Category: Uncategorized

Old White Dude Rules

Federal Judge of the Eastern District of Virginia TS Ellis has been on the bench since his appointment in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan.  He is seventy-nine years old, a “senior Judge” in the Federal Court system.  When he was appointed to the Bench, the number one song was “Walk Like an Egyptian,” the top movie “3 Men and a Baby” and the top TV show, “The Cosby Show.”  Less than 20% of homes in the US had personal computers, with most of those computers built by IBM.

It’s called the “Rule of Eighty.”  After a judge has reached the age of sixty-five, if they can add their age and their years of service on the Federal Bench together and reach eighty, they can take “Senior Judge” status.  This allows them to continue on the Bench, working part-time, and still draw their judicial salary.  Prior to “Senior” standing being established in 1919, judges either had to serve full-time or resign.  Today judges do have the option of full retirement as well.

According to the “Rule of Eighty,” Judge Ellis is at one hundred and eleven.   He has been on “Senior Status” since 2007.

Judge Ellis has tremendous academic credentials; Bachelors in Engineering from Princeton, Magna-cum-Laude from Harvard Law, and an additional Law Degree from Oxford University. He presided over high profile cases in his career, including John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban (sentenced to twenty years); and Khalid El-Masri, who sued the CIA for rendition and torture (case dismissed.)

Judge Ellis also presided over the corruption trial of former Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson, where $90,000 was found in a freezer in the Congressman’s Virginia home. The money was part of a bribe paid by an FBI informant. Jefferson claims that he was cooperating with an FBI sting of foreign officials, but a jury found the Congressman guilty on eleven of sixteen counts of bribery and corruption, and Ellis sentenced him to thirteen years in Federal prison (subsequent to the Supreme Court ruling in McDonnell v United States, Jefferson appealed, and was ultimately released after five and a half years.)

Most recently, Judge Ellis presided over the Eastern District trial of Paul Manafort, brought by the Special Counsel’s office of Robert Mueller.  From the pre-trial hearings, Ellis expressed his skepticism towards the Special Counsel; commenting that the eighteen charges against Manafort, from tax evasion (over $6 million owed) to defrauding the United States, did not include any conspiracy charges with Russia.  Ellis, in open Court, decried that if Manafort hadn’t had a role in the Trump campaign, the other charges wouldn’t have been brought.

Ellis seriously entertained a defense motion to reject the charges, based on the limited authority of the Special Counsel to investigate the Russia matter.  However, after deliberating for several days, he found that Mr. Mueller was acting within his scope of authority.  That ruling didn’t seem to alter Ellis’s antipathy towards the Special Counsel’s office though, and prosecution lawyers faced continuing interruptions and restrictions from the judge throughout the proceedings.

Manafort was a long-time Republican operative from his beginnings in the Nixon campaign (along with his friend and business associate, Roger Stone.)  Manafort worked for Ford, Reagan, George HW Bush and Dole, as well as taking his “talents” overseas.  The firm of Black, Manafort and Stone served as political consultants to dictators and despots in Africa, and later in the former Soviet Union.   It had been since the Dole campaign that Manafort was involved in US politics, but he volunteered himself to the Trump Campaign, and quickly was appointed Chairman.

The jury found Manafort guilty of eight of the eighteen counts, the other ten counts were declared a mistrial – a single juror voting against conviction (That juror later admitted that she was influenced by the President’s tweets about the trial being a “witch hunt.”)  According to Federal sentencing guidelines, Manafort could have been sentenced to up to twenty-four years in prison.

Judge Ellis sentenced him to four years, with nine months already served.  When questioned about his departure from the guidelines, Ellis stated: 

“The Court also has to take account of the guidelines. They’re not mandatory, but they’re advisory. These guidelines are quite high. They provide for a sentence that is from 19 to 24 years, roughly. I think that sentencing range is excessive. I don’t think that’s warranted in this case.”

And in determining the sentence of Manafort, convicted of a pattern of criminal activity going back over a decade:

“The defendant is a Category I in criminal history; that is, he has no criminal history. He is a graduate of a university and law school here, Georgetown for both, and he’s lived an otherwise blameless life. And he’s also earned the admiration of a number of people, all of whom have written the Court about him.”

Congressman Jefferson must have been ineligible for the “blameless life” status, nor was his Bachelors from Southern, Law Degree from Harvard, and Masters in Law from Georgetown good enough to qualify for the Ellis “discount.” Of course, the disgraced Member already had two strikes against him:  he was a Democrat, and he was black.

It is certain that Judge Ellis was doing what he thought was just towards Jefferson and Manafort.  The Judge did not take a bribe, or is some other way violate the law.  He seemed to operate on two principles in his sentencing: his open disagreement with the authority of the Special Counsel, despite his ruling to the contrary, and his empathy for the wheelchair bound Manafort, struck from the highest levels of American political life.  That would be the “old white dude” rule; the obvious standard of judgment throughout the American judicial system. Ask the former Congressman.

The Holy Alliance

Fox News, the alt-Right, Trump, American Zionists, and the Christian Right:  which of these is not like the others?  

It’s not too difficult to draw a political line from Trump to Fox News (if you need reinforcement, read Jane Mayer’s treatise in The New Yorker).  And, despite the contradictions of a moral group supporting a demonstrably immoral man, the Christian Right has “sold-out” for Mr. Trump. They are willing to accept his personal immorality in return for his dedication to their causes:  an end to legal abortion, privatization of schooling (and the use of public money to fund private schools,) and rolling back LGBTQIA rights (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex and Asexual or Allied – the IA were new to me, and I want to be thorough).  

And while others in the Trump Administration would deny it, the President has made it clear that he sees “…fine people on both sides.”  Trump owes the ideology of his rise to political power to the “alt-right,” from the members of his staff like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, to the more established hate groups (“…I don’t even know who David Duke is…”) to the absolute crazy conspiracy theorists of Q-Anon, a group that Trump quietly and consistently signals his approval.  

So how do American Zionists, mostly Jewish, end up in such a mix?  Traditionally American Jews have supported the Democratic Party platform, are moderate to liberal on social issues, and have been the target for right-wing attacks.  Anti-Semitism was a foundation of the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis; of the three civil rights workers killed during the Mississippi “Freedom Summer,” two were Jewish. 

The President has placed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner in charge of Middle East Policy. Kushner, a Modern Orthodox Jew, has close links to Israel.  And it’s more than just his connection to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Kushner’s father was a close friend of Netanyahu, and Kushner was educated from a young age in Zionism (New York Times.)  Trump himself has connections to the Jewish community, with one of his earliest mentors being attorney Roy Cohn.  And Trump has  more recent found political backing from billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson, whose pro-Zionist views are well known.  When Trump moved the US Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Adelson was given a seat on the podium, and when Adelson wanted to build a casino in Japan, Trump brought the subject up to Prime Minister Abe.

But President Trump isn’t the only nexus between pro-Israeli forces and the conservative right.  Since the late 1960’s, Christian evangelists, starting with Billy Graham himself, have supported the Jewish state in the Middle East.  Christian Zionists see modern day Israel as a sign of Biblical prophecy come true; foretelling the coming of the “end of days” as written in Revelations. 

Both Christians and Jews are encouraged to “own a piece” of the Holy Land. To Christians, Israel is the land of the Second Coming, to have a piece of that land gives a “foothold” for the End (check this Youtube offer to buy 1 square inch for only $49.99!!!) And Jews too can a piece of the Jewish Homeland – $36 for one square cubit near Mt. Carmel, a great Bar Mitzvah present on E-Bay! They even send you a “Deed” with the Star of David (and written in English.)

Sure, someone is making money off of these “land” deals, but it also gives thousands of American Christians and Jews another reason to support Israel; defending their own land!

Democrats have been put into a difficult position.  They used to have the monopoly on Zionism, but the Trump coalition has cracked that wide open.  Democrats are more politically aligned with the Labor Party in Israel, the dominant political force through the late 1990s.   More recently, the Labor Party has been eclipsed by the right-wing Likud Party, led by Netanyahu.  As Democrats try to represent other legitimate interests, including the fate of Palestinians and the concept of the two-state solution to Middle East peace, they are treading a thin line:  it has become difficult to criticize Netanyahu’s policies, without being attacked as Anti-Semitic.  It doesn’t help Democrats that the most recent face of criticism has been a Muslim Congresswoman from Minnesota, playing into the right-wing “trope” for Muslim hatred.

In current Israeli politics, Likud is polling at 30% and Labor at 18%.  Israel has fourteen political Parties, it takes an alliance of multiple parties to gain the majority.  The coalition around Likud is polling at 61%.   Israel is itself divided, so it’s should be no surprise that support for Israel in the United States is divided as well.

It is possible to be pro-Israel and not accept some of the actions of the Netanyahu administration. It is possible to be in favor of a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine, and still be supportive of a Jewish state.  It is possible to be concerned about the fate of the Palestinian people, trapped on the West Bank and in Gaza, without being anti-Semitic.  But in our current political climate it is difficult to be nuanced; every action is exaggerated to its extreme, broadcast from the mountaintop by Trump and Fox News.  

And somehow, they have laid claim to the power of declaring who is Anti-Semitic.

While We Wait

We are waiting: waiting for the next move by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.  Waiting for more indictments, for a final report, for something!!!!  Waiting, waiting; for the other shoe to drop, twiddling our thumbs, spinning in circles:  on hold until the next step in our history is revealed by the Special Counsel’s office.

And meanwhile we watch the Democrats in the House get twisted around a freshman member from Minnesota, trying to balance anti-Semitism against anti-Muslim words and “tropes.”  We listen to Republican moderators demand that Democrats renounce “SOCIALISM,” while still supporting programs that are by definition socialistic.  But those programs are exactly what Democrats should be standing for; if socialism means caring for the poor and the “least” among us, we ought to be doing it.

To quote a line from Hamilton (as always); can we get back to politics?

The Presidential election of 2020 is tough to sort out.  The first assumption, that Donald Trump will be running for reelection, is so dependent on the waiting game we are playing, that it’s tough to go to the next step.  And Democrats have a lot of sorting out to do, with some of the major players, Biden for instance, still sitting on the sidelines, waiting for – well – I’m not sure what Biden’s waiting for.

But there are other elections in 2020, elections that may have just as dramatic an impact on the nation as the Presidential one.  In 2018, Democrats made a lot of noise about trying to gain a majority in the United States Senate.  It was a bridge way too far for the Party, the electoral map depending on not only winning a tough race in evenly split Florida and an upset in Texas, but also by holding Senate seats in Republican Missouri, North Dakota, Indiana and West Virginia.  Only Joe Manchin in West Virginia was able to hold on, by acting as more of a voting Republican than some actual Republicans.

2020 is a far different story.  Republicans today have fifty-three Senate seats, a three vote majority plus the tie-breaking Vice Presidential seat.  Democrats have forty-five actual seats, but the two Independents (Bernie Sanders and Angus King) both caucus with the Democrats, giving them a working forty-seven seat minority.  Thirty-three Senate seats are up for re-election, twenty-two now held by Republicans, and twelve by Democrats.

So Democrats are already at an advantage, defending significantly fewer seats.  That’s important when it comes to apportioning money into the electoral process, particularly in a Presidential election year when finances get sucked into the national process.

But even more importantly, eleven Democrats running are in a “safe” position, running in states that traditionally elect Democrats anyway:  New Jersey (Booker), Massachusetts (Markey), Oregon (Merkley), Peters (Michigan), Rhode Island (Reed), New Hampshire (Shaheen), New Mexico (Udall), Delaware (Coons), Minnesota (Smith), Illinois (Durbin) and Virginia (Warner). Even with Booker running for President, his replacement, if needed, would likely still be a Democrat.

Thirteen Republicans are running “safe” in many states as well:  Tennessee (Alexander), West Virginia (Caputo), Louisiana (Cassidy), Arkansas (Cotton), Wyoming (Enzi), South Carolina (Graham), Mississippi (Hyde-Smith), Oklahoma (Imhofe), Kentucky (McConnell), Idaho (Risch), South Dakota (Rounds), Nebraska (Sasse) and Alaska (Sullivan). 

So here’s the math: Republicans are defending twenty-two seats, and thirteen are “safe”, leaving eleven seats in some jeopardy.   Democrats are defending twelve seats and eleven are “safe”, leaving one at risk.  

So here are the “high risk” Senate races, two Republican and one Democrat.  Susan Collins (R-Maine) is in for the fight of her life.  Her flip-flops and final vote on the Kavanaugh nomination have made her a target of pro-choice and pro-women groups, and at the same time her vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act didn’t improve her Republican standing.  Maine does not easily fall into a political category, but Collins definitely looks to be a likely Democratic (or Independent) pick-up.

The second Republican “high risk” seat is the one Martha McSally was appointed to (the John McCain seat).  McSally ran and lost in the other Arizona Senate election (to Democrat Krysten Sinema) and is likely to face an even tougher Democrat, former astronaut and Gabby Gifford’s husband Mark Kelly, in 2020.

The Democratic “high risk” seat is from Alabama, the election won by Doug Jones in 2017. Jones ran against Roy Moore who was saddled with accusations of being a pedophile, and Jones is likely to face a more normal opponent in 2020.  While the South is changing from it’s solid Republican tradition, it’s unlikely that Jones will survive a “normal” election.

The “high risk” seats won’t change the majority in the Senate.  However, Republicans are faced with four more “risk” seats and the Democrats have none;  Texas (Cornyn), Colorado (Gardner), Perdue (Georgia) and Tillis (North Carolina). Texas and Georgia would be particularly vulnerable if the two stellar candidates from 2018, O’Rourke in Texas and Abrams in Georgia, chose to run.  This would require Beto to ignore the lure of the Presidential race, and Stacy to chose to not wait for a re-match with Kemp for Governor.  

So with the “high risk” and “risk” seats going to the other parties, the Senate would flip: Democrats 52, and Republicans 48. This would not even require a Democrat winning the Presidency (and Vice Presidency) to control the tie-breaker.

Flipping the Senate (and holding onto the House) will not be an easy task for Democrats.  The Presidential election will absorb much of the electoral energy; Democrats will need to have an “eye on the prize” for both the White House and the Capitol.  

Who Counts?

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.²  The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.  US Constitution Art 1, §2, Clause 3

Could there be anything less controversial in the Constitution then the Census?  It is the basis for our representative democracy, but it’s the simple counting of heads to determine the apportionment of representatives and taxes. No complications, just count everyone.

From the very writing of the Constitution, the Census was counting more than just “citizens.” As written, free persons, including indentured servants, were counted at one each.  Indians were excluded, and all other persons, namely slaves, were counted as three fifths of a person.  With the 14^thAmendment to the Constitution, the “three-fifths” compromise was deleted, and after 1900, Indians both on and off of reservations were beginning to be counted.  By 1930, Indians were fully included.

It is supposed to be a head count of every person in the country.  Recently there have been concerns about “under-counting” of homeless folks and those who are in the country without documentation.  The current census is done by “household,” with the “head of household” filling out information for everyone who resides under their roof.  But for those who don’t have literal “roofs” it is more difficult to gather the information. However, the census takers try, physically going to find those folks.  That’s how serious the Census is about counting – everyone.

To many Americans, it seems innocuous that the Census Bureau was asked to include this simple question on the 2020 survey:

•  Is this person a citizen of the United States?
•          ____ Yes, born in the United States
•          ____ Yes, born in Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands, or
• Northern Marianas
•          ____ Yes, born abroad of U.S. citizen parent or parents
•          ____ Yes, U.S. citizen by naturalization – Print year of
• naturalization ________
•          ____ No, not a U.S. Citizen

There have been several censuses where they asked about the number of toilets in the house, the access to internet, and the income of the household.  Up until 1950, the census always included a question about citizenship, so why shouldn’t the Census gather this information?

It is both a question of intent, and of consequences.  If it is the intent of the Census (and it is) to count everyone in the United States, then this question that will without question create an “undercount” of persons,  and should not be on the census.  In our current climate regarding illegal immigration, with seemingly random and capricious ICE raids, dragging people from their long established homes for deportation, how likely are the “heads of households” where undocumented immigrants live to answer the citizenship question?  And since not answering the question could serve as a “trigger” for further investigation, it is so much more likely that the head of household will simply fail to fill out the census document itself.

That’s illegal, by the way. Failing to fill out a Census form or falsifying the information can result in a $5000 fine and up to sixty days in jail.  And while the Census Bureau is not an enforcement agency and rarely prosecutes folks who fail to file, they will actually send workers to a household that fails to fill out the form. Despite this, placing the citizenship question on the form is likely to result in non-compliance and will result in fewer forms being returned.

The Census Bureau promises that all information provided is confidential, and will not be personally identified to anyone, including other government agencies like ICE.  But “trust” in government among minorities and the undocumented is pretty low.   It doesn’t help that today it was revealed that the Census Bureau is proposing to get data from the Department of Homeland Security about individual citizenship status, including full identifying information; name, address, and even the alien registration number of those who aren’t US citizens.

The professional staff at the Census Bureau were well aware of the consequences of asking the citizenship question, and advised the political leadership against it.  Yet the orders to include it literally came from the top, from Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.  The Secretary went to some lengths to obscure it as his request, asking the Justice Department to “ask him” to include the question, but the origin clearly came from Ross and the White House political staff.  This raises the question – what was their intent in wanting this controversial question added to the 2020 census?

The Republican Party has for a decade waged a legal campaign to restrict the impact of the changing demographics of America.  From the “Redmap” gerrymandering plan that has successfully maintained Republican majorities in many state legislatures and Congressional districts despite changing voting patterns, to legislation that served to restrict voting such as Voter ID laws; Republicans have searched for legal ways to maintain political power regardless of shrinking party membership and votes.

What happens if the 2020 Census undercounts undocumented migrants?  It isn’t like they are voting, despite the alt-right cries, the worst recent voter fraud seems to have been committed by Republicans in North Carolina. So what’s the difference if they aren’t counted?

The Census population is used to determine the “apportionment of representation.” Members of the House of Representatives are divided by ALL of the population, so if areas are undercounted, they will get fewer Representatives, and other areas will get more. Since the areas with greater numbers of undocumented also tend to be Democratic, that means fewer Democrats in Congress.  In addition, votes in the Electoral College, the body that actually chooses the President and Vice President of the United States, are determined by the number of Members of the House (plus the number of Senators plus three.)   If the population is undercounted, then those representatives and electoral votes will go to more Republican areas.

Ultimately this is a partisan question with partisan outcomes.  This has been confirmed by two US District Court Judges, one of whom said that;

“… Secretary Wilbur Ross acted in bad faith, broke several laws, and violated the constitutional underpinning of representative democracy when he added a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.” – US District Judge Richard Seeborg.

The case has been “fast tracked” to the US Supreme Court, where the Federalist Society majority will be forced into a difficult choice.  Their philosophical foundation is to follow the “original intent” of the founding fathers, who in clear language wanted everyone counted (other than Indians and two-fifths of slaves.)  But their political desire is to help and maintain the Republican Party, and particularly the current President.  It will be interesting how they reach a conclusion, because in the end there is only a basic choice:  the question is on, or it is off.

Briefing Book – Capital Punishment

In every political campaign (at least the good ones) there is a “book,” outlining the issues the candidate will face, and the arguments and positions the candidate takes.  It is so everyone on the campaign is literally on “the same page” when it comes to that issue. I’m not running for office, but over the next several weeks, I will be presenting a series of issues for my “briefing book.”

It was the Presidential election of 1988.  George HW Bush, the Vice President for the past eight years under Reagan, was behind in the polls.  His opponent, Democratic Governor Michael Dukakis, was smoothly moving to win the Presidency.  On October 14^ththey held their last Presidential debate at UCLA.  

CNN’s Bernard Shaw led off with the first question, asking Dukakis if his wife, Kitty, was raped and murdered, would the Governor then be in favor of an “irrevocable” death penalty.  It was a shocking question.

Dukakis answered calmly, citing statistical studies of the ineffectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent, and stating his continuing opposition to it.  It was the beginning of the end of the Dukakis campaign; the American people saw a cold and calculating politician who showed no emotion at the vision of his own wife raped and murdered.   Bush then followed up with the racially charged “Willie Horton” television commercial, and ultimately won the Presidency.

It was over thirty years ago, but the issue still continues today.   And, just as Governor Dukakis found in the debate, there are two levels to the question of the death penalty.

The first level is evidentiary – does the death penalty work in deterring criminals from committing certain crimes?  There are different studies examining states that have removed or reinstated the death penalty to see if there is some impact on crime rates, but none have shown a change.  In fact, there is almost no scientific evidence that shows the death penalty deters crime (other than crime committed by the person put to death) and volumes that shows that capital punishment has no impact.

This is difficult for many people to accept.  They think in terms of:  if I knew I was going to be killed for doing something, I probably wouldn’t do it. That makes common sense, but it is the thought process of someone who is highly unlikely to commit the kind of crime that would result in a death penalty.  However, were those folks to be “out of control” angry, would they still have the same thought process?  Or would they act, and then regret it later on?

For a drug dealer on the street, carrying loads of drugs or cash, having no protection other than what they can carry, the threat of the death penalty is abstract and far away. The more imminent worry is that some other criminal will kill them for their money or drugs; their risk is right now, not in some court.  So legal penalties have little determinative value to them, their own survival is paramount and immediate. 

So we know the death penalty doesn’t work as a crime deterrent.  We know that the thought process of those willing to commit capital offenses does not include the calculation of legal punishment.  And we know that the use of the death penalty is biased, economically and racially.

50% of prisoners now on death row are black, in a nation where blacks represent 12% of the overall population.  The most likely death sentence recipient:  a black man who killed a white person.  And overwhelmingly, poor people get the death penalty, people with means, who can afford effective legal representation, do not.  

In recent years we have developed evidence, including DNA, that has exonerated 164 men and women who were facing the death penalty.  164 people who were facing death, and ultimately found to not have committed the crime they were sentenced for. 164 who would have been killed by mistake.

And of course, the actual process of execution is difficult.  We try to kill “mercifully,” but our current methods are only merciful to those who must watch, not those who are killed.  Killing is ugly whether it’s hanging, or electrocution, shooting, or lethal injection.  We place some civil servants, including medical personnel, in the position of taking life rather than saving it.  They bear that burden, for all of us.

So from an evidentiary standpoint, the death penalty does not deter crime, if is racially and economically biased, it is irrevocable if a mistake is made, and it forces some of our society to become our “killers.”  So why is it still in use, and why is it still politically popular, with 56% of Americans in favor?  (October, 2018, Gallup Poll)

The death penalty satisfies an “Old Testament” sense of justice, or revenge:  “an eye for an eye.”  As stated earlier, it makes “common sense” to those who are the most unlikely to commit a capital crime.  To average Americans, it “feels” like the right thing to do, especially with particularly abhorrent forms of murder; the “do unto him what he did unto someone else” view.

But revenge is a poor motive for a society to kill someone.  A “New Testament” view, forgiveness of sin, turning the other cheek, or judge not lest you should be judged; all counter the Old Testament Biblical argument.  In fact, revenge is one of the actions we hope to make unacceptable in our society; we want to be “better” than that.  We want to act from reason, not passion or anger.  

And in the same way, our “civilized” society should move away from Government sanctioned murder. In the world today, 104 nations have abolished capital punishment.  Another 36 nations have not carried out an execution in the past ten years.  That leaves 53 countries that still have and use the death penalty.  China with 1000+ executions leads the world, followed by Iran 567+, Saudi Arabia 154+, Iraq 88+, Pakistan 87, and Egypt 44+. The United States with 20 is next in line, putting us in dubious company. (2016, Amnesty International)

Mike Dukakis wasn’t wrong in 1988.  Where he made his mistake was in failing to acknowledge the instinctive horror of capital crimes, and the emotional desire for revenge.  Abolishing capital punishment won’t happen by ignoring those emotions; they must be acknowledged, and discussed before the “factual” conclusions are drawn.  Only then can the United States stop being a  “top ten” executor, and join the more civilized world.

Bill Clinton should have resigned

It was the first big government shutdown.  House Speaker Newt Gingrich, freshly empowered by the Republican House victory in the “Revolution of ‘94” with their “Contract with America,” led a confrontation with the Democratic President, Bill Clinton.  The first shutdown was over Medicare premium increases (Gingrich wanted the increases, Clinton did not) and lasted for five days.  It ended with a temporary resolution, but within the month the government shut down again.  

The second shutdown lasted twenty-one days.   The issue now was a balanced budget agreement, but public perception was altered when the Speaker complained about an apparent snub on Air Force One from the President.   The public began to see the shutdown as a personal temper tantrum by Gingrich against Clinton, rather than about principle.  

It was during these shutdowns, that Bill Clinton began an affair with a twenty-one year old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.  As many of the White House staff were laid off by the shutdown, unpaid interns were used to run errands, including getting food.  It was during one of these “pizza runs” that Clinton began their affair, which ultimately included nine sexual encounters.  Clinton and Lewinsky never had intercourse, but had oral sex during these trysts in the Oval Office.  

Both Bill and Hillary Clinton were under investigation by a Special Prosecutor, Ken Starr, originally for illegal land deals in Arkansas when Bill Clinton was Governor, called the Whitewater Investigation.  The investigation expanded into the series of sexual relationships Bill Clinton had during that time, with potential charges of sexual imposition and even rape.  The Starr investigation found out about the Lewinsky affair in early 1998, and Clinton answered questions about it before a Grand Jury (via closed circuit TV.)

In his testimony, Clinton denied having “sexual relations” with Lewinsky.  He later tried to parse the difference, stating that oral sex wasn’t intercourse, and therefore not sex.  He also claimed that sex required action by both participants, and that since he had “received” oral sex, he wasn’t “participating.”  These arguments led to a reasonable conclusion that the President had perjured himself in his testimony to the Grand Jury.

As a high school government teacher at the time, my curriculum changed from political science to sex education.  The United States, and most certainly the sixteen, seventeen and eighteen year olds; were engrossed (and grossed out) with the definition of sex, what one could do with cigars in sex, and Clinton’s famous line; “…it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’, is,” describing whether he “is having an affair,” or “was having an affair.” 

The President of the United States, then fifty years old, had an affair with a twenty-one year old intern, and did it in the Oval Office.  He then lied about it to a Federal Grand Jury.

The Republicans in the House of Representatives determined that Clinton’s actions met their definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors;” the phrase describing grounds for impeachment in the Constitution.  After a series of leadership resignations, including Gingrich (affair with secretary) and his apparent successor as Speaker, Bob Livingston (four affairs;) the Republicans finally settling on Dennis Hastert as their leader (who eventually served time in prison for molesting high school wrestlers when he was the coach)  and voted on impeachment.

The President was impeached by the House in a close to party-line vote, and a trial was held in the Senate.  There were eleven counts divided into two Articles against Clinton, including perjury, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice.  The Senate is required to reach a two-thirds majority to convict (and remove) the President, but in the final vote, neither Article gained a simple majority vote (45-55 on the first, and 50-50 on the second) and Clinton remained in office.

There have been three Presidents in American history who have faced removal from office.  The first, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee (1865-1869) was Lincoln’s Vice President, who became President after the assassination. Johnson was chosen Vice President as a “Union candidate” to balance Lincoln’s “Republicanism,” and when he became President he faced a hostile Republican Congress.  Their political fights over the shape of the post-Civil War nation, led the Congress to exercise the impeachment clause for the first time.  

The Johnson impeachment was purely political, and Johnson remained in office by just one vote (Senator Edmund Ross of Kansas.)  

The second President to face impeachment was Richard Nixon.  After two years of denying criminal involvement in the Watergate break-in, the release of the White House tapes clearly showed that Nixon was involved from the very beginning in covering up the crime.  Republicans in the Congress went to Nixon and told him he was going to be removed, and Nixon chose to resign rather than face the humiliation of impeachment.

Which brings us back to Clinton.  He disgraced himself by having an affair with a twenty-one year old, in the Oval Office of the White House.  He then perjured himself to a Federal Grand Jury.  With the standards of today’s #METOO era, his behavior is completely unacceptable.  Even in the 1990’s, his actions evoked cries for his resignation.  Instead, in what became a partisan vote, Republicans tried to remove him.

This leaves us with the legacy of impeachment as a political action, one used for partisan rather than Constitutional reasons.  When questions arise about the actions and behaviors of President Trump, his allies claim that it is a “partisan witch hunt,” along the lines of the Clinton impeachment.  

What if Bill Clinton, rather than “toughing” it out, had resigned.  Even Democrats acknowledged (at the time) that Clinton had disgraced himself in the Presidency, and while the economy was good, Clinton was hamstrung in other actions by the crisis.

If Clinton had resigned, Al Gore would have become President of the United States.  Gore would not have had to carry the burden of the Clinton legacy in the 2000 election, and would undoubtedly been elected to office on his own (he won the popular vote as it was.)  The “alternative history” that would have created, likely no war in Iraq, early intervention in environmental issues, and a different handling of 9-11; is interesting to contemplate.

But what would be more impactful in today’s crisis, is that impeachment would not be seen as a wholly political/partisan move.  Because Clinton set the example of “toughing out” an impeachment, even though his actions were disgraceful and illegal, he established the path for Trump to do the same. Clinton should have followed the example of Nixon rather than Andrew Johnson, and because he didn’t, Trump will try to follow Clinton, forcing the nation through an even more excruciating period.  

So whether Trump is impeached, or the final decision is turned over to the people in the election of 2020, it is the actions of Bill Clinton that is determining our course today. By “saving” his Presidency, he has left us with his legacy – a disgraced Presidency, then and now.

Dear Hillary

This weekend Hillary Clinton attended the annual commemoration of the Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery.  This was the famous march that ended on the Edmund Pettus Bridge with the marchers being attacked and beaten by police.  Current Congressman John L. Lewis was one of the young leaders of that march, and suffered a skull fracture in the melee.  

Clinton was only one of the dignitaries honoring the memory of the marchers.  Civil Rights icon Jessie Jackson was present, despite suffering from Parkinson’s Disease.  Announced Presidential candidates Senators Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders were there as well, though Sanders had to leave before the memorial march itself along with unannounced candidate  Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.

As Lincoln said, “…it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”  The marchers on “Bloody Sunday” altered the course of the Civil Rights movement.  The media coverage, particularly television, brought the reality of Southern discrimination into every American living room, and forced the nation to confront its brutality.

Secretary Clinton was one of the speakers at the Brown Chapel, the historic starting place of the march.  In her speech, she spoke of the continuing fight for voting rights in the United States. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the basis for applying racial equality to voting, was passed as a direct consequence of the March.  Part of the Act required that nine southern states demonstrate that any changes in their voting laws would not be racially discriminatory.  That remained the law from 1965 until 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down that portion of the regulation.

Since 2010, the Republican Party has made it their policy to try to gain power by redistricting (gerrymandering) to advantage their candidates, called the “Redmap” plan. They have also engaged in a nationwide campaign to enact laws that make voting more difficult, reducing lower income and minority voting.  Voter ID legislation, restricted polling times and locations, and voter roll purges are all part of a clear strategy to keep groups seen as “Democrats” from being able to vote.

The impact of the Republican policies has been seen in several close elections, including the 2018 Georgia Governor campaign, where Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp used multiple forms of voter suppression to defeat Democrat Stacy Abrams.  Secretary Clinton also mentioned the closeness of her own electoral defeat in 2016, with states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania all enacting laws suppressing minority votes.  

She isn’t wrong.  But the problem is that when Mrs. Clinton talks about losing the 2016 election, the narrowness of the loss means EVERY factor cost her the race.  Absolutely, voter suppression in those three critical electoral states made a difference. And so did FBI Director James Comey’s announcement October 26^thstatement saying he was re-opening the e-mail investigation, the social media attacks by Russian Intelligence, and their still unexplored attacks on the actual voting systems.

No, she isn’t wrong. But somehow every time Mrs. Clinton talks about the election, it seems she never states what most Democrats would now acknowledge:  that despite all of these factors, her campaign should have won.  They lost because of a failed campaign strategy, probably based on flawed polling data.  And they lost because she was unable to overcome an undeserved image as a cold candidate, unable to relate to regular voters.

She now comes across as a sore loser.  Even though it’s hard to deny she has that right, it indicates that she is unable to move on.  You can’t blame her, or Al Gore; they both had the Presidency and the fate of the nation in their grasp, only to have it ripped away.  But that attitude won’t work with the American voter of 2020; and if Hillary Clinton isn’t running for President, she needs to step back and let the new candidates take charge.  

America is in an existential struggle.  If you didn’t think so before, just spend a couple of hours listening to our current President’s speech at CPAC this weekend.  Defeating voter suppression is a major part of that struggle, the courage shown by the marchers on Bloody Sunday may well be needed again to change the Republican plans already in the works for 2020.  But unless Hillary Clinton is going to run for President (and I hope she is not) she needs to take a role familiar to her husband; one where she encourages specific voting groups to take action.  She needs to get off of the main stage, and allow the Democratic Party the room to sort out the list, and determine who should lead us in this next battle.

Winning the Big Ten

Congressman Jim Jordan on Meet the Press 3/3/19

I listened to Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio today, fresh off his interrogation of Michael Cohen in front of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.  Jordan is adept at sticking to his talking points, nimbly pivoting from questions about why the President would have allowed a man like Cohen at his side for ten years, to “the good” Mr. Trump has done in his two years in the Presidency.  

Jordan praised the “successes” he sees in the Trump Presidency:  the tax cuts, lower unemployment rates, cutting regulations, appointed “Federalist” judges.  “Why doesn’t the media talk about these,” he decries, “instead of Russia and scandals.” He talked about the “corruption” in the FBI, and the removal of the top leadership there, from Director Comey to agent Storzk.  And he threw in his favorite “pivot,” the assertion that the only Russian “collusion” was Hillary Clinton, followed by his litany:  from lawyers, to Fusion GPS, to Michael Steele to the Russians.

And in listening to all of this, I realized that Jordan wasn’t a fool, or stupid.  He was a man on a mission; to get his “good” out of the Trump Administration, and ignore all of the bad.  It’s something that Jordan has been doing for most of his life.

I was a successful high school track coach for forty years.  We won league and district championships, lots of invitational meets, and hundreds of duals.  In the second to last year of my career, I clearly had the best team I’d ever coached. We had returning all-state runners, including one of the top distance runners in the nation.  We had potentially state placing athletes in many events, enough so that we could begin to dream of taking home the ultimate prize, a state championship.

Like any athletic endeavour, there is always a risk of injury.  Going into May, we lost a key pole vaulter, but otherwise we remained strong.  We won the league meet on by a huge margin, and were ready to make our run at the state.

Two days later I got a call, saying that a team member, a key athlete in four events, had been caught stealing a bottle of booze from a local store.  While I could have waited to be notified “officially” by someone; could have stalled to keep him in play for as long as possible, I didn’t.  I can’t say I didn’t consider the stalling option for a few minutes, but it was only a few.  I was a high school coach, and while winning was important, doing things right, as an example to my athletes and to the rest of our community, was the standard we set for our program.  

I called the athlete in question, and he confessed the entire incident.  I suspended him from the team, and notified my administrators.  They agreed, but expressed surprise at my decision; we all knew that this was the beginning of the end of state championship dreams.  I said it was obvious, that the decision was the right thing to do.  

From Monday through that Friday, we lost that athlete, then a high jumper (quit), and one all-state sprinter in four events (hamstring.)   It was a dramatic disaster.  By the state meet we had three runners left, including a state champion in the 3200, and a third in the 400 (so damn proud of those guys) and we placed 13^thin Ohio.  Looking back, I wouldn’t do a thing different; I recognized my responsibility as greater than my own individual goals.  That might make me righteous, or stupid, or just obstinate.  

Jim Jordan was an all-star wrestler, and became an assistant coach at Ohio State from 1987 to 1995. Unlike most coaching, the job of an assistant wrestling coach is to teach wrestling by wrestling.  Bringing in the “best” (Jordan was a two time NCAA champion) meant that Ohio State wrestlers would compete against the “best” in “the room” (the practice facility) every day.

What makes that kind of individual a champion?  Jordan wrestled 151 times in high school, and lost only once (to a wrestler I helped coach!) His intensity of focus, a complete ability to ignore distractions; allowed for that kind of career.  He brought that into “the room” at Ohio State.

So while the athletes he was coaching were being molested by the team doctor and ogled by perverts in the shower room; Jordan focused on wrestling.  That might have been the right thing for an athlete to do, but not for a coach responsible for the athlete’s welfare.  But Jordan, and his head coach, Russ Hellickson, were focused on winning the Big Ten, and molestation became a distraction to be overcome, not a crisis.  

Jordan made a choice, one that he now pretends didn’t happen.  He chose to let his athletes face sexual abuse rather than disrupt their season.  He wanted to win the Big Ten.

Listening to Jim Jordan today, it’s the same choice he’s making with President Trump.  Jordan, with a Bachelors in Economics, a Masters in Education and a Degree in Law; isn’t stupid.  Jordan is ignoring the “distraction” of a President who violated laws and made deals with our enemies, in order to achieve his goals:  the “Federalism” of the court system, the de-regulation of America so that industries can do whatever they want to make a profit, and the institutionalization of his brand of Conservatism.  

Jordan is a United States Congressman in the Trump era, and is still focused.  And just like his days at Ohio State, he is missing his real responsibilities.  As a coach he needed to protect his athletes, and set a standard for acceptable action. He, more than most, should be standing up for the Constitution, for the rule of law, and for the good of America. Instead, he has put his political goals ahead of what is right.

He didn’t learn.  Ohio State didn’t win the Big Ten.  

Presidential Wednesday

President Trump (and the United States of America) had a really bad day Wednesday.  The talks with North Korea broke down, with both Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim cancelling meetings and heading out of Hanoi.  They had reached the inevitable sticking point:  nothing Mr. Trump could offer was enough for Mr. Kim to give away his nuclear capacity; it is all North Korea has.  Air Force One revved up two hours early for home.

For any President, and particularly one whose reputation is that of the “great deal maker,” a failed summit is a bad day.  And, regardless of how you feel about Mr. Trump, the world became a lot more dangerous Wednesday.  We can expect North Korea to continue to work on their technical abilities to use nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, something that the world ultimately will find difficult to tolerate.

But Mr. Trump’s failed summit was really the least of his worries on Wednesday.  Back here at home, the day was given over to the House Oversight Committee questioning of former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen. Cohen is a disgraced man; sentenced to three years in federal prison for multiple crimes including income tax evasion and bank fraud.  But his most serious crimes were committed in the name of aiding the Trump Presidential campaign, and his testimony and evidence were an indictment of the President himself in those crimes.

Mr. Cohen made a compelling case that the President conspired with Cohen and members of the Trump Organization in the last days before the election, to buy off the story of porn star Stormy Daniels’ affair with Mr. Trump.  This was an all out effort to keep it out of the press; on top of the Access Hollywood tapes the affair would have cost Trump the Presidency.  

The actual “catch and kill” buying off of Ms. Daniels’ story wasn’t illegal.  What violated the law was the spending of $130,000 for the campaign, without declaring it as a campaign finance donation.   Mr. Cohen spent $130,000 of his own money, raised from a home equity loan; it was never listed as a contribution (and if it had been, it would have been over the allowable limit by $128,000.)  Then, through the artifice of “payment for legal consultation” Mr. Cohen was reimbursed by the Trump Organization in a series of monthly checks.  Cohen testified that the checks were paid monthly in an effort to reduce the amount of tax required on this “income.”

The checks were written and signed by Donald Trump Junior, Alan Weiselberg, Trump Chief Financial Officer, and by the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.   Mr. Cohen (and the Federal Prosecutors both in New York and Washington) have copies of the signed checks.  In a simple criminal conspiracy, two or more people have to agree to commit an illegal act, or take legal action for an illegal purpose.  Part of Mr. Cohen’s prison sentence is for violating Federal Campaign Laws.  Trump Junior, Weiselberg and the President and Cohen are all equal participants in the crime – thus unindicted co-conspirators.

Some of the Republican members of the committee did their best to mark Cohen as a criminal (true) and a liar (also true.)  They brought up his previous perjury to Congress, where he stated lies that benefited the President’s story.  They marked him as a tax evader (true) and a disgraced lawyer (true.)  But with all of the insults and Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows’ foaming at the mouth, they failed to do the one thing they had to do to protect Mr. Trump:  they failed to shake Cohen’s factual accounting of the story.  Cohen, disbarred on Tuesday, going to jail in May, came across as a man with nothing to lose by telling the truth:  and he had the checks.

There’s a Saturday Night Live line, lampooning the famous Lester Holt interviewwith the President, where Trump stated that he fired FBI Director James Comey because he wanted to end the “Russia thing.”  Michael Che, the actor playing Holt, turned to the camera and said “…so did I get him, is it all over?”  He then receives a call, and is told that absolutely nothing matters.

Did Michael Cohen “get” the President with his testimony, or does nothing really matter?

Michael Cohen alone will not end the Trump Presidency.  But this was the first time the Trump corruption had a face, and a voice.  Conspiracy to avoid election finance law, in another era might have brought down a Presidency, but it won’t do it today. The United States has somehow grown accustomed to this kind of deceit from the President; we have accepted that he can lie to us about almost anything, including what is true and what is not.  A significant portion of the nation expects him to be with porn stars, and lie about it, and cheat to cover it up.

But what the Cohen testimony does anticipate is what the multiple Federal investigations might reveal. Disgraced perjurer, tax evader and disbarred lawyer; he represent the tip of the iceberg in how the Trump Organization did business, and how they approached every opportunity.  Cohen is going to jail, but he might get some company in the not to distant future.  And maybe then, it really will matter.

Back in Vietnam

Music Selections          Modern – Back in Vietnam – Lenny Kravitz

                                    Generational – We Gotta Get Out of This Place– Animals

                                    Traditional – Fortunate Son– Creedence Clearwater

Donald J. Trump, turned eighteen and draft age, in 1964.  His father had a doctor/friend, and Donald was able to avoid the draft, and the war in Vietnam, with five medical exemptions for bone spurs.

There were a lot of American men who found ways out of Vietnam.  In full disclosure, I was two years too young  (though I still have my “draft card” from the day, and I was still nervous as hell when I had to go and apply for it.)  I never had to make the decision, nor did I ever face the letter with the heading, “greetings from the President of the United States.”  I did watch my older friends struggle, worrying about draft numbers and college deferments.  Some went to Vietnam; many found a way out.

So I can’t really blame Trump for the decisions he and his father made in the 1960’s.  What I can say is that whatever decision you made in that time of crisis, you should own it now.  Bone spurs, becoming a public school teacher, whatever way you found out, don’t hide from the fact.  And for those many who truly believed that fighting in Vietnam was immoral, respect that decision.

But once you took that position, don’t criticize those Americans who went to fight in Vietnam. Criticize the President, the Generals, the Congress, the War; but don’t say a word about those guys in the rice paddies, or helicopters, or walking trails as moving bait for Viet Cong attacks. They didn’t choose Vietnam; they did what they thought our nation expected of them.  

So President Trump will continue his Quixotic effort to speak reason to Kim Jong Un of North Korea, this time in Hanoi.  The last grand meeting in Singapore created a lot of talk, but little action.  Kim did destroy a collapsed underground nuclear testing facility, and he hasn’t sent missiles over Japan recently.  But US intelligence estimates, regardless of the President’s dreams, show that North Korea is continuing to work on developing and improving their nuclear weapons.

It sure seems unlikely that Kim will “give up” his nuclear weapons.  What the US can offer:  a peace treaty for Korea, a removal of some US sanctions, and the possibility of US development of the tourist industry (“don’t they have great beaches”); doesn’t seem enough for Kim to give up the weapons that has become the basis of his national identity. 

The US reaction isn’t Kim’s only worry, he has to be concerned with the economic power of South Korea, the 11^thlargest economy in the world (The Economist.)  North Korea is ranked 118^th.  While North Korea’s 23^rdrated military (without the added nuclear weapons) is behind South Korea’s 12^thranking (depending on US nuclear power), that’s a lot closer than the economic comparison (Business Insider.)  Peace on the peninsula might mean a North Korea subsumed by the South Korean economic juggernaut, winning a peace instead of a war.

Having this summit in Hanoi is symbolic in several ways.  It may well represent the same frustration that the Vietnam War engendered; the idea that the most powerful nation in the world, the United States, could not enforce its will on a dramatically smaller nation.  Like the North Vietnamese outlasting America, Kim may be looking to drag the US along, getting more time for nuclear research while pretending to negotiate.  

For President Trump, Hanoi presents him with another chance to contrast himself to one of the city’s most famous former residents, John McCain.  McCain was imprisoned for five and a half years in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton;” that will be a poor comparison with the image of Trump staying in one of Hanoi’s luxury hotels:  the Intercontinental, the Marriott, the Crowne Plaza, or, ironically, the Hilton.

Don’t count on Trump ignoring the obvious.  He probably will have something negative to say about John McCain once again, the temptation will be too great.  But the real contrast is to John McCain’s determination to use American power to protect the world; to make real changes that made the world safer.  I was not a great supporter of McCain, and I don’t necessarily agree with his willingness to use our military to intervene in every world situation.  But two things were clear:  he had a substantive idea of what was needed, and he had the courage to implement it.  

The President has no plan, simply image.  And, bone spurs or not, he clearly doesn’t have the courage to work for real change.

Silly News

Last week was one of silly news.  Not that the Manafort sentencing memo isn’t important; that guy is going to jail for a long, long time.  Not that the arrest of a Coast Guard Officer with multiple assault weapons, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and a hit list of Democrats and media celebrities isn’t serious, but it was way “below the fold” in media coverage.  And not that the beginnings of the Democratic race for the Presidential nomination aren’t interesting, and a welcome contrast to “all Trump, all the time.”

But the Manafort document didn’t say much new.  And, thank goodness, the Coast Guard Officer was caught before he could shoot up his steroids, and Congress.  And the first primary caucus in Iowa is still eleven months away; the Democrats are running an ultra-marathon, not a sprint to the nomination.

And we are all waiting, waiting, waiting; for the real results of the Mueller investigation.

So we got caught up in a lot of “silly” news last week.  From the Democrats, we learned the Senator Klobuchar gets mad when her staff screws up, and ate a salad with her comb when they didn’t get her silverware.  That this was actually considered “news” might have a lot more to do with the fact that she’s a woman running for office: John McCain’s temper tantrums were considered part of his “charm,” and Bill Clinton’s anger with staff and others was legendary.  

McCain’s image was always “crusty,” but Clinton made his political “hay” as an empathetic candidate and leader.  That matches Klobuchar’s image as the plain-spoken mainstream Minnesotan; but our cultural politics haven’t moved that far yet, and the media isn’t quite prepared for a woman with a temper.  

Back in 1981 I worked for Eve Bolton running for Cincinnati City Council.  I remember having long discussions about how important even a handshake was for a woman candidate:  too soft and the candidate would look weak, too strong and they would look “overbearing,” too little grip (the grab the fingers shake) and it would look “dainty.”  It was a conversation that wouldn’t have occurred to a male candidate, but it was a necessary one for a woman in the political arena.  I guess things haven’t changed that much in the last thirty-eight years.

But we did find out that we need Ranch Dressing more than another Democratic candidate.

And last week we had “BREAKING NEWS” from Chicago, with the arrest of Jussie Smollett.  He’s an actor in a series I haven’t seen called Empire,and it seems he staged a racist and homophobic attack on himself by guys with red MAGA hats.  We really aren’t sure what the reason for this attention-getting action was, perhaps to get a better paycheck from the producers, but it turns out he’s a fake, and really kind of sad.  But we got the full play-by-play from the Courthouse.

Of course, the real news in the Smollett story isn’t him, but the impact that his fake attack might have on the next real victims of racism, sexism or homophobia.  It makes the case for “it was all made up” stronger, and makes getting justice even more difficult.  It falsely bolsters the alt-right case against the Kavanaugh accusers, and other uncomfortable cases that have come to light (R. Kelly, Trump, Cosby, Epstein.)

But perhaps the biggest “silly” news didn’t make the mainstream media.  It was an ongoing social media crisis, however, the “anti-vaxx” and “anti-anti vaxx” movements.  Parents demanding the right to not vaccinate their children, and others pointing out the public health risk that creates.  The “best” of those was a post pointing out that “we” (I guess we must be even older than me, at sixty-two) survived without vaccinations, so why should they protect their own kids.

The inventor of the oral polio vaccine, Albert Sabin, lived down the street in Cincinnati when I was growing up.  Polio terrified communities in the 1950’s, no one knew when it would strike and paralyze their children.  We were some of the earliest to use the vaccine, and polio is now a disease that has to be explained.  

We didn’t get polio; and we survived mumps and measles, chicken pox and whooping cough, scarlet fever and “german measles.”  We did, but others didn’t or were so damaged that they don’t get to talk about it.  And that’s why kids should be vaccinated.

It feels like the vaccination “crisis” is being amplified by the same forces of social media that influenced the last election; another way to divide American society.  It’s hard to imagine that parents are willing to risk their children to diseases that have been forgotten; perhaps it becomes all a part of the “fake news” society we now have to live with.

Maybe it wasn’t such silly news after all.

Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous

Cast of Characters

Jeffrey Epstein – Wealthy financier, Registered Sex Offender

Prince Andrew – Second Son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip

Bill Clinton – 42^ndPresident of the United States

Alan Dershowitz – Commentator, OJ Defense Attorney, Retired from Harvard Law School 

Donald Trump – 45^thPresident of the United States

Alex Acosta – current Secretary of Labor, former US Attorney Southern Florida

It was 2008, far before the advent of the #METOO movement.  The “Access Hollywood Tape;” the Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby trials, and the Kavanaugh hearings were more than a decade in the future. 

Jeffrey Epstein was a brilliant financier, with clients like Les Wexner, the founder of the Limited Brand companies here in Columbus.  He was a well-liked person, not just because of his money and altruism, but as a friend to the rich and famous.  Two Presidents, a Prince and an Academy Award winning actor were among those who spent time with him, either at his Palm Beach home, his New York house (said to be the largest private home on Manhattan,) his 100 acre private island in the Virgin Islands or jetting around the globe on his private jet.

In 2005, Epstein had his personal assistant, Sarah Kellen, hire a fourteen-year-old girl to give “massages” at his Palm Beach mansion.   The “massages” were more than massages, and the child got $300 for her efforts.  When it was revealed, Epstein plead guilty to a single count of soliciting a minor for prostitution, and served a 13 month sentence, spending every night in jail, and every day on “work release” to his office.  Epstein is now a registered sex offender.

That much is fact.

The FBI’s investigation turned up much more than just one child.  While some reports are still sealed, at least forty underage girls were recruited and paid by Epstein.  The Assistant US Attorney’s report at the time stated:

“Mr Epstein, through his assistants, would recruit underage females to travel to his home in Palm Beach to engage in lewd conduct in exchange for money… some of the girls were expected to strip naked and give massages to Epstein while he masturbated, while others had full intercourse with the financier… Some of those victims went to Mr Epstein’s home only once, some went there as many as 100 times or more.”(Guardian)

Epstein was never tried for any charges; and while there was a full Federal investigation, he was never charged with any Federal crimes.  The US Attorney in Miami, Alex Acosta, allowed Epstein to take a plea deal.  The solicitation charge was a state penalty, the sentence served in the local Palm Beach county lockup.  

Epstein served a part-time thirteen-month sentence for one crime, instead of a life sentence for the many offenses he may have committed.  And the deal was sealed, kept quiet, so quiet that even the victims weren’t given any options or notifications.  This week, eleven years later, a Federal District Court ruled that Acosta had violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.  The case is back open.

Currently attorneys for the victims are looking at their options. The Federal Court gave the US Attorneys fifteen days to come to some agreement with the victims (though that seems like a short amount of time considering it’s been eleven years.)  There is no Federal statute of limitation on the crime of sex trafficking, and the Justice Department, already under pressure from several US Senators, has re-opened the investigation.

The question is:  why did Acosta, now the Secretary of Labor in the Trump Administration, make the deal in the first place?  Two possible answers are Epstein’s money, and Epstein’s friends.  Two US Presidents, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, flew with Epstein multiple times and visited his homes (Epstein’s Palm Beach house is less than five minutes from Mara Lago.)  OJ Simpson defense attorney and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz also travelled with Epstein, and was accused of having sex with one of the teenage girls. And Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth’s second son, was also accused of participating in the underage sex.  

Princes and Presidents, celebrity lawyers and the super-rich: all-powerful men who could influence a US Attorney to keep the investigation quiet.  Did Alex Acosta bury the Epstein scandal to protect others, or to gain a “quid pro quo” for himself, now the Trump Administration Secretary of Labor?  

We don’t know the answer yet, but the Miami-Herald, and now the US Department of Justice, are doing the hard investigative work to find out.  For Donald Trump, just another in the list of scandals that threaten his Presidency.

A Legal Back Door

The President of the United States has declared an emergency on the Southern border, and is attempting to transfer funds, already “encumbered” by Congress for other projects, to build a border wall.  His use of “emergency” is based on the National Emergency Act of 1976 (signed into law by President Gerald Ford on September 14^th, my twentieth birthday, while I was very busy working to get his opponent Jimmy Carter, elected President.)

The “emergency” declaration gives the President the power to invoke a multitude of emergency powers found in other legislation.  The “emergency” powers continue until:  Congress enacts a joint resolution to end it; or the President issues a proclamation ending it; or it is not renewed at the end of a calendar year by the President.

The term “emergency” was not defined in the Act. It was assumed by everyone that there would either be an agreement that there was an emergency, or that the Congress could exercise their power to end it.  The 1976 Law stated that Congress could end the “emergency” with a majority vote of both the House and the Senate for a joint resolution. 

This gave the power to end the “emergency” to a simple majority of the House and Senate, and was not subject to Presidential signature or veto like normal “laws.”  But in 1983, the US Supreme Court ruled that this law, and other laws that allowed Congress to avoid the veto, was unconstitutional. For Congress to terminate a Presidentially declared emergency, it would require the passage of the joint resolution, and, if the President vetoed it, a two-thirds override of each House to end it.

So what was originally a means of controlling the power of the President by restricting and controlling the ability to declare emergencies, ended up giving the President even greater unchecked authority.  This was exactly the opposite of what the post-Watergate Congress intended, and passed a great deal of “legislative” authority over to the President.

Friday, the Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced the resolution to stop the Trump Emergency. It will go to a vote on Tuesday, and likely will pass the House.  It will then be voted on by the Senate, where, despite a Republican majority, it still has a reasonable chance of passage.  Many Republican Senators see the emergency declaration as an overreach in Presidential power, and are philosophically opposed.  How many of those will act on their philosophy, rather than their fear of a Presidential tweet attack, remains to be seen, but it would only take four to do it.

But the Resolution would then go to the President, who obviously would veto it.  And while there are plenty of Democrats and some Republicans against the emergency, it is unlikely that there are 288 votes in the House and 67 votes in the Senate to override the veto.

The battle will then move into the courts, and ultimately to the US Supreme Court.  While the merits of the argument will be based on the definition of “emergency,” there is a judicial back door that Chief Justice Roberts and the conservatives on the Court could use.

John Marshall was the third Chief Justice to serve, but he was the most influential in gaining the power to make the Court a co-equal branch of government.  His most famous case, demonstrating the power of the Court, was Marbury v Madison.  

It was the Presidential election of 1800.  The Federalists, represented by President John Adams, were defeated by the Democratic-Republicans led by Vice President Thomas Jefferson.  At that time in American government, the election was held in November, but the new President didn’t take office until March.  In that long lame-duck period, Adams appointed as many Federalists as he could to judgeships and other offices, trying to “stack” the government.  For those who remember Government class, these were the “midnight judges.”

A few of the appointees failed to have their documents delivered prior to the new Jefferson administration taking over.  Jefferson’s Secretary of State, James Madison, refused to deliver a left over to Federalist William Marbury, who was to be a magistrate for the District of Columbia.  Marbury sued directly to the Supreme Court citing authority granted by Congress through the Judicial Act of 1791, demanding the Court require Madison to deliver.

Marshall, himself a late appointee by Adams, agreed that Madison should deliver the document. However, the Constitution created the Supreme Court as a co-equal branch to the Congress and President, as such, the Congress could not determine or expand Court jurisdiction.  If they could give it, they could take it away, making the Court subservient to Congressional legislation.  Marshall and the Court declared that the Judicial Act of 1791 was unconstitutional.

Marshall got the opportunity to chastise Madison, without giving Madison the opportunity to object. At the same time, he founded the principle of judicial review, declaring a Congressional law unconstitutional (and getting a shot at the new Democratic-Republican legislature as well.) Marbury did not get his appointment, but the Supreme Court gained an equal footing among the branches of government.

Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts could take a page from the Marshall playbook.  The Supreme Court has a majority of, ironically, “Federalists,” supposedly dedicated to the original interpretation of the Constitution.  It is an easy argument  for them to make, that the founding fathers would not have wanted Congress to give over these kind of “emergency” powers to the executive, authoritarian type powers that the authors of the Constitution were most concerned about.

Roberts should recognize that not only has the original intent of the 1976 law been lost, but the original intent of the founders in separating legislative power from the executive lost as well.  The National Emergency Act should be declared wholly unconstitutional.  It gives the Republican/Federalist Society majority of the Court the opportunity to take their “shot” at a Democratic House of Representatives, while still controlling the growing power of the Presidency.  It’s a win-win for them, and a legal backdoor out of a Trumpian government of unchecked executive power.  

Ennemi du Peuple

Robespierre is a name that has become synonymous with terror.  He was a leading member of the “Committee on Public Safety” during the French Revolution, the group whose goal was to seek out enemies of the Revolution, and destroy them.  The Reign of Terror was supposed to end opposition with death on the Guillotine; more than 16,000 died.  The greatest crime:  to be declared an “ennemi du people,” an enemy of the people.   The Reign of Terror only ended when the “Committee” came for Robespierre himself.

In the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin used the term to define everyone who opposed his rule:  “…all leaders of the Constitutional Democratic Party, a party filled with enemies of the people, are hereby to be considered outlaws, and are to be arrested immediately and brought before the revolutionary court.”  Enemies of the people were sent to the infamous Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, or to the Gulag, or to their deaths.

The term was later enshrined in Article 20 of the Constitution of the Soviet Union, but became so enmeshed with Stalin’s terror and purges, that after his death Nikita Khrushchev called for an end to the use of it, stating:

“…the formula ‘enemy of the people’ was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals who disagreed with Stalin.”

Mao Zedong (I know I’m old but it is difficult not to type Mao Tse-Tung) used the phrase to describe:  “…social forces and groups which resist the socialist revolution and are hostile to or sabotage socialist construction are all enemies of the people.”

“Enemy of the People” is a term enshrined in revolutionary fervor, and corrupted by a history of sudden imprisonment and arbitrary death.  So it should cause dismay that the President of the United States, representing the nation of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; tweeted the following:

The New York Times reporting is false. They are a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!

(Donald Trump Tweet – 2/20/19)

Americans have been overwhelmed with the coarseness of our recent political discourse.  We have a President who has discussed the relative size of his…hand…in public debate.  We have become inured to “fifth grade” insults and petty complaints.  But, just because the President pretends to have no sense of the history loading his terms, it doesn’t mean we should let him get away with it.  A President using the term “enemy of the people” to describe a newspaper he doesn’t like, raises the specter of censorship and absolutism.  

In our era of hyper politicization, it is easy to stir the base, on both sides.  This week a Coast Guard officer was arrested with multiple semi-automatic weapons, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and a list of Democratic and liberal media targets on his “hit list.”  Donald Trump is not telling this guy to go shoot people, but he is a big cause of an environment that encourages extremism.  If the New York Timesis an enemy of the people, then so are MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Joe Scarborough, and CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Van Jones; all on the officer’s “hit list.”

Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Trump:  like it or not, they all were willing to make the charge “enemy of the people.”  The first four acted on that charge with terror and death.  Ignorance is not an excuse for the President of the United States. He is willing to “ride the tiger,” to reach into the dark recesses of history to attack his perceived enemies. The problem:  as President he’s taking us all on that ride.

• A little “Inside Baseball”

Anyone who reads “Trump World” with any regularity knows that I am a frequent MSNBC viewer.  It’s on now, and most of the time in our house.  From the time our young Yellow Lab Atticus sticks his nose in my face early in the morning: it’s food for him, coffee for me, and Morning Joe in my office.  

This morning I listened to Mika and Joe complaining about the rush of many to condemn the apparent attack on Justin Smollett, the actor who claimed he was racially assaulted in Chicago.  Now it appears Smollett may have orchestrated his own assault, and Mika and Joe scolded liberals for leaping to believe his story.

Mika specifically linked it to those who believed in the Kavanaugh accusers, saying that their protests made it difficult for their friend Claire McCaskill in Missouri to gain re-election to the Senate. But I remember well Mika’s own support for the women accusing Kavanaugh (a support well deserved in my opinion.) It seems that Joe and Mika are rewriting history.

It’s not the first time.  In 2015 and early 2016, Morning Joe gave Donald Trump an open “mike” on the show.  Trump called in often, and talked for extended periods of time. While the show offered others similar time, it was Trump who used their airtime to make his case.  He got millions of dollars of free time. Later, after the election of Trump as President, Joe and Mika scolded America for not taking Trump seriously, glossing over their own role in his rise.

Atticus and I will still watch Morning Joe in the morning – but we don’t want to shoulder the blame for what Joe and Mika do.

May 2017

May, 2017:  it was the critical moment in the fate of the Trump Administration.  Rod Rosenstein took over as Deputy Attorney General at the beginning of the month. He was the acting Attorney General regarding the Russia investigation with Jeff Sessions recused. In his first few days on the job, the President asked him to write a memo regarding FBI Director Jim Comey’s actions in the Hillary Clinton email investigation.  Rosenstein did so, without a “firing” recommendation, but the President used it as his excuse for firing Comey.   

At least that’s what the President said at first.  But a few days after Comey’s firing, Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt, that he did it to stop the Russia investigation.  To the FBI, it appeared that the President was trying to obstruct the investigation by firing those in charge.  Comey had documented conversations with the President who asked him to “go easy” on former National Security Director Mike Flynn, under FBI investigation for lying about talking to the Russians.  

Looking at the evidence, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe faced the possibility that the President of the United States was acting for Russian Intelligence. Still today we don’t know what other information he had, but it was in those May meetings, looking at all the options, that McCabe opened an investigation into the President of the United States himself.

It is the stuff of 1960’s novels:  Seven Days in May, Night at Camp David or The Manchurian Candidate.  But it wasn’t paperback fiction:  there was real evidence that the President might be an asset of Russia.  The leadership of the FBI and the Justice Department were faced with an extraordinary situation, and looked for extraordinary options.  One of those actions could be that the President, “incapacitated” by the investigation, could be “suspended” until the investigation was cleared.  The process of the 25^thAmendment might be used for that.  Another could be that the Deputy Attorney General could wear a microphone to conversations with the President, to gather more conclusive evidence.  Neither of those options “on the table” was ever used, but the mere discussion showed how extreme the situation was.

McCabe, as the acting director of the nation’s counter-intelligence agency, briefed the leaders of Congress, the “gang of eight.”  While today we hear commentators calling the Justice Department actions an attempted “coup;” in May of 2017 Congressional leaders:  Ryan, Pelosi, Nunes, Schiff, McConnell, Schumer, Burr and Warner; all knew. They knew, and not one of them, not even Devin Nunes, “blew the whistle.”   While today Trump apologists say they were muzzled by security protocols, if it really was a “coup” would these leaders have remained silent, especially Nunes who couldn’t keep his mouth shut about anything else?

The pressure from the White House grew.  Trump harassed McCabe in their first meetings, even insulting McCabe’s wife. Rosenstein looked to somehow insulate the investigation, protecting it from executive interference.  He determined to appoint a Special Counsel, and choose a man that everyone, on every side of the issue, had to respect and accept.  Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was brought in, and Rosenstein gave him the latitude to search for the truth.

McCabe was accused of making “less than truthful statements” to FBI investigators, and twenty hours before he could retire, was fired (no paybacks there, of course.)  The FBI agent in charge of counter-intelligence investigations, Peter Strozk, was scourged by Republican Congressional committees, and ultimately fired from the Bureau.  Department of Justice Russia expert Bruce Ohr was demoted, and FBI General Counsel James Baker removed. 

All of the leadership team that sat with Comey and then with McCabe at those May meetings are gone from the Bureau, removed because of their participation in the investigation, damaged by attacks from the President.   They have all been disgraced by the Rudy Giuliani/Jim Jordan propaganda machine, so that, should they ever testify, their “integrity” is in question.  This week, in every interview Andrew McCabe gives he is asked about the Inspector General report that calls him “untruthful.”

It is the responsibility of the FBI to investigate attempts by foreign powers to infiltrate our government.  Starting with the summer of 2016, the leadership of the Bureau had growing evidence that the Trump campaign was penetrated by Russian intelligence.  It was the actions of the newly elected President, first regarding Mike Flynn, and then pressuring the Director to stop the investigation, that placed a target on the Oval Office. 

Andrew McCabe said,  “…if the evidence is there, and we don’t open a counter-intelligence case, even against the President of the United States, we aren’t doing our job.”  

They did their duty, at the cost of their careers.  Rod Rosenstein is leaving the Justice Department next month, and rumor has it that the Mueller investigation will be finishing up soon.  May of 2017 was the critical turning point, a time when dedicated men saved the investigation.  March of 2019 could be when we find out if it was worth the sacrifice.

Democrats:  Brave New World or Do-Over

The Democratic Party preparing for the 2020 Presidential election is far less intellectually divided than the current media projects.  The “divisions” between the candidates are often a matter of degree rather than difference; from Mike Blumenthal to Bernie Sanders they all want to improve healthcare, help the middle class, and deal with climate change.  How much, how far, how radical; those are the differences of degree that divide Democrats.

But there are real choices still to be made.  The “new” Democrats; Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Booker and the rest, want to lead the Party with an agenda for change.  They offer healthcare for all, a deadline to meet for climate change, and real efforts to reduce the income discrepancy between the middle class and the one percent. The “moderate” Democrats, Amy Klobuchar, and potentially Sherrod Brown, Beto O’Rourke or Joe Biden; still talk about those ideas; but offer a more seductive value:  a surer thing.

If the goal of Democrats is to “change the world” then the new world candidates are available.  The risk:  in trying to change the world, do Democrats give away the vast middle of the American electorate and re-elect Donald Trump, or whatever right-wing replacement the Republican Party finds.  Or do Democrats chose the more-centrist candidates, and risk giving away the left wing of the party to a third party, or to the disillusionment that made many desert the voting process entirely, the real issue that haunted the election of 2016.

In essence, do Democrats want a do-over of 2016 with a different candidate leading the ticket, or do they want to press the “progressive” agenda?  

For older more moderate Democrats, alleviating the trauma of the Trump election has become the prime goal. That means not taking chances:  put a “white man” on the ticket, go with Sherrod’s “Medicare to 55” rather than for all, raise the minimum wage but no massive program to change income inequality.  It’s Democrat-middle, not Democrat-left.

The moderate ticket hopes to regain the white, working class vote lost to Trump.  It also hopes to claim the near-extinct moderate Republicans disgusted with Trump, and the white suburban Mom: “he grabbed what!!!” vote.  It worked in the 2018 Congressional election, why not in 2020.  It is the coalition that should have elected Hillary Clinton; and they’re not wrong – she did win the popular vote.  

A Biden/Klobuchar ticket, or a Brown/Harris ticket, or a Biden/O’Rourke ticket would meet the moderate bill (yes I am ignoring Booker, Castro and others, but they could be plugged into any of these combinations.)

For New World Democrats this would be a tough sell.  They see the winning coalition not as a re-boot of the old days, but as an expanded electorate.  The demographics show two things:  American voters should be younger, and they should be much more diverse.   These Democrats believe that the answer is not to get moderate white people to change their vote, but to convince the younger and diverse voters to come to the polls.  They believe Democrats need to offer fresh, aspirational ideas to motivate those voters.  The “Green New Deal,” some form of universal health care, reforming educational financing:  all ideas that encourage a “new Democratic coalition.”

There is always the specter of real division, of a Bernie Sanders, running in the Democratic Party while maintaining his Independent status, breaking away from a centrist Party and running a third party candidacy to the left.  While everyone, even Bernie himself, certainly recognizes that this is the sure way to elect a Republican, it can still happen.  Remember Ralph Nader in 2000, claiming there was no difference between Gore and Bush.  His name on the Green Party ballot made all of the difference in Florida, changing the Presidential outcome.  With the perspective of history, there was a HUGE difference between Bush and Gore.  Two words say it all:  Iraq and Environment.

As an old “liberal,” my heart wants to be inspired, to fall for an aspirational candidate who is offering positive change for all Americans.  As a 2016 traumatized Democrat and current Resistor; I realize the horrible difference those 77,744 votes made (total votes that Trump beat Clinton in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania combined.) It changed the electoral college from Clinton to Trump.  Above all else, Democrats cannot lose the 2020 Presidential election.  Literally, the fate of America and the entire world are at stake.

I don’t have to answer today.  We are a full year away from the first primaries, and twenty-one months from the election.  We don’t know what the results of the Mueller investigation will be, and we haven’t had the chance to see how these candidates will shake out. 

Maybe a middle-right third party, a Kasich/Hickenlooper ticket, will change the entire dynamics of the field.  Imagine that:  Bernie Independent on the left, Biden Moderate-Democrat, Kasich Independent on the Right, then Trump Republican:  Whew!!! But there’s no need to DECIDE, not yet. 

Ultimately the Democrats will need to make some choices, at least choices of degree.  Let’s get closer to the show before we decide.

Time for the Green New Deal

I often have conversations with twenty-somethings, trying to convince them they should be involved in politics.  They have an interesting perspective:  rather than a broad and perhaps shallow world understanding from the newspaper and nightly news my “boomer” generation grew up with; they have a “well field” view.  They get most of their information from streaming and the internet, so they have in-depth understandings of very specific subjects, without necessarily having a broad overview.  It’s not wrong, it’s just a different way of seeing the world.

Besides the generalization on my generation,  “…things will be better when the old white dudes finally die off…” there is also the specific accusation:  “what have you done to our world?”  They aren’t wrong there either.  Any “shallow” research into what is happening to our environment shows that we are at the end: the end of the opportunity to “fix” the damage we have caused.  The twenty-somethings can quote specifics:  rising temperatures, changing zones, and catastrophic events.

Fixing the environment has always been something in the future for my “boomers,” some other generation would have to “pay the piper” for the damage done.  Meanwhile, we accepted the benefits of that damage, the wealth created at the cost of dumping our unadulterated wastes into the atmosphere, the ocean, and the soil.  It’s what our fathers did, and what we continued to do. We have benefited, and so have the twenty-somethings that I talk to.  

“Planet has only until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change, experts warn.” 

 This is not the scare preview on some black and white 1950’s science fiction movie. This is a CNNheadline from last October.  The future is here.

To the twenty-somethings, denying climate change is simply saying:  “we will continue to take advantage of you, getting whatever we want, and screwing your future in the process.”   To them, climate denial isn’t seen as a legitimate position, but rather a form of armed robbery, using the power of government instead of a gun, and stealing the future.

So when the new young Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced House Resolution 109, “The Green New Deal,” it didn’t surprise the twenty-somethings that it was ridiculed from the start.  Wyoming’s Senator John Barrassotold them from the floor of the Senate, “…There’s another victim of the Green New Deal, it’s ice cream! … American favorites like cheeseburgers and milkshake[s] would become a thing of the past.”

His compatriot in the House, Congresswoman Liz Cheneyhad this to say: 

“I would just say that it’s going to be crucially important for us to recognize and understand when we outlaw plane travel, we outlaw gasoline, we outlaw cars…”

So, according to the representatives from Wyoming (oil and cattle) the Green New Deal will outlaw cattle farming and therefore dairy and meat, and using fossil fuels and therefore planes and automobiles.  Of course, that’s not what the Green New Deal does say, and twenty-somethings see the older generation with the same gun in their hand.

The Green New Deal is a resolution, not a law.  It is a “sense of the Congress” that there is a need to recognize that global warming is occurring, that it is caused by human activity; that we broke it, we bought it, and we need to fix it.   It puts Congress, the nation, and the world on notice that we cannot do this incrementally; that we must make major and dramatic changes to avoid catastrophe.

But the Green New Deal also shows a way to make those changes while increasing employment, and improving healthcare.  It recognizes trade-offs, accepting cattle methane production (that’s really cattle farts) by reducing coal fired power plants.  It calls on the United States to maintain its standard of living, but make the changes necessary to maintain our world as well.

As always, the “devil is in the details.”  The Green New Deal is an aspirational plan, not a specific legislation.  But it puts on record the needs of the twenty-somethings, the future generation. It has to happen, and if it happens now we can avoid the great damage that awaits our world.  The clock is running:  ten years to create the fix.

But if it doesn’t happen now, it will someday.  It is inevitatble:  the current old white dudes will die off, and the twenty-somethings will take over.  

Letter to James Comey:

First I want to say that I read your book, and believe you are an honest and honorable man.  You tried to do what you believed was right in the difficult times of the spring, summer and fall of 2016.  There are those who say you “threw the election,” but I believe that was never your intent.  You did your best to protect the investigation,  the Bureau and the nation.

I do think, though, that there were two judgment calls made in the last months of the 2016 election that ultimately were in error.  The first was the announcement of the re-opening of the Clinton email investigation. The actual investigation was fine, and in fact, necessary.  You had to know whether more evidence was available.  But the announcement created a huge impact on the election, one that I believe you should have been able to predict.  The only reason I can see for you to have done this, is that you knew the information was going to come out of the FBI office in New York anyway, and to protect the Bureau, you let it out officially instead.

But once that happened, it was incumbent upon you to “level the field.”  You knew there was significant evidence of Trump campaign collusion with Russia, you knew that there was an ongoing investigation that, at the time, gave indications of a serious chance of a “Manchurian candidacy.” Sure, if the Clinton investigation re-opening had remained secret, what all of your FBI and DOJ procedures called for, then the Trump investigation should remain silent as well.  But you “outed” Clinton; and you are a fair and honest man.  You should have taken one more step down the perilous slope, and arranged for the Trump investigation to be “outed” as well.  At least then things would be “even;” albeit even uglier.   Then the American people would have had an equal opportunity to decide.

But that didn’t happen. As unbelievable as it seems, Donald Trump was chosen President by the Electoral College; and you, the intelligence community, and the American people were faced with a President potentially under Russian influence.  I believe you then continued to do your best, first to try to persuade the President of his vulnerabilities, and then to investigate into what was occurring.

You, your FBI agents and staff, were faced with impossible and heroic choices.  You saw evidence that the President was compromised, and, despite the dangers involved, went ahead and investigated.  As history has demonstrated, many who have “aimed for the king” get sacrificed.  You and your deputy were fired, and multiple others have been transferred, retired or resigned.  All of you have been disparaged in public, in the media and by the President himself on Twitter.  Your team was sacrificed in the name of protecting the United States.  While all of that will probably be seen as heroic ten years from now, it can’t make it feel much better today.

Your successors discussed the Constitutional means of protecting our nation.  This included enacting the 25^thAmendment, and even gathering evidence towards impeachment.  They did everything they legally could to protect the investigation, with Mr. Rosenstein ultimately appointing an unimpeachable leader to protect it, Robert Mueller.  

Some have called this an attempted “bureaucratic coup d’etat.” But a “coup d’etat” is defined as an illegal action to overthrow the leadership of the state.  You and your team were searching for the LEGAL means of dealing with an unprecedented situation; it is reasonable that every Constitutional tool should have been on the table.

We don’t know what Mueller, Rosenstein, McCabe or you knew about Trump, then or now.  We do know that if it comes down to whom to trust to have the best interests of the nation at heart, it sure should be the folks who dedicated their lives to her service.  So, while I wish you would have acted differently back in October of 2016, I believe that you and those leading the FBI were acting with integrity, then and now.

Americans will ultimately see the truth, and act with that same concern for our nation.  I simply hope the damage being done by the President and his allies to our institutions, and to our faith in the nation, will not be beyond repair.

Thank you for your service.

It’s an Emergency

Presidents declaring National Emergencies is nothing new for the United States, and even for President Trump.  His declaration last Friday was the fourth time he has signed a National Emergency proclamation.  

The National Emergency Act of 1976 was written to codify and restrict the emergency powers a President could claim.  This was in response to the Vietnam era, when Presidential power seemed to escalate out of control:  Congress wanted to restrict executive actions, but recognized that there were situations where the President might need to claim powers and move quickly (9-11 being a good example.) 

The normal process of creating law starts with the Congress, developing written legislation and passing it by majority vote.  The legislation is then sent to the President where he can sign it into law, reject it by veto, or do nothing leaving the legislation to become law in ten days.

The National Emergency Act created a “negative authority” for Congress.  The President can declare an Emergency, essentially writing legislation. In response the House and the Senate can pass a resolution against the President’s actions by majority vote.  Like any piece of legislation, the President can veto the resolution, and should the both Houses of Congress vote by two-thirds majority, they can override his veto, and end his emergency.

Twenty-five of the thirty-two Emergencies in effect have been declared as a way of placing economic restrictions on individuals or countries.  One recent example was the Emergency declared by President Obama against certain individuals in Russia in response to the Russian takeover of Crimea from Ukraine (the sanctions that triggered the Russian actions in the 2016 elections.)  This allowed the President to react quickly and specifically to a foreign event, using America’s financial power to respond to international crises.   

One National Emergency was declared to fill a void when the 1979 Export Act expired, and six dealt with war or warlike crises; the Iran hostage crisis, nuclear weapons spreading, and the 9-11 Terrorist attacks.

Leaving us with Friday’s rambling declaration of an emergency on the border, one that the President himself admitted (in the same speech) “he didn’t need to do” and was only necessary because he wanted to “hurry” things along.  Unlike previous acts, this “emergency” was declared as a RESULT of Congressional action – the negotiated agreement to keep the government open, and deal with the border security.

These are both important points to consider as the future of this “Emergency” unfolds.  As Radical Republican Congressman Jim Jordan stated, Congress is likely to pass a resolution against the President’s act, one that Trump surely will veto.  And with the 67 Senate and 288 House votes to gain an override is unlikely, this emergency act is headed to the Courts.

The issues will be: does this meet the 1976 definition of emergency, does this subvert the Congressional power to control spending (the “power of the purse”,) and is this an unconstitutional extension of executive power to subvert the stated “will” of the Congress, the act to keep the government open?  While it was very strange to listen to President Trump “rap” his expectations of judicial action, he wasn’t necessarily wrong.  

It is likely that the Emergency Declaration will be found unconstitutional on the District and Appellate levels, and we end up in the Supreme Court.  The five Federalist Society members of the Court will be faced with a difficult decision.  The Society is dedicated to “originalism,” to the strict intent of the original authors of the Constitution.  It is clear that the Founders would find this extension of Presidential authority to be abhorrent to their carefully balanced division of powers.  However, the Justices will also look at the language of the 1976 Act, and find that the President’s actions may well fit the parameters of the law.  

Will Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch stand with the President that appointed them?  Will Justices Thomas and Alito follow the judicial philosophy of original intent they so believe in, or follow their conservative political views?  And, will Chief Justice Roberts, himself a son of the Federalist Society, continue to serve as the ultimate and remaining check on the President, or succumb to the massive political pressure?

Or will the Court take a different tack; delaying action on the “border emergency” through temporary injunctions, then ruling on technicalities that don’t address the core issues of the case?  

The real point is none of that matters to the President.  The Emergency Declaration was his only way out of the border situation he created.  He couldn’t close the government down again, and he couldn’t (at least he wouldn’t) accept the “loss” of the Congressional compromise.  So he can declare a “win” by declaring the Emergency, knowing that it will be tied up in the Courts for years, and won’t require any real action. 

That’s a win-win for the President, and maybe for the country as well.  The Congressional border compromise will help solve a lot of the real problems at the border, and even begins to deal with the source of the migration, conditions in the Central American countries.  

For the high price of lawyers able to practice in the Federal Courts, we get to put the “wall” problem aside and deal with the real emergency of today:  do we have a President held under the sway of a foreign power?

National Emergencies Currently in Effect

1979 – Carter, Iran Hostage Crisis

1994 – Clinton, Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation

1995 – Clinton, Economic Sanctions against Middle East Terrorists

1995 – Clinton, Transactions on Iranian Oil

1995 – Clinton, Transactions on Colombian Narcotics Trafficking

1996 – Clinton, Movements of Vessels and Planes near Cuba

1997 – Clinton, Sanctions on Sudan Trade

2001 – GW Bush, Sanctions on Albanians regarding Macedonia

2001 – GW Bush, Export Controls replacing 1979 Export Act

2001 – GW Bush, Terrorists and 9/11

2001 – GW Bush, Terrorists and 9/11

2003 – GW Bush, Sanctions on Zimbabwe

2003 – GW Bush, Sanctions on Iraq

2004 – GW Bush, Sanctions on Syria

2006 – GW Bush, Sanctions on Belarus

2006 – GW Bush, Sanctions on Congo

2006 – GW Bush, Sanctions on Lebanon

2008 – GW Bush, Sanction on North Korea (nuclear weapons)

2010 – Obama, Sanctions on Somalia

2011 – Obama, Sanctions on Libya

2011 – Obama, Sanction on Trans-National Criminals

2012 – Obama, Sanctions on Yemen

2014 – Obama, Sanctions on Russians regarding Ukraine

2014 – Obama, Sanctions on South Sudan

2014 – Obama, Sanctions on Central African Republic

2015 – Obama, Sanctions on Venezuela

2015 – Obama, Sanctions on Chinese (Cyber Attacks)

2015 – Obama, Sanctions on Burundi

2017 – Trump, Sanctions on Myanmar regarding Rohingya Muslims

2018 – Trump, Sanctions on Russia – Election interference

2018 – Trump, Sanctions on Nicaragua

2019 – Trump, Security on the Southern Border

ABC News 

Whoppers

I grew up in a world where facts mattered.  It was the basis of the Vietnam War protests:  the “facts” that the US Government lied about to us.  Folks risked their freedom and their lives to get the facts out, folks like Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press.  The Papers were the factual history, written for the Secretary of Defense, and demonstrated the pattern of lies and misinformation about the conflict given to the American people by the military and the President over three administrations.

Facts mattered.  So it is with dismay that I watch our current President tell lie after lie.  I don’t believe people are stupid:  so how can they accept the demonstrable lies they are given?  Cognitive dissonance, willful self-deception, auto-suggestion, confabulation, self-indoctrination, double-think, delusional, the big lie: all try to describe what is going on in our political world today.  Most of these terms contain two elements, the internal realization that there is a lie, and the determination to make that lie truth anyway.

Let’s look at this week in American politics.  We have been told that the “wall” is already being built, when it demonstrably is not. The cry has been made that there is a “crisis on the border,” when statistically fewer illegal crossings are occurring now than in the past several years.  And the biggest lie of all:  we have been told that a fence is a wall, or that a barrier is a wall, even though we ALL know what a wall looks like.  The scariest part of that is that now the media (and not just FOX; CNN and MSNBC as well) have reporters standing beside demonstrable fences that you can see through; gesturing to it and calling it a “wall.”  

And outside of the “non-crisis” on the border that is throwing our government into a desperate mess, we have been told that the Democrats want to pass a “Green New Deal” that will, and I quote Republican speeches given on the floor of the US Senate: ban cattle farming, end products from ice cream to milk to cheeseburgers; stop air travel, and take away our cars.  None of those “facts” are real; the Green New Deal looks at various ways we create pollution, including cattle farts and air travel, and tries to balance the pollution we have to make, with pollution we can choose to limit; such as the coal fired power plants President Trump ordered the Tennessee Valley Authority to keep open (the TVA refused.)

Perhaps the biggest “lie” of the week though was reserved for the alterations in abortion laws that New York made and Virginia is contemplating.  Those laws codified what the US Supreme Court has already accepted, that abortions before twenty weeks of gestation are “on demand,” and that those after can be made for the health of the mother or the viability of the fetus with the recommendation of health professionals.  Several states are looking at putting those factors into law, in anticipation of the Federalist majority of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade and returning abortion controls to the states. 

But instead of noting the current state of law, opponents to those laws are screaming that babies could be murdered after birth, as if this is new “pro-murder” legislation.  It’s nothing particularly new for the “pro-birth” movement, but if you view Facebook with the right set of “friends” you can see the panic, claiming that live babies will be ripped from the womb.

And we haven’t even mentioned the ongoing self-delusion of some about vaccinating children, or climate change.   

As I was growing up, the ultimate authority for any language question for my University of London (UK) educated mother was the Oxford Dictionary.  If it was there – it was right – even when I failed spelling tests with “theatre” and “favour.”  And it’s there:

“Post-Truth” Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. 

We live in a “post-truth” era, at least for the moment.  Politicians, and friends, can tell “whoppers” and demand they be accepted as fact. Maybe that’s a good thing, if the “Green New Deal” passes, we won’t be able to eat “whoppers” so at least we can still tell them.