Sunday School 8/8/21

Let's begin this week's Sunday School with Dana Bash in the CNN State of the Union classroom, where she talked with Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL). Here are some highlights, starting with Cassidy, who's also a doctor. 

He was clear that there are ways to get out of the COVID mess his state, and others are in: get vaccinated or wear a mask.

If you have a large percentage of your population which is not vaccinated, and your infection rate is going up, you have got one or two choices. If you're inside, either you're vaccinated or you have to wear a mask. Otherwise, you're at too great a risk to further spread infection, to further pack those emergency rooms, to further prevent people who have terrible accidents from getting cared for because the hospital is full of COVID. And there is a choice. On the other hand, if we don't want mask mandates, get vaccinated, the infection rate goes down, and you don't have a mandate.

And, he says, it's a "conservative principle" to have local officials making decisions on thinks like mask mandates for schools - so he's not a fan of what Gov. Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida.

On the infrastructure bill, on which he's been a key negotiator for the Rs, he said 50% of it will be scored as 'paid for' by the Congressional Budget Office, and the other half will have a lot of paid for items, given they're taking already appropriated COVID package monies that haven't been used and applying them to the infrastructure bill. And, he said, the Rs have some 'splaining to do if they're complaining about the pay-for or deficit aspects now, when they didn't before.

I will point out that president Trump proposed a $1.5 trillion package, which most Republicans were all for, and only 5 percent of it was paid for. We have $550 billion of new spending, of which we can reasonably say is paid for, but certainly one-half by CBO score. And now folks are saying, oh, can't vote for that... OK, well, that's OK. But, on the other hand, we're creating jobs. We're creating bridges. We're protecting people from flooding. Hopefully, they change their mind.

 And he suggested that with the Problem Solvers Caucus on board, they should have a path for getting the traditional infrastructure bill done in the House without having it held hostage for the gigunda human infrastructure bill that the progressives want. Speaker Pelosi, he said,

doesn't need a radical left wing. She can pass the infrastructure package with just that committed group of American congressmen and women who want to see our country get better, to have the $110 billion for the roads and bridges and highways, etc., and the new jobs. They can pass the infrastructure package without having the radical left. And that, I think, opens a pathway. 

Let's hope that's what happens when the House gets back to work.

Next up was Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. He talked mostly about the DOJ and the attempt by Former Guy to have the DOJ interfere in the 2020 election. Durbin noted that

...what was going on in the Department of Justice was frightening, from a constitutional point of view, to think that Bill Barr left, resigned after he had announced he didn't see irregularities in the election, and then his replacement was under extraordinary pressure from the president the United States, even to the point where they were talking about replacing him. 

He didn't provide any juicy details, but he did say that president Trump asked Jeffrey Rosen, the acting Attorney General after Bill Barr resigned, "to do certain things related to states' election returns, which he refused to do," regarding the 2020 election. Rosen was being asked "by the White House, the leadership in the White House, to meet with certain people who had these wild, bizarre theories of why that election wasn't valid, and he refused to do it." History will be kind to Rosen, Durbin said - and that was not what he would have thought when Rosen was appointed. 

We'll close with his reflection on what they've learned so far in the investigation; emphasis on the last sentence is mine, for the people in the back of the room. 

I guess the thought that we have come to accept that this president and his bizarre conduct, we came to accept over four years as normal. It's outrageous. When you look back on the Richard Nixon episode and the Saturday Night Massacre, people out of principle were turning around and threatening to resign. The same thing happened here, incidentally, within the Department of Justice. There was a point where virtually everyone in the authority in the Department of Justice was going to walk if the president had his way. I mean, these are moments in history which you would never want to see repeated. And, with Donald Trump, they were.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) was in the Fox News Sunday classroom with Brett Bair sitting in for Chris Wallace. He's not a fan of the infrastructure bill, because it's not paid for, and "we've got to start doing things responsibly." He likes road, bridges, airports, and seaports - stuff he did when he was Florida's governor, but "less than half this bill... had anything to do with roads, bridges, airports, and seaports."

Even though his state has a 'C' on its infrastructure scorecard, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, he's not interested in adding to the debt by borrowing money to pay for it. Even though, of course, that wasn't the case when that other guy was president, Bair pointed out. 

In fact, if you look at the numbers, the debt went up at the end of fiscal 2020, $26.9 trillion. The Trump administration and Republicans added $6.7trillion to the debt. That was since President Obama's last budget, a 33 percent increase. Understanding COVID had a big role in that, but there's not a great track record for Republicans recently to tout themselves as deficit debt hawks and now to be doing it here.

That's different now, Scott said. The Rs

had a caucus meeting where we said, we're not going to raise the debt ceiling without -- all Republican senators said, we will not raise the debt ceiling without structural change. That's what we all agreed to do.

On COVID, in a nutshell, everyone should be able to make up their own minds, to make good decisions, if the government would just tell them what they need to know. 

Here's what I believe we ought to do at every level of government. Let's be honest. If you feel comfortable, get the vaccine. If you don't, figure out how you're going to keep yourself safe. I mean that's what I believe we ought to be doing. And I'm going to -- I'm going to do everything I can to tell people, you know, that, you know, I've -- I've been comfortable with the vaccine. I had COVID. I don't want anybody to get COVID.

He also said

This is -- you know, this is not a country where we need people telling us what to do. I love my mom. I hate her telling me what to do. Give me good information. I'll make a good decision.

We'll make "good decisions," he said? Yeah, maybe, maybe not: around 400,000 people at Lollapalooza, with widespread reporting of vaccine and negative COVID test documentation being ignored by security, and requests from public health officials urging attendees to get tested... 400 at Barack Obama's birthday part... 700,000 expected at Sturgis... 

Finally, in response to Baier's last question on whether Former Guy is the leader of the GOP, Scott thinks not.

I was able to win because I went and I told people what I thought they -- I -- they wanted somebody to do. That's who's going to win. The -- in the next election, the '22 election, the '24 election is, who's got the right message and right background for that time. And that's who's going to be -- that's -- but the voters are the leader of the party. 

That's an interesting concept, isn't it?

See you around campus. Make good decisions. Get vaccinated if you're able, and wear a mask when it makes sense to do so.

TGIF 10/25/19

It's that time again folks...

Ready... Set... Go!

Bad weeks were had by:

• House Freedom Caucus members, who orgasmically 'stormed' the Secure Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, in the basement of the Capitol. Their breathless assault on a room where depositions are being taken in the House impeachment inquiry in front of both Democrats AND Republicans was laughable - at best - and it was played out for an audience not of their constituents, but for an audience of one. They know that, and we know that - everyone knows that. 
• Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who was found to be in contempt by a federal judge (in addition to having been found to be in contempt by millions of Americans) and was fined $100,000. Some say the fine was too low, given her resources, but at least someone in a position to do so took a stand. 
• The DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, after a bunch of federal watchdogs said the decision to stop the whistleblower complaint in Trump's impeachment inquiry from getting to Congress was wrong, and not only that, it "could seriously undermine the critical role whistleblowers play in coming forward to report fraud, waste, abuse and misconduct across the federal government."
• And, let's add Rudy Giuliani to the list this week - not for the usual reasons, such as a wacky TV appearance, assault and battery on sentence structure and logical thought, or any of that. Nah -- this time, it's because the founder of Giuliani Security & Safety, which "offers corporations, individuals, and governments a full platform of security, investigative and crisis management services" managed to butt-dial a reporter and leave a voicemail - for the second time in less than three weeks. 
• Democratic presidential candidates; it seems several Dem money bigwigs are unhappy with the choices they have, and might be trying to get others into the race. 

And now, on to the good week, with a World Series focus. My team is spending the off-season trying to figure out what to do next year, but it's still fun to pay attention to the Fall Classic.

• The Washington Nationals are up two games to none, as I write this, against the Houston Astros. That's probably surprising to most experts, it seems, who tended to pick the Houstonians. Sadly, this is also good news for the Baby Shark song.
• Super gymnast Simone Biles had a flippin' good week, too, as she busted a move before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch in Game 2.
• And women had at least a bit of a good week. Astros' assistant general manager Brandon Taubman was fired after repeatedly shouting at three female reporters how "(bleeping) glad" he was that the Astros had picked up Roberto Osuna before the playoffs. Osuna was the third player suspended by MLB for violating the league's domestic violence policy.  

Here's to some good baseball, a clean series, and hopefully, a first win for the Nats.

Oh -- one last thing: hey, Freedom Caucus - you KNOW it's a bad week when even Russia is laughing at you.

TGIF, everyone.

Wondering on Wednesday (v178)

Didja watch the Mueller testimony before the House Judiciary and/or Intelligence Committees?

I confess, I did not. I was in the garden, listening to my favorite NPR shows, so I only caught soundbites that people thought were important. Things like the part where Mueller said he did not exonerate Trump, that he didn't charge him because of the DOJ ruling that you can't charge a sitting president, and that Trump could be indicted for obstruction after he leaves office. You know, the kind of stuff we already knew.

So, in a nutshell, it was just what we thought it would be: a bunch of people trying to score points, some of whom did and some of whom really only swung and missed. And yes, if you're wondering, I appreciate that I'm covering multiple sports there, so no need to point that out.

But here's the part that I think is truly worthy of wonder. In his opening statement to both committees, Mueller reminded us that Russia did try and interfere in our 2016 election. Here's what he said to the Judiciary gang:

And let me say one more thing. Over the course of my career, I've seen a number of challenges to our democracy. The Russian government's effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious. As I said on May 29, this deserves the attention of every American.

Similarly, he told the House Select Committee on Intelligence this:

Finally, as I said this morning, over the course of my career, I have seen a number of challenges to our democracy. The Russian government's effort to intervene in our election is among the most serious. I am sure this Committee agrees. 

So, is anyone listening to that, or are they only listening to themselves ask questions (including a number of them that Mueller flat out said he couldn't or wouldn't answer, but they wasted everyone's time on them anyway)? What are our elected representatives doing about this type of threat, that is happening right now, which Mueller told them could come from other countries too?

In other wondering, there is concern that the budget deal worked out by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin that raises the debt ceiling, and more, will have plenty of detractors on both sides - but it has to be passed this week, we're told, before the House leaves for the rest of the summer, because we could be put in a position of not being able to pay our bills before they get back.

So we have to wonder, will the detractors make a mess of things and not let the bill pass in the Senate? Here's the most colorful answer to that question, and it comes from Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who wasn't sure what he was going to do, but suggested it would be appropriate to "color (him) doubtful."

It may taste like pumpkin pie, but I've got a lot of questions. Cutting spending around here is like going to heaven. Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody's quite ready to take the trip... 

Now that today's shenanigans are out of the way, maybe we'll quickly see where everyone lands on the spending plan.

And finally, turning back to Mueller's testimony, the only other thing I have to wonder is, what will the Dems do next?

Robert Mueller Speaks

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here. 

Two years ago, the acting attorney general asked me to serve as special counsel and he created the special counsel’s office. The appointment order directed the office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

Now, I have not spoken publicly during our investigation. I am speaking out today because our investigation is complete. The attorney general has made the report on our investigation largely public. We are formally closing the special counsel’s office, and as well, I’m resigning from the Department of Justice to return to private life. I’ll make a few remarks about the results of our work. 

But beyond these few remarks, it is important that the office’s 

written work speak for itself. 

Let me begin where the appointment order begins, and that is interference in the 2016 presidential election. As alleged by the grand jury in an indictment, Russian intelligence officers who are part of the Russian military, launched a concerted attack on our political system. The indictment alleges that they used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign. They stole private information and then released that information through fake online identities and through the organization WikiLeaks.

The releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate. 

And at the same time, as the grand jury alleged in a separate indictment, a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation, where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to influence an election. These indictments contain allegations, and we are not commenting on the guilt or the innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

The indictments allege, and the other activities in our report describe, efforts to interfere in our political system. They needed to be investigated and understood. And that is among the reasons why the Department of Justice established our office. That is also a reason we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation. The matters we investigated were of paramount importance. It was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned. 

When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of their government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.

Let me say a word about the report. The report has two parts, addressing the two main issues we were asked to investigate. The first volume of the report details numerous efforts emanating from Russia to influence the election. 

This volume includes a discussion of the Trump campaign’s response to this activity, as well as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy. 

And in the second volume, the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the president. The order appointing me special counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. We conducted that investigation, and we kept the office of the acting attorney general apprised of the progress of our work. 

And as set forth in the report, after that investigation, if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. 

We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. The introduction to the Volume II of our report explains that decision. It explains that under longstanding department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that, too, is prohibited. 

A special counsel’s office is part of the Department of Justice, and by regulation, it was bound by that department policy. 

Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider. 

The department’s written opinion explaining the policy makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation. Those points are summarized in our report, and I will describe two of them for you. First, the opinion explicitly permits the investigation of a sitting president, because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents available. Among other things, that evidence could be used if there were co-conspirators who could be charged now. And second, 

the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing. 

And beyond department policy, we were guided by principles of fairness. It would be unfair to potentially — it would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge. So that was Justice Department policy. 

Those were the principles under which we operated. 

And from them, we concluded that we would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime.

We conducted an independent criminal investigation and reported the results to the attorney general, as required by department regulations. The attorney general then concluded that it was appropriate to provide our report to Congress and to the American people. At one point in time, I requested that certain portions of the report be released and the attorney general preferred to make — preferred to make the entire report public all at once and we appreciate that the attorney general made the report largely public. 

And I certainly do not question the attorney general’s good faith in that decision.

Now, I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak to you in this manner. I am making that decision myself. No one has told me whether I can or should testify or speak further about this matter. There has been discussion about an appearance before Congress. 

Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made.  We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself.  And the report is my testimony. 

I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress. In addition, access to our underlying work product is being decided in a process that does not involve our office.

So beyond what I’ve said here today and what is contained in our written work, I do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation or to comment on the actions of the Justice Department or Congress. And it’s for that reason I will not be taking questions today, as well.

Now, before I step away, I want to thank the attorneys, the F.B.I. agents, the analysts, the professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in a fair and independent manner. 

These individuals who spent nearly two years with the special counsel’s office were of the highest integrity. 

And I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments, that there were multiple, systemic efforts to interfere in our election. 

And that allegation deserves the attention of every American. 

Thank you. Thank you for being here today.

ICYMI: If Not for the OLC Memo...

There are now more than 700 former federal prosecutors who have signed on to the statement saying that, absent the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel's determination that a sitting president can't be indicted, president Trump surely have been indicted on multiple counts of obstruction of justice.

Their statement is excerpted below:

We are former federal prosecutors. We have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice.  The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country.

Each of us believes that the conduct of president Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice. 

The folks who signed onto the statement include some who have served as far back as the Nixon, Ford and Carter presidencies; they have a total of over 8929 years of service, and average of over 12 years of service each.

These are not inexperienced people and they're a whole lot more qualified the vast majority of the armchair quarterbacks  - including the president himself, a boatload or three of elected officials, and countless talking heads, Trump voters and Clinton haters who have (or maybe haven't even) read the Mueller report and reached the conclusion that the president was 'totally exonerated.'

So what did these experts find when they read the report?

The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming.  

The "overwhelming" evidence of corrupt intent? Yeah, that includes:

• the president's efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort;
• the president's efforts to limit the scope of Mueller's investigation to exclude his conduct; and
•  the president's efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign. 

And, they provide details on each of those bullet points to make their case, going so far as to point out that

All of this conduct - trying to control and impede the investigation against the president by leveraging his authority over others - is similar to conduct we have seen charged against other public officials and people in powerful positions. 

There was more in the report that added to the obstruction case, they noted; they called out facts on the three bullet points only. And while they note that there are defenses or arguments that could be made, and that under our system the accused are presumed innocent, not guilty, they are clear that

...to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice - the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution - runs counter to logic and our experience. 

As former federal prosecutors, we recognize that prosecuting obstruction of justice cases is critical because unchecked obstruction - which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished - puts our whole system of justice at risk.  We believe strongly that, but for the OLC memo, the overwhelming weight of professional judgment would come down in favor of prosecution for the conduct outlined in the Mueller Report.  

 Another 15 people have signed on during the time it took me to complete this post.

The Update Desk: The Affordable Care Act

So, there's this court case, Texas vs. United States, that maintained that the Affordable Care Act would be unconstitutional because, as of 2019, the penalty for the individual mandate was $0 under president Trump's Christmas Tax Cut. The thinking of the Texas AG, and the 19 GOP states that joined the lawsuit, is that since the individual mandate penalty no longer exists, and because the tax key to the constitutionality of the ACA according to the Supreme Court, and since the whole shebang is tied up with an inseverability clause, it should be struck down. The lawsuit was filed about a year ago, and in December a conservative judge agreed.

Yesterday, the Justice Department made it officially known that it agrees with the decision of the lower court.

The DOJ said Monday that it agrees the decision should stand as the case works its way through the appeals process in the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. 

"The Department of Justice has  determined that the district court's judgment should be affirmed," the department said in a short letter to the appeals court. 

So, while Democrats are getting all riled up, and Republicans are getting all excited that a court may do what they were unable to do, with 60 failed votes and $87,000,000 wasted in the process, I thought I'd remind everyone what this could mean to America.

Back in 2017, I talked about what "repeal and replace later" would mean, beyond the elimination of protections for pre-existing conditions, which the DOJ also did not defend in the early days of the Texas suit.  Here are some of the things I thought of pretty quickly, back then:

1. Immediately shut down Healthcare.gov and the 28 federally facilitated marketplaces and the five state-based marketplaces using the federal platform. 
2. Cancel the coverage for individuals and families who were covered under the now-defunct marketplaces.
3. Return any unused premium to them.
4. Immediately repeal the voluminous taxes required under the Affordable Care Act, whether charged to a business, a health insurer, any medical facilities, and so on. This will of course require an immediate rewriting of the tax code just to get us back to where we were before the Affordable Care Act went into effect.
5. Immediately repeal the individual mandate.
6. Immediately kick over-aged dependents off their parents' policies in any location such coverage is not mandated under any other jurisdiction.
7. Immediately remove the Medical Loss Ration (MLR) requirements, which dictate the percentage of health care premium dollars insurers must pay for benefits (base around 80%) and requires insurers to rebate premiums to insureds when they don't meet the MLR percentage.
8. Immediately eliminate the full coverage for pre-existing conditions at no additional premium - let the games begin.
9. Remove no-cost-sharing coverage for preventative care, including things like lead screening, mammograms and paps, prostate screenings, annual physicals, a whole host of lab tests, and countless other benefits - those can all go back to whatever pricing structure was in place before.
10. Remove all subsidies which currently help people pay for coverage - all of them.  
11. Similarly, remove all supports that are paid to insurance companies to help cover the costs of  insuring the people who got coverage under the ACA. 
12. Eliminate requirements for 'essential benefits' including outpatient services; emergency services; hospitalization; pregnancy, maternity and newborn care; mental health and substance abuse, prescription drugs, and more.
13. Immediately end all funding for Medicaid expansion.
14. Immediately reintroduce annual and lifetime limits on benefits.
15. Immediately increase the population of uninsured by the number of people covered under a marketplace (~10 million or so as of February 2017) and the number covered under Medicaid expansion, ~14 million)

And that's not an exhaustive list -- I forgot mental health parity regs which were enfolded into updates of the ACA along the way, for example. 

Now, some of those numbers have likely changed but the gist of this is that the Affordable Care Act was much, much more than just the individual mandate and protections for people with pre-existing conditions.  Sadly, that's something that politicians from both parties have been unwilling or unable to communicate well, and of course they continue to ignore lots of the other provisions, if for different purposes. 

The formal move by the DOJ this week to not defend the law of the land will embolden progressives on the Medicare-for-All bandwagon; sadly, it won't likely embolden anyone else to work to defend the other key provisions that also protected patients.  

As the president would say, SAD.

Swampy Glass Houses and Whatnot

Someone on Twitter questioned why "a victim needed a team of high-powered Democratic-operative lawyers."

This led me to wonder why an alleged perpetrator needed to spend day after day after day after day after day at the White House preparing to answer questions about something he says he didn't do?

Just as he did several weeks ago to prepare for his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, Brett M. Kavanaugh was back inside a room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building - again facing questioners readying him for a high-stakes appearance in the Senate.

Commenters on the tweet wondered who was paying for all of that, since the victim is merely a university professor, which caused me to wonder who's paying for all of Kavanaugh's practice. Maybe it's the RNC, which for a time handled the legal bills for the president, a self-proclaimed billionaire several times over (both the number of billions, and the number of proclamations)?

Here are just a couple of mentions of that:

Combined with the Republican National Committee, Trump's campaign paid a total of $5.5 million in legal bills during 2017 amid probes into Russia's role in the 2016 election. The payments were made to law firms, as well as the company owned by the president's family.

The Republican National Committee has for months been quietly paying expenses previously covered by the Trump campaign in an arrangement that experts say is bizarre, but legal. The payments include more than $37,000 a month in rent to president Donald Trump's company, and thousands more in salary to Vice President Mike Pence's nephew, John Pence. The payments started abruptly last September, when the RNC came under pressure to stop paying Trump's personal legal bills in the special counsel's Russia investigation.

Nope -- it's not the RNC. Actually, it's you and me who are paying for Kavanaugh's truth-telling practice sessions.

From the same Washington Post article linked in the second sentence of this post,

This time, the questions were much different. An array of White House aides, playing the role of various senators on the Judiciary Committee, quizzed Kavanaugh last week about his sex life and other personal matters in an attempt to prepare him for a hearing that would inevitably be uncomfortable. 

The article goes on to note

In a preparation session on Tuesday, Kavanaugh faced more than a dozen White House aides in the Eisenhower building, during which aides played different senators for more than two hours.

Dozens of aides, who knows how many hours over the past week or so, spent making sure Kavanaugh tells the truth no matter how he's asked, and that he doesn't lose his cool doing it.

And we're footing the bill.

I wonder why they're not asking Franklin Graham and Ralph Reed and the other evangelical leaders who are threatening the White House that the flock won't vote if the administration doesn't get Kavanaugh confirmed to pay for his 'practice', since they're the ones who have drawn the line in the sand?

Of course, it's nothing new for us to be paying the bills for Trump, his family, his staffers, and his companies.  That's right -- his companies. In this USA Today article from last fall, we learn

Taxpayers are footing the legal bill for at least 10 Justice Department lawyers and paralegals to work on lawsuits related to president Trump's private businesses.

Neither the White House nor the Justice Department will say how much it is costing taxpayers but federal payroll records show the salaries of the government lawyers assigned to the cases range from about $133,000 to $185,000. 

The government legal team is defending president Trump in four lawsuits stemming from his unusual decision not to divest himself from hundred of his companies that are entangled with customers that include foreign governments and officials.

In these cases, Justice Department attorneys are not defending policy actions Trump took as president. Instead, the taxpayer-funded lawyers are making the case that it is not unconstitutional for the president's private companies to earn profits from foreign government and officials while he's in office.

Comically, we're paying them to suggest that there's no difference between foreign government officials and their representatives actually paying to roll around on one of those glorious Trump Hotel mattresses and a different president selling a book.

President Obama, we know he received royalties from the sale of books during his presidency. Did he violate the Emoluments Clause because he likely would have received royalties from the sale of books to foreign government representatives? 

Hmm. Likely would have... actually did...  Yeah, there's a difference there, and you don't have to be a government lawyer to figure that out.

I don't care who's paying Dr. Ford's legal bills - she's entitled to her preparation, just like Kavanaugh is entitled to his. She can choose who'll pay her bills - but we're stuck paying Kavanaugh's, whether we like it or not.

I also care that you and I are constantly paying for the president's money-making business, whether it's office space rentals, or golf cart rentals, or legal bills. And that we pay legal bills for his children. And I care about all of the legal ways campaign contributions can be spent.

The bottom line here? People who are so upset about Ford hiring lawyers should stop and think about the lawyers that they're paying for, without their knowledge, permission or approval.

 And, by the way - people who live in glass swamp houses shouldn't throw pond scum.

Wondering on Wednesday (v123)

Well, well, well. It's Wednesday again - let the wondering begin.

I've been disconnected from news and stuff most of the day, so I have to wonder whether anyone else did a 'Hope and change' comment about poor Hope Hicks, the president's other daughter, resigning from her position as White House communications director?  That was one headline I saw as soon as I got back home. Hicks, who admitted to telling 'white (house) lies' in her role as Communications Director, was the one who wrote the press release praising alleged domestic abuser Rob Porter who, it seems, was her boyfriend at the time.  She's apparently been planning this for a while, and it's not related to her testimony before the House Intelligence Committee where the lying was admitted. 

While Hicks was fairly under the radar - didn't handle press briefings or do interviews or any of the traditional CommsDir roles -- she apparently made her mark on folks, like Trump's General Kelly.

I quickly realized what so many had learned about Hope: she is strategic, poised and wise beyond her years. She became a trusted adviser and counselor, and did a tremendous job overseeing the communications for the president's agenda including the passage of historic tax reform. She has served her country with great distinction. To say that she will be missed is an understatement.

Of course, this is the same General Kelly who spoke so highly of Porter in that lovingly crafted press release.

Rob Porter is a man of true integrity and honor, and I can't say enough good things about him. He is a friend, a confidante, and a trusted professional. I am proud to serve alongside him.

I wonder, is there some compromised judgment here on the part of the General? Or compromised sense of duty?

Speaking of compromised judgment, the president managed to blow yet another tweet gasket about his Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.

Why is AG Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn't the IG an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!

This time, instead of rolling over and playing dead, Sessions fought back.

We have initiated the appropriate process that will ensure complaints against this Department will be fully and fairly acted upon if necessary. As long as I am the Attorney General, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this Department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution.

I have wondered, for a while, why it is that Sessions stays and puts up with Trump's bullying, public thrashing, and general abuse. I still wonder about that, but at least he took a step today and fought back, something that DOJ employees have long wanted, since Trump also attacks them with impunity and with regularity.

One more before we go: remember the "Hispanic, we believe" judge who was involved in the Trump University case? The one who would not be able to be fair to Trump because of his heritage, and because Trump was building a wall, and therefore it was impossible for the judge to rule on anything in Trump's favor?

Yeah, that Judge handed down a very beneficial ruling on the border wall.

US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has cleared on potential obstacle to president Donald Trump's long-promised border wall, ruling Tuesday that the administration has the authority to waive a host of environmental laws and other regulations to begin construction.

I wonder, how long will it take for Trump to apologize for his extremely racist comments about the judge?

Wayne's World

Did you catch Wayne LaPierre's talk at CPAC the other day?

He talked about 'hardening' schools and making them safer, of course. He also took credit, on behalf of the NRA, for the National Instant Check System, and for fighting to make sure that all the bad people who needed to be in the background system were there. Many people disagree with those characterizations of the NRA's positions, but that's a story for another post.

What I wanted to share with you is LaPierre's vision of America; if you like the 2016 Republican National Convention or Trump's inaugural address, you'll love this stuff.

As usual, the opportunists wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain. Saul Alinsky would have been proud. The breakneck speed of calls for more gun control laws, and the breathless national media eager to smear the NRA - think about that, in the midst of genuine grief, in an understandable passion, as millions of Americans searched for meaningful solutions, what do we find? Chris Murphy, Nancy Pelosi and more, cheered on by the national media, eager to blame the NRA and call for even more government control. They hate the NRA. They hate the Second Amendment, they hate individual freedom....

For them it is not a safety issue, it is a political issue. They care more about control and more of it, their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms, so they can eradicate all individual freedoms. 

 They fantasize about more laws stopping what other laws fail to stop. The truth is, laws succeed only when people obey them, that is what the law-abiding majority in this country practices. But once again, so many existing laws were ignored. Their laws do not stop illegal criminals from crossing our borders every single day. Their laws do not stop this scourge of gang violence and drug crime that savages Baltimore, Chicago and every major American community. Their laws have not stopped the plague of opioids and Chinese fentanyl that floods the streets and kills victims every single day in this country. No wonder law-abiding Americans all over this country revere their Second Amendment that protects them more than ever. They do not care if their laws work or not, they just want to get more laws to get more control over people. 

Hold a moment please - the "breakneck speed" with which LaPierre moved from hardening schools to protect children to accusing Democrats and the media of being responsible for, or at the very least complicit in, all of society's ills and of trying to take over the universe was truly breathtaking.

And that's not all. There's a whole cabal of America-hating bastages at work here that need to be foiled, don't you know?  You don't know?  Well, follow along.

Obama promised a fundamental transformation of our country. And you know what? It began with his own national party, a party that is now infested with saboteurs who do not believe in capitalism, do not believe in the Constitution,  do not believe in our freedom, and do not believe in America as we know it. 

Obama may be gone but their Utopian dream, it marches on and president Trump's election, while crucial, cannot turn away the wave of these new European-style socialists bearing down upon us. I'm not just talking about Bernie Sanders, I mean, he's near the end of his career. What about Elizabeth Warren, Bill De Blasio, Andrew Cuomo, Cory Booker, Christopher Murphy and Keith Ellison?  They are not Democrats in the mode of John F. Kennedy or Tip O'Neill.

They hide behind labels like 'progressive' to make their socialist agenda more palatable and that is terrifying. And that should terrify every citizen who values the American ideal in this country of individual liberty. They politicize the Department of Justice. They weaponize the Internal Revenue Service, the EPA, perhaps cripple the FBI and the Intelligence Community, and seized and embedded leadership in all of them to advance their agenda 

Set aside, for a moment, the idea that my Sonofa Gov Andrew Cuomo and New York City's mayor Bill De Blasio have anything to do with the DOJ, the IRS, the EPA or the FBI and the Intelligence Community. Note also that that Keith Ellison, as a DNC executive - and a Democrat in the House - has even less influence than do Warren, Booker and Murphy in the Senate. But again, the truth and facts are not what we're looking for here.

This is a raw meat fest, CPAC is, and everyone knows it. I was naive, I guess, as to how raw the meat was - it's still on the hoof, for Pete's sake. It's blue and mooing, I tell you. Ready to get some of that?

Absolute control in every corner of our government is their ultimate dream. These intellectual elites, they think that they are smarter than we are. They think that they are smarter than the rest of us. And they think they are better than we are. They truly believe it. And you know it. 

The privileged and the powerful, they think they deserve to be in charge of every level of power but you know what? The United States Constitution makes it absolutely clear that they are not in charge. We, the people, are in charge of this country! But Washington - OH. MY. GOSH. The city likes to ignore that. Our intelligence community shrouds everything in secrecy, driving into darkness every dirty memo. And every dirty institutional secret and memory, in the name of national security. But when the leaks come, as so often occurs in the light of day, it reveals nothing about the security of our country and it reveals everything about the corruption of those in power. That is because in a captive society, the loss of transparency results in the loss of truth. 

And I'm thinking, "in the midst of genuine grief, in an understandable passion, as millions of Americans searched for meaningful solutions", the Executive Director of the NRA went off the deep end, way off the deep end, into the dark spiral of paranoia.

I can understand a bit of bad apples in organizations as large as the FBI. But what is hard to understand is why nobody at the FBI stood up and called BS on its rogue leadership. I mean, really, where was the systemic resistance that should protect every powerful institution that serves us? The lowest-ranking Marine knows to resist an unlawful order. The rank and file in every powerful institution must police its own leadership.

Do you think the membership of the NRA was hearing that call, to resist the urges of LaPierre and his bizarro world vision? And do you think LaPierre was right to co-opt the Parkland teens' rallying cry of "we call BS" for his own purpose?

But still, too much of today's Washington, nobody speaks out. Nobody challenges authority. Everyone keeps their mouths closed and their heads down. And that is exactly how socialistic societies function, when leaders do whatever they want, when resistance and repercussion disappears, and when the fundamental concept of moral behavior is expunged. 

The state rules the day and anyone who resists is smeared right into submission. Yep, you know it. - yes, the "art of the smear." 

The state rules the day, and the president, its leader, is a master of the art of the smear - it's one of the ways he vanquished his 16 opponents.

We live in a socialistic age of the art of the smear. It does not have to be true, it just has to stick somewhere, anywhere. It is designed to degrade, destroy, and it is all over the national media to serve their agenda.

Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!  Oh, sorry - I digress. I was practicing the Art of the Smear, which I'm sure will be a new Trump book now that the title has been handed to someone on a sliver platter.

And socialism is a movement that loves the smear. Racists. Misogynist. Sexist. Xenophobia and more. These are the weapons. These character assassinations scream to permanently hang on their targets and create a growing segment of victims. Because socialism feeds off of manipulative victims. You name the group and they will find a way to turn them into victims, they keep their movement growing by finding somebody to be offended every minute of every day.

You know, those 20 manipulative first graders and the six manipulative adults at Sandy Hook, and the 14 manipulative teenagers and three adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and all of the other manipulative victims of other mass shootings, the bastages. 

They do not like free speech any more than they like the Second Amendment. They like only limited speech, controlled speech, controlled by them through safe zones where they can shame the outspoken or riot to shut them up. If you still think that we have full First Amendment freedom in this country, try going right now at Berkeley and speaking out in favor of conservative causes or even the Second Amendment.

Forgetting, he must be, the sad tale of Milo Yiannopoulos. You see,  CPAC's sponsor invited Milo, who was the victim of those riots-against-free-speech-at-Berkeley to speak at the 2017 gathering of this same voodoo-juice-drinking crowd -- and then disinvited him when his free speech was a little too freely offensive. How soon, how soon, the conservatives forget that CPAC is a safe zone itself!

He then talked about how the "socialist state dreams of manipulating schoolchildren" to get information from them, all kinds of information about their parents, what they watch on TV (ironic, since the NRA and LaPierre point out how violent video games cause mass shootings) and if they own guns and stuff.

And all that private information will be entered in to the ultimate list, that cloud of data storage that couldn't care less about due process and constitutional freedom and your privacy as an American citizen and then it is just a short hop to the systematic destruction of our most basic freedoms in this country and you all know what they are, but let me say them: family; faith; individual responsibility; and self destiny. A free market economy; patriotism; respect for our national flag and our national anthem. Personal liberty and justice for all... It will not take long if we stay on the path we are on to erase them completely. That is the consequence of this new socialist wave in America.  

You know, I hear a lot of quiet in this room and I sense your anxiety. And you should be anxious and you should be frightened. If they seize power, if the so-called new European socialists take over the House, and the Senate, and God forbid they get the White House again, our American freedoms could be lost and our country will be changed forever.

I wonder, was the anxiety coming from LaPierre's ranting and raving?  Mine sure was.

And the first to go will be the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. History proves it. Every time, in every nation, in which this political disease rises to power, its citizens are repressed, their freedoms are destroyed, and their firearms are banned and confiscated. It is all backed in this country by the social engineering and the billions (billions of dollars, he means) of people like George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and more, and gleefully promoted by those who have risen to power in the so-called national news media and seized control of social media to spread their propaganda.

They do not tell us news, you all know it and people know it all over the United States. They say it to me every day, they do not tell us news, they tell us what we need to think... 

You know, some people out there think that the NRA should just stick to its Second Amendment agenda and not talk about all our freedoms, but real freedom requires protection of all of our rights, and the Second Amendment isn't worth its own words in a country where all of our other individual freedoms are destroyed...

Forewarned is forearmed -- the NRA TV channel is looking to be way more bigly involved, and way more bigly accessible, just like NBC and CNN. Which are fake news. And Fox, which is real news, except that it does exactly the same thing as LaPierre just described the media doing, which was bad, in case you didn't catch that.

And now, the big finish - and yes, he does talk about guns again. I forgot that he was the Executive Director of the NRA for a second there - as, I think, did he.

Let's be clear. We are never talking about an armed resistance against the socialist corruption of our government. We are always talking about a resistance armed with the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights in our country. The genius of those documents, the brilliance of America, of our country itself, is all of our freedoms are for every single citizen and there is no greater personal individual freedom than the right to keep and bear arms, the right to protect yourself, and the right to survive. 

It is not bestowed by man, but granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright. So I call right now today on every citizen who loves this country and who treasures freedom to stand and unflinchingly defend the Second Amendment, the one freedom that protects us all in this country.

And yes, in case you were wondering, LaPierre did close with the "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.

And yes, in case you were wondering, CPAC, according to several reports, including this one, and this one, is a gun-free zone.

Ethics Defections

It's hard to imagine that it was just over four months ago that I talked about the real problem with the Trump administration. It was not Russia, I said.

The Trump administration, in its infancy, is a swamp.

It's the kind of swamp where everything that is officially called out as being unethical is either an accident or, more commonly, completely ignored. This is particularly true if the notification comes from the Office of Government Ethics. (More on that in a minute)

It's that, and more.

The Trump administration is a swamp of people who think that running America is the same as running a big old family business. One where obfuscation and diversion and dismissal and deflection are the norm. One where, knowingly or ignorantly, rules are skirted, or it's pretended that there are no rules. Where the moral compass is provided by the man in the mirror, or by the same man in the corner office, or by other members of the family, or handpicked associates, without external scrutiny.

Chant with me: #DraintheSwamp #DraintheSwamp.

Hui Chen was, until late June, the Compliance Counsel in the Department of Justice's Criminal Fraud Division. I'm familiar with Chen and her work from my day job, where I have the opportunity to research best practices in the world of ethics and compliance.

Her arrival at the DOJ back in 2015 was incredibly well received by experts, consultants and thought leaders in the ethics and compliance world. After all, Chen had come from the practitioner side of the house, having worked at both Pfizer and Microsoft. Real world experience is what she brought to the table, in how she helped evaluate companies, their E+C programs, and issues of noncompliance.

Until she quit, several days ago, and several months before her contract was up. In a Linked In post, Chen provided some insight on why she left. Here's an excerpt:

First, trying to hold companies to standards that our current administration is not living up to was creating a cognitive dissonance that I could not overcome. To sit across the table from companies and question how committed they were to ethics and compliance felt not only hypocritical, but very  much like shuffling the deck chair on the Titanic. Even as I engaged in those questioning and evaluations, on my mind were the numerous lawsuits pending against the President of the United States... Those are conducts I would not tolerate seeing in a company, yet I worked under an administration that engaged in exactly those conduct(s). I wanted no more part of it.

Now, some have questioned whether Chen's politics - she's participated in protests wearing 'Resist' clothing and holding a sign exhorting people to support the Constitution (the nerve!) - were the real reason why she left. And, she did indicate future plans include helping elect ethical candidates for public office.

But all of that notwithstanding, in the final analysis, I believe she walked the walk and talked the talk.

It's hard for me to imagine that Donald Trump would still be employed at any company I've worked for - not the family owned business, not the industry leader, and not my current employer. Not because of his politics, but because his behavior, his words, and his actions are inconsistent with anything any of these companies would consider ethical. So are the behaviors, words and actions of many he chose to bring into the government.

As the folks at Radical Compliance pointed out,

In the corporate world, if a CEO under investigation for misconduct violations fired the in-house counsel investigating him, the board would have his scalp. We would all be attending our compliance industry conferences, lecturing ourselves about best practices, and saying that the compliance officer at that organization should take the brave step and resign.

At the top of the post, I mentioned the Office of Government Ethics. We've heard more about, and from, that group since Trump won the election I think, than ever before.

Earlier today, the OGE's director, Walter Shaub Jr, tendered his resignation, effective on July 19th. In an interview, Shaub noted

There isn't much more I could accomplish at the Office of Government Ethics, given the current situation. OGE's recent experiences have made it clear that the ethics programs needs to be strengthened. 

Indeed, they do.

How long before others follow Chen and Shaub out of government service and into arenas where differences can be made?