also noted consultants at the agency like Rebecca Katz, who is not related to Morris, were also behind the campaign of Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and said they continued to advise him even after he made a hard-right turn after entering the Senate.

Two sources with knowledge of the letter confirmed its authenticity.

“Morris Katz is one of the chief parties responsible for the catastrophic campaign of scandal-ridden Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner,” the letter says. “Billed as a top adviser to the campaign, Katz helped recruit Platner and supercharged his candidacy with slick video production, friendly media placements, and political connections.”

The only reason people are attacking Morris Katz is that he’s incredibly effective.

An as Ryan Grim pointed out, this is a trumped-up nothing burger: “This is not a DSA letter. There may be some DSA members writing one, but there are 120,000 DSA members doing lots of different things.”

But let’s follow that pivot at the end of the letter to Michigan.

The Attempted Pivot to Michigan

Former George W. Bush speechwriter, David “Axis of Evil” Frum chimed in with a strong pro-genocide statement:

Naturally, as a “Never Trumper”, the Dem establishment loves Frum — despite, or maybe because they have literally zero electoral appeal — and he feels free to pontificate as if he had the moral high ground.

Establishment apparatchick Neera Tanden agrees:

I’ll let David Sirota have the last word on this exchange:

156,000 Mainers Can’t Be Wrong, and Now They’re Pissed Off

Nathan Barnard has a story with a bit more substance for DropSite News:

The 15,000 member volunteer network behind Graham Platner is now using its considerable leverage to push whoever replaces him as the Democratic Senate nominee to be aligned with the same policy platform that drove the largest primary turnout in Maine state history.

Drop Site has obtained a draft letter addressed “to the Maine Democratic Party and prospective candidates” notifying them of their policy demands.

“The volunteer infrastructure that this movement built – the organizers, door-knockers, the small-dollar donors, the hosts, the people who make phone calls and staff tables between now and November – does not transfer automatically to whoever the Party selects,” the letter states. “That infrastructure exists because people believe in a specific platform. It will only continue to exist and only continue to be deployed for a nominee who publicly and explicitly adopts these core commitments as their own.”

…
The tension between organizers and Maine Democratic party officials has grown as they determine a process to replace Platner. A former Platner staffer told Drop Site “all field and data” staff were moved onto MDP payroll before the rape allegations broke for “accounting purposes,” creating an awkward situation for the Platner organizers—who, like the volunteers, are unhappy with the MDP’s manuevers.

On July 8, Platner campaign organizing director Spencer Toth resigned from the MDP over its lack of engagement with volunteers and organizers in determining the replacement process. Drop Site obtained his resignation letter.

“Together, organizers and volunteers built something much bigger than one candidate. They built the largest grassroots operation in Maine’s history, a people powered movement rooted in working class politics and the belief that ordinary Mainers deserve a real voice in the future of the Democratic party,” Toth’s resignation letter says. “But yesterday, the Maine Democratic Party said the people who built this movement will “have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for US Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like.”
…
“That work matters. It cannot be treated as disposable. The people who knocked thousands of doors, organized their communities, and built local teams across the state deserve transparency, respect, and a meaningful voice in what comes next.”

Toth concludes there is “no path forward to defeating Susan Collins without honoring and engaging the grassroots movement” the Platner campaign built across Maine. The future of the race should not be decided without the people who made the movement possible, Toth says.

“You deserve to have your voice heard and it is incumbent on each of you now to hold the Democratic Party accountable.”

Volunteers for Platner have broadly supported the nomination of Troy Jackson in place of Platner. On Friday morning, the Maine AFL-CIO also endorsed Jackson.

“We can pass Medicare for all, we can take on corporate power and the politicians in their pocket,” Jackson said in his Senate announcement video. “I’ve won in deep red Trump country and progressive cities like Portland and Bangor.”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. My instinct is that the decision to destroy Platner’s campaign based solely on allegations with no due process has likely cost the Democrats the chance to defeat Susan Collins, but where there’s life there’s hope.

What Was This Really All About?

And I’ll end with Thomas Neuberger’s point about what the Democratic establishment really wants: to prevent change:

Someone wanted him gone, and they found a way. Someone who? And why? What will the outcome be?

Let’s take these one at a time. Someone who?

The perp, I think, is the Democratic establishment — the party in Maine, the Senate bigs in DC, the vast machine that composes the DNC, its well-paid consultant class and wide-ranging servicing groups like print and televised media. The pile-on, when the accusations were more smoke than fire, began early, were clearly political, and deployed in defense of Janet Mills, the establishment’s preferred choice. Platner’s anti-genocide, anti-AIPAC stance didn’t help with that group, and is likely a cause on its own of his strong opposition.

And chief among all the perps is Sen. Chuck Schumer, who clearly places seating compliant Democratics above beating Republicans.

…

That answers the why. Control of the party comes before winning elections. And support for Israeli genocide is clearly a must, certainly for Schumer and other top Dems of his type. In case he hadn’t heard, total Israel-related contributions to Schumer total $1,727,974. That money buys something, happily given or not.

What’s Next?

The battle is shaping up now. As I write, I’m watching Rebecca Traister on MSNOW say Platner was always disliked by establishment Maine and national Democrats, largely because he brought people real hope for change. Yes, that’s what she said: real hope for real change. In my view, only the genuinely anti-establishment can do that.

…

Watch how the Party decides, and whom they nominate. Will Maine get a Harris-like coronation? A loyalist, solid pretender, or someone more real?

Then watch how Maine voters respond, especially those inspired by Platner’s rebellious stance. You’ll learn a lot.

The fight to return the Democratic Party to its historic role as a representative for the working classes will be long and brutal, and it may be too little too late in the context of the fascist Trump regime, but it’s a long way from over.

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Open Thread

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On July 11, 2026

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

The Old Gray Lady Runs RussiaGate 2: They’re Coming for OpenAI

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On July 10, 2026

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Guest post by Nat Wilson Turner.

New York Times: "China, Russia and Others Seek to Inflame Debate Over A.I. Data Centers"

Thursday’s New York Times brings back their old RussiaGate spirit with a front page banner headline about “foreign interference” and data center opposition.

Here’s a key quote:

…a push by foreign adversaries to seize on what polls have shown is deep ambivalence — verging at times on hostility — about the spread of the data centers needed to power A.I. in the United States and elsewhere.

China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran have sought to use state media outlets to turn the controversy over data centers in the United States into “a domestic fracture point,” according to a new analysis by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, which identified scores of articles and posts on social media this year.

These campaigns, whose impact on public opinion remains to be seen, have raised alarms in Washington, where A.I. is seen as a top issue heading into this year’s midterm elections.

The foreign efforts appear intended to stoke the debate over data centers that has united political figures across the political spectrum — from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a progressive, to Stephen K. Bannon, the erstwhile adviser to President Trump.

“Foreign actors aren’t manufacturing American debates over the future of A.I., they are exploiting them,” said Jessica Brandt, a former official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who tracked foreign influence efforts during the Biden administration.

The goal, she added, is to “deepen our divisions in order to dent our appeal and weaken us from within.”

Interesting sources, some company called Alethea and a former Biden admin DNI spook as our sources.

We’ll come back to them later, but first I’m curious as to why the NYT is only now covering this story when OpenAI put out a press release saying basically the same thing on June 10 except focused solely on China.

After all, OpenAI’s report was convincing enough to sway such luminaries as Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), Republican Leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, The Bitcoin Policy Institute and prominent tech investor Kevin O’Leary, per WIRED.

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Another Decent Summary Of The Ukraine War

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On July 10, 2026

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I’d have just linked and excerpted, but this account is currently private. My comments in italics.

It’s immediately apparent when someone has zero exposure to Ukrainian language reporting on the war, which is the norm. There’s an entire parallel infospace where actual AFU soldiers and even the mainstream Ukrainian media speak quite frankly about the war in a way that would shock most casual observers. So what are the Ukrainians saying about the current strategic balance?

• Ukrainian residents of large cities need to evacuate them because major cities will be unlivable this winter (former Minister of Defense Dmytro Kuleba) Civilian infrastructure was not significantly targeted by Russia till Ukraine started hitting Russian energy infrastructure. Escalation does not favor the weaker side.

• Ukraine has no Patriot interceptors left and all Ukrainian infrastructure will be destroyed unless something changes (MoD aide Serhiy Bezkrestnov) This is credible because the interceptors have been going to Israel and US forces in the Middle East by priority, so much so that we had reports of missiles being transferred from the Pacific. It also explains why the US is talking about letting Ukraine manufacture its own patriot missiles.

• Russia’s deployment of jet-powered Gerans is increasing while 200 older gas powered Gerans attack Ukraine every day (Sergei Bezkrestnov, MoD)

• Russian EW and air defense are becoming more advanced and are being deployed more widely, mitigating the effects of the Ukrainian mid-range drone campaign, while Russian drones are increasingly equipped with AI image recognition terminal guidance. Ukrainian EW and AD aren’t keeping up (Oleksandr Karpyuk, AFU) This is the opposite of what is being reported elsewhere. I don’t know the truth of it, but Russia does have industrial power and Chinese backing.

• The Russians retain the initiative essentially everywhere on the front line (Ukrainska Pravda) Fits with what I read from other alternative sources.

• The mid-range drone campaign has had zero effect on the situation on the front line (Ukrainska Pravda)

• The triumphalism in the Western press is exaggerated and premature. The most realistic Ukrainian goal now is simply to stop the continuous degradation of the AFU’s position, which has been underway since 2023 (Ukrainska Pravda)

• The Russian campaign against Ukrainian fuel infrastructure, gas stations, and power plants will result in a “Crimean situation” across much of Ukraine unless drastic measures are taken (Dmitry Leushkin) Again, Ukraine escalated and Russia matched the escalation, but has more capacity.

Reading Ukrainian reporting, the mid-range drone campaign is turned on its head. Ukrainian planners hope to manufacture 100,000 mid-range drones by the end of the year not in the expectation that it’ll fundamentally shift the balance in their favor, but to help close the gap with the years-long Russian glide-bomb campaign. This target is extremely ambitious, but if achieved, it would put them roughly at parity with the number of glide bombs Russia drops on Ukraine in a year.

The issue is that none of these drones have anything approaching the payload of a Russian glide bomb, with drones like the Hornet delivering something like 4.5kg of explosive to a FAB-250’s 100kg. Drones are more versatile, but the Ukrainians have a long way to go to catch up. In most ways, the drone war is a game of leapfrog, but the Ukrainians still have major disadvantages that have strong effects on the frontline. All the information above was shamelessly cribbed from @EventsUkraine, who tirelessly compiles reports from the Ukrainian media and Telegram multiple times a week. Reading his Substack will expose you to a side of the war that’s rarely visible in the Western press.

This seems more aligned with what I’d expect. He notes elsewhere that he thinks that Ukraine can keep up manpower losses for another few years. I’m not sure, nations tend to collapse before the very end of their manpower.

Basically, a war of attrition favors the side with more weapons, more advanced weapons and more manpower. Which is what I noted at the very start of the war. Ukraine has done amazingly well, far better than most expected, in large part due to massive NATO support, which Trump has recently doubled down on: he seems to have given up on peace.

It should also be noted that the increased attacks in Russia, which are made with Western supplied weapons, whose targeting is chosen by Westerners, and which are overseen by Westerners are degrading Putin’s ability resist hardliners calls for direct strikes against European sites. This war could easily escalate especially if Ukraine makes a high symbolic value attack that hits a major cultural site or kills a lot of civilians.

In “turn about is fair play” Russia appears to have been helping Iran with satellite data and targeting, which is exactly the sort of blowback many of us warned about.

Empires die messy. America’s is dying, and a lot of people are dying with it. Let’s hope this doesn’t turn into a world war at some point, as it did twice during Britain’s decline.

 

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Platner Folds

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On July 9, 2026

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Update: It turns out the accuser only described the DMs. She did not produce them. So this is she said/he said. Under such circumstances in no way should Platner drop out and yes, this is a political hit. It was coordinated by the party and media, they immediately withdrew all funding and voter lists and had a plan for choosing their own candidate.

 

A while back I wrote that the way Democrats get taken out, especially but not only the left, is usually a sex scandal.

for whatever reason, Americans take allegations like these much more seriously than gross corruption, bribe taking, insider trading, or mass murder.

And now an allegation against Platner which was organized by a Democratic establishment lawyer has lead to Platner quitting.

Which is exactly the wrong thing to do. He says he didn’t do it, the Maine party will pick the new candidate through a meeting of six hundred insiders, so the candidate won’t be a strong progressive, and by stepping down he removes protection from those who supported him.

The reason Stoller is on this is that like me he came up through the Netroots. We’ve seen this playbook over and over and over again. We recognize it.

The idea that it is principled is laughable. I saw Fetterman attacking Sanders for supporting Platner, as if Fetterman doesn’t support Israel, who rapes as policy and raped at least one person to death (and it won’t just be one.) Oh, and that genocide.

The left is getting scary to the center. They won quite a few primaries, and the goal now is to take them out post-primary. The most important thing is always controlling the party, winning is secondary, especially in America where the duopoly means that whichever party is out of power knows it will soon be back in.

This is why Starmer purged the left, including kicking out Corbyn.

Platner may or may not be guilty. I don’t know. But I do know that he just made a mistake in folding. To be fair, practically all his support in the party “un-endorsed” him, but frankly, who cares. At the least he should have stuck firm till he got to choose his successor. Make it clear that they’ll have him around all election season, drawing media attention the party doesn’t want, one way or the other.

Folding never gets you anything. There is no honorable peace between the left and the establishment: there are no rules of war, and the left needs to stop acting as if there are. Platner will be smeared as a rapist either way (even if he’s never charged) and the people who believed in him will be fucked over.

(And yeah, he had plenty of red flags and someone else should have been found. But charisma is a thing, and he had it and the safer candidates didn’t.)

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America Attacks Iran & Declares The Truce Over

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On July 8, 2026

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From the orange man’s mouth:

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s over,” Trump said at the ongoing Nato summit in Ankara when asked if the truce with Iran was now finished.

“It’s just a waste of time dealing with them,” AFP reported.

He blasted Iran’s leaders after Washington launched strikes on the Islamic Republic and Iran said it targeted US bases in the Gulf.

“They’re sick, there’s something wrong with them,” he said.

Treasury also re-instated oil sanctions on Iran.

The simple calculus is that the US was trying to re-open the Strait through Oman waters, and while they got a few ships thru, the Iranians stopped most of them hit some. As long as the Strait stays closed, the US is under pressure, because there is a physical economy, and reserves are running down, leaving aside shortages in fertilizer, helium and so on.

Iran just needs to keep the Strait closed to put pressure on the US homeland. As usual, the US can’t be hit directly by its enemies, so this is Iran’s way of hurting America even though its missiles can’t reach American cities.

On the other hand, the US can directly hit Iran, and if they didn’t actually want peace on the terms of the MOU, which apparently they didn’t (though I think this is a factional dispute inside the administration), then going back to hitting Iran makes sense.

Problem is that if the Iranian military does what it’s threatening to do, which is to blow the hell out of oil infrastructure in the Gulf States, the shortages will last years.

And the US isn’t leaving Iran with a lot of other options in terms of escalation.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens. Trump’s decisions have the consistency of runny jello, the real question is if the Iranian hard line faction wins their internal debate and is given the green light to go all out.

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Unintended Consequences: Germany Sick Leave Edition

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On July 7, 2026

19 Comments

So, Merz has announced that German workers will need a note from a doctor day one of calling in sick, and they must get that note in person: phone calls are no longer acceptable.

All the usual garbage: uncompetitive, high costs for employers, blah, blah, blah. (This comes after raising the retirement age.)

Here’s the actual sick leave situation:

Hey, it suddenly increased after 2020? Is anyone surprised? Bueller?

Anyway, doctors and clinics are a fixed resource. Forcing people to go in and see a doctor (normal wait times in Germany are two to three days) mean taking more time with the patient. That means pushing other patients back. So wait time will increase.

Second more sick people will go into work. Some of them will be infectious. More people would wind up sick than if you just let people stay home.

Sub voce this is “we don’t trust people, we think some of them are lying” plus “people really should work when only slightly ill. Suck it up sunshine.”

But the increase in sick time is clearly Covid related, presumably long Covid, so it isn’t likely there’s a sudden epidemic of malingering. And while you can’t pass on long Covid directly, it still means that other people who do have diseases they can donate to their co-workers will come in.

Governments rarely seem to think thru these second order effects and ask if they’re worth it. The City of Toronto has been forced by the Province of Ontario to shut down supervised injection sites.

Now if you’re a normal human person you’re probably thinking “oh no, people will die!”

And that’s true. But Premier Ford doesn’t give a damn about that. There is another effect, however, that he should give a damn about, because voters care, and the Conservaties do have seats in Toronto.

Average wait times in emergency wards are a bit over an hour thru the province. But they’re much higher in Toronto. As of this writing the closest emergency department to me has a wait time of a bit over five hours.

According to ER doctors overdoses can drive those times up significantly. Overdoses require priority treatment, after all. So if more drug users are overdosing (or their drug wasn’t what they thought it was, because the supply is so adulterated), then wait times will go up more.

And voters care about this. A lot. (Last time I went to an emergency department I waited over eight hours. I needed stitches, it was overnight, but I was in no danger, so I got to wait a very long ) People have in some cases died because of wait times, since it isn’t always obvious how bad something is, and while the number may not be large, the bad publicity often is.

This is something Ford and the Conservatives should care about, but it’s rarely mentioned. Bleeding hearts (which I mostly am) tend to lead with “drug users will die”, not getting that to Ford that’s probably a good thing. But “regular citizens will wait longer in the ER and some of them will die” is not something he wants. He may not personally care (I doubt he cares about anybody but himself), but he does care politically.

As for Merz, he’s the worst German leader of my lifetime, trying to run military Keynesianism and letting Germany’s industry be destroyed while he fiddles with marginalia. A few extra sick days aren’t why Germany’s losing its industry and it won’t make the least bit of difference. What is required is innovation and driving down energy prices, but that would require making peace with Russia and Merz is a warmonger.

Ruled by fools.

 

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Most US Jobs Won’t Support An American Lifestyle

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On July 6, 2026

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Over at Interfluidity there’s a good post titled “Why Are Americans So Unhappy?”

Part of the answer boils down to this graph:

What this measures is what percentage of expenses of employees wages pay.

You’ll notice it keeps going down. It peaked near 100% around 1968 and has been trending down since. It’s now under 80%. Note the spike in 2020 when the government let lose the taps and actually helped people. I know a lot of people who, contra the “lockdowns sucks” remember 2020 as the only time they got to take a paid vacation. (And suicides in the under 18 group dropped massively, because school sucks.)

What makes up the rest of the money people use to support themselves? Well, for the better off its assets based wealth: dividends,  capital gains and all that good stuff. But for all intents and purposes if you aren’t in top 10% the amount of money you get from these sources is infintesimal. So, in fact, what actually makes it up is having two people working where one plus maybe a minor part time job would cover it.

The post is worth reading in total, but I want to point out something simple: this is deliberate. This is a result of policy. This is what American elites worked hard to create.

There are a lot of moving parts, but the most important for a long time was that the idea of NAIRU, that unemployment below a certain level was bad and caused inflation, so every time unemployment got low, the Federal reserve would crush the economy. (This is why good employment news would cause the market to go down, and bad employment news would cause it to rise all through the 80s to 2000s.)

Low unemployment is when employers are forced to raise wages, since there’s more jobs than applicants. It’s when labor has pricing power. So the Federal Reserve spent over 30 years (and still does occasionally) deliberately suppressing wages because they figured that wages were the most important form of inflation.

Or that’s what they said. There’s lots of sources of inflation, but somehow the Fed was never concerned with bubbles, never concerned with moral risk, never concerned with oligopolies and monopolies, never concerned with actually supply as opposed to demand. Nope, it was all those nasty workers who wanted raises.

Now a cynic, or perhaps a realist, might think “if there were a lot of ways to deal with inflation and the only one they did was crush wages” that perhaps inflation wasn’t at least 50% just an excuse to crush wages.

A realist might notice that everything else happening, like tax cuts on the rich, the end of Glass-Steagall, deregulation and much more all seemed to have as its effect making the already rich richer, and notice that wages are an expense to rich people, not their primary source of income, and that crushing wages thus also helped make the already wealth even richer.

Since many people pointed out, as early as the mid 80s, that the result of the policies being pursued would be rampant inequality, and indeed it was showing up in the stats as early as those 80s, one can safely assume that decision makers, whether at the Fed, Congress or anywhere else understood what the results would be.

But, after all, they are the important people. The good people. The job creators. The people who are worthy of having lots of money. Nurses, orderlies, janitors, clerical workers, garbage men:  pretty much everyone who has a job that actually does something the economy actually needs done and when it isn’t done people scream, they’re putzes and don’t deserve to have a good life. Just disposable trash.

At its heart it really is this simple. There were plenty of ways to deal with inflation, and many were suggested at the time. The most regressive path, one everyone knew would cause a lot of poverty and increase the wealth of a minority massively was chosen. It was chosen because it benefited the people in charge and their retainers, and those people didn’t and don’t care about anyone else.

Along the way the morons also managed to piss away America’s industrial and tech lead and lose America’s superpower status. But being fake rich (because it’s China that’s actually rich now, no matter how many billions of US dollars you have) and crushing their lessers was what was important to them.

And yeah, plenty of people, your kind and gentle host included, predicted this, well in advance. It was known. If you didn’t know, it was because you metaphorically had your fingers in your ears as you chanted “it doesn’t matter who makes things, or where. The market is global and fungible. It doesn’t matter who makes things, or where the market is….”

Anyway, it worked out for a few people. A few million. It’s a big club, as a comedian once noted, and you aren’t in it.

Your living standard was crushed, your wife was forced to work (not just permitted, but forced) and your children’s future was pissed down the drain deliberately, along with America’s place in the world, because it made a few million people rich, and a few thousand so rich Gilded Age barons would be jealous.

There was a class war.

The rich won.

You lost.

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

 

 

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