Welcome to Trump's Corrupt State - the Star Wars Cantina of World Politics

Top: We realize Paul Ryan retired, but this is such a telling illustration of the state of the GOP we just had to use it.
Bottom: Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)

By Robert Reich, Guardian UK

16 June 19

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The administration and the Republican party are nests of lobbyists and con artists who make Greedo look like a saint

rump has been ramping up his “Deep State” rhetoric again. He’s back to blaming a cabal of bureaucrats, FBI and CIA agents, Democrats and “enemies of the people” in the mainstream media for conspiring to remove him from office, in order to allow the denizens of foreign “shitholes” to overrun America.

But with each passing day it’s becoming clearer that the real threat to America isn’t Trump’s Deep State. It’s Trump’s own Corrupt State.

Not since the sordid administration of Warren G Harding have as many grifters, crooks and cronies occupied high positions in Washington.

Trump has installed a Star Wars cantina of former lobbyists and con artists, including several whose exploits have already forced them to resign, such as Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, Tom Price and Michael Flynn. Many others remain.

When he was in Congress, the current White House acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from payday lenders, then proposed loosening regulations on them. Mulvaney was also acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, of all things.

When he was Trump’s special adviser on regulatory reform, the Wall Street billionaire Carl Icahn sought to gut the Environmental Protection Agency rule on ethanol credits, which was harming his oil refinery investments.

This week the Guardian reported that a real estate company partly owned by Trump son-in-law and foreign policy adviser Jared Kushner has raked in $90m from foreign investors since Kushner entered the White House, through a secret vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands. Kushner’s stake is some $50m.

All this takes conflict of interest to a new level of shamelessness.

What are Republicans doing about it? Participating in it.

The secretary of transportation, Elaine Chao, who also happens to be the wife of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has approved $78m in grants for her husband’s home state, Kentucky, including a highway improvement project twice rejected in the past. Chao has even appointed a special liaison to coordinate grants with McConnell’s office. Did I say McConnell is up for re-election next year?

Under normal circumstances, news that a cabinet secretary is streamlining federal funding for her husband’s pet projects would be a giant scandal. But in the age of Trump, ethics have gone out the window.

Since he was elected in November, congressman Greg Pence, who just happens to be the brother of Vice-President Mike Pence, has spent more than $7,600 of campaign funds on lodging at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Federal election law forbids politicians from using campaigns dollars to cover housing costs.

The Corrupt State starts with Trump himself, giving new meaning to the old adage about a fish rotting from the head down.

When foreign governments aren’t currying favor with Trump by staying at his hotel, they’re using state-owned companies to finance projects that will line his pockets, like China’s $500m for an entertainment complex in Indonesia that includes a Trump-branded hotel.

Trump claims the Deep State allows foreigners to take advantage of America. The reality is Trump’s Corrupt State allows Vladimir Putin and his goon squad to continue undermining American democracy.

“I’d take it” if Russia again offered campaign help, Trump crowed this week, adding that he would not necessarily tell the FBI. Just days before, Trump acknowledged “Russia helping” him “get elected” the first time.

Despite evidence that Russia is hacking and trolling its way toward the 2020 election, Republican defenders of Trump’s Corrupt State won’t lift a finger.

McConnell refuses to consider any legislation on election security. He and Senate Republicans even killed a bill requiring campaigns to report offers of foreign assistance to federal authorities.

The charitable interpretation is McConnell and his ilk don’t want to offend Trump by doing anything that might appear to question the legitimacy of his 2016 win. The less charitable view is Republicans oppose more secure elections because they’d be less likely to win them.

Trump and his Republican enablers are magicians who distract us by shouting “look here!” at the paranoid fantasy of a Deep State, while creating a Corrupt State under our noses.

But it’s not a party trick. It’s the dirtiest trick of our time, enabled by the most corrupt party in living memory.

Mitch McConnell making sure that Russia is welcome to screw with the 2020 election

Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday June 12, 2019 · 7:16 AM PDT

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Back in May, Mitch McConnell passed a milestone: over 100 pieces of legislation that were passed by the Democratic-controlled House have been halted by the Senate majority leader before they ever got a vote. McConnell bragged about turning the Senate into a legislative cemetery, and he’s being a good crypt-keeper by making sure that even the most critical bills are dead on arrival.

That includes sorely needed legislation that would provide election security for 2020. As The New York Times reports, McConnell is blocking any vote on a bill that would provide funds to secure state and local election facilities against exactly the sort of attack that Russia carried out successfully in 2016. McConnell is also blocking legislation designed to force companies such as Facebook and Twitter to be more transparent about the sources of political ads.

McConnell is protecting Russia’s hacking. McConnell is protecting Russia’s social media campaign.

What else could McConnell do to grease the skids for more Kremlin interference?

Well, he could make it harder to conduct a quick response when hacking or other interference is detected. And he has. In fact, McConnell has told Republican senators that he absolutely does not intend to address concerns about campaign security. Even though other Republicans seem to be worried that failing to do something about security for 2020 might make the party seem weak, McConnell is steadfast … about actually being weak.

It’s almost as if McConnell’s 2016 performance, during which he refused to sign on to a bipartisan condemnation of Russian interference and threatened President Obama with accusations that he was meddling in the election should the administration speak out more forcefully, was just a cover for genuinely wanting Russia’s thumb on the scale. No, wait. It’s exactly like that.

In 2016, McConnell did sign on to a bipartisan letter demanding legislation aimed at improving security. But now that the exact bill that letter described is sitting on his desk, he’s not routing it anywhere but to the circular file.

Rich White Men Still Rule America. How Much Longer Will We Tolerate It?

"In a country whose electoral system still somewhat functions, there is only so much a government can do to keep people from exercising their right to rule, without resorting to totalitarian measures." (photo: WP)

By Nathan Robinson, Guardian UK

20 May 19

Minority rule has always been a feature of American democracy. These days, however, it is getting worse

he core democratic principle is that people should have a meaningful say in political decisions that affect their lives. In Alabama, we’ve just seen what the opposite of democracy looks like: 25 white male Republicans in the state Senate were able to ban almost all abortion in the state. The consequences of that decision fall exclusively on women, who will be forced to carry all pregnancies to term if the law comes into effect. And, as has happened in other countries with abortion bans, poor women will be hit hardest of all – the rich can usually afford to go elsewhere.

There is no reason to respect the legitimacy of this kind of political decision, in which those in power show no sign of having listened to the people they’re deciding on behalf of. Though plenty in the pro-life movement are female, the people who will be most impacted are nowhere in the debate. Unfortunately, structural problems with the US government mean that we’re heading for an even more undemocratic future.

White men have never made up the majority of the US population, and yet from the country’s beginnings they have made up most of its political decision-makers. The constitution itself is an outrageously undemocratic document. People today are bound by a set of procedural rules that were made without the input of women, African Americans or native people. The framers quite deliberately constructed a system that would prevent what they called “tyranny of the majority” but what is more accurately called “popular democracy”.

That set of rules has been very effective at keeping the American populace from exercising power. James Madison was explicit about the function of the United States Senate – it was “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority”.

Indeed, that’s precisely what it does. As Jamelle Bouie points out, the Senate has “an affluent membership composed mostly of white men, who are about 30% of the population but hold 71 of the seats” out of 100. Though popular opinion may overwhelmingly favor universal healthcare and more progressive taxation, these policies are said to be “politically impossible” because the millionaires who populate Congress do not favor them.

We hear a lot about how the electoral college, the US supreme court and gerrymandered districts are undermining democratic rule. But it’s worth reflecting on just how deep the disenfranchisement really is. The supreme court is the highest branch of government, in that it can overturn the decisions of the other two branches. It consists of just nine people, all of whom went to Harvard or Yale and two-thirds of whom are men. Ian Samuel has pointed out the remarkable fact that, thanks to the way the Senate is structured, the senators who voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the court received represent 38 million fewer people than the senators who voted against him.

The implications here are extreme. It simply doesn’t matter where the people of the US stand on union dues, campaign finance reform, or abortion. What matters is the opinion of nine elites, in many cases appointed by presidents who did not win the popular vote. A constitution written by slaveholders is being interpreted by a tiny room full of elites who have been given no meaningful popular approval. When you step back and look at the situation objectively, it’s utterly farcical to call the US government democratic.

The electoral college is, of course, its own problem. It’s difficult to know how elections would have gone in its absence – after all, people would campaign differently if success were measured differently. But there is something perverse and troubling about a system in which the person who gets the most votes loses the election.

Things are only going to get worse. The good news is that America is becoming an ever-more-diverse and in many ways more progressive country. By 2045 the US will lose its white majority, and despite Trump’s efforts to whip the country into a xenophobic frenzy, the American people are becoming steadily more sympathetic to immigrants. Most young people identify as socialists instead of capitalists, and on the whole people want a far more progressive set of national policies on economics, foreign policy and immigration than are currently being practiced.

But demographic changes do not automatically change the power structure, and it’s likely that we’ll see a conservative white minority taking extreme steps to cling to power in the coming decades. That’s why you see new voter ID laws and resistance to restoring voting rights to felons who have served their sentence.

That’s why state legislatures draw districts in a way that ensures the party that gets the most votes doesn’t necessarily get the most seats.

The undemocratic nature of our institutions means that conservatives might well succeed in overriding popular sentiment for many years to come. If, God forbid, Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer left the supreme court during Trump’s term in office, the radical right would be all but assured to have complete veto power over US policy for the next several decades. It’s very hard to undo gerrymandered districts or loosen campaign finance laws if the whole point of these measures is to keep the left out of power.

It’s hard to say where all of this will lead. If the court pushes too far in overturning democratic measures it will lose legitimacy and schemes like “court-packing” will come to seem more like necessary correctives than revolutionary disruptions. In a country whose electoral system still somewhat functions, there is only so much a government can do to keep people from exercising their right to rule, without resorting to totalitarian measures.

But that’s precisely why we may see increasingly totalitarian measures, as the gap between the will of the people and the interests of the small minority in charge continues to widen. History’s bloody revolutions show us what happens when this gap becomes too large, and the government entirely ceases to effectively represent the governed. Conservatives will continue to push unpopular policies on an unwilling United States. 

But it’s unclear how long people will accept having decisions made for them by a few dozen rich white men.

Poll: Massive majority of voters oppose state abortion bans that take away women's freedoms

Laura Clawson

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday June 12, 2019 · 5:44 AM PDT

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Abortion bans passed in Alabama, Georgia, and other states are drawing a lot of attention from American voters, with 58% having heard about the bans—more than have heard about congressional investigations into Donald Trump, a trade war between the U.S. and China, or the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. That’s according to a recent poll from Navigator.

Alabama’s ban, which prohibits abortion even in cases of rape or incest, draws the strongest opposition, with just 24% support. In particular, 58% of Republicans said they oppose the Alabama ban and its lack of rape and incest exceptions, while opposition among Republicans dropped to just 28% when the pollster asked about “Recent new abortion bans that have been passed in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Louisiana, Missouri, and other states.”

The people polled strongly identified the abortion bans as “taking away women’s rights and freedoms”—67% said that was the effect of the laws. In other words, voters can clearly see what Republicans are doing with these bills, when they think about it. 

It’s on us to be sure they don’t forget between now and November 2020.

Reflections on Robert Mueller

Former FBI director Robert Mueller. (photo: Getty Images)

By Bob Bauer, Lawfare

09 June 19

readersupportednews.org

 

obert Mueller must have known that he was having serious trouble with his public when New York Times columnist Gail Collins suggested he might be a wimp. When Mueller was appointed special counsel, Collins was satisfied that he was “a very serious choice” for the role; last week she mused that while “a lot of us thought he’d wind up as a chapter in the history books of the future,” he may qualify now for no more than “an asterisk.” Others commented more in sorrow than in anger. In a Times op-ed, Robert De Niro even stepped outside his “Saturday Night Live” portrayal of Mueller to implore him to speak out more forcefully.

Overall, there was evidence of smashed hope, as in this headline: “Disappointed Fans of Mueller Rethink the Pedestal They Built for Him.”

Now Democrats, progressives and others horrified by Donald Trump have come to at least this agreement with the president: There are problems with the way Mueller did his job. Republicans were first, and quick, to sour on the special counsel. The president they chose to follow pounded away at the illegitimacy of the investigation, alleged partisan bias in its conduct, and concocted zany theories of personal conflicts of interest that disqualified Mueller from holding the position.

 For entirely different reasons, and expressed far less virulently, the other side of the aisle has begun to join the crowd of Mueller critics.

It has been a steep fall for Mueller, the straight-arrow law enforcement professional known and much admired for going “by the book.” His background, history of service and reputation had made his appointment especially compelling.

In 2011, when Congress extended his FBI director term by two years, the Senate vote was unanimous. Congressional leaders made clear that it had not lightly made the exception to the 10-year limit for the position; but Mueller—then described in news reports as “widely respected by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle”—was deemed a good reason to do it.

Then, when Mueller was appointed as special counsel, USA Today advised its readers that “a Congress utterly fractured by partisan bickering came to rare bipartisan agreement … as members of both parties effusively praised the selection of former FBI director Robert Mueller.” Jason Chaffetz, a reliable Republican congressional warrior, pronounced it a “great selection,” one that should be “widely accepted.” Even Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows, noting that Mueller credibility might be greater with Democrats than Republicans, offered that “he has credibility on both sides.”

In these polarized times, many imagined that, drawing on his well-earned reputation, Mueller could take on this extraordinary assignment in a deeply divided political environment and pull it off. He would, because he was Bob Mueller, get the benefit of the doubt on the hard calls.

But playing by the book did not at all times appear adequate to the task. To be the straight arrow was both a blessing and a curse, the reason for the disappointment as well as the original, warm welcome. In the Russia investigation, Mueller was under pressure to enforce not just the law but also norms of appropriate presidential conduct; to stand up for the rules but, if necessary, break new legal ground; to vindicate regular order when the president and key associates at the center of his inquiry hold regular order in contempt.

 Many of those who cheered his arrival and supported him in his mission had little use for a “by the book” conservative approach, believing that he was operating under emergency conditions. This was a case, after all, about a president charged with colluding with a foreign power to win an election; a president who felt free to throw up one obstacle after another to accountability. Commentators calling for aggressive prosecution counseled Mueller to find ways around the limitations imposed by the special counsel rules. He was urged to steer around the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president. He was exhorted to find ways to inform congressional impeachment deliberations, via a “road map” or otherwise, when, under the special counsel rules, he lacked the authorization formerly given to independent counsels to identify potentially impeachable offenses and was limited to communicating on confidential terms with the attorney general.

In many respects, Mueller held his familiar ground, going by the book. Unlike Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, he stayed out of the press, eschewing leaks and tit-for-tat exchanges through spokespersons with the ceaselessly bellicose Trump and his lawyers. He was conservative in much of his reading of the law—such as, at least in my view, the punches he pulled in the campaign finance analysis of the Trump campaign’s engagement with the Russian government. He not only accepted that he was bound by the OLC opinions immunizing the president from prosecution, but he also read them, surprisingly (again, in my view, mistakenly), as preventing him from expressing even a conclusion about the legality of the president’s obstructive conduct. He took a sort of institutional high road, arguing that an unindictable president should not be confronted with a legal finding he could not challenge in a formal legal proceeding. He did not force the issue of the sit-down interview Trump rejected, apparently weighing its possibly limited value against the extended delay and uncertainties, and possibly even further disruption to government, entailed by protracted litigation.

Yet Mueller also improvised, apparently concluding that he had to depart in some respects from the most conservative editions of the “book.” The report he wrote was not a simple statement of the reasons his office pursued or declined prosecutions, which seems more like what the special counsel rules contemplated.

He turned out an opus, packed with detail, which he surely understood—and, by his own account, hoped—would see the light of day, as it did. While he declined to make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” about obstruction, he staked out aggressive, controversial ground on the theory of presidential liability for this offense and then indulged in un-Mueller-like commentary in explicitly refusing to “exonerate” Trump. He wrote a letter to the attorney general to protect his four-page summary of the report knowing that this, too, would become public, even though the rules commit all questions of publication or public commentary to the attorney general.

In the end, Mueller was hardly as free-wheeling as a Comey, but he was not the purest version of the straight arrow. One could imagine a range of choices far more self-limiting, more conservative in approach and theory, than the ones he made. He worked with the materials at hand and within challenging conditions: the OLC opinions, certain of the limitations of the special counsel rules, the outrageous behaviors of a president that tested the boundaries of established law and norms, the unprecedented nature of a number of the legal issues. To navigate this treacherous course, with all the intense expectations, Mueller eventually pushed the boundaries.

It would not be enough for some critics and far too much for others. If too much the straight arrow, he would risk being a chump, failing to rise to the demands of the moment. If not enough the straight arrow, he would put at risk the credibility, accumulated over the course of an exceptionally distinguished career, that prompted his well-received appointment.

Of course, the disposition, or suspended judgments, affecting Trump personally does not tell the whole tale of Mueller’s work. In two years, he secured indictments, convictions or pleas from 34 individuals and three companies. His prosecutions included Trump’s former campaign manager and his national security adviser but also members of Russian military intelligence and individuals with clear ties to the Kremlin. He sent an unambiguous message to Moscow. He did so in less than two years.

But there was little chance that Mueller would end his investigation to the bipartisan acclaim that greeted his appointment. This era is not one with much room for the hero who can overcome the pervasive partisanship; it is one in which the legitimacy of a process is judged primarily by its outcome. American political culture is not especially kind to the straight arrow right now. In principle, a special or independent counsel is an outstanding lawyer with a record of impartiality and fairness who has earned the public’s confidence and will keep it. In the politics of the day, a law enforcement professional like Mueller who might have been celebrated as having “near mythic” status will not enjoy it for long.

Did Mueller make mistakes? Democrats and Republicans are increasingly united in the belief that he did. First-rate scholars have argued a range of failures, including Richard Pildes’s contention that Mueller abdicated a “core responsibility” in declining to reach a judgment on obstruction of justice and Jack Goldsmith’s argument that the Mueller report misapplied the law governing a president’s exposure to liability for obstruction.

Perhaps it is inevitable that by one standard or another, given the choices he faced, Mueller would make mistakes or misjudgments, or leave himself exposed to the charge. The most that can be hoped of someone in Mueller’s position is that if he makes mistakes, it will be apparent that he erred in good faith, not for condemnable lack of judgment, independence or courage—and that had another been appointed instead, that special counsel would have done no better and, in all likelihood, far worse.

And now, at the end, we have the squall over his wish to have his report speak for him without further comment or congressional testimony. In this sense, he is one more time going by the book—the one he wrote, online and in bookstores around the country, still number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

Former Republican prosecutors release video calling for Trump’s prosecution for obstruction

Jeffrey Harris, Paul Rosenzweig, and Donald Ayer

Walter Einenkel

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 31, 2019 · 10:16 AM PDT

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The Republican Party has been on a pretty steady trajectory toward fascism for a little over 50 years now. The original division between those who believe in a world of humane progress and justice and those who want total control over our country’s abundant resources and wealth was and continues to be predominantly racial. 

The push toward more fascistic powers of control by conservatives has historically followed the line that people of color, women, and those without money should not be allowed an equal say in the running of our country. That push has never been more overt than it has been in the past decade, when Republicans crystalized their white supremacist agenda, first against President Barack Obama, and subsequently with the support of Donald Trump.

A group of former Republican federal prosectors has combined efforts to push for the further investigation and possible prosecution of Trump for obstruction of justice. Calling itself Republicans for the Rule of Law, the group has released a video highlighting the case against Trump as set out in the Mueller report. 

The former deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, Donald Ayer; the former deputy assistant secretary of homeland security under President George W. Bush, Paul Rosenzweig; and the former deputy associate attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, Jeffrey Harris, are all featured in the video, explaining in the most simple of terms how insanely corrupt a picture the Mueller report paints of the current administration.

Some highlighted quotes:

• “Obstruction of justice and perjury are far more important than most normal crimes. They go to the absolute core of how the rule of law functions in this society.”
• “This administration, in my view, has an absolute disregard for the law.”
• “As a former prosecutor, I did not think it was even a close prosecutorial call as to whether the president obstructed justice.”
• “Were the president anyone other than the president, he would have been subject to indictment.”
• “In the Mueller report there is a damning case of obstruction of justice by the president.” 

Finally, Ayer delivers the most striking line over images of Sens. Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and Ted Cruz, and Rep. Kevin McCarthy.

One of the most disturbing things to me is the conduct of Republicans, in the Senate and in the House. These are actually smart people. They know that there is a damning case, in the Mueller report, of obstruction of justice by the president, and they are acting like it’s not. And that’s just flatly dishonest. And they seem to be doing it because they think Trump is the only game in town.

The end of the video is a plea to other conservatives to put the principles of our Constitution and our country’s laws before party and speak up. All three of these men worked in administrations that were arguably violating not only our Constitution, but also fundamental laws of human rights. There is a disconnect between their statements now and the political party they helped seemingly to work tirelessly against the rule of law for the past 50 years. That being said, they are right about this, and about the need for their conservative colleagues to take a long look in the mirror.

Like father, like sons: Eric and Don Jr. reportedly skipped out on Irish pub bill

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Friday June 07, 2019 · 4:02 PM PDT

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During their recent trip overseas, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. actually managed to find a small patch of land where they were welcome. 

According to The Irish Post, the two drew praise from at least one Irish pub owner, Caroline Kennedy (no, not that one), who described American Psycho and his sidekick, Beavis, as “lovely and down to earth.”
And then this happened:

”They thanked everyone for their support and for coming out to meet them and said there was a drink for everyone in the house and it was their small gesture."

Unfortunately, when it came time to footing the bill, things hit a slight snag with neither of the brothers carrying any cash.

Kennedy isn’t worried though, having been assured the hefty bar bill would be paid for.

"I don’t think we’ve to worry about getting paid for that," she said.

"I don’t think they carry cash. We were told it’d be all sorted later so there’s no problem.”

Uh huh.

With apologies to Bubbanomics …

Oh, Ms. Kennedy, that’s adorable. Sorry, you’ve been Trump’d.

Of course, it’s certainly possible Kennedy will get paid … if enough people find out about this to embarrass these two ambulatory semen stains into sending this poor, guileless lass a check. If not, I doubt she’ll see so much as a circus peanut from these clowns.