Feeding the president 'brown paper bags full of cash'

PLUS: Cowgill health update

Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

Since I last deigned to write about our world on March 21, a lot has happened. As is now par for the course in a Trump administration, the news proceeded — and continues to proceed — at a dizzying pace.

I don’t want to lead with it, so an update on my health can be found below, near the end of this column.

As we approach the 100-day period of his second term, President Trump’s insane and empty-headed trade war has continued, but he has zigged and zagged so many times that it’s hard to keep up with what’s tariffs remain in effect and which he has abandoned. Here’s a pretty good two-minute summary. He seems to have lifted some sanctions and imposed some new ones, and in the process has rattled the markets, causing nerves to fray for anyone, such as yours truly, who has a stake in the equities markets.

But beyond the obvious, what has Trump accomplished in his first 100 days? As the Washington Post reports, it’s a mixed bag:

It’s doubly difficult to keep track of Trump’s accomplishments because of his shifting explanations of previous promises made. During the campaign, he promised, for example, to end the war between Ukraine and Russia within 24 hours of his inauguration, if not sooner. Now he says he was exaggerating for effect or — get this — he was just joking.

But here is an undercovered story that has captured my imagination, highlighted recently in the WaPo, though available through many other sources. It concerns Trump’s involvement in a get-rich-quick crypto currency scheme.

In an executive order posted on March 6, Trump claims he wants to create a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that will treat bitcoin as a reserve asset and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile, positioning the United States as a leader among nations in government digital asset strategy.” So what appears to be a personal enrichment scheme is disguised as good public policy and has the imprimatur of the U.S. government.

If you don’t understand what cryptocurrency is, you’re hardly alone. Indeed, I’ve struggled with it for years. Here is a nice succinct explanation from the Reserve Bank of Australia:

Cryptocurrencies are digital tokens. They are a type of digital currency that allows people to make payments directly to each other through an online system. Cryptocurrencies have no legislated or intrinsic value; they are simply worth what people are willing to pay for them in the market.

And for your convenience, here is an AI-generated bullet-point summary of the WaPo story:

And get this: In addition, the top 220 Trump coin holders will be rewarded with a private dinner with the president at one of Trump’s many golf courses.

Think about this for a second: if you buy crypto from Trump’s project, you can gain direct access to him. Lots of politicians engage in pay-to-play schemes but they generally keep them under wraps, lest they suffer the shame of being discovered as a crook. But Trump is a vulgarian; he doesn’t care about such niceties.

The dinner promotion “creates the specter of a pay-to-play deal” for wealthy spenders eager to bend the president’s ear, one ethics expert told The Post. “He’s actually selling access, personal access, to him and to the White House if people invest in this meme coin, which really has no intrinsic value,” added another.

Here’s a discussion on the topic between The Bulwark’s Sam Stein and business and finance journalist Ben Walsh:

I echo the sentiments of my social media friend, the very level-headed journalist and fellow Wesleyan alum Paul Starobin:

“This is like handing him a brown paper bag full of cash,” added Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark.

“When did it become OK to sell shit out of the White House?” one commenter asked rhetorically.

But we really should not be surprised. This is what Trump does. In the words of his confidant Steve Bannon, Trump “floods the zone with shit” so that we either can’t keep track of his corruption and lies or, in effect, it simply becomes normalized.

Worth reading:

Legal experts say Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency raises questions about ethics and secrecy -Politifact

Cowgill health update

Once again, I apologize for the lack of activity on this platform. As I posted (see below) shortly after being discharged from Duke Regional Hospital after three weeks that included major hip replacement surgery and intensive in-patient physical and occupational therapy, I’ve rarely felt up writing about anything.

Pardon my interruption

As I have told some of my closest friends and family, my progress has not been what I had hoped it would be more than three months after the surgery. Much of the lack of progress has to do with a little known muscle in the buttocks, the piriformis.

At one point in my recovery — likely when I seemed to be improving and became overconfident — I pulled that muscle. This proved to be a tipping point. One of the keys to recovery from total hip replacement is to rebuild the lost muscle mass in the pelvis and buttocks areas.

During surgery some of the muscle mass is removed so that surgeons can access the area, install the new hip, apply the cement and install the hardware with screws. Yet more muscle mass is lost through the inevitable atrophying that occurs when the glutes are used less frequently.

Your truly at his ‘desk’, err standing workspace.

At any rate, it is very difficult for me to build muscle mass in that region when a key muscle is pulled and is quite painful to flex. It also makes walking normally a painful task because when I try to lift my surgical leg as I do my other leg when I walk, it creates more pain in the piriformis. So too often I walk by slightly dragging my surgical leg. Yuk. All of this is complicated by sometimes severe (and unexplained) nerve pain in my nonsurgical leg.

To make matters worse, it’s painful to sit for anything but the briefest of periods. This makes writing a challenge. As I type this, I’m standing at the kitchen counter in our San Antonio apartment. Hah. You know something’s not right when you can stand longer than you can sit.

But I have a new physical therapy team at the San Antonio Orthopaedics Group that is focusing on that muscle, and I’m optimistic that I will regain most of my physical prowess and stamina. So with a new outlook, now is a good time to start writing again.

I’m hopeful you’ll hear from me again soon. Meanwhile, thanks for reading, subscribing and supporting me!