How To Stop Inflation ...

... stop buying stuff!

Back in 2008, in the waning days of the Bush administration, the economy collapsed.  It was all propped up on inflated housing values, financed with funny-money mortgages which were generated by people paid per mortgage issued, not based on good mortgages issued.  Those were in turn packed up and sold as "investments" even though half of them were basically guaranteed to go into default.

It all fell apart and a major investment house went bankrupt and others had to be bailed out (they did pay back that bailout money, though).  The overall economy collapsed, and GM went bankrupt, Chrysler (owed at the time by venture capitalists) was sold to Fiat.  Again, there were bailouts, but they were paid back.  The only bailouts not paid back were "mortgage adjustments" to a few lucky individual homeowners.

Gas in 2008 was over $5 a gallon in some places, but by 2009, had dropped dramatically as illustrated in the chart above.  Why?  Because people stopped buying gas!  "But Bob!" you say, "People have to buy gas!  How else would they get to work or go to the store or go on vacation?"

Well, that's true, but how much gas you consume is somewhat flexible.  And in 2009, people cancelled vacation trips, lost their jobs, went shopping less, combined trips to save fuel, bought more fuel efficient vehicles, and slowed the fuck down for a change - and gas consumption plummeted.  As a result, prices plummeted - the law of supply and demand kicked in, as it always does.

It was heaven - for a few months, anyway.   You could go on I-95 and there was no traffic. What traffic there was, was traveling at a reasonable pace.  Even (or especially) truckers slowed down, realizing that going from 5 to 6 miles-per-gallon made a huge difference in fuel costs (20%!).  People stopped racing to red lights and then slamming on their brakes.  They stopped flooring it when the light turned green. They stopped tailgating and zooming around traffic, trying to "get ahead."  It is amazing how a small increase in the price of gas affects behavior.

But overall, prices dropped across the board.  McDonald's introduced its "dollar menu" and for a couple of bucks, you could get two burgers and a small fries.  No kidding.   Other restaurateurs followed suit as customers evaporated.  You had to offer something to get people in the door - or close the doors for good.

Over time - 20 years or so - we got lazy and fat (metaphorically and realistically speaking).  I went to a friend's house the other day to help them install a split-system A/C unit (I am too old for that shit! It nearly killed me!) and his wife was nice enough to get Chinese take-out.  She drove over 20 miles, round-trip to get it.  Financially, it made no sense, particularly when there are restaurants here on our island.  But you see this all the time online - people complaining about their "door dash" delivery going horribly wrong, after paying a $20 upcharge on $15 worth of McDonald's food (delivered cold and congealed, if delivered at all).

In short, people are spending money like drunken sailors.  And companies are making record profits - they always are, by the way, as inflation ratchets up all prices.  I kind of get sick of statistics like that - "housing prices are at an all-time high - you could buy a house in 1950 for $5000!"  Well, duh - inflation.

A Chevy Vega or Ford Pinto cost $1999.99 back in 1972 ("under $2000") and today, with inflation, that would be about $14,396 which oddly enough is not far from the price of the cheapest new car sold in America today.  Of course the car today has standard air conditioning, power windows and locks, six air bags, radial tires, disc brakes, sound system and so on.  Add those options to the Vega (such as were available back then) and the price is dead even - or even cheaper today.

Always be suspect when someone touts a statistic that such-and-such is at an "all-time high" - because everything is always at an all-time high, due to inflation, if nothing else.

But I digress.  Enough soapbox!

The pandemic may have been part of the problem, in two ways.  First, a lot of money was pumped into the economy, not only in terms of unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, but also in massive "PPP" loans that were forgiven.  Scratch a "rugged individualist" driving a new Suburban to his overwrought mini-mansion, and chances are, you'll find a "businessman" who had hundreds of thousands of dollars in PPP loans forgiven.  He's the one pissed off because "no one wants to work anymore" and his PPP money doesn't go as far as he thought it would.

The second aspect is that getting sick or seeing others get sick (or die) you realize life is finite.  So a lot of folks are "YOLO"-ing their way around and spending money because, well, life might end tomorrow so you might as well spend it, right?  That is the mentality, anyway.  And the recession, which has already started, worldwide (but not in everyone's mind just yet) is about to change that mentality with one helluva hangover.

These companies buying up apartments and houses to "control" the rental market may find themselves owning a lot of overpriced assets.  Empty office space is so useless they are basically giving it away.  Maybe some can be converted to housing, but as I noted before, this presents a lot of zoning and technical issues.   The point may be moot if the housing market collapses - which it could and probably will do, in the next few months.

As I noted before, there is no such thing as unaffordable housing - when people can't afford a house, they stop buying them, and then prices drop.  And small differences in supply and demand drive up prices - and drive them down again.  It could all change in a big hurry, but so long as some chump pays top dollar today on a funny-money mortgage, the party will keep going like its 1999 2008.

Even the guy or gal who was just laid-off from Meta or Google - with a six-figure salary - isn't cutting back just yet.  After all, they have severance pay, and surely another tech firm will pay them top bucks for an HR administrator position, right?  There is a lot of hysteresis in the system, as I noted before, and it will take months before the laid-off person runs out of severance money and unemployment and realizes - after one failed job interview after another, that they have to reset their salary expectations and lifestyle choices.  First to go is the lawn service and the twice-weekly housecleaners.  Door dash?  Take-out food? Restaurant meals?  That went away long ago.

But again, this takes time and it may be the 4th quarter of 2023 or even next year before we see the impact of these layoffs and contracting economy.  Then it won't be "no one wants to work anymore!" but "hey buddy, you got a job for me?" and all this talk of $50-an-hour minimum wage will evaporate, at least for the time being.

And prices will come down - for everything - but only for a while, as the above-chart illustrates.  Prices of everything go up over time, to be sure.  A bubble in pricing occurs when the slope of the graph (Oh my! Mathematics!  Too hard!) spikes briefly.  In order for a correction to take place, the upward trend may reverse (and over-correct in the opposite direction) before resuming its upward climb.  These spikes and valleys are excellent opportunities for people who are smart or just lucky - which is why some argue these events are orchestrated, not organic.

Yea, it is pretty odd how every tech company suddenly lays off tens of thousands of people all at once.  Is it the recession?  Or are they just tired of paying top dollar for salaries and know a good way to put the fear of God back into employees too coddled by work-from-home and in-office gyms and daycare.  You throw a few of their coworker into the fire and well, the rest get back to work, harder than ever.

Once again, cycles!

The Depression Box II

Cable Television kept consumers depressed and spending for decades.  Now it is the smart phone's turn!

I was bartending at a reception at Goodyear and one of my friends had their grandchildren there.  It is funny, living among old people, how you forget what it was like to be young.  Many of the oldsters said the same thing, "Did you see those kids?  Perfect skin!  Were we ever like that?"  And indeed we were, once upon a time.  But today, we go to the dermatologist twice a year to have parts of the largest organ in our body (our skin) removed, after decades of exposure to ultraviolet rays.  We are jealous of the young, who think life will go on like that forever.

I digress, but I ran into someone the other day and they made some noises about "being old" and said they were an ancient 61.  "Oh wait," I replied, "I'm 63!"  "No way!" they retorted, "your complexion is so good, what is your regimen?  What products do you use?"  Uh, I wash my face with a wash cloth?  He was so flummoxed that despite the plethora of "product" he used in a daily torture to scour his face, that the end result was worse than my benign neglect.   I consoled him by saying that all my fat tends to stretch out the wrinkles, and he laughed.

But it illustrates how unfair life is - here's a guy trying to look youthful and failing at it, while I don't give a damn and look younger than him.   Maybe there is a hint in there as to how that works.

Anyway, another friend is performing at the reception and his grandson, barely in grade school, was dancing with abandon.  Where does he get off being so happy?  Then it struck me, he doesn't have a cell phone - yet.   He doesn't have a little pocket-sized depression box constantly telling him what a shitty place the world is and how rotten things are.  Even if he had a cell phone, chances are, all he does is play happy games on it, instead of doom-scrolling all day long, or being bullied on social media.

Yet.  This too, shall change.

Soon enough, one of his fellow kids will bring a fancy phone with him to school, and all the other kids will "ooh!' and "aah!" over it and jealousy will start to set in.  Why won't Mom and Dad buy me a shiny consumer object so I can be the center of attention, if only for a minute?  This is how it starts.  This is how Adam and Eve got tossed out of the garden of Eden.

And he'll get that phone and go down the rabbit hole - just a little bit at a time.  He'll exchange messages online and the kids - being kids - will mock the oddballs and bully the newcomers. Eventually, he will find online discussion groups, video channels, and social media, which will put rotten ideas into his head.  As a teen, he will  think it is "edgy" to profess the moon landing was faked or that the world was flat - after all, these stances garner attention.  And when he reads about the world at large, well, it will seem that everything is horrible and his generation has been singled out for special punishment.  It is all so unfair!

And that happy-go-lucky kid who is dancing to the tune of his grandpa's guitar, is gone forever, replaced by a truculent teen and a depressed 20-something.  He will become one of us in short order.

I have mentioned before, once or twice, how the television is a recipe for depression and the "nightly nooze" sells nothing but bad news.  Oddly enough, people pay - big bucks - to get cable tee-vee and then spend hours watching Fox News, who tells them nothing other than the world is a shitty place (well, except Russia, which is a paradise-on-earth) and everything is going to hell in a handbasket.

And people believe this, because, as I noted before, it is fun to feel bad sometimes - which is why people do it so much.   "The world is coming to an end!" is a message as old as our civilization.  And no matter what the situation, you can say that the "end times" are upon us, as all the signs, as foretold, are there.

But funny thing, the world doesn't end, and life goes on.  And plans made based on everything going to hell often backfire in a big way, whether it is the doomsayer who shorts the wrong stock, or the "prepper" who spends every last dollar on canned goods and ammo for his bunker - for a zombie war that never takes place.

Depressed people make excellent consumers.  Since they have basically given up on life and embraced learned helplessness, they see nothing wrong with "spending it all now" on either some consumer bauble they think will make them happy (and will, for ten minutes, until the unboxing is over) or on a delivered happy meal with a $20 upcharge.   The real misery kicks in, decades later, when Uncle Tomorrow finds out the cupboard is bare.

We should all be as happy as that little kid.  Why not?  All it takes it to put the phone down once in a while and try to appreciate the world as he see is - a sunny day, pleasant breeze, people having fun, and grandpa strumming the guitar.

What more do you need in life?

Because life is short, and too short to spend hours yelling at the tee-vee or staring at a little black box in your hands, thinking life is awful, when it really isn't.

Mother and Child Reunion

Relationships between parents and children are weird.

Mark and I are at an awkward age - at least on Old People Island.  Most of our friends are older than us, sometimes by only a few years, sometimes by a decade or two.  It is less and less common for people to say, "I have children your age!" anymore, as we age out.  But we do find ourselves in the interesting position of being ten years younger than friends of ours and ten years older than their kids.

And not having children of our own, we are sometimes mystified by how parents and children interact.  I mean, we were kids once and we had parents.  But we only experienced that relationship from one side, not both. So it is weird, being halfway in age between two generations, to see how they interact, as we can converse with both parent and child, separately, on a somewhat peer-to-peer basis.

And it is odd, but many parents - and their children - always seem to act like they are mildly annoyed with the other.  And I have experienced this from one side, as my parents got older and I got older, and I realized they were not God-like beings, but just flawed human beings, and they started doing weird stuff like threatening the neighbors with a BB gun.  Yes, second childhood is preceded by second adolescence - particularly when there is liquor involved.

It seems that to parents, their children are always something of a disappointment for vague reasons.  A friend of mine always sighs when talking about their kids.  I asked them, "What, are they Republicans or something?" - because yea, that would probably annoy a parent who was very liberal.  But they said, "No, it's not that..." but failed to elaborate why the parent-child relationship was always predicated with a sigh.

Similarly, for the kids, when I talk to them (and by "kids" I mean people in their 30's and 40's with kids of their own) they kind of roll their eyes when talking about Mom and Dad.  Mom and Dad are a little goofy, in their eyes.  And maybe that is because the "kids" are in the middle of their careers, commuting to work every day, struggling to make each month's mortgage payment and getting their own children off to school.  Mom and Dad (Grandma and Grandpa) are just goofing off and playing golf and pickleball!  Why can't they be more serious?

And maybe part of this was the 18+ years of growing up, and those cringe-worthy teenage years (with doors a-slamming and "you're not the boss of me!" and so on) which create this history with your immediate relatives - a history that maybe you'd soon forget.  And going to visit Mom and Dad brings up those memories for both sides.

I get it that being a parent must be an interesting vibe.  You bring home this tiny life that is your responsibility, and it is the most intimate relationship possible.  Sure, maybe you and your husband have sex, but these little monsters came out of your vagina, not in it.  It doesn't get more intimate than that.  Throw in breast feeding and let's face it, there is a thin line between childhood and incest.

I mean, hats off to the Mom's of the world - teaching children how to wipe their ass and all (wipe away from the genital region, not toward it, particularly if you are a girl).  Oddly enough, I remember that lesson vividly, even though I was only in the low single-digits in age.  I am cursed, it seems, with remembering only the awkward moments in life.

I noted before that over time, the child has to separate themselves from the parent, which is why, during adolescence, kids have to "find themselves" and become more independent. And this can be heartbreaking for parents.  My Mother, after a martini or two (which is to say, after 10:00 AM) would get all maudlin and tell me about an incident when I was five years old.  Apparently, she used to hold my hand when we crossed the street, and one day, I pulled my hand away and said, "I can do it myself, Mommy!" - and that broke her heart and turned her into a raging alcoholic.

So I get it - it must be heartbreaking to bring these perfect little beings to life, only to see them drift away, apparently ungrateful for all your efforts in raising them.  And their values - the values of their generation - seem somewhat scary or even stupid.  And since you are no longer "in charge" of their lives (if either parent or child has any common sense) this loss of power is disappointing.

On the flip side, parents can be a pain-in-the-ass as they get older.  As I noted in my previous posting, we see older women (mostly women - the men kick the bucket sooner) rattling around in big old houses, worrying their children, who live far away and have lives of their own.  "Mom, why don't you move to Boca Del Vista?  It's only a ten minute drive from my house, and they provide lifetime care and we could have lunch every Wednesday!  I worry about you living all alone in that big old house - it is too much to take care of!"

And the Mom, of course, says, "Fuck off, kiddo - mind your own business!  Remember who brought you into this world!"

So yea, there is this tension.  And I am not sure there is a way to avoid it - it may be part and parcel of the parent-child relationship, even if you have a "good" relationship with your parents (which, I am learning more as I get older, is a very, very, rare thing).

I take a piss on my parents a lot in this blog (see, e.g., above) but over time, I have met people or seen scenarios where, well, it makes me realize I had a pretty decent childhood.  It seems particularly in recent times, that children are tossed back and forth between parents of broken homes - treated as possessions more than family members.   Parents who seek custody not out of love or bonding, but as an act of revenge against an ex-spouse.  What will those kids be like when they grow up?  Read the news on any given day - you'll have the answer.

So maybe there is an answer - just don't sweat it.  Don't try to be like my late Sister, who wanted to "understand her relationship with Mother" - just accept it for what it is, and go on and live the best life you can.  And similarly, for parents, to just accept their kids for what they are - living in a world far different from the one we grew up in - and move on.

But do me one favor. When I ask about your grown adult children, don't immediately respond with a sigh.  Because that makes me wonder what the hell they did to be so disappointing to you.

Somebody, somewhere, has to be pleased with how their kids turned out - right?  Please?

Knowing When to Leave

It is hard to give up your home and your lifestyle for a new chapter - the final chapter.

Living here on Old People Island is like having training wheels for old age.  We get to see, up close and personal, how the end game works for humans - the good, the bad, and the ugly.  It isn't often pretty and it isn't easy either.  One of the toughest choices to make is when to find an assisted living place to go to.  And as I noted before, it is like selling out during an asset bubble - going too soon is better than too late!

Sure, maybe you sold out of that stock bubble before the peak, but you still did OK and did a lot better than the fellow who waited too long and ended up broke.

Similarly, it is better to move to a retirement community earlier than later.  If you are somewhat younger and mobile, you can take part in the activities and bus tours and actually do things, make friends, and have some modicum of fun.  If you wait until you are wheelchair-bound or bedridden, well, it is a different head entirely.  And if you wait too long, you end up dying in your home, found trying to crawl across the floor to reach the cell phone (and never making it) leaving behind a trail of various bodily fluids as you shit and piss yourself.  Meanwhile, you try fighting off your cats, who are trying to eat your face.

OK, I joke about the last part, but we did have a friend whose one worry in life was dying at home and having her cats eat her face (not kidding, her words exactly).  And she die at home - but no word on the cat situation.  In other instances, we have been to estate sales where there is a huge stain on the floor where the previous owner slowly passed away.  It's a freaking horror show.

And like I said, that's why young people like horror movies and old people don't.  We're living it, so some "scary dude" with a hockey mask and a knife doesn't seem nearly as scary as an oncologist in a lab coat.   You'll get there someday yourself.   Funny, isn't it, though, that the "monsters" in horror movies are often depicted as old and decrepit people (who oddly enough are quite handy with the cutlery).

But I digress.

It is hard - very hard - to make this decision.  But yet another reason to go earlier than later is that, if you wait too long, the decision is made for you.  The neighbors call the police as you are found in your bathrobe on the front lawn, screaming at the squirrels (as happened to the Dad of one friend of ours).  The kids show up, go to court to be appointed custodian of their parent, and then pick a "home" to put him in.  It often gets ugly.  Better to make this choice yourself.

So how do you know when to leave?  Well, there are telltale signs.  When life starts to get harder and harder to do, that is one sign.  You've stopped working in the yard, because you don't have the energy you used to have.  You have a yard guy, but he just mows and your garden has gone to weeds.  Keeping up with the laundry and dishes and cooking - even for one - is a lot of work, and you find yourself taking shortcuts, like wearing the same clothes all the time (which you put in the laundry at night and then put on again in the morning - bypassing that whole "putting away" deal).   Maybe you find yourself skipping meals or going to the local restaurant more, for just a cheese sandwich, as you are too tired to cook.

And speaking of cooking, maybe the fire department has visited your home once or twice, when you put something on the stove and forgot about it.  It happens - to anyone of any age.  But when you are 80 or older, well, people start to talk.

As a result, many old people get embarrassed and worry about being "put in a home" so they start hiding what is going on.  They socialize less, because they don't want people to see that they need help going up and down stairs, or can't stand for long periods of time.  It is nothing to be ashamed of, but on Old People Island, well, they shame the crap out of you.  And the shamers, a few years (or even months) later, find themselves being shamed.  I fail to understand this aspect of aging - it isn't a game and no one wins at it - ever.

One old lady living alone (now deceased) locked herself out of the house.  She was so worried that her children would find out and "put her in a home" that she lived in her car for several days, asking the local pharmacist for money to buy food.  Yes, clearly she was losing her faculties, but why wait until something weird like this happens?  Well, it does happen, because people say, "I still have my faculties, so I don't need to make plans for my future!"  And yet, we lose our faculties so slowly that, well, we wake up one day and its too damn late.  There's a dead cat in the freezer.  Well, he won't eat your face, at least.

Small car accidents or incidents are another sign - and could be deadly.  My own Grandfather had to give up his license when he drove though a storefront in Kerrville, Texas.  Classic gas/brake pedal confusion incident - it can happen to anyone (I did it at age 23, but didn't hit anything).  Scraping the car getting out of the garage, backing into things (or other cars) in the parking lot.  The worst case scenario - which we see on I-95 with regularity - is an oldster driving the wrong way on the Interstate an causing a fatal head-on.  Someone did a video on YouTube about how some intersections and onramps are confusing and how easy it is, at night, to get on going the wrong way.  Probably true, but you rarely hear about young people doing this, unless they are very, very drunk.

The cat-face lady went through this - being legally blind, they took away her license and she had no way to get groceries (in a pre-door-dash era). So she drove a golf cart on the road - also a no-no without a license.  The State Patrol pulled her over and gave her a ticket.  So she drove the golf cart on the bike path.  Quite frankly, "legally blind" and over 80 is a slam-dunk "time to pick out a nice retirement community" indicator.

And some can be quite nice. I noted before Mark's Grandmother went to Shell Point in Ft., Meyers, Florida (shown above - not too shabby!) and had an apartment of her own. When she was unable to drive, she sold her car and relied on a local taxi or the shuttle bus to do her shopping.  When she was unable to make meals for herself, they moved her to a hotel-like room with three meals a day.  And when she could not walk, she was moved to a hospital-like room and cared for.  Beats cats eating your face.

But like clockwork, the rest of the family criticized her choice, saying she was "too young" (70) to be in an "old folks home" and they were wrong on both counts.  Shell Point has a golf course (maybe two or three) and million-dollar homes as well as dock space for your yacht.  The stereotype of the "old folks home" as some decrepit fire-trap with oldsters in wheelchairs on the front porch, is outdated.  You'll only end up in such a place if you don't make the choice while you are able to.

Of course, finding such a place can be hard to do and a little off-putting.  Many oldsters move to a community near their family (adult children) on the premise that they will visit more often or be there if something goes wrong.  Other choose exotic locations or places with nice weather.  When touring such places, though, it can rub an oldster the wrong way.  You go there and some cheery young person (i.e., under 40) says, "hi there!  You're going to love it here, we have canasta tournaments!"   And they show you some day room in the non-ambulatory department with a bunch of snoozing geezers watching game shows and you think, "Uh, maybe not!"

But that's why I say it pays to look early, rather than wait, as many such places have waiting lists to get in.  And if you have a place in mind - and maybe even lined-up - you can make such a move at a later date, after you drive your car through the front window of Hobby Lobby - and not on purpose, either.

Cost is an issue for many, but many fail to understand the cost savings.  A friend of ours balked at the $4000-a-month cost for one retirement community.  On the one hand, it seems like a lot of money.  On the other - have you seen what rents are like lately?  $48,000 a year may seem like a lot, but is within the income level of many retirees.  And often this includes a lot of amenities, such as one or more meals a day in the dining room.  You may literally not have any other expenses.  Or damn few, anyway.

What got me started on this is a friend - a very talented, smart, and intelligent friend - is finding themselves in a situation where life is getting harder to do - and some of the telltale signs are showing up.  It is possible to remain in your home, if you have a bevy of volunteers to help you out - a neighbor to check in on you every few days, a friend to drive you to the grocery store, another friend to pull the dents out of your car, and so on and so forth.  But relying on the kindness of strangers isn't always a good plan - they move away and they have lives of their own, or they may, themselves reach "that age" and no longer be able to help you.

And then you may end up like Blanche DuBois.

Super-Deluxe Nothingburger With Extra Cheese

The indictment is out - and it's not only a nothingburger, but a super-deluxe nothingburger with extra cheese.

Back in the day, when the police wanted to make an example of a stoner who was growing a couple of pot plants under gro-lites in his closet, they would weigh the pot plants - including the pots they were growing in, the dirt, and the rocks at the bottom of the plant pots - and then claim the hapless stoner was "in possession of 45 pounds of marijuana narcotics!"

It was stupid.  What he actually was in possession of was less than an ounce of weak weed, that had no more THC in it than lawn clippings and tasted about the same when you smoked it.   But cops - and district attorneys - love to overcharge.

It is like these situations where you read about some guy who was "in possession of" thousands of images of child pornography.  What a pervert, right?  Well, what they found, on his hard drive, was a cached 30-second portion of a video, which, at 60 frames per second,  comes out to a whopping 1800 "images".  And it is possible to e-mail someone a link to a video - or a video itself - and if the person clicks on it, the video will load into their buffer.  If the recipient closes the window in horror, well, they still "downloaded" it onto their hard drive, and portions of it are not erased, unless you do a sector-by-sector scrubbing or reformatting of your hard drive.   Yes, if you want to "get even" with someone, you could send them such a link and then report them to the police (but you yourself would be guilty of possession as well!).   Worse yet, a government agency could do this to a citizen - if they were corrupt.  But that never happens - or let's hope it doesn't.

The point is, prosecutors love to play these sort of games, claiming that a perpetrator did more than they actually did - counting each bullet as an illegal possession of a firearm, for example, or indicting people on numerous counts for the same act.  The reason is simple - if you have a number of charges, it scares the crap out of the defendant, as they are looking at decades in jail.  So you over-charge and then offer a plea bargain on one or two charges and the defendant goes for it.  Justice served, except that we are finding out today that many a defendant (particularly minorities and the poor) take these plea deals even if they didn't commit the crime, because they are scared a jury will convict on all the charges and put them in jail forever - which has also happened.

How ironic - Donald J. Trump finding himself in the same legal meatgrinder that young black men face.  Maybe he will develop empathy as a result, but I doubt it.

If you read the indictment and have any sort of legal background, you'll have a good chuckle.  The "34 felonies" are all related to the same event, and they really should have been charged as one misdemeanor and the fine paid the day Trump was arraigned.  And I say this, not as a Trump supporter, but as a (former) lawyer and Democrat.  On a personal level, I just find him to be plebeian and gross - his choice of banging a porn star is an example of his baseness - as well as his tastes in food, women, fashion, and architecture.  He is everything that is wrong about America.

But that doesn't mean I mindlessly agree with how this was handled.

In case you missed the bus, the "crime" goes like this:

1. Trump has an affair with a trashy porn star. Trashy is as trashy does - and Trump is trashy.

2.  He decides to run for office, but realizes that the evangelicals won't like his personal life.  Funny thing, they didn't care - they are as trashy as Trump (highest rate of teen pregnancies and divorce is among evangelicals).

3.  He hires hapless attorney Micheal Cohen to pay the porn star $130,000 - and odd amount.  I am guessing that Trump being Trump, he offered $100,000, thinking a porn star would think this was "a lot of money" and they haggled over the amount.  She countered with $150,000 and they finally settled at $130,000.  The art of the deal - right?  (Stormy won).

4.  The porn star signs a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for $130,000.  Up to now, no crime has been committed - it is not illegal to pay someone to sign a non-disclosure agreement.  If it was, every corporation in America is guilty of this crime.

5.  Cohen sends a bill to the Trump Org for $130,000 plus his fees, categorizing all of it as "legal services" - which is billing fraud.  Not really a crime per se, but enough to get you into trouble with the State Bar.  I had a boss who did this once.  Yes, there was an investigation.  No, nothing ever came of it.  So long as the client doesn't complain, it is not a huge issue.  But apparently, it was enough to scare the crap out of Cohen and get him to testify.

6.  The Trump org pays off Cohen in a series of smaller payments - and enters the invoices in their system as legal expenses.  This is where the 34 charges come from.  Each check is considered a "falsified business record" and even each check stub, invoice, voucher, and money transfer from the Donald J. Trump irrevocable trust.  Even just receiving Cohen's invoices and filing them is deemed "falsifying a business record."

So 34 charges for one crime - not atypical of any district attorney's filing strategy.  But not 34 crimes.  And in the greater scheme of things, not a great crime.  Note that it does not appear that the DA is claiming tax fraud.  And that is probably because the Trump Org pays little or no taxes in some years, so a $130,000 fraudulent "deduction" isn't going to make a dent in his tax bill.  Besides, since the Trump Org is basically a licensing operation of the Trump name (no, he doesn't own all those golf courses and buildings that his name is being chiseled off of), they could argue that preserving his image is, in fact, a business expense.

But of course, that isn't stopping the full-on Trump haters from thinking this is the "smoking gun" that will put Trump in jail.   But I doubt it will.  In fact, the whole thing will backfire. Once people realize it is a nothingburger, they will say, "Well, that settles it, Trump did nothing wrong!"   And that makes me think that either the Democrats are being particularly stupid, the DA is using this to advance higher ambitions, or that somehow this is being engineered to make all accusations against Trump look insignificant.

It is like the Bush/National Guard thing.  60 Minutes (which has always had a shitty track record - stop acting shocked about Leslie Stahl) did a piece claiming that Bush II ducked out on his National Guard duty.  The "smoking gun" was a letter clearly created using Microsoft Word, supposedly from an era of IBM Selectric typewriters.  It was laughably stupid  - and again, people said, "Well, there was nothing there, there must be nothing to the other accusations!"  One has to wonder if Bush himself didn't plant that letter.  It is a strategy that is commonly used to deflect criticism.

As a friend of mine remarked, it would have been better if indictments from Georgia came out first.  They have Trump on record asking our Governor and Secretary of State to "find" over 30,000 votes.  That's a significant fraud.  That's treason.  But now that will be swept under the rug in favor of the "Stormy Daniels" sex scandal.

And this is a shame, not because Trump is a decent person - he isn't.  It is a shame because it has become part of this tit-for-tat investigation and accusation and impeachment attempts that go back to Watergate.  The GOP was pissed about Watergate - and Iran-Contra.  So they ginned up the "whitewater investigation(s)" which, after years of painstaking research revealed that Bill Clinton got a blowjob in the White House.  That was it.  And Republicans thought the rest of America was so revolted by sex as they are (but of course, they just feel bad about what they do - right Lindsey Graham?) that this revelation would be enough to destroy Clinton.

Sadly, they did fail to prosecute a real crime - offering Monica Lewinsky a government job in exchange for her silence on the matter.  Of course, the whole whitewater thing came to nothing, but it spurred more investigations on both sides.   A President is elected, and a standing committee on investigating the President is created - strategically releasing damning claims at particular times to either discredit the President at a critical moment or to deflect attention from something their side is doing.

So we have "Benghazi! The Musical!" now running on London's West End, followed by The Hunter Biden Laptop Story - another super-deluxe nothingburger, this time with special sauce.

And maybe, over time, people will see through this.  Nothing ever comes of these "investigations" ever, it seems.  Is Hillary in jail yet?  How long does it take to go through the hard drive of a laptop?  What people will start to realize is that there is no "there" there.  And maybe they become jaded by all these investigations and start to ignore them.

Which, of course, could be a strategy, as I noted above. Indictments of Trump have been promised since the day he ran for office. And here we are, six years later, prosecuting Trump over what is probably the most trivial offense of his career.  He's done a lot of egregious things over the years, banging Stormy Daniels wasn't one of them.

Sadly, I think this indictment will just add more momentum to the investigation/counter-investigation flywheel and keep it spinning forever.  Expect bombshell announcements from the Hunter Biden Laptop committee shortly.  Would you like to supersize that nothingburger meal?

What is really sad is that your average American didn't read the actual indictment or even the statement of facts (which is not a legal charge) but instead relied on some talking head on the channel of their choice, which told them what they wanted to hear.  And what they want to hear is "Hooray for our side! Too bad for the other guy!" and this partisan "divide" that the media finds so profitable is fueled even further.

People blindly love Trump or blindly hate him.  Most cannot articulate an actual policy that he enacted that they are for or against.  They root for politicians like NASCAR fans root for their favorite driver.  It is mindless and stupid, of the first order.

Choose your battles wisely.  Insurrection and trying to illegally alter the outcome of a legitimate election are real issues and real crimes.  Paying off a stripper, which might seem tawdry and generates a lot of headlines, really isn't.

Sadly, people just don't get this.