Carrying Out Trump's Agenda

Six days before the last presidential election, Mick Mulvaney admitted "yes, I'm supporting Donald Trump. I'm doing so as enthusiastically as I can given the fact that I think he's a terrible human being."

In Mulvaney's defense, he said two accurate and honest things: 1) Donald Trump is a terrible human being; and 2) he was, very likely, supporting Trump as enthusiastically as possible.  That's a reasonable conclusion given that, Mulvaney, head of the Office of Management and Budget, acting White House chief of staff, and director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has

fired the agency’s 25-member advisory board Wednesday, days after some of its members criticized his leadership of the watchdog agency.

The CFPB said it will revamp the Consumer Advisory Board, known as the CAB, in the fall with all new members.

The panel has traditionally played an influential role in advising the CFPB’s leadership on new regulations and policies. But some members, who include prominent consumer advocates, academics and industry executives, began to complain that Mulvaney was ignoring them and making unwise decisions about the agency’s future.

You will be shocked! shocked! to learn that one of Donald Trump's appointees has apparently been playing footsie with the law:

On Monday, 11 CAB members held a news conference and criticized Mulvaney for, among other things, canceling legally required meetings with the group.

On Wednesday, group members were notified that they were being replaced — and that they could not reapply for spots on the new board.

And where "stakeholders" is spelled "banks, mortgage institutions, real estate companies," etc.

In a statement, the agency’s spokesman, John Czwartacki, took a final swipe at the group. “The outspoken members of the Consumer Advisory Board seem more concerned about protecting their taxpayer funded junkets to Washington, D.C., and being wined and dined by the Bureau than protecting consumers,” he said.

Revamping the board is part of the CFPB’s new approach to reaching out to stakeholders to “increase high quality feedback,” the bureau said in an email to the group. The CFPB will hold more town halls and roundtable discussions, the letter said, and the new CAB will have fewer members.

When Mulvaney was Representative Mulvaney, he labeled the CFBB a joke and wanted its activism on behalf of American consumers restricted. And so

“Mick Mulvaney has no intention of putting consumers above financial firms that cheat them. This is what happens when you put someone in charge of an agency they think shouldn’t exist,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who helped conceive of the bureau, said in a statement.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said: “Mulvaney has proven once again he would rather cozy up with payday lenders and industry insiders than listen to consumer advocates who want to make sure hard-working Americans are not cheated by financial scams.”

Mulvaney already had

stripped enforcement powers from a CFPB unit responsible for pursuing discrimination cases and proposed that lawmakers curb the agency’s powers.

Last week, Mulvaney sided with payday lenders who sued the CFPB to block implementation of new industry regulations. The CFPB filed a joint motion with the payday lenders asking the judge to delay the case until the bureau completes a review of the rules, which could take years.

Firing current members of the advisory board is a huge red flag in this administration’s ongoing erosion of critical consumer financial protections that help average families,” said Chi Chi Wu, an attorney for the National Consumer Law Center who has been a board member since 2016.

 The Consumer Advisory Board is required under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law. Members also included the head of retail banking at Citi, the founder of NerdWallet and a director at Texas Appleseed, a public interest law center. Members of two other boards — the Community Bank Advisory Council and the Credit Union Advisory Council — were also dismissed.

A year ago, Mulvaney declared "we are still Elizabeth Warren's baby. Until we break that we will never be considered a gold standard institution." We have a better idea now what Mulvaney- and Trump- would consider "gold standard." "After Trump's election," Emily Bazelon writes in The New York Times magazine

(Elizabeth) Warren and (Bernie) Sanders said that if Trump followed through on his promise to rebuild the economy for workers and their families, they would help. If Trump had championed labor over corporations, he could have scrambled American politics by creating new alliances. But that version of his presidency didn’t come to pass.

It didn't come to pass with President Reagan nor the presidents Bush and, with Mick Mulvaney's assistance, it's full steam ahead for corporate America with consumers getting run over in the process.

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Americans Kill Americans

Donald Trump says the USA needs a new President. More, he suggests we need one as soon as possible: Reacting to a 24- hour spree in London of three stabbings and one shooting resulting in three deaths, the leader of the free world has tweeted "LONDON needs a new mayor ASAP. Khan is a disaster - will only get worse!

Trump previously had denounced Mayor Saddiq Khan, not in the least because the latter is a Muslim.  Responding to Trump's remark

Just in case you weren’t aware:

🇺🇸Pop. 330 million
🇬🇧Pop. 65 million

🇺🇸Gun homicides (2017): 14,542
🇬🇧Gun homicides (2017): 31

5x the population.
469x more gun homicides.

Laws matter. https://t.co/Kk0Z8Wc6j4

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) June 15, 2019

In Great Britain, guns don't kill people- and neither do people kill people, generally. Recognizing that the knife is the weapon of choice there, Klass nonetheless further notes

If you just look at the murder rate — regardless of weapon — the murder rate in the US is roughly 5.35 per 100,000 inhabitants. In England & Wales, it’s 1.22. So the UK murder rate is 4.4x lower than the US murder rate. And it’s largely because of easy access to guns.

Whatever other reasons there might be for disinclination of Britons to shoot each other

Great Britain has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the world.  The main law is from the late 1960s, but it was amended to restrict gun ownership further in the latter part of the twentieth century in response to massacres that involved lawfully licensed weapons.  Handguns are prohibited weapons and require special permission.  Firearms and shotguns require a certificate from the police for ownership, and a number of criteria must be met, including that the applicant has a good reason to possess the requested weapon. Self-defense or a simple wish to possess a weapon is not considered a good reason.

Admittedly, Great Britain has an unfair advantage over the United States. It has no Second Amendment to misinterpret, as we have done routinely in the USA.   And knives are simply not as efficient at killing strangers, acquaintances, and loved ones as are firearms.  So if Sadiq Khan needs to be replaced as mayor of London, surely the inadequate and pathetic Donald Trump is  no more as a President than he is as a human being.

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Weak And Wrong Thus Far

Watch Bill Maher on Real Time make a very bad point (Democrats can impeach President Trump merely because he said he would take dirt about a campaign opponent without reporting it to the FBI) and later a very good point.

Listen as New York Times editorial board member Bari Weiss, evidently pining for the days of the Tip and Ronnie show and never having noticed Mitch McConnell, remarkably comment "let's focus on restoring the country, not tearing it apart." Watch conservative Republican and Never Trumper Charlie Sykes recognize the Democratic Party as "feckless" and "gutless," noting "if you're not potted plants, if you're serious about your constitutional responsibility, you need to have this impeachment."

Most of all, view former New York State Attorney General recommend Democrats not begin impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, afterward inadvertently making a particularly strong argument in favor of doing just that.

The fun begins at 18:03 of the video below. But at 18:37 Spitzer intriguingly comments

I want to make a different point. I was a prosecutor for a lot of years. I wouldn't want to bring a case I wasn't going to win and the House can vote for impeachment (but the Senate wouldn't convict).

They are not analogous situations, especially because impeachment is both legal and political in nature, but the argument is not without merit.  However, a few moments later (at 23:59), Spritzer would undermine his own argument by maintaining

You're right about all that. So let's vote an article of impeachment. Pass a budget. Pass a gun control bill. Pass a good environmental bill. Pass an infrastructure bill. Pass a tax reform bill. That's- the House should do stuff that affects votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Then we have a policy to run on. Then we win.





They've done that. As of late May, the Democratic-controlled House had passed 49 bills, resolutions, and suspensions. But Senate Majority Leader McConnell is the self-proclaimed "Grim Reaper" and virtually everything has died in the Senate.

Nonetheless, House Democrats have continued, will continue, and should continue to legislate. It's not only right and proper, but also good politics. Similarly, initiating impeachment activity in the House is not the right thing to do only because the standard for lawlessness should not be set in the White House. Democrats also must demonstrate to voters that they are not going to sit on their hands, and that when they control one-half of one branch of government, they will not shrink from doing what has to be done.

If an impeachment resolution is approved, it very likely will die in the Senate. However, the public will have viewed- endlessly- witnesses in the House Judiciary Committee describing deep and extensive lawbreaking and abuse of power in the presidency. Watching Senate Republicans condone a president demonstrated to have committed obstruction of justice to cover up collusion with a foreign enemy would be quite entertaining. If Majority Leader McConnell short-circuits the process in the Senate, it will be clear he has subverted the will of the people. The public will see Democrats acting and Republicans sabotaging.

That is how "we win."  And that is why Maher (though he meant "change" rather than "lead') was dead-on when he noted of avoiding an impeachment inquiry is folly because

We don't know what the right politics is because they go by the polls and again, Republicans lead polls, Democrats follow polls.  If they would do that, maybe they would change the polls because because it (i.e., dodging impeachment) looks weak and the problem is the Democrats always look weak. 

Bill Clinton believed voters respond to politicians who are "strong and wrong than someone who's weak and right." Strong and right works, too.



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Don't Call It Treason

Circumstances change so quickly in the Trump era that by the time something is published, it's almost out-of-date.  Scholars at Stanford University have issued a report citing methods which could be used to protect the democratic process and on Tuesday the Washington Post editorial board wrote

Measures also could be taken to hamper Russia’s efforts to manipulate the American public online. Foreign states and individuals should be barred from purchasing online advertisements intended to influence the electorate, even when they are not expressly advocating for or against a candidate. Something like the Honest Ads Act is also necessary to require that platforms reveal who paid for political ads that do run — using the names of responsible individuals, rather than only opaque organizations. Social media sites should establish an official body to coordinate with each other and the government about threats, which might require a law lowering the barriers to sharing information.

All this is only a start, and it represents but a handful of those 45 recommendations the Stanford report authors have to offer, yet it is still bounds beyond what the government has managed so far. The United States has not given Russia or any other would-be meddler any real reason to stop meddling. It would help, of course, to have a president willing to admit the problem instead of papering it over with the chief perpetrator. It is a dereliction of duty for Congress and the administration not to take up on a most urgent basis the defense of the nation’s democratic process.

The President is no longer "papering it over." The very next day we learned that President Trump, asked by ABC News' George Stephanopoulos whether he'd take information offered to him about a campaign opponent by a foreign nation, had stated

It's not an interference, they have information -- I think I'd take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI -- if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, 'oh let's call the FBI.' The FBI doesn't have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that's the way it is. It's called oppo research.

It's not "papering over" when a candidate practically begs a foreign power for dirt on a political candidate. Similarly, Congress cannot be cited for "dereliction of duty." On Thursday, Republican senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee stated “All of us know, if you were to ever be contacted by a foreign entity, your first call is the FBI. I don’t care if it’s Russia, Norway, China, whomever."

If it is Donald Trump receiving the information, however, the above is inoperable. Then she

blocked an effort to pass a bill requiring political campaigns to report to the FBI any offers of foreign assistance.

After President Donald Trump said he would welcome information from a foreign government about his opponents in the 2020 election, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) tried to pass the bill on the Senate floor via unanimous consent. Blackburn prevented unanimous consent by raising an objection to the measure....

It’s already illegal for electoral campaigns to knowingly accept help from a foreign entity or power. Warner’s bill would also mandate that campaigns report such an offer of foreign assistance to federal authorities.

Blackburn objected to the legislation, however, arguing that it would pose an “overbroad” burden on campaigns. The senator claimed that it would apply to campaign workers on “so many different levels” ― from vendors to door knockers to phone bankers. And she said she worried about how the bill would affect Dreamers ― undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children ― who sign up to volunteer for political campaigns.

Blackburn added that, of course, “no one wants foreign interference of any type” in U.S. elections.

Warner responded by calling his colleague’s reading of the bill “not accurate.”

“The only thing that would have to be reported is if the agent of a foreign government or national offered something that was already prohibited,” he said.

Can you imagine a GOP politician lying?  Donald Trump has set the standard and it's going to be impossible for a member of his party to catch up. That applies even to Marsha Blackburn, who has a questionable history, having probably met with Alexander Torshin and other Russian nationals in her home state, and not to discuss the Tennessee Titans defensive line.

It's time for The Washington Post or other news outlets to recognize that "fair" no longer is balanced or accurate. One party in Washington condones foreign interference in American elections.  One politician in Washington, supported wholeheartedly by his party, asked Russians to interfere with the last presidential election and on Wednesday invited them to do so again.

It's not as if the Republican officials are committing treason. They are not giving aid and comfort to an enemy, because Russia is not a declared enemy of the USA. But they've decided that they cannot, as the USA currently is constituted and increasingly will be constituted, win free and fair elections. They are not traitors, merely proxies for Russia.

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Evolving Into Falsehood

The Hill reports

A Democratic Nevada lawmaker is defending former Vice President Joe Biden after the 2020 White House hopeful flip-flipped on a controversial measure that blocks federal funding for certain abortion services.

“Like any politician, the vice president has evolved in his positions and reconfirmed his commitment to woman’s right to choose and has reaffirmed that he wants to work with women to craft the best policies for women’s reproductive health rights,” Sen. Yvanna Cancela (D) told Hill.TV in an interview that aired Tuesday in response to a question over Biden's decision to renounce his past support for the Hyde Amendment.

“I believe in his sincerity and wanting to do what’s best for women as they make decisions over their bodies,” Cancela added.

There is nothing that says "sincerity" better than a politician with a 47-year career in and about Washington, D.C. opposing Medicaid funding of abortion one night and announcing the next night that he has discovered there are states trying to block a woman's choice.

But in a larger sense: can we have done with the  "evolve" dodge? To his credit, Biden did not claim to have "evolved" on public financing or abortion in the manner that Barack Obama suddenly "evolved" into supporting same-sex marriage three days after Vice President Biden came out in favor. However, the former vice-president admits neither that his previous position put him at odds with Democratic voters, nor  that he had been wrong for so long.

Evolution is "a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state." More simply, it is "the gradual development of something." It is not something which happens in the space of 24 hours, as in the case of Biden, or in the case of Obama, probably an opinion he had held for many years.

Whenever a candidate or his/her campaign has claimed the candidate has "evolved," the timing must be questioned and explored. And if that's too much effort, pundits can characterize it, almost certainly accurately, as a "lie."

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Re-Election Critical

Steve M. believes Donald Trump

wants to win because he wants to win. He doesn't want to win because he wants to do the job of president. He just wants to be president, because if he's president, that means you're not. If he won reelection, that means some loser lost to him.

There is only one thing, Steve seems to understand, that Donald Trump likes better than winning- seeing someone else lose. That may be because, as this twitterer points out, "the thing about Trump is he believes morality is a con and no one is any better than him, not really, not deep down."

Psychoanalysis aside, the major reason that Donald Trump wants to be re-elected is that it is the only way to assure (virtually) that he won't land up in prison..

Kim Wehle, a law professor and former associate independent counsel in the White water investigation, has explained

there is, in general, a five-year statute of limitations for federal crimes. It’s not hard to do the math. If Trump fails to win a second term, he will become a private citizen the day he leaves office. Federal offenses committed within the five preceding years could still be charged. This period of time would include the months leading up to the 2016 election during which Russians, Wikileaks and people connected to the Trump campaign took steps to collaborate around election-related data that would damage Hillary Clinton and help Trump....

Based only on the thin slice of publicly available facts, it’s possible the Department of Justice has amassed sufficient evidence to charge Trump with additional crimes relating to:

-Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, including conspiracy to defraud the United States

obstruction of justice regarding special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation

-campaign finance-related crimes stemming from the Trump inaugural committee

witness tampering in connection with congressional investigations

-financial crimes relating to Trump’s personal taxes or the Trump Organization, including possible tax fraud, bank fraud or money laundering

Although Wehle wrote this four months ago, nothing in the Mueller investigation diminishes the likelihood of mounting one or more strong cases of criminal prosecution against private citizen Donald J. Trump.

He's not stupid, as recent events have demonstrated. President Trump now has either leveraged a threat of imposing tariffs against Mexico to gain concessions on Mexico or instead "cut a vague, imperfect or constitutionally questionable deal at the last minute, claiming victory and savaging the critics."

Whether a strategic victory or one of his many cons, the President accomplished what he set out to do. Someone able to pull that off is smart enough to know that it's better to win and be considered immune from prosecution than to lose and be prosecuted, probably not living long enough to be justly sentenced to prison.

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Confiscating Illegal Firearms

The New Republic's Alex Shephard notes

In broad strokes, Democratic candidates tend to support universal health care, large investments to fight the oncoming climate catastrophe, increasing taxes on the wealthy, and democratic reforms aimed at guaranteeing broad voter access.

In the broadest of strokes, Democratic candidates support also gun safety legislation.Removing firearms from individuals who should not be in possession of them should be a major priority of presidential candidates. 

At first glance, it is. On National Gun Violence Awareness Day, twelve Democratic candidates tweeted out their opposition to people being killed by firearms.  (If this seems like the least they can do, consider that President Trump was silent.... and that there actually are 23 Democratic presidential candidates.)

Proposals could include expansion of background checks; raising the minimum age for purchase; a ban on assault weapons; "red flag laws"; and licensing of gun owners, as recently advocated by Cory Booker.

And at least one other thing, which never will be recommended: stop-and-frisk.

The federal government could encourage jurisdictions, perhaps with grants, to implement stop-and-frisk policies for the sole purpose of confiscating illegal weapons and the individuals who possess them.

There must be two conditions, however. The procedure would have to include measures to ensure that it does not violate the US Constitution by being racially discriminatory. Additionally, it must preclude any arrest or summons for violation of any law, most notably for possession and/or distribution of illegal drugs.

Determining which areas are subject to stop and frisk can be determined objectively, considering such factors as the rate of gun violence and the prevalence of street gangs.  Nonetheless, the program should be monitored to ensure that within any one area, individuals are stopped and searched randomly or in some such manner so that it doesn't involve a disproportionate number of individuals of any ethnic group, unless there is an awfully good reason related to public safety.

Nor can the program be perverted or distorted to be an anti-drug initiative or even one directed toward crime in general. It would be a gun safety measure, with the goal of getting illegal firearms out of the community with the ancillary aim of arresting and prosecuting individuals who have violated gun laws.

Republicans are frightened, or supportive of, the National Rifle Association, and confiscation of guns from dangerous persons is not something that organization would tolerate.  And Democrats have de facto sworn off any policy which can be legitimately or illegitimately criticized as racist. Alas, the latter includes any policy which could disproportionately inconvenience young black males, even while it probably would disproportionately benefit African-American neighborhoods.

It won't happen. But it should.

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