About the Episode

Asking you to remember this US legal 4 letter acronym. RICO. R I C O. It stands for Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organization. This is what organized crime figures have been charged with Former Prosecutors like Rudy Giuliani gained convictions of mob bosses on racketeering chargers. People die. And Reputations die. But Irony lives forever. Irony of Ironies. Rudy Giuliani is now among a yacht load of people charged in Georgia with multiple felonies including Racketeering and it need to be said the most famous among the charged is Donald Trump. There are those who say so what Trump is charged every week. The latest charges are different. They aren’t federal. Trump if he goes back to the white house can pardon himself of federal charges – not state charges. If he begins serving time in a State Penitentiary in Georgia the Election of 2024 cannot be a Get out of Jail card for Donald Trump. And by the way there is mandatory minimum sentence if he is convicted on RICO – a 5 yrs mandatory minimum. If convicted on everything he is being charged with, he’ll spend the rest of his so called natural life in the bucket. One more thing. The Georgia grand jury isn’t the second or third to indict Trump. This is Grand Jury #4. And relatively few Republicans are saying Throw the bum out. Republicans still fear his voters, his fans, his cult so most name brand Republicans are little more than an obedient choir of crickets.

Don’t look now. But China is slowing down. The world’s second largest economy – not to mention a very important customer to many countries around the world including Canada is slowing down. China is much too big to fail. But world markets are paying attention. It’s affecting stock markets in Asia Europe the US and Canada and it’s also dampening the Oil market. I don’t want to turn this feature into a data dump. But I will tell you that unemployment among the young in China is above 21 percent – highly elevated for any orderly society. History informs us that nothing brings disorder faster than millions of bored out of work and hungry young people.

In this country the PM and his wife and kids are on vacay – together – an issue for some after the recently announced decision of a separation agreement in their marriage. Should separating couples take vacations with the children asks the Ottawa Citizen, a once respected Canadian newspaper.