Treacherous Trump

"Hence," Donald Trump remarked in the third of a series of three tweets on Wednesday,"legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations. The Presidency is a far more important task!"

They may be in the process of being crafted, but they won't get completed.  Either no approximate documents will come about, or  they  won't take him out of business operations,  as we may learn at the press conference Trump promises for December 15 to reveal the new arrangement. Or not.

Vox's Libby Nelson only began to outline Trump's opportunity to turn the presidency into his personal and family cash cow when she noted

Foreign governments are already trying to curry favor with the Trump administration by staying in Trump’s hotels and appointing his business partners as diplomatic envoys. Trump has met in his New York office with business partners from India. He brought up an issue he considers crucial to his Scotland golf course, wind farms, in a call with British politician Nigel Farage. And stalled Trump-branded projects in Argentina and the nation of Georgia have suddenly been able to proceed since he was elected president.

Economist Dean Baker nine days ago suggested the blatant conflict-of-interest could be sidestepped in three simple steps:

1) Donald Trump arranges to hire three auditors from an independent accounting firm. Each one does an independent assessment of Trump's holdings and assigns it a value.

2) The middle assessment becomes a benchmark. Donald Trump buys an insurance policy that will guarantee him that he will get this amount of money when all assets are sold. If the total take is less than the benchmark, he collects on the insurance policy. Any money received in excess of the benchmark goes to a charity of Trump's choosing (not the Trump Foundation).

3) All the proceeds from the sales are placed in a blind trust.

As Baker recognized, the president-elect won't do this on his own.

Neither will Congress force him to do so. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who was so energized from the House Select Committee's investigation of Benghazi (!),  and House Oversight Committee chairperson Jason Chaffetz, who was anxious to begin impeachment proceedings against a president-elect Clinton, suddenly have gotten cold feet.

"Every minute you are not  talking about Trump's self-enrichment  & corruption," anti-Trump conservative David Frum stated last week on CNN, "is a minute you are wasting." McCarthy and Chaffetz won't be the only Republicans who will whiff on this central issue. On Thursday, former U.S. Representative Joe Walsh neatly summed up the GOP's likely approach when he tweeted  "this whole Trump/conflict of interest crap is much ado aout nothing. We've never had a real businessman be President before. Deal with that."

There you have the entire conservative ethos wrapped in three short sentences: Corruption is fine, as long as it's our guy. Only capitalists should run the government. Up yours!

In a nation with a President who could be elected only with the (direct of indirect) assistance of the director of  the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Vladimir Putin, the nation's media is faced with a responsibility arguably greater than it ever has had before. Unfortunately, as Frum has tweeted also, "if Trump wants to imprison flag burners, imagine what he'll try to do to journalists who report on his corruption."

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Picking Pockets

The platform of Black Lives Matter lists six areas of "demands," which in their terms they group under: political power, community control, economic justice, invest-divest, reparations, and end the war on black people.

Amidst the hot, radical, and absolutist rhetoric are legitimate proposals- uh, er- demands including "an end to capital punishment," an "end to the criminalization and dehumanization of black people," and "an immediate end to the privatization of police, prisons, jails, probation, parole, food, phone and all other criminal justice related services."|

As it happens, the State of New Jersey (by statute) ended capital punishment several years ago, generally avoids the "zero-tolerance school policies and arrests of students" and placement of police in schools slammed by BLM, and has largely not privatized criminal justice services (the hideous Governor Christie, notwithstanding).

Nonetheless, even in the predominately Democratic and liberal state abutted by Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware, there are disturbing penal trends. Gannett-owned Asbury Park Press reports

The chairman of the Assembly's Judiciary Committee said Monday he wants state lawmakers to study municipal court reform after an Asbury Park Press investigation called the fairness of the system into question and showed how municipalities increasingly rely on court fines for revenue.

"(The story) gives cause to take a step back and think this is an area that we should study and look at to determine if there should be legislative fixes," said state Assemblyman John McKeon, D-Madison, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "Justice should be just that at all levels."

Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon, R-Little Silver, said the Press report raised issues that should be a concern of every elected official.

"We have to stop looking at motorists as ATM machines," he said. "You want to remove any profit motivation from police enforcement of any kind. When tickets are written that don't improve safety, it doesn't help anybody. It's not a reasonable way to raise revenue."

The mountain west has the Rocky Mountains, South Dakota and Wyoming the Black Hills; Florida has Disney World and New Jersey has the shore or more popularly, "the Shore." However

The Press investigation found that municipalities often turn to the law for new revenue, especially in small Shore towns where municipal court revenues have nearly doubled in the last five years. Towns have the power to pass new ordinances or increase fines in old ones, enforce the fines through its police force and then send defendants to local courts headed by judges appointed by the town leaders.

Against this backdrop, municipal courts in Monmouth and Ocean counties raked in more than $26.2 million in 2015 — up $3.2 million, or 14 percent, from 2010. Municipal court revenue in 37 Monmouth and Ocean county towns increased from 2010 through 2015. The average increase was 39 percent.

"Our courts and police should not be seen as revenue generators," said O'Scanlon, who added that his staff has been discussing the municipal money grab for a while and exploring legal remedies. "That's not what they're there for."

Or at least that's not what they should be there for. Nonetheless, they are, as the north Jersey legislator recognizes:

"It's fair that municipalities and governing bodies get to appoint those who serve as judges and prosecutors, but on the other end, maybe part of the answer is to insulate the judiciary from that kind of pressure," McKeon said.

Municipal judges are appointed every three years by governing bodies of towns. And while they're sworn to follow the rule of law and judicial ethics, the pressure to bring in the money is potent in New Jersey, lawyers and former judges told the Press.

The New Jersey State Bar Association earlier this year assembled a panel to study the independence of municipal judges and whether the political pressure they face through their appointment impacts decision-making. The panel hasn't yet disclosed its findings.

That should be enough to energize an organization such as Black Lives Movement keen on wiping out the abuses of the law enforcement and criminal justice systems. If not, they might notice

New Jersey's municipal court fines are also regressive and have a negative impact on the poor, who often end up with more charges and fines if they fail to respond to a ticket or miss a payment on a past violation, Ramsey said.

"The fines are the same whether you're a millionaire or not," he said. "It kills (poor) people. It clobbers them. They can't pay the fines."

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey is studying the impact of the state's municipal courts on the poor, said Alexi Velez, a law fellow with the organization.

Velez said she's examining the hefty monetary fines and sanctions for traffic offenses and low-level non-indictable crimes heard in municipal court. She said much of the data that have been collected correspond to the findings in the Press' investigation.

"We're interested in how the shortcomings of due process impact all New Jerseyans," Velez said. "In particular, we are aware of the disproportionate impact on the 11 percent of those who live at or below the poverty line."

It's highly unlikely that this is an issue confined to New Jersey. Undoubtedly, there are municipal courts in states throughout the nation acting as a banker for municipal government. While the American Civil Liberties Union is providing air power, it could use some ground support from Black Lives Matter in the "war" it believes the American system of injustice is waging.














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She Knows Sexism!

According to NBC News

Two sources at the top of the Donald Trump transition team confirmed to MSNBC that they spoke to the president-elect today and that Donald Trump was "furious" at Kellyanne Conway's comments Sunday suggesting Trump "betrayed" his supporters by even considering Mitt Romney for a position in his cabinet.

"Kellyanne went rogue at Donald Trump's expense at the worst possible time," a source familiar with Trump's thinking told MSNBC. 

Trump's top aides said they were "baffled" by Conway's comments and suggested that it feeds into a growing concern inside the campaign that "instead of driving Donald Trump's message, she's pushing her own agenda." 

"It's dangerous," said a top transition aide. 

Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus have reportedly been growing frustrated by Conway's failure to become a team player in a transition process where the top players are forming a tight knit group around the president-elect.

Conway, responding to MSNBC via text early Monday, denied the report, saying, "It is all false. And sexist."


And sexist.

It seems that a clique led by Bannon and Priebus may be trying to put enough heat on Conway that she is forced out, voluntarily or otherwise. That may or may not have anything to do with gender, but the claim that the report of their displeasure is sexist would be bizarre were it not another example of the Trumpists whining about the media. They may yet raise the the "blame the messenger" approach to a new level.

It shouldn't be necessary, though, to remind Mrs. Conway that she remained arguably the top staffer in a campaign whose candidate has been accused by several women of sexual assault and spoke publicly of Megyn Kelly's menstrual period. Of Carly Fiorina he remarked "Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?! I mean, she's a woman, and I'm not s'posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?" And an audiotape revealed

“I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it,” Trump is heard saying. It was unclear when the events he was describing took place. The tape was recorded several months after he married his third wife, Melania.

“Whoa,” another voice said.

“I did try and f--- her. She was married,” Trump says.

Trump continues: “And I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, ‘I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.’”

“I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married,” Trump says. “Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”

At that point in the audio, Trump and Bush appear to notice Arianne Zucker, the actress who is waiting to escort them into the soap-opera set.

“Your girl’s hot as s---, in the purple,” says Bush, who’s now a co-host of NBC’s “Today” show.

“Whoa!” Trump says. “Whoa!”

“I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her,” Trump says. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”

“And when you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

“Whatever you want,” says another voice, apparently Bush’s.

“Grab them by the p---y,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

Kellyanne Conway stood by her man and finds a news report- not Trump's statements or behavior over a quarter century- "sexist." She and Donald Trump deserve each other.

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Ramping Up Voter Suppression

At first, it seemed not only absurd, but purposeless, when on Sunday Donald Trump tweted “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

He didn't win the Electoral College in a landslide, of course, as he garnered 306 electoral votes (pending recounts, which could lower the figure). In the six previos presidential elections, the victor was awarded more than 306 votes in four occasions, with the average in the last six elections 336 electoral votes.

But Trump's claim of an electoral vote landslide is no more an accident than the fabrication that he "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."  When he charged fraud

Trump offered nothing to back up his allegations of wrongdoing in the Nov. 8 election -- one that returned to his pre-election mantra of a “rigged” result. Although Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton 306-232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, the former secretary of state leads Trump by more than 2.2 million votes in the nationwide popular vote, according to a running tally by the non-partisan Cook Political Report. A Trump spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cook shows Clinton with 64.65 million total votes to Trump’s 62.42 million, or a lead of 48.2 percent to 46.5 percent. Third-party and other candidates received 7.19 million votes, or about 5.4 percent. In 13 swing states, Trump won 48.4 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 46.6 percent.

On Nov. 13, Gregg Phillips, a former Texas Health and Human Services Commission deputy commissioner, tweeted about there being 3 million votes that were cast by noncitizens.

Attempting to con the masses, Trump is trying to insinuate the myth that there is a conspiracy. Phillip Bump of The Washington Post explains

Phillips claims in another tweet that his organization (it's not clear which organization, but it may be VoteStand) has a database of 180 million voter registrations and he confirms that 3 million of the people in that database who voted are noncitizens. He has been asked to provide evidence for that claim repeatedly, without having done so.

Regardless, the story was quickly picked up by the conspiracy-theory hawking site InfoWars, a story that was linked out at the top of the Drudge Report on Nov. 14.

When Matt Drudge qualifies something with "Claim:" it's worth treating it with skepticism.

The rumor-debunking site Snopes looked at Phillips' claim and found no evidence for it. (It also noted that Phillips has a history of implying that Obamacare will lead to the registration of millions of immigrants here illegally.)

(This is standard operating procedure among conservatives. A website makes something up and then rank-and-file conservatives pick it up and spread it as settled fact.)

"Worth saying," Jamelle Bouie tweeted, "that broad accusations of illegal voting were the first steps toward voter suppression laws in WI, NC, TX, etc."

And maybe elsewhere.  Four hours after the original remark, Trump tweeted "serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.  So why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias- big problem."

In addition to the standard- yet tactically wise- GOP tactic of whining about the media, this is setting the predicate for claiming a wide-ranging Democratic voter fraud conspiracy.







"The Trump voting tweet," David Frum observed, "may be more than an ego spasm. It may also be a warning that voting is about to be made more difficult for millions."  Donald Trump is no RINO. He recognizes, as does the entire Party, there is no way Republicans can consistently win races for national office without voter suppression, and their success on November 8 will only embolden them.

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Populist In Image, Not In Substance

Many experts have cited the role of the media in enabling the rise and triumph of America's most famous demagogue.  Among them is the Shorenstein Center in Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard University, which published a study in June, shortly before the Republican and Democratic national conventions.

The Kennedy School found Trump had received overwhelmingly positive coverage, largely because his campaign could be framed as "gaining ground," rather than "losing ground," "trailing," or "leading" (chart from Media Tenor via Shorenstein Center, 1/1/15-12/31/15).

Failure to cover the Trump campaign adequately in the general campaign followed, though it was concealed by "hot topics" such as Trump's support of sexual assault and animosity toward Mexican immigrants.

In the end, obviously, the former played little role in the election, while the GOP candidate was boosted by the latter. Ignored was Trump's obeisance to special interest groups, manifested in an economic perspective that was radically pro-corporate and a cultural perspective that reflected pandering to the Christian evangelical and pro-gun violence lobbies.

This has not ended. In a recent Politico magazine article about Steve Bannon's love for both Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, Ruairi Arrieta-Kenna writes "years before the partisan provocateur of the 2016 cycle hitched himself to the upstart populist billionaire from New York..."  In late July, 2015 "Bannon made the Palin-Trump populist connection explicitly clear- with a dose of Reagan adulation for good measure."

Arrieta-Kenna, with no sense of irony, recalled that Palin a few days later wrote for Bannon's outfit, Breitbart News "Trump ha tapped into America's great populist tradition by speaking to concerns of working class voters..."  Building the myth of the man as a populist has taken him a long way electorally.

Donald Trump wants everyone to know he is the best, as a negotiator, in the education he has had, the money he has made, and the women he has seduced or grabbed.  His populism is anit-Establishment (in rhetoric) but hardly anti-elite.

Trump doesn't rail about the elite, instead bragging about having attended the elite Wharton School of Finance and of being "really rich,"  He knows "the best negotiators. I’m in New York.... I know people you’ve never heard of that are better than all of them.” He is truly special, and having claimed as President he will be above the law, wants you to know it.
 
He revels in his status as a wealthy celebrity, yet is portrayed as a "populist."    That "populist" is opposed to a federal minimum wage, wants Dodd-Frank repealed, has a tax plan which gives the 1% a $214,000 tax cut, and has nominated for Education Secretary a billionaire who wants to take public education out of the hands of the public and put it into the claws of private profit-seekers. He owns $120 million to Deutsche Bank, according to The Economist (from which the chart below is taken).

"His children," Jonathan Chait notes, "have taken roles on the transition team. Ivanka attended official discussions with heads of state of Japan and Argentina. The president-elect met with Indian business partners to discuss business and lobbied a British politician to oppose offshore wind farms because one will block the view at one of his Scottish golf courses."






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Where Is Waldo? Where Is Hillary?

Asked about prosecution of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump replied "It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about. I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t. She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways.”

That was interpreted by friends and enemies, supporters and critics, alike as nearly a rejection by the President-elect of prosection of his former rival.  It may, however, have been something more- brilliant political positioning in which the incoming President signals flexibility but avoids committing himself.

Election security expert J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, writes

Were this year’s deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked. But I don’t believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other. The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts.

The New York Times notes "Uniting around the social media hashtag #AuditTheVote, the campaign-after-the-campaign has picked up momentum among grass-roots activists still mourning Mr. Trump’s victory," though results would have to be reversed in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (in which the final vote is not in, but Trump is in the lead) for Clinton to claim victory.

Nevertheless, as Politico reports, a certain presidential candidate has set up a fundraising website to acquire the $2 million required to pay for filing fees and the recount for Wisconsin (deadline Friday), Pennsylvania (deadline Monday) and Michigan (deadline Wednesday).  Her statement reads "After a divisive and painful presidential race, reported hacks into voter and party databaes and individal email accounts are causing many  Americans to wonder if our election results are reliable."







Presumably, the cash would be readily available- but the candidate is Jill Stein, not Hillary Clinton.

This is not out of a sense of guilt. If all of Stein's voters had instead opted for Clinton (extraordinarily unlikely, obviously), the Democrat still would have fallen short in Pennsylvania and therefore been unable to deny Trump the needed 270 electoral votes.

However, this has been a presidential election in the most powerful nation on earth. Although it is very unlikely a recount would overturn Trump's victory in each of the three states, Stein is doing the right thing,  and probably for the right reason. Hillary Clinton, though, is silent, which should give rise as to whether the possibility of  prosecution by Donald Trump's Justice Department trumps her interest in a final, definitive count in an election, in which, she said, she was "the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse."





Update: The Michigan Secretary of State has declared the state a win for Trump, by 10,704 votes.



                                                 HAPPY THANKSGIVING






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Exit The Populist

Question: what do public education, public roads, and earned benefits have in common with each other?

Answer: They all are in danger in the upcoming presidency of the great populist and (white) working-class hero, Donald Trump.

Trump has announced that he is nominating Betsy DeVos, a member of the DeVos family of Michigan, which rivals the Koch family of Kansas in its wealth and dedication to right-wing, corporatist causes.  Tierney Sneed of Talking Points Memo reports

Much of DeVos’ political activity has been focused on the expansion of charter schools and school vouchers, putting her selection in line with Trump’s campaign proposal to shift $20 billion in federal education funding into state block grants to enroll children in charter and private schools.

The DeVos family bankrolled a failed 2000 Michigan ballot initiative that would have required that students enrolled in failing public school districts be offered vouchers for private school tuition.

Though the measure was rejected soundly by voters, the DeVoses doubled down on the issue and formed a political action committee to support pro-voucher candidates nationwide, according to ChalkBeat, a nonprofit news organization focused on education. They also operate philanthropic organizations known for giving to entities aligned with the charter school movement, including faith-based schools and conservative think tanks, Inside Philanthropy reported.

Charter schools usually are not good for students, but generally profitable for the private companies sponsoring them- with taxpayer money.  That sounds like the motivation for Donald Trump's transportation plan, under which as currently written

the federal government would offer tax credits to private investors interested in funding large infrastructure projects, who would put down some of their own money up front, then borrow the rest on the private bond markets. They would eventually earn their profits on the back end from usage fees, such as highway and bridge tolls (if they built a highway or bridge) or higher water rates (if they fixed up some water mains). So instead of paying for their new roads at tax time, Americans would pay for them during their daily commute. And of course, all these private developers would earn a nice return at the end of the day.

At least Trump was less antagonistic during the primary campaign toward earned benefits than were most of his rivals. Now that he has been elected, however, that is beginning to change.   Jonathan Chait observes that in a Fox News interview with Brett Baier

“Your solution has always been to put things together, including entitlement reform,” says Baier, using Republican code for privatizing Medicare. Ryan replies, “If you’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well. … Medicare has got some serious issues because of Obamacare. So those things are part of our plan to replace Obamacare.”

Chait notes, however, "The Medicare trust fund has been extended 11 years as a result of the passage of Obamacare, whose cost reforms have helped bring health care inflation to historic lows. It is also untrue that repealing Obamacare requires changing traditional Medicare."

Ironies abound. Trump has gotten cold feet about deporting illegal immigrants, now asserting instead that his Administration will get tough on those who have committed crimes, which bears a curious resemblance to President Obama's policy.   He speaks now of his signature wall on the Mexican border as part wall, part fence, not unlike the current structure.

But Trump was portrayed as a different kind of Republican candidate, and expected to be a different kind of Republican President. Guess again.  While focused on squeezing from the presidency as much income for his businesses as he can, Trump is embarking on a plan to intertwine the federal government with the market to enrich the private sector at the expense of the American public and make crony capitalism the hallmark of his Adminstration. (WARNING: Video below is from a conservative libertarian legal outfit.)  The campaign cry of "Crooked Hillary" should now be seen as a case of a plutomaniac with a serious case of envy.










                                              HAPPY THANKSGIVING




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