Day 325…
The first full week of the new Administration has now drawn to a close.
I’m looking out of our living room windows this morning on a serene and tranquil-looking day. It is just as cold today as it was yesterday so there are very few people out and about.
As calm as the week has been, what we are discovering and facing about the country shows that below the seemingly orderly surface, things are roiling.
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning.
"Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence."
“Driven by anger over pandemic restrictions, the election results, and the police’s use of force, “DHS remains concerned that Homegrown Violent Extremists (HVEs) inspired by foreign terrorist groups, who committed three attacks targeting government officials in 2020, remain a threat.”
The agency continues to be worried about potential attacks against targets such as electric stations, telecommunications centers, and healthcare facilities.
Even within Congress, itself, members have become concerned about their own safety - not from attacks by outside extremists but actually from their own fellow legislators.
Speaker of the House Pelosi actually had to move Representative Cori Bush of Missouri’s office away from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia’s. Greene continues to refuse to wear a mask within the Federal hallways, despite an Executive Order requiring her to do so. After a confrontation with Bush in their hallway where she refused to put on a mask coupled with her previous racist rants, Bush told Pelosi that she did not feel safe coming to work.
The Republicans seem to be choosing to allow Greene to continue to do whatever she wants. None of them have spoken so much as a word against her.
Recently there has been an outcry against members of the Reddit online forum “wallstreetbets”. A whole group of them - non-professional day-traders - came together to drive the value of a company called GameStop’s stock from about $6 a share back in September up to $347.51 a share just a few days ago.
They used an app called Robinhood that allows ordinary people to day-trade without having to pay commissions to buy up shares. They did this as a kind of FU to larger investors who were seeking to devalue GameStop for their own gain. And because they could.
Short-selling, which I will freely admit to only somewhat understanding, involves traders ‘borrowing’ stocks from a broker and selling them. If enough traders do that, the value of the stock then falls. The traders then buy the stock back at the lower rate, return the shares to the original broker and keep the overage.
What happened with GameStop was that because the price had been driven up by the Reddit users, the professional traders who had bet that the price would drop, actually had to buy the stock back at the now astronomical rate. It put several large hedge funds completely out of business. Losses were over $1 billion.
Robin Hood strikes again.
Wall Street, of course, has lost its mind. Not because anything that happened was illegal, but because “amateurs” were able to do what the so-called professionals felt was theirs and theirs alone to do. Nothing that happened had anything whatsoever to do with the actual value of the GameStop company - it was just a means to an end that could be readily sacrificed when they were done with it.
The Robinhood app is now being prevented from trading GameStop and several other stocks. The top echelon of traders is completely threatened by these grass-root participants and now want to do anything they can to prevent them from being able to do this again. To be clear, they are doing exactly the same thing amongst themselves.
The stock market is basically a giant casino. It’s driving force is confidence, hardly a tangible commodity. Our prior Administration used it as their sole indicator for the health of our economy. Last year it preformed extraordinarily well, but that performance was not necessarily tied to anything concrete.
The Big Short is a pretty great film about how a whole group of investors bet against the US mortgage market and, by doing so, triggered the entire 2008 financial crisis. It is well worth the watch. What those investors were doing then is exactly what these investors are doing now.
In response to the brouhaha, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a particularly outspoken member of the left, has called for an investigation into Wall Street financial practices. Support for this investigation has come from about as far across the aisle as it is possible to get, from Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
Bipartisanship in action…? No. Ocasio-Cortez is not interested in his support.
On Thursday she tweeted, "I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there's common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out. Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren't trying to get me killed. In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign. You haven't even apologized for the serious physical + mental harm you contributed to from Capitol Police & custodial workers to your own fellow members of Congress. In the meantime, you can get off my timeline & stop clout-chasing. Thanks."
Republican Representative Chip Roy of Texas is now demanding that Ocasio-Cortez apologize.
The central event around which all of this infighting revolves continues to be the Capitol insurrection of January 6. Everyone is trying to figure out what they are going to believe the true history of the event to be.
The simple clarity of the day - that the President incited a group of violent extremists to attack the US Capitol - is purposely being muddied and complicated as legislators attempt to forge a path forward with a revisionist history that supports them and their actions.
With each passing day, however, we learn more and more about the plans and intent of the insurrectionists. We now know that the pipe bombs discovered outside of the Republican and Democratic national offices were placed there the day before, seemingly to create a diversion that would funnel law enforcement away from the action. Recordings and posts by the insurrectionists, themselves, show that many of them were, indeed, planning on causing physical harm to legislators.
With the ex-President’s second impeachment trial looming, Republican legislators are digging in their heels to defend him. Those who haven’t have come under attack by their fellow party members. On Thursday, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida actually went to Wyoming and held a rally against fellow Republican Representative Liz Cheney because she supports impeachment.
In Washington D.C., there are still fences and barricades up around the White House and the Capitol building. There are discussions in progress about whether they should all remain. With members’ safety a serious concern, law enforcement is hesitant to remove them.Remarkably, it is still not illegal for Representatives to have firearms within the Capitol.
Many, however, are concerned about the optics. Do we want to be seen as living in a police state?
I’ve wondered when all of the security around the ex-President’s buildings here in New York would be taken away. For the first few days after the inauguration, I walked past them hoping to see it being dismantled. That hasn’t happened yet. The answer I got from the officers standing there, when I asked when we could expect it to go, was that they didn’t know. It seems that the Secret Service and NYPD are going to evaluate the ongoing concern.
At some point during the last four years, security around those buildings was costing the city over $300,000 a day.
I remember when I was a kid, and we went to London. At that time, you could walk right into Downing Street and knock on the Prime Minister’s front door if you wanted to. Somewhere, I am sure that I have a picture of me standing in front of the door.
Now, of course, you cannot enter the street at all. There is a large iron gate and sentries posted around the clock.
After the election of 2016, the iron fence around the White House was replaced by one that was higher. I watched it going up. As the election of 2020 drew closer, that fence was then covered up with panels that shield the building from the street.
Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg that, “the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
That, of course, still remains to be seen. What I don’t think that even he imagined, was that the government would need to be hidden from the people and need to be protected from the very people who should be fighting FOR it.
Almost all of the last President’s legislation that he enacted over the course of his Presidency was erased last week with simple strokes of President Biden’s pen. The only thing that he can really point to that still stands, besides a few uncompleted sections of his Mexican border wall, is a tax break for his wealthy friends.
His legacy is a United States now faced with having to protect itself from itself.
After the IRA assassinated Lord Mountbatten in 1979, Margaret Thatcher increased the security on the Downing Street that then prevented ordinary people from entering. I don’t know that young Britons even realize that you could once freely go in there.
We may be living with these kind of security measures here for a long time to come as well. It’s probably going to be a while before any of us can take a selfie in front of the White House and actually be able to see the White House.
The security measures around 10 Downing Street were never relaxed and I fear that these won’t be either.
I do look forward to being able to walk down 5th Avenue without all of that mess surrounding the ex-President’s tower in the way. I am sure the businesses nearby do too. They’ve all suffered from the reduced access.
Thankfully, that building no longer has anything to do with our government so maybe once we are past the impeachment trial, it will clear up a bit.
In the meantime, I guess, I’ll just have to walk elsewhere.
❤️My father was a stock broker, he would be baffled I would think today
Astonishing how much of an inside job January 6 was...at least all the secrets are surfacing
A friend suggested I watch
The Dig on Netflix
it restored my faith in someways, the quality of work on every level, but I prepare you, tissues are a must
💕 stay warm, it’s worth a walk today
I heard DeBlasio announce last week that the security around Trump tower was being removed...
You write that Biden has reversed all of his orders? The disruption of every federal agency with so many people fired,departed or retired is going to take a while to get up to speed !