Behind Political Culture: U.S. President Clinton’s Lying under Oath

The stature that comes with occupying (and even having occupied) public office, whether elected or appointed and especially if high office, combined with the ability to attract the attention of the media such that the (former) official’s statements have the credibility of pronouncements, and thus of being true rather than false statements, is rarely examined for what the stature and societal “mouth-piece” imply (i.e., veracity). A very high former elected representative who has even admitted lying under oath in a court proceeding back while in office can very easily be assumed decades later to be making a true statement by the public even though that statement is practically identical to the statement known (and admitted) to have been false. Even published photos that are strong evidence that the second statement is false can be dismissed by a public too liable to being beguiled by clever political birds of prey. I have in mind here the twin statements of Bill Clinton, who was the U.S. President for two terms in the 1990s and went on to associate with Jeffrey Epstein, the infamous head of the child-prostitute sex-ring, and at least one of his paid girls.

At least three compromising photos of Clinton with girls in close proximity were released by the FBI to my knowledge in 2026. In one photo, Clinton is situated between Maxwell, who was Epstein’s accomplice, and an under-aged girl in an indoor pool at a resort (not in the U.S.). Maxwell would later be convicted (and imprisoned) for her role in arranging girls for Epstein’s clients. In another photo, Clinton is sitting in a hot-tub with an underaged girl. In a third photo, he is seated with one arm (and hand) low around the waist of a girl in what appears to be Epstein’s private jet. To be sure, even though the positioning of Clinton’s arm (and his hand) low around the girl’s waist connotes sexual rather than paternal interest, and that a girl is with Clinton in the hot-tub photo (and the pool photo) are together highly suggestive, none of those photos is evidence that Clinton raped (i.e., had sex with) one or more of Epstein’s girls. Moreover, anyone accused of a crime is assumed to be innocent in any of the United States unless or until the accused is convicted in a court of law of having broken a law.

Even though the arm being around a girl’s waist and being in a pool with an under-aged girl and an adult whom we can now say definitely arranged Epstein’s girls for sex may bring to mind the old phrase, “where there is smoke, there is fire,” I bring up the matter of the photos merely as context to show just how misguided it was for the American public to assume that Clinton was testifying honestly before a Congressional committee in 2026 on his relationships with Epstein and the child-prostitutes. That Clinton was recognizable (i.e., fame) and had political stature as a former U.S. president are not sufficient for the default-assumption to be that even what he has said under oath is truthful rather than mendacious. This is the idea.

Asked under oath while testifying before a Congressional committee if he had had “sexual relations” with the woman in the hot-tub photo, Clinton answered, “No.”[1] Even if the photos make his answer difficult to believe, that he also “denied knowledge of Epstein’s crimes” may be so incredulous that a person could reasonably toss out all of Clinton’s testimony for being deceitful throughout.[2] It is possible that he rationalized lying because, as he had claimed, he believed that the Congressional subpoena, which he had unlawfully ignored, had been politically motivated.  Because Clinton claimed to have been unaware of Epstein’s business (i.e., prostituting girls to the rich and/or famous) in spite of spending leisure time with the criminal and his accomplice, and because Clinton knowingly violated the law by ignoring a Congressional subpoena, a rational basis can be laid for leaning at the very least toward concluding that Clinton lied under oath about having committed statutory rape.

Clinton being asked whether he had had sexual relations with a child-prostitute ought to ring a bell for anyone who was following U.S. politics toward the end of Clinton’s time in the White House. Back in January, 2001, the media reported that in “an 11-hour deal to avoid criminal charges over his sex-and-lies fling with Monica Lewinsky, President Clinton . . . admitted ‘knowingly’ lying under oath.”[3] Clinton had to surrender his Arkansas law license and pay a $25,000 fine. Stating, “certain of my responses to questions about Ms. Lewinsky were false,” on his last day in office, Clinton was referring to his responses made under oath in a deposition to questions including, “Did you have sexual relations” with Lewinsky? His answer under oath was a perjurious “No.” Sound familiar? Why would anyone lend any credence to Clinton’s answer to the same question decades later in regard to a child-prostitute? Why would his answer be reported as though his earlier answer to the same question in regard to another woman were truthful?

I contend that a person who has admitted to having lied, under oath, in answering a question of having had inappropriate sexual relations (with an intern) and is asked the same exact question (regarding a child-prostitute) should at the very least be viewed as questionable in terms of whether his second answer can be believed to be true. At the very least, the media should have inserted a footnote to remind readers that Clinton had lied, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” in speaking to the American people about Lewinsky’s “oral” contact with Clinton in the Oval Office. To the extent that the American public’s reaction to reports of Clinton’s Congressional testimony in 2026 was muted rather than publicly raising the obvious point that especially on the matter of sexual relations, Clinton was not to be believed, the undue credit that is implied or inherent in holding (or having held) public office and having a mouthpiece in the established, “main-stream” media can be surmised and judged to be problematic in themselves.

Societal credibility enjoys a certain default that, even if dislodged once as in the case of Clinton, can exist without any real foundation based in the character of the office-holder celebrities.  This is not to say that if they are caught “red-handed,” such as U.S. President Nixon was, and members of Congress have been more commonly, societal credibility can be difficult to regain. My point is that the public tends to swallow too easily that which should at the very least be held as suspect in terms of veracity. That Clinton lied under oath and to the American people about having had sexual relations with Lewinsky in the 1990s should have registered on the media’s radar screen and in popular reaction to Clinton’s answer, again under oath, to the same question, to Congress in 2026. An old dog can indeed learn new tricks, but personal ethical development should not be assumed as if the proverbial dog had not done the old, sordid deed once already.

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1. Leo Briceno, “WATCH: Bill Clinton Grilled on Shirtless Hot Tub Photo amid Swirling Questions on Epstein Relationship,” Foxnews.com, March 2, 2026.
2. Ibid (on the quoted material).
3. Marilyn Rauber, “Finally Admits He Lied under Oath: Dodges Criminal Charges with a Last-Minute Deal,” California Post, January 19, 2001.

Congressional Subpoenas: The Case of the Clintons

The rule of law is absolutely essential to a representative democracy being able to endure even as strong personalities in public office may seek to bend or even dismiss law for their own purposes. The notion that anyone subject to law gets a pass according to one’s own discretion and power is toxic to a republic being regarded as fair. Just as everyone has a right to due process in legal proceedings in the U.S., no one is above the law there. This applies to former presidents and secretaries of state, and thus to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Their written statement in refusing to recognize a Congressional subpoena as valid—a presumptuous stunt to be sure—reveals that they held the presumption of being able to decide whether a law to which they were subject was valid. This presumption could also be seen when Bill Clinton occupied the White House, for he deliberately lied under oath, “I did not have sexual relations with” Monika Lewinski even though she had performed oral sex with him in the Oval Office when she was a White House intern. My point is that the underlying pattern is clear with respect to a lack of regard for law itself (even though both Clintons went to Yale’s law school) and the presumption of setting oneself in the position of invalidating law to which one is subject. That Bill Clinton was no punished with incarceration in the 1990s was unfortunate even for him and his wife as they were not afforded the opportunity to learn a lesson.

On January 21, 2026, members of the Republican group in the U.S. House of Representatives began the process “to hold former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary in contempt of Congress” because the couple had repeatedly refused to honor a Congressional subpoena to testify on the Epstein sex-girls racket.[1] Photographic evidence that Bill had been in contact with Epstein had been made public, and members of the House had questions for the Clintons regarding what they may have known of Epstein’s crimes. Even though the demand for testimony sounds reasonable enough, Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the relevant committee, had said at the start of a hearing in which the Clinton’s attendance was required that the Clintons had responded not with “cooperation but defiance.”[2] Such a blatant response to a Congressional subpoena is astonishing because, as Comer said, “Subpoenas are not mere suggestions, they carry the force of law and require compliance.”[3] The Clintons contended that the subpoenas were “invalid because they do not serve any legislative purpose.”[4] But it is not for subpoenaed people called to testify to assess whether any such purpose is being served, for otherwise anyone could disregard a Congressional subpoena simply by declaring there to be no legislative purpose.

In his ethical theory, Kant argues that if universalizing a maxim results in a contradiction, such a maxim is unethical.  For example, if no one were to tell the truth, no one would believe anyone else’s truth-claims and so making such claims would not make any sense. Universalizing the maxim that it is ok to lie would result in no claims being made. Similarly, were everyone to act on the maxim, a person subject to a Congressional subpoena can determine the validity of said subpoena and act on that determination, it would not make sense for Congress to issue subpoenas because none would be honored. Universalizing that maxim results in the absurd, so that maxim is unethical.

Another formulation of Kant’s ethical theory holds that rational beings should be treated not merely as one’s means, but also as ends in themselves. In presuming that the committee members were merely playing political games in issuing the subpoenas and dismissing them, the Clintons were treating the members as means only (to the Clinton’s own ends) rather than as ends in themselves worthy of respect by virtue of being rational beings. Why worthy of respect?  Because to Kant, it is by the use of reason that we assign value in the world, so reason itself must have absolute value and thus be worthy of respect. To Kant, the formulations of his Categorical Imperative have the necessity that law does.

It is such necessity, both in law itself and in ethical principles, according to Kant, that the Clintons repeatedly and conveniently overlooked or dismissed outright, and with impunity. It is significant, therefore, that being in contempt of a Congressional subpoena can carry time in prison. There is a good reason for that, so I submit that the criminal charges should be automatic rather than depend on a majority-vote in the House chamber. Obviating accountability by means of political deals does no favor to the guilty in terms of lessons learned, and no favor to an institution that looks weak if its subpoenas can be ignored with impunity. Impunity for some and jail for the rest is no way to run a republic that is based on the rule of law.

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1. Stephen Groves and Matt Brown, “House Republicans Begin Push to Hold the Clintons in Contempt of Congress Over the Epstein Probe,” APnews.com, January 21, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

U.S. Presidential Encroachment on State Prerogatives

Both in the E.U. and U.S., the member-states are semi-sovereign, and are even guaranteed all residual sovereignty that is not in any of the enumerated competencies (i.e., powers) of the respective unions and the states. Europeans are smart to have multiple avenues for the state governments in the European Council and the Council of Ministers so those governments can protect themselves against encroachment by the Commission. To be sure, these safeguards go too far, especially given the sheer number of states even by the mid-2020s, in giving each state a veto especially on important matters in which qualified-majority voting does not apply. In other words, the safeguards against federal encroachment in the E.U. are excessive as long as each state can wield its veto against federal policies, legislation, and regulations. Regarding the latter, the directive means provides each state with some latitude. I suspect that the Europeans who constructed the E.U.’s federal system were in part fearful of federal encroachment because so much of that had already built-up in the U.S., where federal consolidation had become a threat to the governmental sovereignty of the member-states, as if they were just regions rather than republics holding even more sovereignty, on parchment at least, than does Congress and the federal president. So, it is worth taking not of the rare instances in which a state legislature pushes back against threats from the U.S. president on a competency (i.e., enumerated power) reserved by the states.  The rejection by the Indiana Senate of U.S. President Trump’s pressure to accept new districts for U.S. House representatives from Indiana—a map in which the Republican Group would likely pick up two seats—is important because Congressional-district maps are the prerogative of the states rather than an encroaching federal executive.

According to Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. basic law (consolidated as a constitution), the member-states have the primary authority to regulate the “times, places, and manner” of the U.S. House or Representatives’ elections. This authority includes enacting the boundaries of the districts within a state. To be sure, Congress has been delegated authority to override a state’s Congressional-district map, as federal oversight is in line with the “checks and balances” feature of modern federalism. For instance, a state’s map that discriminates against regions populated mostly by a racial minority would be ripe for Congressional action. It is significant that the U.S. president plays no role either in crafting such maps or in oversight. Therefore, U.S. President Trump’s threats laid against certain senators in the Indiana Senate so they would pass a new Congressional map before the next census so to give Trump’s Republican group in the U.S. House of Representatives more representation than otherwise would likely be the case was a case of federal encroachment of a state power encased in the U.S. Constitution. The Indiana senators voted prudently and justifiably in rejecting the U.S. President’s “bully tactics.”

Senator Michael Crider, a Republican, who faced “threats of violence and intimidation,” issued a statement after he voted no on the redistricting proposal.[1] “When you get kind of bullied and threatened, if that tactic works, then you can expect to deal with that for the rest of your political career.”[2] Sen. Vaneta Becker issued the following statement: “I think this looks like and feels like bullying, and I don’t think Hoosiers respond well to bullying.”[3] Neither, I might add, do Illinoisians on the other side of the Wabash river, to whom people from the Indiana side of the river-border used to shout, “Whos you’r,” hence the mascot, “Hoosier”, instead of who are you?

The same consequences of giving into a bully can be said of a state legislature; once it capitulates to threats and pressure from the federal executive (or Congress), threats will be more likely to continue and even become more dire until the member-state legislators are afraid to use even the powers reserved for the states. In the case of the redistricting plan, President Trump even threatened the Indiana government that federal funds would be cut off from the state in retaliation for not approving the president’s partisan plan. Sen. Spencer Deery made the problem of encroachment on the state explicit: “As long as I have breath, I will use my voice to resist a federal government that attempts to bully, direct and control this state or any state. Giving the federal government more power is not conservative.”[4] That a prerogative of a state legislature could be circumvented “at the whim of a president’s request” was too much for Sen. Mike Bohacek too.[5] Therefore, both in terms of threatening Indiana lawmakers, who have been democratically elected, and in terms of eclipsing federalism, wherein the vital element of checks-and-balances between the federal institutions and those of states, the political courage of the Indiana Republican senators who voted against President Trump’s partisan plan is laudable. Threats of violence have no place in politics, and efforts to usurp the governmental sovereignty that is reserved for the states, whether in the U.S. or E.U., should be resisted lest the check-and-balance “oversight” feature of modern, dual-sovereignty, federalism be lost.

Fortunately, the “acts of intimidation and threats and acts of violence targeting [Republican Indiana] senators who opposed” the proposal backfired, as a majority of the 40 Republican senators voted against the bill.[6] Ironically, politically conservative principles were cited by some of those senators. The head of the Republican Group in the Indiana Senate, Sen. Rodric Bray, said, “many of my caucus members don’t think redrawing our Congressional map mid-cycle is a guaranteed way for Indiana.”[7] In short, changing maps for partisan purposes mid-way through a decade violates the tradition of redrawing maps only just after the U.S. census, which occurs once every decade. As per conservative principles, Bray urged Republicans to campaign more so as to sway a district that was then held by a Democrat but becoming increasingly Republican. As the saying goes, elections have consequences.

 

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1. Paul Blumenthal, “These Are The Indiana Republicans Who Voted To Crush Trump’s Redistricting Plan,” The Huffington Post, December 12, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

Wealth and Ethics in American Fiscal Policy

In a struggle between wealth and ethics, practically speaking the former tends overwhelmingly to win hands down, even if the form of government is at least nominally a representative democracy, but in fact an oligarchy or plutocracy. The influence of the moneyed interest both in the E.U. and U.S. is likely much stronger than most of the respective citizenries know. When the poorest of the poor are to be made worse off financially by cuts in certain government programs while defense contractor companies stand to get more, which tends to mean higher bonuses for executives (and campaign contributions for elected representatives), the skew toward the gilded and away from the most vulnerable economically can be viewed as an x-ray of sorts indicative of rule by wealth rather than by the People. U.S. President Trump’s fiscal budget enacted in 2025 is a case in point by which the questionable morality of the plutocracy or oligopoly form of government can be gleaned.

Plato laid out the following as alternative forms of government, from the best to the worst:

1.       The Ideal State (kallipolis): everyone is doing their respective jobs well; philosophers with knowledge of the good are in charge of making decisions pertaining to public policy.

2.       Timocracy: (e.g., Sparta): people who love honor, social status, and competition are in control. In other words, a military. 

3.       Oligarchy: producers (or suppliers) of goods and services (i.e., business executives and or companies) are in control. That is business runs the government.

4.       Democracy: the “mob” is in control. Direct democracy. Such “mob rule” is volatile, with enacted policies swinging back and forth. This does not include representative democracy, which is better, but not as good as having a philosopher king rule because reason should control the passions in a mind and a city.

5.       Tyranny: a tyrant is in control. This is the worst form of government, for obvious reasons, as an autocrat faces no worldly constraint in unleashing suffering and death on a population. In 2023 through at least 2025, the Israeli government was a tyranny in Gaza.

The three highest Hindu castes fit the three highest Platonic forms of government, with Brahmins, who are ideally priests (or philosophers), soldiers/generals, and merchants in descending order in Hindu society. The “mob” in Plato’s scheme corresponds to the laborers in the caste system. That business managers (including CEOs) running (and thus controlling) government are higher than direct democracy may sound strange to modern ears in the West, even in the E.U., in which Greece is a state unless the difference between well-paid modern elected representatives and a mob of mostly uneducated (i.e., unprofessional) laborers in ancient Athens is grasped. Even in modern representative democracies, complete with terms of office to buffer the momentary passions of the people—passions that can contradict a people’s long-term best interests (i.e., the public good)—corporate interests likely view themselves as superior and thus legitimately at the helm in what is known as a plutocracy, or rule by wealth. The moneyed interests could cite Plato’s hierarchy of government-types without bothering to point out that Plato had mob-rule rather than the U.S. Senate in mind as democracy. We need not pit the reasoning, albeit skewed by self-interest, of CEOs on public policy against what a disorganized mob might come up with as the public good (over partial interests), but we might want to consider whether corporations and individual CEOs should have so much monetary sway with elected representatives and their appointees that a representative democracy is de facto a plutocracy serving the relatively narrow interests of capital. The pecuniary interests of American defense-contractor companies in manufacturing and selling weapons, planes, and tanks to the U.S. Government for use in Israel as it pummeled 2 million residents of Gaza in 2024 and 2025 were not necessarily in the best interests of the United States, which might have been more accurately represented and instituted by the American electorates than business political-action-committees helping representatives get re-elected. Not that any member of Congress cares about that, of course.

Or take the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed by the Republican lawmakers in both chambers of Congress and signed by President Trump in 2025. The projected economic impacts on the different economic tiers of Americans supports Adam Smith’s fear that company managements and government officials would work together at the expense of workers and even competitive markets themselves. On August 11, 2025, the Congressional Budget Office made public its estimates “that the 10% poorest Americans will lose roughly $1,200 a year as they experience restrictions on government programs like Medicaid and food assistance, while the richest 10% of Americans will see their income increase by $13, 600 from tax cuts. Overall , American households will see more income from the tax cuts in the legislation, including middle income households, but the largest benefit will go to the top 10% of earners.”[1] Such a distributional impact could be expected in a plutocracy, even in the form of a hijacked representative democracy. Very poor disabled Americans living on Social Security (SSI) of less than $1,000 a month already faced reductions if they negotiate a good deal on rent, or a friend or relative helps out with utilities or rent. That the U.S. Defense Department budget was increased, with corporate defense contractors set to reap additional profits as a result, illustrates the questionable ethics in taking from the poorest of the poor, who cannot work, and giving more to wealthy corporations (with higher bonuses, everything else equal, going to executives). Additionally, just for added fun, roughly “2.4 million people won’t be eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [i.e., food stamps] under new work requirements” for poor Americans who have not been declared disabled by the Social Security Administration.[2] Food has thusly been declared not to be an unconditional human right. As the work requirement applied to Medicaid, the government program that funds healthcare for the very poor, access to medical services—and thus good health—was also declared to not qualify as an unconditional human right.

In short, the American social contract between the federal government and its people was changed in ways that stood to make many of the poorest Americans poorer while defense contractors could make even more money from that government. The new social contract reflected a plutocracy or oligarchy in the guise of a representative democracy. Although arguably superior to mob rule, such a trajectory for representative democracy may trouble a good many people, financially or otherwise perhaps in conscience. A person need only read John Rawl’s Theory of Justice to realize that a plutocracy gearing public policy to the narrow interests of a part rather than the whole of a society is diametrically opposed, or antipodal, to a system of government and economy in which the poorest of the poor are looked to first such that they can survive and lead decent, albeit not wealthy, lives before other, increasingly better off tiers are taken into account. In a school yard, only a bully goes after the kids with the least to eat for lunch so to enrich himself and his buddies.

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1. Stephen Groves, “Trump’s Tax Law Will Mostly Benefit the Rich, While Leaving Poorer Americans with Less, CBO Says,” The Associated Press, August 11, 2025.
2. Ibid.

The U.S. Supreme Court Clipping Judicial Overreach

The separation of powers that characterizes governments in the United States assumes that each branch will act to further its own interests, given the salience of self-interest (and self-preservation) in human nature. It is assumed that the checks and balances between legislative, judicial, and executive branches will keep any one branch from dominating the other two, and, moreover, the government itself from becoming tyrannical at the expense of the liberty of the citizenry. It is not assumed or relied upon that a branch will prune itself without external pressure from one of the other branches. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court may have done so in ruling on June 27, 2025 to limit “the ability of lower-court judges to block executive branch policies nationwide.”[1] I contend that any real wing-clipping by 6 of the 9 justices is illusory rather than indicative of the federal judiciary unilaterally restricting itself.

“With their decision, the justices appeared to upend the ability of single federal judges to freeze policies across the country,” according to The New York Times.[2] The appearance is belied by the fact that the ruling would not go into effect for 30 days and “the justices laid out a potential path for challengers, saying that district court judges could consider whether to take up class-action suits seeking to bar enforcement of the executive order on a statewide, regional or even national basis.”[3] The latter basis would essentially enable a district-court federal judge to block an executive order from going into effect anywhere in the United States.  Groups that had challenged the executive order at issue—invalidating birth-right citizenship for children of illegal immigrants—quickly filed class-action suits in Maryland and New Hampshire, with others expected in the following week—well within the 30 days. As for the validity of the executive order itself, the court would decide that in a case scheduled in the court’s next term.

It is interesting that the justices “split along ideological lines” on a matter of judicial process rather than on the substance of the executive order.[4] Perhaps political ideology has more of an imprint on judicial rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court than most people realize. After all, Justice Sandra Day O’Conner wrote the majority opinion for Bush v. Gore (2000) before oral arguments were heard. Might it be that the conservative justices on the bench wanted President Trump to see a win for him even though the national judicial block of his executive order would likely continue uninterrupted? That president had been very critical of Justice Amy Barrett for another ruling, and she wrote the majority opinion on the case on whether district federal judges could block an executive order nationally. Indeed, the president declared himself the winner from the ruling even though the six conservative justices left open a way for district court judges to be able to continue wielding nationwide injunctions to block the president’s policies issued as executive orders.

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1. Abbie Vansickle, “Justices Put Limit on Judges’ Power, In Win for Trump,” The New York Times, June 28, 2025.
2. Ibid., italics added.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Is Healthcare a Human Right?

Humanity still has not come to a consensus on what are entailed specifically within the rubric of human rights. Even in terms of those specifics that have come to be generally held to be human rights, such as in designated war crimes and crimes against humanity by international agreement, the lack of de jure and de facto enforcement render such agreement nugatory in practice. As a result, calls for human rights are in effect calls for warring to stop. The enforcement that goes along with laws legislated by governments render any consensus on what constitutes human rights more substantive in practice. This is undercut, however, in empire-scale polities of polities, such as the E.U. and U.S., to the extent that human rights are carved out at the federal level to applied across differing cultures. Such ideological diversity between the American member-states has triggered drastically-different notions of just what are included as human rights to be played out in Congress. The debate over the government-financed health-insurance program for the poor in 2025 illustrates such a lack of consensus, which in turn suggests that the member-states should play more of a role in how or even whether to provide free insurance to the poor. Sometimes, one size doesn’t fit all. In short, the matter of federalism is very relevant up front, before matters of the proper role of government itself and of human rights are decided. In other words, the qualitative and quantitative differences between a union of states and a state are very relevant up front, lest states eventually peel off in utter frustration with a one-size-fits-all approach to policy-making to fit an empire composed of member-states.

As the U.S. Senate considered changes to the Medicaid program, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley acknowledged “that the main cost-saving provision in the bill—new work requirements on able-bodied adults who receive health care through the Medicaid program—would cause millions of people to lose their coverage. All told, estimates are 10.9 million fewer people would have health coverage under the bill’s proposed changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.”[1] Millions would be relegated to not getting medical attention or going to the emergency rooms of hospitals mandated to treat the uninsured, who would be strapped with unaffordable medical bills and thus bad credit-reports.

That a significant number of poor people in the United States would lose health-insurance was known and anticipated by the legislators. Speaking on the bill as it was taking shape in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Hawley said, “I know that will reduce the number of people on Medicaid.”[2] What, then, justifies the loss of health coverage? The senator answered this question by adding, “But I’m for that because I want people who are able bodied but not working to work.”[3] In other words, being able to have access to medical services should be conditional on having a job. The conditionality itself means that health care is not a human right because such rights are inherently unconditional.

Some or even many of Sen. Hawley’s constituents doubtless favored excluding medical services from being included among other human rights, perhaps in the belief that people who are able to work but refuse to work do not deserve to be kept alive if they fall sick, which in turn can be based on a belief that only the strong of any species should survive. Sen. Hawley represents Missouri, when is generally conservative. Sen. Warren of Massachusetts, on the other hand, would find that the conditionality and thus the exclusion of medical care from human rights much less popular in her member-state. Such a wide divide by state on this question would be unlikely in the E.U., even between the states of Hungary or Poland and Sweden or the Netherlands. The European notion of subsidiarity would thus be more applicable in this case to the U.S. than the E.U., given the greater diversity of ideology on the question in the United States. In other words, federalizing universal healthcare would come with less ideological tensions between E.U. citizens in different states than between U.S. citizens in different states; there was more consensus within the empire-scale European Union than within the American bloc.

The imposition of work requirements as a condition for the poor having access to medical treatments may be just fine with most people in Texas and Utah, for example, and yet be very objectionable to most people in Vermont and Connecticut. To conflate these various member-states as being ideologically and culturally homogenous is suboptimal and comes with political costs as opposition pressure is likely to result where the federal policy is unpopular; more optimal politically would be transferring the program of Medicaid to the member-states so their respective peoples could tailor the program—or even cancel it—according to their respective political ideologies. The notion that policy in another state should reflect one’s own views is anathema to federalism, and even to there being empire-scale unions of states. Toleration within a union is thus necessary lest one size be applied throughout and eventually republics break off in frustration, as Britain did from the European Union due primarily to anti-federalist sentiment.

In short, finding a large gap from consensus in Congress (or in the E.U.’s legislature) can be an indication that a policy question would be better resolved by the member-states than at the empire-level, given the heterogeneity between states on the question. Congress and the federal president applying work requirements on what most people in some states regard as an unconditional human right may be intolerable emotionally to those people, but so too, Obamacare had been viewed as an intolerable overreach of government to most people in some other states. Behind this chasm, ideological and thus as emotional as cognitive, lies a basic disagreement on just what should constitute human rights, and thus be an obligation of government. In other words, besides different political philosophies of the proper role of government, different moral principles are involved on the question of whether government should pay for healthcare for the poor. In a federal system, the matter of where such a divisive policy question should be decided should be decided before both the proper-role-of-government and the human-rights questions are decided, or else the federal system itself would be compromised and thus put at risk.

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1. Leah Askarinam, “The GOP’s Big Bill Would Bring Changes to Medicaid for Millions,” Apnews.com, June 15, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

A U.S. Senator Thrown to the Ground: Security on Steroids

A U.S. Senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed rather than escorted out of the building because he asked a difficult question for the speaker holding a news conference illustrates not only the bias towards using excessive force that having police power lavishes on human nature, but also a proclivity toward excessiveness without any internal mental check that is entwined in virtually any human brain. That the primary arresting FBI employee was the only person in the room wearing a bulletproof vest inside the federal (government) building may also reveal his penchant for exaggeration—or, going too far without realizing it. The prescription in terms of public policy is a strengthening of checks on law-enforcement employees even, if possible, by embedding other municipal (or federal) employees whose sole function it is to evaluate police conduct either by listening in or observing even in real time. A U.S. senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed in a federal building in California rather than escorted out of the building evinces a power-trip more base, violent, and primitive than the typical power-trips that occur on the “floor” of the U.S. Senate. It must have been a shock to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on June 12, 2025 to be physically shoved to the ground, especially if the rationale for his removal from the press conference was itself an exaggeration.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was holding a news conference in early June, 2025 as protests against the arrests of illegal aliens were going on outside in downtown Los Angeles in California, when U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla said, “I have questions for the secretary!”[1] Even if the senator was trying to visibly score political points with his constituents by interjecting, which, by the way, would be in the realm of the sort of power-trip that is quite common in politics, the reaction of the Trump Administration may point to a trumped up political reason for the violent way in which the senator was manhandled by Secret Service employees and then the FBI agent. The White House accused Padilla of “disrespectful political theatre” and Noem herself accused the senator of having ‘made a scene.”[2] If these opinions were behind the manhandling of the senator, then “criminalizing politics” steeped to a new low: instant violence against the elected representative for being political. The violence itself is much worse than merely charging someone for being political in a way that offends someone else in power.

For its part, the Secret Service lied that Padilla had “lunged at Secretary Noem,” and furthermore that the agents there “thought he was an attacker.”[3] Reviewing the video of the event shows the willingness of people with guns to lie to protect themselves, which I contend is reason enough for additional checks on law-enforcement employees, whether federal or state. That the senator, the most senior Democrat on the U.S. Senate’s Border Security and Immigration subcommittee, announced repeatedly that he was a U.S. Senator belies the credibility of the claim that he was thought to be an attacker.

California’s Gavin Newsom, head of state, chief executive, and commander-in-chief of California’s National Guard (i.e., army) wrote online a poignant point worthy of our consideration: “If they can handcuff a US Senator for asking a question, imagine what they will do to you.”[4] Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much imagining to consider the actuality of employees of a government in law enforcement presuming that the law is theirs to make in real time—casting a blind eye intentionally on the actual law—and lying and threatening even victims of a crime with arrest should they object. Enforcing existing law does not give a government employee the discretion with which to ignore the law and even come up with one’s own law and yet how easy it is simply to ignore this vital point in the carrying out of one’s “duties.” I have witnessed this mentality enough to know that it is too common to ignore, and thus I contend that more checks are needed on law-enforcement employees on the non-supervisory level locally, at the member-state level, and at the federal level in the United States. The problem is worse “on the ground” than has reached the public air-waves.

Even if Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, was right in opining, “Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theatre-kid stunt” because “he wanted attention,”[5] treating the senator as if he were an attacker rather than simply escorting him out of the building—or even letting him remain and treat the altercation between him and Noem as political—reveals an emotionally jejune, hyper-“trigger-happy” mentality among the Secret Service and FBI employees in that federal building. Such a mentality among government employees who have been given the legal right to use force is, I submit, dangerous, and thus should be exculpated from the ranks of law enforcement in any jurisdiction, lest the trend eventuate in people being surrounded by security simply for being angry and even raising one’s voice at a political event. Treating such as a threat is itself passive-aggressive, which as we have seen can turn outright aggressive given the human, all too human proclivity to go to far. 

Put more plainly, assuming that lies used to cover-up the underlying mental ailment, Secret Service employees who perceived the senator lunge at Noem and thought Padilla was an attacker should be put on mental-health leave so they can relax and untighten, and be subjected to psychological tests on latent aggression, for their sort of power-trip is much more dangerous than that which goes on in the U.S. Senate—and the White House, for this incident is but a glimpse toward a realization that not enough had been done even in multiple jurisdictions to root out the sordid pathology from the field of law-enforcement. De facto absolute power “on the ground” loves a vacuum of accountability, and is even willing to lie to keep it at bay.

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1. Ali Abbas Ahmadi and Kwasi G. Asiedu, “US Senator Dragged Out of LA News Conference and Handcuffed,” BBC.com, June 13, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Corporate Governance and Political Activism: The Case of Ben & Jerry's

When a company’s management decides to take a partisan position publicly on a political issue, especially one that is contentious, decreased revenue, whether from potential or actual consumers individually who disagree with the company’s position, or from an organized boycott from groups that stand against the position. Anger may be a stronger motivator than ideological agreement, in which case any increase in purchases would be less than the lost revenue. This asymmetry itself is interesting from the standpoint of human nature, and strongly suggests that CEO’s steer their respective companies, which managements operate on behalf of the stockholders anyway, away from taking controversial positions on social or political issues that do not directly and significantly pertain to the bottom-line (i.e., profitability) in the short- or medium-term. In short, wading into societal issues is, generally speaking, not good for business. What then about a company like the ice-cream manufacturer, Ben & Jerry’s, which from its inception had social/political activism as a salient part of the company’s mission?

Both the initial two owners and all subsequent owners, which includes Unilever, which bought the company in 2000, could not have become owners with the understanding that they were buying (into) an apolitical company, so the fiduciary duty of management was not breached. That Unilever fired Ben & Jerry’s CEO, Dave Stever, in 2025 because he had continued the subsidiary’s very public political activism presumably because it included criticism of U.S. President Trump is, let us say, complicated. I contend that the firing constitutes a breach of contract even though that contract contradicts the principle of corporate governance in part but not enough to justify allowing the firing to stand legally.  

On March 18, 2025, the management of Ben & Jerry’s accused the subsidiary’s parent-company of violating the ice-cream-maker’s “independence on social policy issues.”[1] It is precisely because a parent-company has the legal right to control the management of a subsidiary.

Unilever had informed the management of Ben & Jerry’s on March 3^rd that the latter’s CEO was being removed “without consulting directors because of his commitment to the ice-cream maker’s social mission and brand integrity, not because of concerns about his job performance.”[2] Unilever’s managers had “repeatedly warned personnel” at Ben & Jerry’s “not to defy” that management’s “efforts to ‘silence the social mission’” of the subsidiary.[3] Unilever’s management blocked the management of Ben & Jerry’s from honoring of Black History Month and opposing the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, “a U.S. permanent resident” who had been “active in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University.”[4] It was not as if the subsidiary were supporting a “KKK (i.e., racist) month” and gang activity coming across the border from Mexico and hitting streets in the U.S.; nevertheless, the positions that Ben & Jerry’s management wanted to take were controversial in nature, though it is not clear that either position would have lost the subsidiary much revenue. 

The issue, I submit, comes down to corporate governance. Ordinarily, when a company buys another, the former gets to control the latter. It is not like a federal system wherein two governing bodies have at least some governmental sovereignty over the same territory; rather, corporate governance is top-down. The question is whether, in buying Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever’s agreeing to recognize and go through an independent board tasked with safeguarding the political and social activism that were so much a part of the ice-cream brand was valid. In refusing to go through that board and in accusing the management of Ben & Jerry’s as defying the Unilever management, the latter was taking the position that as the owner of the subsidiary, Unilever could unilaterally cancel the agreement.

Prime facie, to sign off on a clause in a legal contract and while presuming the legal right to unilaterally invalidate said clause without notifying the counterparty of the escape clause before the signing is odious and unethical (the technical term being sneaky). The practice could be considered a form of lying because the standard understanding of a legal contract is that all parties signing it accept that they are bound to it and thus cannot legally violate it. Kant reasoned that promise-breaking is unethical because if such a policy were universalized, making a promise (or an agreement) would not make sense because no one with any sense would sign a written contract. The logical contraction itself offends reason and is thus unethical because it is by the use of reason that we assign value to things.

Another ethical issue is whether it is fair that Unilever fired Ben & Jerry’s CEO even though plans were in place to spin off the subsidiary later that year. In February, 2025, the subsidiary’s management had “accused Unilever of unilaterally banning [the subsidiary’s management] from publicly criticizing [U.S. President] Trump, ostensibly because of the ‘new dynamic.”[5] Given the spin-off plans, this could very well have been the motive in firing the CEO because even a few months more of political speech could be dire for Unilever financially, given the president’s penchant for payback. Using corporate governance to stifle political dissent is, however, questionable ethically as well as from the standpoint of democracy. The ethical issue would be exacerbated were Unilever’s board-members or its CEO supporters of President Trump. In terms of democracy, an elected president’s de facto control of companies with respect to wiping out political dissent is obviously problematic because of the importance and right of free-speech in maintaining a republic. Of course, Hitler’s political use of companies to locate political dissent and even to find Jews didn’t face any such obstacles.

As important as ethics and political freedom are, the core issue in this legal case pertains to corporate governance itself. Specifically, do property rights, such as a parent company has in being able to control any of its subsidiary companies, trump even a written contract by which a parent company has agreed that subsidiary’s management can be protected from certain exercises of control by the parent company’s management or board? This is the pertinent question in this legal case.

Noting that a person putting one’s labor (or money, which represents labor in part) into something renders it legitimately one’s own property, John Locke saw property rights as existing in the state of nature, whereas Thomas Hobbes did not; in the contentious seventeenth-century Europe, he advocated that a political sovereign be given a monopoly on political (and religious) power in part to protect the property of people so they would not kill each other over it (though the sovereign could of course take over the property without providing a justification). In the antebellum southern States in the USA wherein slaves were considered property, those slaves had no rights against their respective owners. It is ironic that a case of humans-as-property illustrates the epitome of property rights, and yet such rights in themselves, at least in a society, have a legitimate basis. My point is that while we may not like where the doctrine of property rights can take us, modern corporate governance is on a sound footing philosophically.

Unilever’s breach of contract may, however, run aground because a system of property rights is for practical purposes based in a legal framework, wherein a breach of contract is not legal even though particular circumstances may admittedly justify it ethically and even legally. The question of whether Ben & Jerry’s CEO could legally “defy” the board or management of Unilever because officials representing the latter signed a legal contract mandating the use of the independent board centers on whether that clause can be considered to be legally valid and thus binding even though it “defies” the doctrine of property rights upon which corporate government itself rests.

I contend that the clause is legally enforceable. It is not as if that clause were in “boiler-plate” small-print that the lawyers at Unilever missed. It is not as if the clause contains an escape sub-clause for Unilever, for Ben & Jerry’s management (and lawyers) would have flagged it as undercutting the very point in having the clause in a legal contract. Moreover, the willful unilateral decision by a party to a contract that it no longer binding is offensive to law itself, which is an important foundation for a free society, l’etat est moi is a different story. In fact, it is as if the board or management of Unilever were saying, we are above the law, or we are the law. Either premise guts the basis of a legal system, and thus of corporate governance too. Such a governance system in the private sector is based on a legal system even more fundamentally than on property rights because even such rights are premised on a legal system (even though Locke disagreed). Regardless of what holds in the state of nature, the rights of property in a society are granted by law, which requires the existence of a legal system unless law is the will of a political sovereign. This is why it is so important that the President of the United States recognize the constitutional validity of judicial decisions bearing on a president’s will, for otherwise that will could easily become law and no legal system would be needed; the republic would collapse into dictatorship.

That a republic, including federal republics wherein smaller republics also exist—the E.U. and U.S. being notable examples—can (and have) become autocracies demonstrates just how tenuous democracy can be. Property rights, too, may be tenuous, especially in autocracies even though eminent domain exists in republics. To be sure, the lack of legal restraint on a regime of dictatorship, for the state’s will is the law, means that property owners are not typically monetarily compensated for the loss of their respective properties taken by the state. The legally contracted legitimacy of the independent board protecting Ben & Jerry’s social-activist-brand intangible asset is in relative terms not much of an affront to property rights as instantiated in corporate governance.

I have argued that Unilever’s representatives signed the contract of the merger-agreement means that the independent board is not even not much of an affront. In effect, Unilever’s property rights regarding  Ben & Jerry’s explicitly excluded the right to ignore the independent board. As a principle to be derived from this case, it can be maintained that corporate governance does not necessitate or require an absolutist doctrine of property rights. The very existence of the state, whether democratic or autocratic, means that absolute property-rights do not and cannot exist. Therefore, a purchaser of an asset agreeing by legal contract to restrict one’s rights with respect to the use of the asset is legally valid and thus should not be vitiated by later appeals to the doctrine of property rights. In renting house, the house’s owner typically agrees in the lease to restrictions on entering the house. The state may mandate this restriction to protect renters even thought their use of a rented property is not ownership. That is, use-rights can trump property-rights in certain respects short of the right to assume ownership of the property, and the existence of such restrictions on property rights does not destroy property rights as a prominent part of a legal system.

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1. Jonathan Stempel, “Ben & Jerry’s Says Parent Unilever Decided to Oust Ice Cream Maker’s CEO,” Reuters, March 18, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Electing a U.S. President: What Is a Landslide?

A landslide electoral victory in representative democracy is typically limited to the criterion of the extent of the vote-spread between candidates for a given office. In regard to the U.S. presidency, the Electoral College presents an alternative criterion, especially as a significant difference in votes in the College may not be reflected in the popular vote. Although that vote is by member state, the totals from all of the states are typically used to assess whether a landslide has occurred and thus whether the winning candidate has a political mandate to implement campaign promises. Whether a landslide or not, winning an election legitimates a candidate implementing the platform on which a candidate has campaigned. So whether a candidate for U.S. president has a landslide has typically been over-emphasized by American journalists, as if not having a large spread in the popular vote—even if such a spread exists in the Electoral College vote (which is the vote that really matters in the election of a U.S. president)—means that the winner has no prerogative to enact one’s agenda. I contend that even under the assumption that an electoral landslide is important, there are alternative ways of assessing whether a landslide has occurred.

A landslide can be inferred in terms of the extent of a shift from one party’s candidate to that of another. In the election of 2024, over 90% of counties in all of the U.S.’s member states shifted in the direction of Donald Trump from the election in 2020. That the shift took place in so many counties can be reckoned as significant, and thus as a landslide in terms of shift.

Yet another way to interpret whether a landslide has occurred is to compare how many more or less votes a candidate (or party) has received in an election relative to previous election. For instance, “Donald Trump added about 2.8 million votes to his total in his 2024 victory [from the election in 2020]. Vice President kamala Harris, on the other hand, underperformed by about 6.8 million votes compared with Joe Biden in 2020, according to CNN election results as of November 25 [2024].”[1] Viewing Trump’s gain with Harris’s underperformance relative to Biden in 2020 is arguably more revealing than is looking at small percentage-point difference (49.9% to 46.9%) between the two candidates’ totals in the popular vote (158,425, 893 and 154,247, 094, respectively) in 2024.[2] 

Blue: Where Harris Underperformed; Red: Where Trump Gained (Source: CNN)

The tide was coming in for Donald Trump and was going out for the Biden-Harris administration. Harris had said during the campaign that she would not differ from Biden’s policies, so comparing Biden in 2020 with Harris in 2024 is valid. That Harris received almost 2 million fewer votes in California, her home state, than Biden had received there in 2020 is also revealing regarding the depth of the shift away from her in 2024.[3] 

The top line shows California (source: CNN)

Loading only on the 49.9% to 46.9% difference in the overall popular vote totals masks the magnitude and depth of the shift; the 312 to 226 significant difference in the Electoral College in the 2024 election results is a better indication, though the bias toward relatively less populated states that typically vote Republican overstates the real difference that would exist if the number of electoral votes that each member state has were based only on the number of the number of U.S. House representatives rather than adding the number of U.S. senators in too. Therefore, a landslide in the Electoral College can be considered as less legitimate than the percentage spread in the overall popular vote.

Therefore, I contend that measures indicative of the extent and depth of a basic shift pervading all the electorates of the states can be used to assess whether a landslide has indeed occurred. Using this criterion, the 2024 U.S. presidential election can be viewed as a landslide. Contributing factors may include Harris’ decision to continue arms sales to Israel even though the International Court of Justice had ruled that Israel’s entire occupation violates international law. The International Criminal Court would subsequently issue arrest warrants for two Israeli government officials, including Netanyahu. Another factor may have been the failure of the Biden-Harris administration to sufficiently aid Ukraine to forestall territorial advances of Russia in its invasion of the sovereign country. Still another factor may have been the spreading anti-woke reaction and the failure of the Democratic Party to push back on its woke wing in the general election. The Biden-Harris administration’s refusal to apply anti-trust to the meat-producing and grocer industries when prices stayed high after the pandemic may have influenced the working-class voters who had not shifted over to voting based on social/cultural (i.e., woke) issues. Trump’s visual use of an assassination attempt to “Fight” may also have been a factor. In short, the image of Trump’s fist in the air as he was ushered away from his speaking platform with a bloody ear is miles away from the image of half-measures and political calculation. I contend that the indicators of a general shift from 2020 in the election results better reflect these factors than does the small overall percentage-spread in the popular vote for Trump and Harris in 2024.

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1. Amy O’Kruk et al, “7 Charts and Maps Where Harris Underperformed and Lost the Election,” Cnn.com, November 27, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3  Ibid.

Greedy Grocers: Exploiting Customers and Workers with Impunity

Adam Smith theorized that price competition on products and labor would allow the self-interests of the buyers and sellers to result in unintended beneficial consequences. For one thing, price gouging would not happen because, assuming low barriers to enter the market to sell, competitors would quickly drop their prices and gain market share. That grocery prices did not fall after the supply-shocks, including in shipping and hiring workers, ended with the end of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2023 is a pretty good indication that the grocery (and meat producer) industry was not competitive. Oligarchic markets—those in which just a few, often times very large, sellers exist—are devoid of the competitive mechanism that would otherwise maintain prices that are fair to buyers. That is, not only do competitive markets efficiently allocate goods and services at prices that connect supply to demand; such markets can also satisfy the ethical virtue of justice as fairness. Smith was not shy in admitted that a government willing to stand up to big companies is necessary to keep a market from slipping into the decadence of an oligopoly and especially a monopoly. I contend that both Americans and their elected representatives were blind, perhaps conveniently so given the power of large companies in American governments, both during the coronavirus pandemic, which ran from roughly 2020 to 2022, and even afterwards as Kroger and Albertsons colluded at the expense (literally) of their respective customers and workers.  

On February 26, 2024, about a year after the coronavirus pandemic ended in the United States, the Federal Trade Commission “sued to block the largest proposed supermarket merger in U.S. history—Kroger Company’s $24.6 billion acquisition of the Albertsons Companies, Inc.—alleging that the deal is anticompetitive.”[1] While testifying to a Federal Trade Commission attorney ,  Andy Groff, Kroger's senior director for pricing, said the grocery giant had raised prices for eggs and milk beyond inflation levels. In an internal email to other Kroger executives, he had written, "On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation."[2] Of course, the company’s strategy was to try to discredit Groff rather than assume responsibility for having taken advantage of the pandemic. It was telling, however, that at least at Albertsons, including its Safeway division, the practice of weekly discounts shown on the shelves was greatly diminished. So, we can add ending discounts to price gouging to understand the true sticker shock that customers encountered.

The price gouging alone was “not at all surprising," Drew Powers, the founder of Illinois-based Powers Financial Group, has said. Economists had “long indicated that the grocery sector, which is composed of only a few chains like Kroger and Walmart, was benefiting from supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, allowing the companies to hike prices beyond what was necessary to retain profits. According to Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor, "Supply chain issues, rising shipping costs, and increased wages certainly played their part in the higher prices we're currently seeing. However, the admission some prices were elevated simply because businesses knew they could doesn't help the case for those arguing price gouging isn't an issue."[3]  

Perhaps even more disturbing, but much more subtly, Kroger and Albertsons did not lower prices after the unique economic context of the pandemic had ended. In fact, both companies saw record profits into 2024 and a generally increasing trend from 2010 that belies any claim to have needed to raise prices during the pandemic to stay in business. In fact, the profits during the pandemic were greater than in 2018-2020, and record profits as of January 31, 2024. Not coincidentally, the grocers provided customers with just a slight reduction in prices of food items in 2024 even though the huge increases during the pandemic had been said to be specific to it. This demonstrates that the industry had ceased to operate in a competitive market. The following graphs from Metatrends.net of gross profits for the years (January 1) 2009 - (January 31) 2024 tell the tale, a picture being proverbially said to be worth a thousand words. 

Kroger (left) and Albertsons (right) Gross Profit ($)

That Albertsons increased prices excessively during 2022 can be inferred from the fact that the company's net income that year increased 51% from 2021 even though the pandemic was still occurring. In July, 2024, Newsweek stated the following: “Companies across multiple industries have been posting record profits since the [coronavirus pandemic] while consumers have faced the highest inflation in recent history. The math can only point to companies raising prices above the general level of inflation. As the old saying goes, 'Never let a good crisis go to waste.'"[4] And never let the end of a crisis be the end of the party, for the excuses can run their natural course if the herd animals (and their leaders) are gullible (and corrupt) enough.

That a grocery-store worker filed a class-action lawsuit against both Kroger and Albertsons in Colorado on November 25, 2024 for having colluded “against striking employees to keep pay and benefits down” may indicate that the giant chains took advantage of workers too.[5] The suit alleges that “the two competitors reached an illicit agreement not to poach employees or customers during a 2022 work stoppage.” This “gave Kroger an upper hand against its employees’ union during contract talks,” and Albertson too would likely benefit as it had the same union.[6] The word most erroneous here is competitors, and if Kroger and Albertsons were not competing for employees or customers, then it would have been easy for both managements to raise prices, essentially creating inflation (i.e., above costs and a reasonable profit), in taking advantage of the pandemic turned into a rationale for higher prices and then of societal expectations that price increases would happen and be legitimate.

That Kamala Harris ran for U.S. president in 2024 with only vague promises to help consumers with high food prices rather than a bold promise to wipe off the Sherman Anti-trust Act to apply it to break up both Kroger and Albertsons is so glaring that it could (and should) be asked whether, or to what extent, that industry, as well as the concentrated meat-producer industry, was made financial contributions to Harris’ campaign. Even President Biden’s decision to oppose the merger of those two companies ignored the likely possibility that the grocery (and meat-producer) industry was already too concentrated (i.e., oligopolistic) for price competition to have lowered food prices after the pandemic.  Both the president and the vice president (i.e., Harris) were too snug with the status quo, and perhaps relatedly too influenced, financially and otherwise, by the grocery (as well as meat-producing and even restaurant) industry. That the profits of Kroger and Albertson grew not only during the pandemic, but also in its wake, especially as compared with the pre-pandemic numbers, should have been an obvious indication that Adam Smith’s apotheotic competitive-market model could no longer operate due to the enormous sizes and few number of grocery chains in the United States. Enough voters may have been angry at Biden and Harris for not using the judiciary to restore competition—only acting to oppose the merger—to vote for Harris even though Trump would not likely apply anti-trust law even to the merger. A similar rationale concerning Biden and Harris actively supporting Israel militarily even after the UN’s top court had ruled that the occupation violated international law can be applied for why Harris lost. Enough of the American electorates wanted boldness in place of status-quo timidity that they were willing to vote against Harris and even for Trump even while disagreeing with his bold policies, such as on stopping illegal immigration.

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1. “FTC Challenges Kroger’s Acquisition of Albertsons,” FTC Press Release, February 26, 2024.
2. Suzanne Blake, “Kroger Executive Admits Company Gouged Prices Above Inflation,” Newsweek, August 31, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. 
5. Dave Jamieson, “Worker Sues Kroger and Albertsons, Alleging Collusion Against Union,” The Huffington Post, November 26, 2024.
6. Ibid.