Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, February 18, 2026
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19 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
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BlueSky.
Just to recap.
As of 0630 CST, the Colbert You Tube interview of James Talarico has
5,122,638 views.
And 47,345 comments.
Driven, I presume, by a combination of Trump aggression and Russian disinformation campaigns. But not good at all.
US now ranks behind only Russia as top world peace threat in German eyes, researchers find
Mikaela Shiffrin just spanked the world to take Gold in the slalom!!!
By over 1-1/2 secs.
She skis like a girl!!!
More stiff arm from Canada.
Canada defense plan aims to reduce ‘dependency’ on US
As we squander decades of mutually beneficial relationships.
Here is Heather Cox Richardson in today’s newletter.
The contrast between the Epstein case and the ICE deportations are an interesting look at how people of different economic classes are treated. ICE is rounding up people randomly, violating peoples rights, and doing it with no regard whatsoever. They can do this because these are largely a class of people who have little access to the legal system. They are denied due process for no other the reason then they are too poor to have legal counsel or support contacts to call on when they are denied this due prosses. US citizens have been in custody much longer then necessary by ICE. This is a textbook case of unconstitutional behavior.
Meanwhile the with Epstein files, powerful men get their names redacted, a lot of care is taken not to offend them (in contrast to the actual victims) and have the money to afford all the legal process that can be had. Even if any were arrested they would never darken a jail cell while teams of lawyers work to shield them from any consequences. It’s a grotesque reminder that we have a two maybe three tiered system of justice where the rich and powerful are only persecuted if they offend other rich and powerful individuals.
This country has officially hit Banana Republic status run by Banana Republicans.
Next day reply to @JohnSF
I’ve no doubt the US could take over Iran. I had no doubt they could take over Iraq and Afghanistan, either.
The other question is how many army and marine troops they’re moving to the region. Air power can wreck a country, but it can’t hold ground.
@Kathy:
I’m not a military guy but in my mind there’s a difference between what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan and “taking over.” We were never in control. We exerted overwhelming force. But IMO that is not the same as control.
@Daryl:
Agreed. But I still stand by my implication.
On other news, Tropical diseases are making inroads in Europe.
Remember this is all part of a hoax.
Not a hoax, and neither was the above, today there’s an earthquake drill. I’d no idea one had been planned. Two more will take place this year. one on Sept. 19th, the anniversary of the 1985 quake, but it falls on Saturday. no clue why they picked that date. I know what I’ll do if it catches me at home: nothing.
@Scott:
Just to put this in perspective, his recent interviews with two other much better known politicians, Josh Shapiro and Bernie Sanders, have about a tenth of those viewership numbers
@Rick DeMent:
I’ve been idly kicking this idea around when it comes to taxes. It’s kind of a stupid argument, but I’ve started wondering about when does the application of taxes violate equal protection?
I’m not making an argument that progressive taxation violates equal protection, I don’t think it does. I think there are two aspects to this:
1. if poor, middle class, or the barely rich get busted fudging their taxes they are going to get stomped on with both feet by the IRS, but the very rich and the billionaires can seemingly openly and defiantly fuck around on their taxes.
2. What’s the difference between a CEO avoiding taxes by getting paid in stock and then using loans to fund their lifestyle and a small business owner putting everything on the company card and just not making a profit. To my mind, the only differences are scale and political power.
Like I said, kinda half thought out, but it does really speak to how the US is just a giant scam to funnel money upwards.
@Beth: As someone who has had a small sniff at some of these things in my golden years – you’re not really wrong.
AND, it turns out that many people with money who want to avoid taxes are really kind of dumb.
I once sat through a meeting where a guy was pitching life insurance to me. It was an annuity plan. After listening to his pitch, I asked him, “So, you want me to accept rouughly 20 years of below-market returns for this scheme.” His reply was, “Yeah, but at least the IRS won’t get it!”
The meeting was over. I realized that this pitch probably worked on a lot of people. The argument “I get less money but the IRS gets none!” worked on people.
I took this as evidence that a lot of the world is like this. Finance people regularly skim off of people who are rich and if not dumb, too emotional, about certain financial decisions. Not to say I am a genius oracle, because I’m not.
Most of my life, we have seen policies that are sold as being good for economic growth. Maybe even for a while, say in the 70’s, it made sense to do some of these.
But at some point you have to ask who is benefitting from that growth. If it ain’t me, maybe I don’t care about that growth. Of course, it can be very difficult to tease apart individual policies and figure out which helps and which doesn’t.
I figure that there is a change coming, and the change will really kick the billionaires in the ass.
It will also embody policies that I don’t think are actually good, and don’t really help the kind of people I grew up with – which is to say working class people. But this is politics, and with 150 million people (or more) voting, it’s never gonna be perfect. Bring it on, I say.
@Beth:
Part of it is the very rich are acting according to the letter of the law they paid millions in lobbying and, I assume by now, bribes, to get Congress to write and the president to sign.
Another part is they are better able to put up a defensive army of accountants and lawyers that will tire out and defeat any auditor, no matter how determined. The rest of us are easier pickings.
Somewhat related, here’s a question I haven’t thought through: what if individuals and small businesses could issue debt bonds like big companies and government do? Imagine borrowing $10,000 at 6% and paying off only $10,600 a year later. Even if you did monthly coupon cuts, these would be $50 per month. No payment on the principal until the bond matures after 365 days.
I’ve a faint notion it would be so chaotic as to make the weather seem orderly and simple.
The other day I wrote:
I was just watching Glenn Kirschner on Brian Tyler Cohen say pretty much the same thing. He talked about the Nixon pardon, then Merrick Garland’s failure to act fast enough during Biden’s term, then he said:
@Scott:
@MarkedMan:
To give some more perspective, Talarico claims his campaign raised $2.5 million in the 24 hours since Colbert’s show aired.
@Rick DeMent:
What Wilhoit said.
The system was designed, by lawyers, to provide all the due process the accused can afford.
I would like to direct attention to Dr. Krugman’s Substack this morning. He offers a succinct exposition of why our governance is screwed up. He has a neat chart showing that in the first decade of the century, prior to Citizens United, billionaires provided around 0.5 percent of political contributions, in 2024 it was 16.5%, and climbing fast.
The chart shows that the wealthiest 0.00001% held around 0.2% of total wealth in 1990. Now it’s 2%.
We’re right to worry about Trump and MAGA and “populism”, but don’t lose sight of the fact that they are just the public face of oligarchy. We need a wealth tax or a return to Eisenhower era 90% marginal tax rates, or both, with a greatly simplified tax code.
@Kathy: CBS says Colbert is lying and the interview wasn’t banned, that he was merely advised on how to comply with FCC directives, including by interviewing Crockett.
Colbert says that statement is butt-covering crap, pointing to his two previous already-aired interviews with Crockett. And dropped this tibit: network lawyers review and approve monologues (as written) before airing.
CBS and Colbert are making the sausage in public, and it’s indeed an ugly view.
@DK: Oh yeah, let’s pretend the Trump FCC cares about fairness to Crockett (D).
@DK:
I’d sooner believe Pinocchio than any of the MAGAt mouthpieces.