Chasm – Oligarchs and the rest of us.

PRENOTE: Hiroshima-Nagasaki events Twin Cities Aug 5, 6, 8.  Details at end of post.

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Today’s column from Paul Krugman, “The Oligarchs are Doubling Down on Republicans” deserves a full and careful read.  In 2008 Krugman received the Nobel Prize in Economic Science.  My opinion: Krugman’s column concerns the arrogant obsession of the ultra wealthy and their escalating efforts to increase their already excessive power, at the expense of all of us less fortunate..

The only power that can take the oligarchs on is voters like myself.  The power people  know this.  So the efforts have to be to neutralize us through the many levers at their disposal, particularly misinformation (lies) portrayed in expensive and pervasive media dumps.

Within the last few days Trillionaire Elon Musk says he plans to dump up to $120,000,000 into the 2026 mid-term elections.  It is totally legal.  As a trillionaire (that’s 1,000 billions (000,000,000), a hundred million ($100,000,000) is hardly chump change to Musk.

Like Musk, I have only a single vote, and so do you.  We voters are the only buffer.

There are only two ‘sides’ in this election: Democrats or Trump (there is no functional traditional Republican Party any more – all that remains is the name), and the minor parties including the amorphous masses who call themselves “independents” will be left in the dust.  After November 3 it will be either D or T….

I have absolutely no idea who will “win” anything on Nov. 3.  If the Trump side prevails, all, but the tiniest sliver of the super wealthy, will be the losers.

Overnight from Heather Cox Richardson.

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POSTNOTE 1.  In a companion article, Carol shared the following from the New York Times about how the proposed arch in DC would interfere with other historic national sites in the city.

Again, as one of the 99%+ who are not functionally wealthy in this country, I note with concern the increasing attempt to rewrite American history, past and future.

This will all catch up on the wealthy in the end, but unfortunately, it will decimate the less wealthy first and most viciously.

There aren’t any of us who can come up with a trillion dollars ($1,000.000, 000, 000)

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POSTNOTE 2.  When Trump first ran for office I had almost zero notion of who he was or would be as a president.  I had never (and still haven’t) watched an episode of the Apprentice.  He had never run for public office, so there was no criteria to judge there.

Now, nine years after the famous escalator entrance into the fray, evidence abounds that the man is, as one of his admirers admitted in a letter on this blog in 2019, “a common criminal” (which the writer almost described as a virtue).  Still, Trump has slavish admirers who deny their very eyes.

I’m in no position to be a first person witness, but I do try to pay attention to life at ground zero – my own and the people I know personally.  We are the micro – the real world – the people who make up the mass that is everyone.  The news tends to focus on the macro.

I offer these observations as summer begins to wane, and we start the move to fall and winter and 2027 and on.

Last spring I filed my taxes as I always do, and my tax preparer surprised me by saying we would be getting a pretty substantial refund.  I was preparing to pay in for 2025, but indeed came a goodly refund.  A summer vacation gift from the government!?

Most recently a recurrent TV ad touts something called “Trump Accounts” apparently $1,000 per child to parents of young children as an investment in their future.  It all seems so nice and innocent.  Free money, compliments of the President of the United States.

Frequently come news about changes in existing medicare and other plans, cutbacks on services taken for granted at parks, for instance, etc., etc. etc.  Most of these are prospective or ‘Nickel and Dime” changes which people are less likely to notice.  But everything adds up, and of course the tax rate on the wealthy has to be paid for by something.  So the national debt continues to go through the roof.  Who’ll pay for that?

And who can deny the roaring stock market, from which many of us benefit short term, but which even I can observe is grossly overvalued and only time will tell if reality will set in.

All these examples illustrate wins that may end up as losses in the short and long term when election season is over and the long winter begins.  As the saying goes, “There is no free lunch.”   Gas prices go up a heap, and down a little, then up again, and even higher, but are conveyed as wins for consumers….

Of course, I may be wrong in all of this, but this appears to be like a con job in progress.  It is much like going to Las Vegas or the local casino or lottery to win when everyone knows that the House always wins.  Everywhere there are similar stories.  The ordinary individual does not go to the Casino to win.

At this moment in history we seem to have a con man in charge, with a glib tongue, talking people out of their deserved stake in the game of life, and taking a large cut out of their individual longer term welfare.

We seem to like being taken for a ride.  Sometime that time will end.

COMMENTS (additional comment at end of these comments)

from Larry: I just read that column ..very scary..musk is a neo Nazi and Trump turned loose with a chainsaw. The list long. But he must go through the 25th or impeachment…asap..and Doug is paying a price for his compliance. Thanks for your writings and links.

from SAK:

Thanks for that Mr Bernard I hope many decide to exercise their right to vote!

Aneurin Bevan was a British Labour leader, Welsh to be more specific which explains his name, his nickname was “Nye”.

I like something he said years ago: “The whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century, is being deployed to enable wealth to persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power.”

Swap Conservative for Trumpist or Republican & 21^st century for the 20^thand you have crossed the Atlantic and arrived at the present.

How does wealth achieve this sleight of hand – legerdemain taken from French is another cute way of putting it? After all it is basically a form of trickery & deception to make people vote against their own interest!

Well by focusing on an issue here, another there to distract from the real motives. Issues like abortion, race, China, communism. The focus can be explicit or implicit: some have become masters of the dog whistle & can easily join an orchestra if that instrument were admitted!

Mr Bernard is right poverty, indeed all, are still politically free for now & can vote – well aside from those hampered or barred by Jim Crow laws 2.0 & other “innovations” again deployed against the democratic spirit.

He is also right to point to possible economic/financial crises threatening to washing ashore . . . after all it is impossible to cut taxes for the rich, bribe a segment of the electorate, explode the defence budget & govern with alarming incompetence (e.g. tariff soap opera) without exacting a price. The national debt is an obvious victim as Mr Bernard mentions.

Do you remember all the talk about how Reagan’s SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative – nicknamed Star Wars) supposedly meant the USSR had to respond & spend too much money on defense thus bankrupting it & hastening its end? That view is controversial but anyway, a huge defense budget did not help the USSR.

Well now we have US vs China. Are they playing the same game? Who will be bankrupted & what happens then? Yet another “end of history” or much worse!?

Whatever happens the world will suffer since precious resources are being wasted on wars & the military instead of urgent action needed on the climate, food scarcity etc.

When a country borrows money it then starts paying interest on the debt. Looking at US debt in May, 2025 the conclusion was that if the 10-year yield (that is how much one would expect in return if he bought the 10-year US bond) was at 4.4% the result would mean the US has to pay about $900 billion a year in interest:

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/higher-treasury-yields-would-add-trillions-debt

Actually the debt & the yield grew quicker than expected & the US ended up paying $1220 billion:

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/interest-expense-avg-interest-rates/

One can see the direct relationship between rates & how much the US pays in interest – which is more than any budget including defense!

And with Trump’s new Fed chairman & a divided Fed (3 members wanted to raise rates) deciding not to raise rates although inflation is rising . . . the rates shot up again this week.

30-year Treasury yield hits highest level since 2007 after Fed keeps rates unchanged

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/29/treasury-yields-fed-interest-rates.html

Yield on 10-year US treasury bonds:

This is pretty unusual!

https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/US10Y

If rates stay as high as they were recently the US will pay $1.25 trillion ($1,250,000,000,000.00) or likely more in interest in 2026.

Pentagon Awards Mega Contracts to Firms Amid Iran War Strains

Jen Judson and Tony Capaccio    July 30, 2026

The Pentagon is accelerating defense production with multiyear mega contracts as the Trump administration seeks to enhance the armed forces and the Iran war intensifies demands on a dwindling US weapons stockpile.

On Wednesday alone, the Defense Department announced two massive contracts worth about $135 billion to major US defense companies. The administration has more broadly requested $1.5 trillion for an unprecedented defense budget amid what it calls a necessary generational investment to prepare for future conflicts.

The Army reported a $59 billion, seven-year agreement with Lockheed Martin Corp. to bolster production of in-demand but hard-to-replace Patriot interceptors that have been crucial to the Middle East conflict.

At the same time, the Pentagon unveiled contracts worth as much as $76.6 billion for General Dynamics Corp. and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. to expand construction of the US’s top nuclear submarines and make shipyard infrastructure improvements.

The awards include nine new latest model “Block VI” Virginia-class attack submarines, equipped with an expanded capacity for Tomahawk cruise missiles. The contracts also cover five additional Columbia-class nuclear-missile submarines in the planned fleet of 12.

Shares of General Dynamics rose 2.6% in after-hours trading in New York, while Huntington Ingalls’ stock gained 3.9%. Lockheed’s shares advanced 0.5% after the announcement of its award following the close of regular trading.

The multiyear deals help lock in arms suppliers and give defense contractors the confidence to increase capacity on production lines. There have been numerous contracts announced after the Pentagon’s top officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, complained that major contractors were delivering products late and over budget.

The Iran war has only heightened concerns about the American defense industry. US forces in the Middle East are using up vast amounts of high-value interceptors — costing around $4 million each — to defend against Iran’s ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones.

Persian Gulf nations have also deployed Patriot missiles to defend themselves against hundreds of missile and drone attacks on energy facilities and other critical infrastructure as the conflict expanded across the Middle East.

The agreement announced Wednesday is Lockheed’s second major long-term missile production deal. Earlier this year, The company was awarded a contract that could be worth as much as $35 billion from the Pentagon to quadruple production of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, interceptors, over seven years.

The new Lockheed contract will help the firm step up from roughly 600 missiles a year to about 2,000 annually by 2030. But even that may not be enough for a US war effort in an extended conflict, particularly against a more powerful country than Iran, such as China.