Just Print The Money

What seemingly intractable problems can be solved with just four simple words?  And which current presidential candidate once actually said those four exact words, "just print the money", or at least the last three of those four magic words?

A)  Bernie Sanders
B)  Elizabeth Warren
C)  Kamala Harris
D)  Joe Biden
E)  Donald Trump

Give up?  Scroll down to find the answer:

The answer, believe it or not, is E, Donald Trump.  Yes, THAT Donald Trump.  Meanwhile all of the other 2020 candidates (sorry Bernie, but even you don't get a pass on this one) are apparently too cowardly to utter those words when asked how they will "pay for" the various high-ticket items on their wish list.

Back in 2016, then presidential candidate Donald Trump said a lot of outrageous and controversial things and too many gaffes to count.  But one in particular stands out in light of recent posts and current events, namely, the one in which he implied he would default on the national debt if he couldn't negotiate a better deal.  Now that is clearly not something for a politician or candidate to even joke about, let alone actually do.  But it was what he said after he was criticized for it and he backpedaled on it which was actually much more noteworthy:

This is the United States government. First of all, you never have to default because you [just] print the money. I hate to tell you. So there’s never a default.

And that second "gaffe", ladies and gentlemen, was actually NOT a gaffe at all.  Why?  Because it is actually TRUE, believe it or not.  Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, after all.

Wait, what?  You read that correctly.  Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has actually been arguing this for years now, as has Rodger Malcolm Mitchell and his own theory of Monetary Sovereignty (MS).  That is, a Monetarily Sovereign government like our own federal government and many others (but unlike the euro nations or any US state or local government) has the inherent and unlimited power to create money by fiat.  The only limits such a government has are those it chooses to impose on itself, such as the remaining arcane and archaic rules left over from when we actually had a gold standard before we got off of it in 1971.  The world changed in that year, but our "leaders" have apparently not gotten the memo.

You might want to sit down before you read any further.  Taxes do NOT actually pay for federal spending, rather, the government simply creates the money they spend ad hoc with a few clicks of a computer as they go along.  Nor is there any physical need for them to borrow money, but they do so anyway by issuing Treasury securities (i.e. T-bills, T-notes, and T-bonds) whenever they create new money that is unmatched by taxes in order to match it with borrowing--all because of those arcane and archaic rules that they could remove with a stroke of a pen if they chose to.  That is, IF they actually chose to.

So where do our tax dollars actually go then?  Well, one could argue that those dollars are effectively taken out of the economy and needlessly destroyed.  And yes, some of those dollars are ultimately destroyed in practice if not in theory.  But it is worse than that, for at least at some point before destruction, they first have to make a pit stop at the privately-owned FERAL Reserve, where they do little more than further enrich the bankster oligarchs.  Again, all because of those arcane and archaic rules.

And that big, scary number that we see on the National Debt Clock?  Well, nowadays the national debt is literally just an accounting gimmick.  What it really consists of are deposits in federal Treasury security accounts, not debt in the way that private debt is.  Effectively, it is really a national savings account, and so-called "deficit" spending is simply when the government puts more money into the economy (via spending) than it takes out (via taxes and fees).  Thus, a deficit for the federal budget is actually a surplus for the rest of the economy, and vice-versa.

Of course, Rodger Mitchell has an even better, more fundamental idea that makes it so the government would never need to borrow a single penny ever again, and it doesn't require raising taxes OR cutting spending.  Not only that, but it would guarantee that Social Security and Medicare, and any other program, would remain fully funded indefinitely as well without the use of FICA taxes (or any other tax for that matter).  The solution, in his exact words:

The best way is to eliminate the federal budget deficit and debt: Ending government borrowing. The government has the unlimited ability to create and spend money without borrowing. The process will be: 

1) Congress will create an account called "Money." 

2) Congress will determine how much money this account contains. The process will be similar to the way Congress now determines the debt ceiling. 

3) Federal agencies will write checks against this account according to budgets decided by Congress. If any federal agency needed additional funds, Congress would decide whether or not to allow this spending, in the same way that Congress votes for additional spending by the military et al. 

This would eliminate concerns about "our grandchildren paying for the federal debt." There would be no federal debt.

And as long as such money were created without any interest or related fees attached to its creation (as per Ellen Brown), such a solution would actually work.  Modern Monetary Theory indeed supports such an idea.  Congress can already spend money into existence rather than lend it into existence, all they would have to do now is officially decouple such spending from taxes and Treasury securities.  (And since he mentioned the debt ceiling, that is another thing we should really get rid of as well in the meantime, since it does far more harm than good.)

Before that, there actually is a painless (albeit unconventional) method of paying off the existing debt in one fell swoop.  Not just this year's deficit, but ALL of the cumulative $21 trillion of the debt. It's called the Noble Solution (named after its creator, Richard E. Noble) and does not involve any significant tax hikes or spending cuts. So what is it? It's something we never would have advocated just a few years ago:  printing (electronically creating) money out of thin air to pay it off all at once.  After all, FERAL Reserve has been creating money out of thin air for decades now (including that recent whopping $16 trillion secret bailout of the banks, which eventually rose to nearly $30 trillion) so we might as well put this practice to productive use.  Money is really nothing more than an accounting entry nowadays, so let's make the entry and be done with it for good.

But wouldn't that lead to hyperinflation?  In a word, NO.  Noble points out that while creating such money is undoubtedly inflationary, using it to pay off the debt (which is in Treasury bonds and is thus already part of the money supply) would be deflationary in that it would shrink the money supply by an equal amount. Thus, the two effects would cancel each other out, as paper (electronic data) would be exchanged for paper (data).   Besides, inflation and hyperinflation is NOT caused by money creation, but rather by shortages of food and/or energy, leading to reverse causation.  Of course, we would have to bypass the FERAL Reserve to avoid creating more debt in the process, such as #MintTheCoin. Or better yet, nationalize the FERAL Reserve entirely and return the power of money creation to its rightful owners, our elected representatives in Congress and the Department of the Treasury.  America would then be "free and clear" for the first time in history since Thomas Jefferson.  And it would cost us NOTHING.

Not like it really matters, since as we already noted, the "debt" is not even really debt at all, but simply deposits in Treasury securities.  And as Mitchell notes, since the federal government has infinite money, it does not actually touch those deposits at all, but simply returns the existing money in those accounts to the account holders by transferring it, while adding newly-created interest dollars to whatever amount is there.  Thus, to "pay off" / extinguish the debt completely, the only new money that needs to be created is the interest, and that new money will stimulate the economy.  You read that right.

Alternatively, Joseph M. Firestone points out that the very same effect can also be had more gradually, with Congress passing an Act (such as the very next budget or appropriations bill) that removes those arcane and archaic rules entirely, and mandates/guarantees than any new deficits as well as any outstanding Treasury securities (i.e. national debt) be funded / paid for automatically with the very same ad hoc money creation that they already do in practice, but no longer needing to match it with new borrowing or tax revenues.  Thus, the federal government would no longer need to borrow even one penny (i.e. issue any new Treasury securities) unless they truly wanted to for reasons unrelated to the federal budget.  And according to Rodger Mitchell, such bonds do, in fact, have other useful, unrelated functions (i.e. providing a safe haven for investors to park their money, and an effective platform for the government to control both short and long-term interest rates, and thus the demand for dollars).  But the point is they would no longer HAVE to do so just to meet their current and future fiscal obligations, so the national debt would stop increasing and gradually decrease as any existing  Treasury securities mature and/or are redeemed. And thus the 100% contrived political issue (and cudgel) that is the national debt / deficit would quickly become a dead issue, and we can finally focus on other, real priorities for a change.

You know, things like Universal Basic Income, Medicare For All, free college, improvements to education, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and stuff like that.  All of which can be readily "paid for" with the stroke of a pen and the click of a computer key.   No taxes or borrowing required.  And if the "inflation dragon" ever does happen rear its ugly head again, simply raising interest rates will quash it, as will the practice of draining excess bank reserves and "sterilizing" cash inflows at the FERAL Reserve (which again, really should be nationalized to to become truly FEDERAL) when the newly-created dollars pass through many hands and then the banks and make an inevitable pit stop there.  Problem solved.  And any inflation that is driven by food and energy shortages can be resolved by simply redirecting federal spending to incentivize the producers of such to produce more, by buying such products at a premium and selling (or giving them away) at a loss.  Hey, it's infinite money, remember?

So what are we waiting for?

When Will The Trump Bubble Burst?

With impeachment now a foregone conclusion, the trade war still ongoing and damaging the economy, and Trump generally making a mess of things, people are wondering, when will the stock market bubble finally burst?  Like a dog on a leash, it eventually has to snap back to reality sometime.  All the corporate stock buybacks in the world or FERAL Reserve machinations will not be able to postpone it forever.  As history has shown, what goes up, must come down.  And the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

The massive federal "deficit" spending (which to be honest, is really a non-problem for a Monetarily Sovereign government like ours) from 2018 onwards is of course fueling the economy right now in spite of Trump's general wrecking-ball economic and non-economic policies.  More federal "deficit" spending = more money supply = more growth dollars = more economic growth, as a general rule.  But eventually even that will not be enough to stop the damage being done by Trump's recklessness, especially since so much of that new money creation is going to the where in least needs to go (into the hands of the rich and mega-corporations, Wall Street instead of Main Street.  Especially if the Republicans decide to actually start cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other vital programs while cynically using the "deficit" hysteria as a cudgel.  Yes, they will actually have the chutzpah to try that at some point.

You can really only do so much damage before papering over it no longer works anymore.

Trump's Syria Withdrawal Is Reckless And Treacherous, But...

Trump just announced that he will be abruptly pulling all troops out of northern Syria, while allowing Turkey to invade Syria, essentially throwing our Kurdish allies to the wolves after all they did for us for so many years now.  Predictably, this has earned him strong condemnation from both corporate duopoly parties that are invested in the military-industrial complex, but not only from them.  The truth, however, is a bit more nuanced than that, even if Trump doesn't really do nuance.

It is obvious now that Trump is clearly Putin’s puppet and is pulling out of Syria for the very basest of ulterior motives: to appease Putin and Erdogan, to “wag the dog” and distract from his mounting scandals, and of course to nurture his own fat relentless ego. And he is doing it as abruptly and chaotically as possible, without so much as a heads-up beforehand to our allies, especially the Kurds who he seems to have no qualms about selling down the river to Turkey.  Very base and cowardly indeed.  

We at the TSAP thus condemn Trump's withdrawal for the way he is doing it and the timing of it.  But...

That said, sometimes even a stopped clock can be right twice a day. As we have noted time and time again, we need to get the hell out of out of not just Syria, but also the decades-long quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter of which is longer than Vietnam at this point.  ISIL, though clearly still in existence as a terrorist group (kinda like al-Qaeda and the Taliban, etc.) is nonetheless defeated territorially compared to 2014. Time for other countries/actors to step up to the plate and do whatever remains of the heavy lifting now.   Long past time for that, in fact.

And we also need to stop suborning Saudi Arabia’s unconscionable mass-murdering proxy war in Yemen as well (though Trump seems cool with that for now).

"Endless war" is NOT a sustainable strategy.  In fact, it is not even a strategy at all, but a concept, and an absurd one at that.  The only people who benefit from it are the oligarchs and the military-industrial complex, as the late Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler once famously noted in his 1935 book War Is A Racket.  (Of course, WWII was the exception that proves the rule.)

Whether a war is a “wham, bam, thank you ma’am” kind of war like Libya or a decade(s)-long quagmire like Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan, the end result is essentially ultimately the same sort of disastrous failed state that becomes a magnet for extremists.  And once it becomes Quagmire Accomplished like it is currently, whether we leave now, a year from now, ten years from now, or 100 years from now, the result on the affected nation(s) we invade and subsequently leave is basically the same.  Quick withdrawal in general is thus the lesser evil on balance.

In fact, Tom Englehardt (Tom Dispatch) and Peter van Buren had the best idea of all--quick withdrawal, after getting ISIL where it really hurts by taking out their OIL.  Such targets--wellheads and oil trucks--are not at all hard to find, and are fairly easy to take out from the air.  And put diplomatic and economic pressure on Turkey and other so-called "allies" to stem the flow of Daesh oil as well.  Because oil is their primary source of funding, and removing that will cause them to quickly collapse of their own weight, and when they are seen as a failure then few would want to join them.  And once we take it out, then GTFO and let Daesh fall on their own sword.  (And apparently, we ended up doing a modest version of exactly that sort of oil campaign, with a fair amount of success, albeit late in the game and minus the withdrawal.)

The TSAP agrees with that idea, and we would also like to add to that.  We have said it before, and we will say it again.   Before withdrawing, we should give every *woman* over there an AK-47 and tell them to take over their country and mow down anyone who stands in their way. Let Allah sort it out. Problem solved. But of course, the mostly-male powers that be would not be too keen on that idea. After all, they wouldn't want women in THIS country getting any ideas, now would they?  (Of course, the TSAP believes that women should indeed take over the world in order to save it, so that wouldn't really be a bad idea, come to think of it.) Honestly, it is certainly a better idea than arming questionable male "rebels" who end up turning traitor.  Seriously, think about it.

For Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to get out yesterday.  For Syria, it is more nuanced and complicated thanks to Turkey's latest incursion into Syria, and of course what that means for the Kurds (spoiler alert: it isn't good).  Thus, being a bit less hasty with withdrawing the 1000 or so troops in Syria specifically would probably be the least-worst idea right now.  And in all of these countries, a post-withdrawal Marshall Plan would also be a good idea as well to help deal with the aftermath.

Like the song says, if we go it will be trouble, if we stay it will be double.  And those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

UPDATE:  Just 24 hours after he recklessly shunted troops to the side in Syria (he didn't actually remove them yet from Syria, but plans to) to pave the way for the Turks to invade and slaughter the Kurds (which they are apparently doing right now), he ordered 1800 troops to Saudi Arabia, because reasons, perhaps to provoke Iran.  This man is extremely dangerous right now, amd clearly unfit for command even as dogcatcher, let alone President of the United States.

The Donald Is Circling The Drain

It really does NOT look good for the Donald these days.  A formal impeachment inquiry has now been officially launched against him, and it looks like he will be impeached any day now.  This time, it is because Trump allegedly tried to pressure a foreign government, the Ukraine, to give him political dirt on Joe Biden's son.  That, and so many other things in Trump's laundry list of scandals are now coming back to haunt him.  And that is a VERY long list indeed!

With dirty tricks like that, he makes even Tricky Dick Nixon look like an angel by comparison!

Of course, the House can only charge him with such "high crimes and misdemeanors", and it is up to the Senate to actually try him and vote on whether or not he should be removed, which requires a two-thirds majority to do so.  But even if they don't have the votes to remove him before the 2020 election, it is just a little over a year away, and him having this sort of a dark and ominous cloud hanging over him would certainly NOT help him win re-election at all.

And now with his stupid trade war really starting to bite hard and wreak havoc with both the national and global economy, and his latest foray into the asinine War on Vaping, he is pissing off more and more of his erstwhile supporters, making it even more likely that he will be creamed in 2020 either way.

The jig is up, Donald.  Now go do us all a favor and RESIGN, yesterday.  Don't let the door hit you on the way out.  Or as you like to say, "YOU'RE FIRED!"

UPDATE:  It looks like Trump threw Pence under the bus as well.  So we may very well get a two-for-one impeachment special as a result.  Plus, if Trump eventually does a Nixon and pre-emptively resigns in hopes of Pence pardoning him, he will surely be out of luck now.  Hey, that's karma!

How To Prevent--And Cure--The Next (Or Any) Recession Or Depression (Updated)

With a recession likely coming later this year or next year at the latest, it is important to realize the causes so such recessions can be cured or even prevented in the first place.  Enter Rodger Malcolm Mitchell, the guru of Monetary Sovereignty, penned this important and timely article.

He notes that every single recession and virtually every depression in history has been preceded by a cut in federal deficit spending, or worse, a federal surplus.  That is not coincidence, since cutting the federal deficit slows the growth of the money supply, and surpluses actually shrink the money supply, all else being equal.  (Federal deficit spending = spending new dollars into existence.)  A growing economy requires a growing supply of money, and when the money supply fails to keep up with the demand for money for too long, the economy reacts by shrinking.  Thus, barring a truly massive increase in private debt (i.e. more money lent into existence by banks), deficit cuts ultimately result in recessions and surpluses result in depressions or at least really long and deep recessions.  And recessions and depressions can only be cured by increasing the money supply dramatically, typically by increasing federal deficit spending.  That's it.

And this makes perfect sense, since GDP is literally nothing more than a money measure.  To wit, GDP = Federal Spending + Nonfederal Spending + Net Exports.  Kinda hard to grow that without sufficiently growing the money supply as well.

Everything else is basically a sideshow, but that said, sometimes sideshows can be significant too.  Take the current Trump Trade War, for example.  This lose-lose, negative-sum game would have been recessionary by now had it not been for the massive growth in the federal deficit occurring at the same time, and eventually it may still cause the next recession in spite of the deficit.  But if the Republicans decide to cut federal spending because of manufactured deficit hysteria, that will cause a far worse recession or depression, on top of the consequences of the trade war.  And Wall Street recklessness can indeed cause financial crises, which of course can have knock-on effects on Main Street as well, as we have seen numerous times already.  Though even that is most likely due to the fact that stock market crashes--or any other asset price crash--will shrink the money supply, all else being equal.  And that is especially true when there is a "credit crunch" where banks suddenly refuse to lend as much as before, as we have seen in the wake of both the 1929 and 2008 stock market crashes (but not 1987).

What about oil and gasoline prices?  True, 10 out of the past 11 recessions have been preceded by sharp increases in fuel prices.  And that makes sense in a country in which oil is the lifeblood of the economy.  But even this is more nuanced than one may think.  Neither increases in interest rates alone nor increases in fuel prices alone seem to be enough to cause a recession by themselves unless such increases are truly extreme, which is very rare.  But the simultaneous combination of significantly large increases in both (that is, a sharp hike in the Fed Funds Rate by more than 2.00-2.50% AND at least a doubling of crude oil prices within a year or two) appears to be sufficient to cause a recession.  Of course, given how rare it is for recessions to not be preceded by cuts in deficit spending, it is not clear if sufficient deficit spending can be enough to prevent an oil-induced recession while interest rates are also hiked to prevent or cure inflation.  But at the very least, increasing federal deficits will cure such recessions once the inflation dragon is defeated.

The Fed recently cut the Fed Funds Rate by 0.25 percentage points (25 basis points), while noting that there would not likely be any more cuts this year.  And the stock market lurched downward upon that announcement, and lurched down again the following day thanks to Trump's further escalation of the trade war, and yet again following China's predictable retaliation.  Cutting interest rates is basically like pushing on a string, and in any case it may be too late to fully prevent the next recession that is largely induced by Trump's trade war.

Overall, we know what causes virtually all recessions and depressions.  That means we also know how to prevent and cure them as well.  That is, when recession hits, or ideally before it hits, we should increase federal deficit spending, or at least refrain from cutting it.  It's really not rocket science.

Enough Is Enough Already! (Yet Again)

Another day, another horrible mass shooting.  This time, it was in fact TWO mass shootings within 24 hours:  one in El Paso, Texas, followed by another in Dayton, Ohio, and so far at least the first one (if not the second as well) appeared to be fueled by racism, xenophobia, and white nationalism (much like the one at the garlic festival in Gilroy, California just days prior).  These two shootings are among the deadliest in this country's history, but in context with the numerous other recent mass shootings it otherwise seems disturbingly banal.  Seems that mass shootings in general have become an almost daily occurrence in recent years, and school shootings in particular an almost weekly occurrence--in the USA at least.  So far there have been 251 mass shootings in 2019 alone.   But the rest of the industrialized world doesn't really seem to have this kind of problem, even in countries where racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and hate groups in general are rife.  Why is that?  Well, there's always....

GUNS.

America is the land of 300 million guns, and combined with a culture that is crazier and more violent than most other "developed" countries, and much more extreme inequality, it is a very lethal combination indeed.  And some states, most notably Florida and Texas, but also Pennsylvania as well, have particularly lax gun laws compared to other states.  Of course, the biggest elephant in the room is the fact that at least 98% of mass shooters are MEN.  Thanks to the patriarchy and the sort of "toxic masculinity" that it creates, combined with the above factors, too many men end up resorting to violence.  Like the Iron Maiden song says, "a briefcase, a lunch, and a man on the edge".  With a gun. I mean, what could possibly go wrong, right?

There should be no doubt at this point that something needs to be done.  However, we do not believe that banning all guns for everyone, or adopting British or European-style gun laws, is the solution, as the genie is already out of the bottle, and there is also that whole Constitution thingy as well.  Thus, the TSAP recommends that the following measures be taken:

1. Bring back a new and improved 1994 assault-weapons ban yesterday, this time with more teeth.  This time, include all rapid-fire devices and all magazines with more than ten rounds in the ban as well as the previously-banned types of semi-automatic rifles and their knockoffs.
2. Remove the 20-year ban on gun violence research, yesterday. 
3. End the gun-show loophole and implement universal background checks, yesterday.
4. Put a significant excise tax on all bullets/ammo, like Chris Rock recommended. (Seriously)
5. Treat ammo sales the same as gun sales.  Or better yet, treat bullets like Sudafed:  must show ID, limit on the number that one can buy, the number bought would be recorded, and if you do buy too many, you will be investigated.
6. Pass a "one gun a month" law at the federal level.  And consider perhaps putting a limit on the number of guns that an individual can own at a given time, except for antiques/relics/curios.
7. Require reporting of lost or stolen guns.
8. Regulate firearms like other consumer products in terms of health and safety standards--currently such standards are nonexistent.
9. Improve enforcement of existing gun laws, which tend not to be enforced very well these days, and improve state reporting of prohibited persons to NICS.  Also, prohibit anyone on the terrorism watch list from buying any guns, period--and consider hate groups to be domestic terrorists as well.
10. Consider a massive gun buyback program, one that pays significantly more than what the guns are worth on the street.  Voluntary for any still-legal weapons, mandatory for any newly-banned ones. 
11. And last but not least, improve our woefully-inadequate mental healthcare system.

Of course, to truly solve our gun violence problem would require a fundamental overhaul and transformation of our society, which the TSAP clearly supports.  We need to go from being what Riane Eisler calls a "dominator" society to more of a "partnership" society, as the latter kind is far less violent overall.   But in the meantime, the aforementioned recommendations would go a long way towards taking the dangerous edge off of the problem. 

And like other cases of domestic terrorism, these were most likely due to a combination of toxic masculinity, easy access to deadly weapons (especially the obligatory semi-automatic AR-15, AK-47, or their knockoffs), and a virulent racism and xenophobia fueled by the so-called "alt-right" (read: white supremacists, KKK, and neo-Nazis) as well as the Trump administration that nods, winks, and looks the other way (when they aren't stoking the fire themselves like Trump himself apparently had done recently).  Regardless of the motive, the first two factors are absolutely essential for virtually all mass shootings.   To be clear, these atrocities are, even more disturbingly, NOT isolated incidents or flukes, but the tip of a very large iceberg of hate and violence that appears to be getting worse in recent years.

I don't know about you, but my favorite part of the Second Amendment is where it says "well-regulated". Too bad so many Republican Congresscritters who are bought and paid for by the NRA can't seem to read the first half of the freaking sentence.  Oh, and nevermind that when it was written, guns at that time fired at most one round per minute, not 600+ per minute like so many of today's killing machines.  Not like the gun lobby and their lackeys really do nuance.

It's (Still) Mueller Time!

The Russiagate scandal, along with Trump's other myriad scandals, is not going away anytime soon.  And after Mueller testified to Congress, he made it clear that Trump was NOT exonerated, particularly for the high crime of obstruction of justice, though under current Justice Deparment rules a sitting president cannot be indicted.  Thus, Congress needs to impeach him.  And Nancy Pelosi really needs to stop dithering about it and get the ball rolling yesterday.

We Still Condemn Trump's Deplorable Immigration Policy

Trump's deplorable immigration policy is only getting worse it seems.  While the administration has supposedly stopped separating undocumented children from their parents at the border, the children thay have been separated already have still not been reunited.  And as there is currently a crisis at the border with all of the recent asylum seekers, they are increasingly being detained in deplorable conditions without adequate food, water, and sanitation.   We literally have innocent children being treated worse than convicted felons in this country.

And yes, "concentration camps" is the correct term, since the dictionary definition is "the mass detention of civilans without trial".   So it looks like AOC is apparently spot-on.  This is how it started in 1930s Germany, after all--first they had detention camps, then slave-labor camps, and only from 1941 onward did they have extermination (death) camps.

Look, it is clear that a lot of people don't like the term "concentration camps".  Maybe we should call them "torture camps" instead, given that what all too often occurs in them meets the internationally recognized definition of torture, especially when it involves children.  Or perhaps we should call them "Trump Camps" to guarantee that historians forever attach their memory to his name and vile and disgusting legacy, while ironically giving him a perverse ego boost without him even seeing the irony.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is planning even more ICE raids for the purpose of deporting more and more undocumented immigrants, including those who have been living here for years or decades and have no criminal records.

Clearly, such cruelty for cruelty's sake has NOT been any sort of deterrent, as the number of illegal border crossings has gone from the lowest it has been in years in much of 2017 to the highest it has been in decades by March 2019.  Let that sink in.

That kinda backfired, didn't it?  Meanwhile, the 100% preventable illnesses, injuries, and deaths of both children and adults in these camps just keep piling up every day that goes by.  We can no longer call our country a "shining city on a hill" anymore as long as this continues.  Even the late Ronald Reagan (who coined both that phrase, as well as the MAGA slogan, by the way) must be spinning in his grave right now.

To be sure, the crisis at the border does not have any easy, ready-made solutions at this point, and certainly requires thinking outside the box.  Ideally, all immigrants should come in through the proper channels legally.  But the system is currently broken, and when those proper channels are blocked off by the powers that be, for political reasons, clearly something has to give as a result.  And the train has basically left the station at this point.

Don't look away.  This is how it starts, people.  The banality of evil, and "we were just following orders" and "the law is the law".  So where's the long-overdue outrage?  Remember, the only thing it takes for evil to prosper, is for good people to do nothing.  Seriously.