LA Metro

The Skid Row Express (also known as the D line expansion) is set to open in LA soon. Skid row junkies will soon be able to travel from their homeless camps downtown to new homeless camps in Westwood, with convenient stops at Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills for naps, open air… pic.twitter.com/GPSGsAs9Ny

— Peachy Keenan (@KeenanPeachy) July 1, 2026

Urban transit in the US is a festering sore. Ridership, especially on subway and commuter rail systems, has diminished since COVID, while transit overall is significantly less safe. Los Angeles is no exception. A recent piece in City Journal, which in 2024 broke the story of Haitians in Temporary Protrected Status, outlines the problem:

Every day, thousands of Los Angelenos take a deep breath, step out of their houses, and plunge themselves into a transit experience straight out of Mad Max. The city’s buses have become rolling homeless shelters, replete with drugs and feces. Its trains are home to murder and mayhem. As Daquan, a daily rider who works near the North Hollywood station told us, “You could kill somebody down there and just get away with it.”

The transformation has been swift and stark. Between 2020 and 2025, crime in the system more than doubled. What drove the change? L.A. Metro’s dedication to creating an equitable transit system, where all Angelenos—drug-addicted, homicidal maniacs included—can effectively ride free, without consequences.

. . . Activists and their allies in city government have spent years laser-focused on driving cops from the L.A. Metro’s buses and trains. Their argument: making people pay to use the trains is racist.

. . . Obviously, none of this is working. . . . Adjusting for ridership, battery and aggravated assaults both increased by more than 100 percent, and narcotics offenses rose by more than 800 percent.

The lawlessness starts at the entrance: about half of L.A. Metro riders don’t pay, according to data analyzed by Davis. By comparison, Metro’s fare-evasion rate was between 3 percent and 7 percent across stations in 2007. Most importantly, more than 90 percent of violent criminals on the Metro evade fares, meaning the sort of people who go on to stab old ladies in the neck could have been caught by fare enforcement, but aren’t. Despite L.A. Metro’s numerous pilot programs and quasi-safety measures, the one method proven to work for the system is the one method board members are reluctant to try: classic policing.

Kansas City discovered that free buses don't work:

Turns out there’s no such thing as a free bus ride. Kansas City started charging fares again this month to ride the bus, six years after making them free. The area’s transportation authority said it chose requiring users to pay over continuing to impose service cuts.

. . . There is voluminous evidence that charging fares, and enforcing them, helps keep troublemakers out. Randy Clarke, the head of D.C.’s Metro system, credits a crackdown on fare evasion with improved public safety. “Not everyone who fare-evades commits crimes, but almost universally, everyone who commits serious crimes fare-evades,” Clarke told Santi Ruiz on the “Statecraft” podcast. “Not many people are going to tap in and then do armed robbery.”

The Bay Area Rapid Transit system in California found that installing hardened fare gates on its subways contributed to rising revenue while reducing crime and decreasing upkeep. BART performed almost 1,000 fewer hours of corrective maintenance in the first six months after the new fare gates were installed.

Here's a vignette of fare enforcement at tbe Bay Area Rapid Transit system:

Meanwhile at a BART fare evasion gate in SF (to save $2.55) pic.twitter.com/TdSxenaeeu

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 2, 2026

According to San Francisco media,

"I hope she wasn’t hurt and I hope she received a nice ticket to pay for fare evasion," says BART Director Liz Ames, speaking to NBC Bay Area about the viral incident.

Ames tells the station that BART revenue is rising and fare evasion has plummeted thanks to the new, mostly evasion-proof fare gates — and, consequently, crime is down as well, Ames says.

Trump-supporting former BART director Debora Allen also got a call for comment from NBC Bay Area, and she was happy to take credit for spearheading the new fare gate project.

"I think it’s great. I think it’s the best thing we’ve done at BART in many, probably decades," Allen tells the station.

Ames added that revenue is up about $10 million, possibly thanks to the fare gates, and if that keeps up each year, the $90 million project to install the gates will have paid for itself in less than ten years.

When I was in tech back in the day, I had lots of assignments in the San Francisco area, and riding transit back then was an enjoyable experience. It was actually always better than in LA, but apparently things changed, and the two cities are about equally bad. Fare enforcement, at least in San Francisco, might turn things around.

Platner Post Mortems

I've got to say I'm disappointed that Graham Platner dropped out of the Maine Senate race, because having him stay on the ballot would have been just too delicious. But there's plenty of awkwardness and embarrassment yet to come. Just for starters is the Maine Democrat chair's message, embedded in Mark Halperin's 2WAY YouTube above:

As you know, the Maine Democratic Party has been working around the clock to develop a process to replace our US Senate nominee that is open, inclusive, transparent, and fair. the integrity of this process is just as important as the outcome, and we are committed to ensuring that Democrats across our state can have confidence in both.

Because, of course, last month's primary wasn't open, inclusive, transparent, and fair enough. She goes on, to cackles from one of Halperin's guests,

We have repeatedly reiterated [sic] to Graham Platner's team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the US Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like.

I'm not sure bhow they'll be able, first, to create and promulgate an open, inclusive, transparent, and fair process to pick a new nominee, and then to implement it in an open, inclusive, transparent, and fair way before July 27. For starters, a girlboss type may not be the best spokesperson for the project, but maybe that's just me.

Another intriguing development yesterday was the gathering at Platner's home before he announced he was dropping out:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s silver-spoon socialist adviser, Morris Katz, rushed over to beleaguered Graham Platner’s house Wednesday as they plotted how to remain a powerbroker in the Senate race — enraging Democrats.

The gathering included Platner’s top campaign brass in addition to Katz, who is trying to hatch a plan for Platner to “remain a voice” in the Senate contest “no matter what” the accused rapist decides, a source familiar with deliberations told The Post.

. . . His intransigence has left Maine Democrats “livid” and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) “in shock,” according to the source.

Well, you can tell from the Halperin clip that the girlboss is not amused, anyhow. The piece continues,

“The fact that the NYC mayor’s fixer is headed there to triage Maine has everyone fuming,” the source added.

Allies of Platner argue that he formed a movement in Maine, touting the over 150,000 votes he notched in the primary, and deserves to remain influential.

. . . Two sources say Katz has told allies he believes Platner should to leave the race before the 5 p.m. Monday deadline to withdraw from the ballot — but wants the exit to be on the candidate’s terms.

“It’s quite clear that he’s [Platner’s] gonna have to get out of the race,” a second source told The Post. “Their reluctance here … is a result of their larger political project, trying to get these types of candidates into places of power.”

Other campaign officials seen entering Platner’s Sullivan home include field director Spencer Toth, digital communications consultant Ryan Aquilina, campaign manager Ben Chin, and Chin’s deputy Eleni Neyland.

A later report suggests the leverage Senate Democrats were able to apply:

Just hours after the latest rape claims, Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) issued a joint statement denouncing Platner.

“The allegations reported today are incredibly disturbing – violence, abuse and sexual assault are absolutely unacceptable,” it said.

“Graham Platner needs to immediately withdraw as the Democratic nominee for Senate and allow Maine Democrats the opportunity to choose a new candidate who can defeat Susan Collins. The DSCC [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] will not invest in the Maine Senate race if Platner remains on the ballot.”

. . . Platner lashed out at those who abandoned him and pulled his financial support.

“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,” he bemoaned.

“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,” Platner continued. “They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine,” he said.

In other words, grassroots donations weren't going to pay the big-bucks salaries of all the hangers-on who gathered at Platner's house yesterday afternoon. Might there have been a deal to keep those folks off unemployment, or have the establishment Democrats dealt the DSA a mortal blow in the Platner fiasco? In any case, according to the UK Guardian,

The state party said on Wednesday it would hold a nominating convention to pick a new candidate.

But one complicating factor has been that Platner won more primary votes than any Democratic Senate candidate in the state’s history, and energized a coalition that the establishment favorite, governor Janet Mills, never matched. Some have suggested that his successor will need to carry forward that energy, while others are arguing the new nominee will have to be independent from him, or risk being seen as his protégé.

Whoever takes the position will have little time to prepare for a general election against Collins, a five-term incumbent.

Media conventional wisdomm lists a dozen or more potential Platner replacements, but a problem is that nearly all of them, like former Gov Janet Mills, have already lost in recent Democrat primaries, either for governor or the Senate nomination that Platner won last month. There are other questioms about numbers. This piece, written just before Platner dropped out, asks:

In her 2020 election, Susan Collins got 417,645 votes (51%), while her Democrat opponent, Sara Gideon, got 347,223 (42.4%). In the Democratic primary that year, Gideon got 116,264 votes, which was 71.5% of the 162,681 ballots cast in the primary. Let’s compare the performance of Gideon to how Platner did in this year’s Democratic primary: 154,084 votes (72.1%) — about 38,000 more votes. But if Collins once again tops 400,000 votes in the November election, where’s Platner going to come up with the extra 250,000 votes he’ll need to beat her?

A Platner replacement won't have the Platner glitz, while former Platner voters may not have the same enthusiasm for someone not specifically aligned with the DSA.

The Platner Story Won't Quit!

The big lesson for me in the evolving Platner saga is how easily mainstream leftists let themselves be conned. Scott Jennings claims he was in fact "vetted":

All of this whole thing is disgusting but to say that they hadn't vetted him, or that they didn't know about all this is totally false. They knew it and they signed up for it and I don't know why they're backing away from this scumbag today when they had already signed off on all that other crazy behavior.

Strictly speaking, the specific Jenny Racicot allegations of sexual assault (and now sneaky behavior relative to contraception) became public only as of the past few days; they weren't general knowledge, for instance, before the Maine primary.

What was actually going on was that, as I pointed out yesterday, Platner was merchandised by DSA talent spotters as though he had been vetted, and the Democrat machine and out-of-state donors took this on faith. He looked authentic, as only someone out of the L L Bean catalog can look. (Full disclosure: the first big change in my lifestyle that my wife announced after our marriage was that I would no longer be sourcing my wardrobe from L L Bean.)

A better take is from Michael Cohen at MS NOW:

The first lesson is don’t fall in love with an unvetted political outsider — or, for that matter, any politician. When he announced his candidacy, Platner told a compelling story. He was a political outsider with no experience in electoral politics, a Marine combat veteran and an oyster fisherman in a state where working on the water is a badge of honor.

. . . It turned out that, far from being a successful oyster fisherman, his biggest customer was his mother, who runs a restaurant. Platner’s claims of a hardscrabble youth were contradicted by stories of living off his parents’ generosity and stints at an elite private school.

But even Cohen misses a central point: like many modern Democrats, if Platner is anything, it's entitled. Platner is People Like Us. Why vet him? We already know who he is! I think this is also key to what's likely next in this saga. Scott Pinsker gamed this out a little over a month ago at PJ Media:

1. Graham Platner drops out in shame and is replaced by a DNC establishment favorite who’s safer, fully vetted, and more likely to win (and follow orders).
2. Graham Platner stays on the ballot, but because the scandal(s) dropped in May/June, it’ll be “old news” by the first Tuesday of November.

As of this morning, the state of play appears to be number 2: Platner so far is either refusing to drop out entirely, or refusing to drop out unless he can name his successor:

Stay strong king you got this https://t.co/DNGWQcIH28

— The Drunk Republican (@DrunkRepub) July 8, 2026

One take I've seen on the Platner story is that this scandal is now actually a bid by establishment Democrats to retake the party from DSA. The biggest piece of evidence is that the latest Jenny Racicot allegations emerged while there's still time for Platner to drop out and be replaced by an establishment Democrat. But as of right now,

according to a source with knowledge of Platner’s campaign, the candidate, his campaign and Democrat strategist Morris Katz are discussing a plan for him to drop out “only if his replacement shares his left-wing values.”

Katz, a former advisor to Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, is described in the Washington Free Beacon as a “26-year-old Nepo Baby Theater Kid.”

. . . But Katz, according to the Post, is recommending that Platner stay in the race. The candidate “appears to be holding the Democratic Party hostage,” the Post said.

“His team is delusional,” the source declared, adding that Platner seems to think “whoever might replace [him] would want a rapist’s endorsement.”

But here's the problem: only Platner can decide to drop out. If he doesn't by next Monday, the Democrats are stuck with him on the ballot -- but the Democrats also want to retake the Senate, and the route to that lies through beating Collins in Maine. If Platner hangs on through next Monday, the Democrats will have to get back on board and re-endorse the rapist.

If Platner stays in -- and there are two ways he can do it, either by insisting on choosing a DSA-aligned successor, or simply refusing to drop out at all -- then the Democrats will need to return to the fold if they have even the remotest hope of retaking the Senate. The DSA will still be on board; Platner is People Like Us. I suspect this will be the end game:

It’s quite funny that the case for Platner, up until about 15 hours ago, was, “well, yes, he has a Nazi tattoo and a history of saying terrible things and treats women abominably, but on the other hand he’s a communist.”

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 7, 2026

The Democrats will simply fall back on this former line, because they'll have no choice. For Platner, as the saying goes, when you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose.

Platner Implodes

We last looked at Graham Platner here a month ago. A link to the New York Post pointed out,

The truth is he was discovered and coached by a pair of Ivy League-educated radical Democratic socialists, replicating a playbook they’ve used in Nebraska and Iowa. That revelation could be more damaging than the tattoo, sexting women other than his wife, blasting fellow veterans and admitting to masturbating in a port-a-potty, as it strikes at the heart of Platner’s alleged authenticity.

. . . In summer 2025, Moraff and Fan were in Maine scouting for a new candidate. They had settled on union boss Chris Williams in Bath, but dropped him at the last minute due to “a skeleton in the closet that wasn’t true that we would’ve had to explain,” according to an interview they gave to Politico.

What skeleton could possibly have been worse than a credible rape allegation? As of yesterday,

A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.

The woman, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, detailed the alleged incident to POLITICO in three interviews over the past two weeks. POLITICO also spoke with a man Racicot dated and confided in the years after the alleged incident, and reviewed documents, including emails between Racicot and her therapist and messages between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned against getting involved with Platner years before he ran for office.

According to The New York Post,

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has cleared his campaign schedule and is considering next steps after bombshell allegations of sexual assault from ex-girlfriend were published.

The former girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, told Politico that Platner drunkenly forced her to have sex with him in 2021 — allegations which the candidate immediately denied as “troubling, serious and false.”

The Platner campaign, hours before the article was posted, had indefinitely postponed town halls in Augusta on Sunday and in Gorham on Monday, as well as an event in Sanford whose listing was taken down.

. . . Last month, The New York Times published a story about six ex-girlfriends of Platner, three of whom alleged he “hated women” — with one alleging he twisted her arm before locking her in her room during an argument, among other acts of physical abuse or intimidation.

Racicot was interviewed for the Times’ piece and recounted Platner’s inebriated arrival at her home in 2021, without any accusations of rape.

One thing strikes me here that nobody else has mentioned: there was nothing grassroots about Platner. He may as well have been ordered from the L L Bean catalog and was merchandised and sold to both the media and the Democrats by the Moraff-Fan team. I think Scott Jennings has this one wrong:

Democrats fully vetted Graham Platner, happily signed off on his incredibly disturbing history to win a Senate seat, and are only pretending to be shocked now because they can no longer rationalize the hypocrisy. pic.twitter.com/jkp12Gwv16

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) July 7, 2026

I don't think anyone vetted him, certainly not before his name was put on the ballot. Real Clear Politics dropped its mask this morning and linked only one piece about Platner, by Ed Kilgore at New York Magazine, Platner on the ledge after sexual-assault allegation, none of the usual one-from-column-A-one from column-B charade:

The crucial, intermittently impressive, but perpetually imperiled U.S. Senate candidacy of Maine’s progressive oysterman Graham Platner hit new shoals today after Politico published allegations from an ex-girlfriend that he sexually assaulted her five years ago. CNN later reported the same. The fresh allegations, on the heels of an assortment of damaging information involving his background, his views, and most of all his treatment of women, has raised the simmering fears among Democrats in and beyond Maine about his candidacy to a full boil, with time running out for a possible replacement for him on the November ballot.

. . . It’s possible Platner is working behind the scenes with Maine Democrats to identify a suitable substitute and to prepare his own public rationale for folding his tent and disappointing the many Mainers who gave his grassroots campaign so many resources and so much excitement.

Again, there was nothing grassroots about Platner, he was packaged and merchandised by DSA talent scouts looking for attractive boutique candidates. He was simply too good to vet. A review of his campaign history in Wikipedia shows there were warning lights blinking all the time:

In late October and early November 2025, several high-level staffers left Platner's campaign during a period that coincided with media reporting on his past controversial Reddit posts. On October 17, Platner's political director, Genevieve McDonald, resigned. Platner offered her $15,000 in severance pay if she signed an NDA, but she refused the offer. On October 27, Platner's campaign manager, Kevin Brown, resigned, citing family reasons. On October 31, Platner's campaign finance director, Ronald Holmes, resigned.

. . . In October 2025, various news outlets reported on Reddit posts Platner made between 2013 and 2021 in which he called himself a "communist", wrote that "all cops are bastards", agreed with a post calling rural white Americans "racist and stupid", and referenced political violence and armed resistance. In a 2013 Reddit discussion about anti-rape underwear, Platner wrote that people worried about assault should "take some responsibility for themselves and not get so [redacted] up they wind up having sex with someone they don't mean to".

. . . During his 2026 Senate campaign, Platner faced scrutiny over a tattoo on his chest of the Totenkopf symbol used by the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) and SS-Totenkopfverbände. In an interview on Pod Save America, Platner said he and other Marines received the tattoo while on leave in Croatia in 2007 and that he had been unaware of its historical association at the time. He later covered the tattoo. CNN and Jewish Insider reported a former acquaintance's allegation that Platner had previously called the tattoo "my Totenkopf", which Platner denied.

. . . In May 2026, The New York Times and other news outlets reported that in 2025, Platner's wife, Amy Gertner, told a senior campaign aide that Platner had been sexting with multiple other women. The Platner campaign's political director, Genevieve McDonald, alleged that Gertner had said Platner had sexted as many as a dozen women. A Platner campaign official said he had been communicating with no more than six, and that the conduct had stopped before the campaign launched.

. . . In June 2026, The Times reported allegations that Platner engaged in disturbing and physically threatening behavior toward women he had dated. A former girlfriend described by The Times as "a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns" alleged that Platner had grabbed her repeatedly with enough force to leave marks and once twisted her arm behind her back, pushed her into a room, and locked her in against her will until morning.

But it looks like the DSA has already come up with a potential Platner replacement:

As Maine’s Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner faces mounting calls to withdraw from the race over a sexual assault allegation he denies, Troy Jackson has emerged as the favorite to replace him.

. .. . State law allows Platner to be replaced on the ballot if he withdraws by July 13. Then, the Maine Democratic Party would have until July 27 to name a replacement.

Among the potential replacements, Jackson is one that could appeal to the progressive base that backed Platner.

. . . Jackson ran a progressive campaign for governor in this year’s race, with a platform that included pledges to reduce prescription drug costs, create a Department of Affordable Housing, and lower property taxes.

Jackson had the backing of Platner, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and more than 20 unions—with the Bangor Daily News describing Jackson as Platner’s "gubernatorial counterpart and prototype."

. . . Jackson had supported Platner on the campaign trail, but joined calls for him to withdraw from the Senate race on Monday.

"There is no place in our politics for sexual violence. Not in our party, not in any party. Graham Platner must withdraw from this race today," he wrote on X. "This is not what we stand for. Not as Democrats, not as Mainers, not as human beings."

But Jackson appears to have his own record of sexual violence:

So yeah, about that DSA-endorsed candidate that folx want to replace Platner:

"As Maine Senate President in a state senate caucus meeting several years ago, Troy Jackson in a heated disagreement struck a female colleague with a bottle he threw at her." https://t.co/iE2GildZXY

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) July 7, 2026

Some of the comments, though, suggest this could be a Platner operation. All I can say for now is stay tuned.

Jacob Rees-Mogg Gets The US Wrong

I've noted before that I've recently discovered the UK Thatcherite toff Jacob Rees-Mogg, who gets things wrong in an entertainingly stuffy way. In the video above, he congratulates the US for having what he implies is a copy of the UK constitutional system. This is the sort of comfortable patter that Winston Churchill used to ingratiate himself with Roosevelt, and the sort of thing King Charles said to the US congress not long ago in a similar effort to get the US to continue to spend money on the UK's defense.

Of the events in 1776, Rees-Mogg says, at 1:40:

[T]he Americans said they were English gentlemen who just happened to live in another place, and they wanted the rights of Englishmen. They wanted taxation with representation. . . . Edmund Burke pointed out that there was a precedent for people living abroad being able to to send MPs. That is to say, up until the reign of Mary Tudor, Mary I, people living in Calais had sent members to Parliament, to the House of Commons.

A little earlier, he says,

The Americans blamed poor old George III, harmless old, mad in the end, George III for what happened and their departure.

On one hand, he's correct in that the Declaration of Independence is in part a list of specific grievances against poor old King George, but Jefferson, the lawyer who wrote it, was certainly aware that on one hand, even as of 1776, the king had little or no power to do the things the Declaration accuses him of doing, such as:

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

In the UK, parliamentary supremacy had been codified almost a century earlier, first in practice during the civil war, and then via the Bil of Rights 1689. But on the other hand, Jefferson didn't assert any legal right for the colonists; the complaint wasn't that the king via parliament hadn't given the colonists legal rights; the complaint in the Declaration of Independence was based on natural law, not any sort of UK legal precedent, Edmund Burke notwithstanding:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. . . . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

The list of grievances is formally against the nominal sovereign, King George, but practically it's against the system by which parliament embodies the sovereign power. The king as a practical matter couldn't do of his own volition any of the things alleged against him in the Declaration.

Rees-Mogg then goes on to list the guarantees provided in the US Bill of Rights and suggests that these are traditionally also establised in the UK, but then he defeats his own argtument by saying those guarantees have been eroded in recent years in the UK -- but it's parliamentary supremacy that's allowed this; it was allowed in 1776 just as much as it's allowed now. Parliament can abridge freedom of speech in any way it chooses. There's no wording in UK law equivalent to "Congress shall make no law" in the US First Amendment.

In fact, a little over a decade later, the Constitutional Convention moved to circumscribe the power of congress and establish an executive that could act independently, something the UK monarchy hadn't been able to do for 100 years. Clearly this was done with the experience of the UK in mind.

Rees-Mogg concludes,

My goodness, how well our two constitutions have done in making the world rich, successful, and safe.

Wait a moment. It's been roughly 100 years since the UK had much of anything at all to do with making the world rich, successful, or safe. UK policies had a great deal to do with bringing about the Great Depression and then World War II. The US, on the other hand, has had everything to do with making the world rich, successful, and safe; the UK has just been along for the ride but seems eager to convince itself it's somehow responsible.

European Shortfall As A Historic Constant

For some resson, the Wall Street Journal put up a link on Facebooki to a piece they ran last April, What Happens When Europeans Find Out How Poor They Are?. Coming back to it today, I find they've tucked it back behind a paywall. But the first paragraphs give up the gravamen:

Do Europeans understand how poor they are? And what will happen when they find out? Those are the Continent’s big political-economy questions for the next few years—perhaps decades.

The widening gap between American and European prosperity is among the most important facts of the global economy. The clearest manifestation is the chasm in per capita gross domestic product: $94,400 in the U.S., according to the International Monetary Fund, compared with $65,300 in Germany, $61,000 in the U.K. and $52,000 in France.

I don't know what history books this fellow has been smoking -- I've gradually come to recognize I did well by not taking any undergraduate history courses -- but European and UK underproduction vis-a-vis the US is a basic fact that underlies the whole 20th century. It's simply nothing new. To show what an elementary issue this is, I asked Chrome AI mode, "Is it possible to compare the difference in per capita GDP between the US and Germany as of 1900?" It answesred,

Yes, it is entirely possible to compare the differences in per capita GDP between the United States and Germany as of 1900, thanks to extensive reconstructions by economic historians. The most authoritative source for this data is the Maddison Project Database at the University of Groningen. This database standardizes historical economic output across time and borders using Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) adjusted to "International Dollars" to account for local cost of living and inflation.

The 1900 Economic Comparison

Data from the historical data records show that by the turn of the 20th century, both nations were rapidly emerging as global industrial powerhouses:

United States per capita GDP (1900): ~$4,096

Germany per capita GDP (1900): ~$3,134

The Absolute Gap: The US led Germany by approximately $962 per person.

The Percentage Difference: The average American's economic output was roughly 30.7% higher than the average German's.

I went to my calulator and founnd that thr contemporary numbers for Germany given in the WSJ show Germany's per capita GDP is 69.3% of the US, versus the 1900 numbers from AI showing Germany's per capita GDP as 69.3% of the US. In other words, the difference over more than a century is de minimis. This guy was somehow able to convince the WSJ that he had something important to say. These people presumably took the same history classes that say Winston Churchill was a great man.

I said above that this is a key fact that underlies the history of the 20th century. Let's ask Chrome AI another question: "Did US banks finance the UK and France throughout World War I?" It answered,

Yes. US banks, led by J.P. Morgan & Co., heavily financed the UK and France throughout World War I. Prior to the US entering the war, Wall Street banks provided billions of dollars in loans and credit to purchase essential American munitions, food, and raw materials.

When the Allies exhausted their initial gold and cash reserves in 1915, J.P. Morgan & Co. organized a historic $500 million Anglo-French Loan to prevent the Allied war effort from collapsing. By 1917, after these commercial credit lines were tapped out, the US government stepped in directly, with the Treasury lending roughly $10 billion to the Allies through the end of the war.

Say what the history books will about the Lusitania and the Zimmermann Telegram, it was actually the fear of the UK and France defaulting on their war loans that drove US entry into the war, and the unpaid war loans were a continuing issue that drove international policy in the 1920s and 1930s. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What effect did UK and French postwar debt have on the German reparations issue?" It answered,

The postwar debts that the UK and France owed to the United States directly paralyzed the German reparations issue, creating a vicious, unworkable economic triangle during the 1920s. Here is exactly how these intersecting debts shaped the reparations crisis:

The Debt-Reparations Triangle

US Demand: The United States demanded full repayment of wartime loans from Britain and France.

Allied Stance: Britain and France could only pay the US if Germany paid them reparations.

German Collapse: Germany’s economy was too broken to fund the entire Allied debt burden.

The basic problem was that neither Germany, the UK, Austria-Hungary, France, nor Russia had the wherewithal to finance the war that began in 1914. J P Morgan himself died in 1913 a seriously ill and mentally diminished man. His son Jack doesn't seem to have been able to correct his father's serious misjudgments in the years before his death, and organizing the 1915 Anglo-French loan without demanding a resolution to the war as a condition was a major lapse in itself, as far as I can see.

But let's skip over the miscalculations of the 1920s, for which Winston Churchill bore a great deal of responsibility, and move to the Second World War, in which neither Germany, nor France, nor ther UK, nor the Soviet Union, nor for that matter Japan, had the financial wherewithal for the extended fight. 1941 was simply a replay of 1917, with US money, organizational ability, and production power shifting the balance. (It was also able to push Churchill out of any influence over Allied policy.)

While both the Soviet Union and Germany couid conceal their financial disadvange via extensive use of slave labor, for Germany in particular, US production capacity won out; it could replace airplanes and pilots, when Germany couldn't. But this is just a special case of a historic constant, something only Trump has been able to recognize, and he's been belatedly readjusting policy as a result.

The World Keeps Looking More And More Like The Bourne Franchise

Back in 2020, I posted about my first serious look at the Bourne franchise:

The original Ludlum novels appeared between 1980 and 1990, while the film trilogy we watched appeared between 2002 and 2007, long before Donald Trump was anything but a playboy billionaire and reality TV star. Yet the image of the CIA and its fictional director, Martin Marshall, is the one we have now, the one with the actual CIA director John Brennan, who in the public mind is fully capable of Martin Marshall's misdeeds and fully eligible for Marshall's implied fate, federal indictment for serious whatever.

Did Martin Marshall go to Yale? You betcha.

A quick summary of the Bourne story as portrayed in the films is that David Webb, a former member of the US Army Delta Force, is recruited into a double-secret CIA program called Treadstone. This uses drugs, psychological manipulation, and elite-level special forces training to create super-assassins, who take out world political figures to further a secret CIA agenda. In the course of one such assignment, which he undertakes using the alias Jason Bourne, Webb is nearly killed himself, but he loses all memory of his former life, and he must undertake a hero's journey to recover his identity and backstory. The CIA deploys all its resources to eliminate Webb/Bourne to prevent Treadstone's exposure.

This premise was credible from the start due to the CIA's proven involvement in programs like MKUltra. According to Wikipedia,

MKUltra was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used in altering human behavior.

. . . Project MKUltra began in 1953 and was halted in 1973. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals without the subjects' consent. Additionally, other methods beyond chemical compounds were used, including electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture.

. . . Project MKUltra was revealed to the public in 1975 by the Church Committee (named after Senator Frank Church) of the United States Congress and Gerald Ford's United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States (the Rockefeller Commission). Investigative efforts were hampered by CIA director Richard Helms's order that all MKUltra files be destroyed in 1973[.]

The problem -- and a reason the Bourne franchise still resonates -- is that nobody can quite say with assurance that MKUltra was in fact halted in 1973. Rep Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) brought matters up to date this past Tuesday (June 30) in a House hearing:

In her opening remarks, Luna called the program “crimes committed by the Central Intelligence Agency against American citizens” and “crimes against humanity.”

“This was a deliberate, systematic governmental operation… authorized by the very top of U.S. intelligence apparatus,” Luna said.

She detailed how CIA Director Richard Helms personally ordered the destruction of MKULTRA records in 1973 as he left office. Sidney Gottlieb and his team spent an entire day burning 152 files.

Gottlieb then had his personal papers destroyed. The head of the CIA’s own records center protested in writing and was overruled.

. . . Luna announced that the CIA is now working to declassify newly discovered documents tied to what she described as a previously unknown “forgery program.”

CIA whistleblower and former officer James Erdman III testified that approximately 40 boxes of sensitive records were removed from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) during declassification review efforts.

. . . Erdman testified that the CIA “took back 40 boxes of JFK files and MKULTRA files being processed for declassification by DNI Tulsi Gabbard” in what he described as “documented efforts to circumvent oversight.”

. . . Adding to the alarm, a former CIA officer testified during the hearing that “I don’t believe that the research stopped” on MKULTRA.

ZeroHedge has more details:

Investigative journalist Tom O'Neill, author of Chaos, told the committee the agency actively misled Congress in 1977. He submitted documents showing the CIA's own earlier claims about LSD experiments contradicted what it later told lawmakers. O'Neill stated flatly: "I believe the agency misled Congress in 1977 when it characterized MK-Ultra as a failure."

He connected dots to figures like psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West and his ties to Charles Manson and Jack Ruby, underscoring how deeply the program reached into real-world events. The message was clear: the full story was buried on purpose.

One of the most disturbing revelations came from historical documents referenced during the hearing. A participant in the original program documented the ability to replace true memories with false ones without the subject's knowledge.

The exact description: "It's feasible to take the memory of a definite event in the life of an individual, and through hypnotic suggestion, bring about the subsequent conscious recall to the effect that this event never actually took place. But that a different fictional event actually did occur."

. . . He then delivered the core warning for today: "There have been enormous advances in cyber technology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Covert agencies may have access to tools for mind control that Sidney Gottlieb could not have imagined."

O'Neill agreed. The massive investment in time, money, and research made it unlikely the capabilities were simply abandoned. The technology they built was too valuable.

Public suspicion about whether MKULTRA-style techniques ever truly ended is not abstract. In 2024, widespread speculation erupted around the Trump assassination attempt and whether the shooter could have been influenced or programmed through evolved versions of these programs.

The CIA issued a flat denial, calling the claims "utterly false, absurd, and damaging" and insisting MKULTRA ended decades ago.

. . . The question is no longer whether the CIA once crossed every ethical and constitutional line. The question is whether those lines were ever truly redrawn - or simply moved into newer, harder-to-detect territory.

My respect for Ludlum as a writer has increased. It may be that, like Lew Wallace (1827-1905), a fascinating figure who among other things wrote the novel on which the film Ben-Hur is based, Ludlum (1927-2001) had an imagination that uniquely inspired buth the public and Hollywood. According to Wikipedia,

Ludlum's novels typically feature one heroic man, or a small group of crusading individuals, in a struggle against powerful adversaries whose intentions and motivations are evil and who are capable of using political and economic mechanisms in frightening ways. The world in his writings is one where global corporations, shadowy military forces and government organizations all conspired to preserve (if it was evil) or undermine (if it was law-abiding) the status quo.

I'm not sure if Ludlum's novels are as good as the films they were made from; I haven't felt compelled to check. The critical consensus seems to be, though, that the novel Ben-Hur isn't as good as the movie, but according to Wikipedia, after its 1880 publication,

It became a best-selling American novel, surpassing Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) in sales. The book also inspired other novels with biblical settings and was adapted for the stage and motion picture productions.

Ben-Hur remained at the top of the U.S. all-time bestseller list until the 1936 publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. The 1959 MGM film adaptation of Ben-Hur is considered one of the greatest films ever made and was seen by tens of millions, going on to win a record 11 Academy Awards in 1960, after which the book's sales increased and it surpassed Gone with the Wind.

I can attest that Ben-Hur the novel is a roaring good read. I may need to look futher into Ludlum; like Lew Wallace and Herman Wouk, he may be an underrated American writer. It's good I didn't become an English prof.