Year: 2019

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At Their Word

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump arrives with his personal attorney Michael Cohen during a campaign stop at the New Spirit Revival Center church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, U.S. September 21, 2016. Picture taken September 21, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst - RC1B23AB0300

It was quite a week for trust, because, as you know, it’s a matter of trust (and just who is that handsome fellow in the Brooks Brothers’ suit at 00:32?).

This is the week where Michael Cohen asked us to believe what he had to say about Donald Trump, and Donald Trump asked us to believe that he believes Kim Jong-un at his word, and that we should too.

I’m guessing that you already know who I think is believable and who is not.

For those of us who have spent a good part of our adult lives being subjected to Donald Trump’s exaggerations, lies, misdirections, bankruptcies, and social habits, Mr. Cohen seems awfully believable.

There is no doubt that Trump had affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougall and there is no doubt that he used both the National Enquirer and Mr. Cohen to suppress and pay them off in the run-up to the 2016 election. It’s also fairly clear that the president has something massive to hide on his tax returns and campaign finance paperwork, and there’s already hard evidence to show that he had a direct role in ordering campaign and government officials to lie for him and to work around protocols and ethics laws for his own gain.

But what really cemented his shoes was when he picked out one lonely fact about Cohen’s testimony: that Cohen said that he had not seen evidence that Trump had worked with the Russians on the 2016 election. Trump gave away the store with that comment, essentially saying that Cohen told the truth about one thing, but lied about everything else. Improbable at best.

And not only that, none other than Chris Christie, and golly does it pain me to cite Chris Christie, said last week that the Mueller investigation is likely the least of the president’s problems. Trump should be focusing more on the Southern District of New York’s investigations into his business practices because it’s not subject to any federal oversight, a statute of limitations, and virtually no limitation on what it can investigate or subpoena.

Remember when it looked like Hillary Clinton was going to be elected president and the Republicans promised to investigate her every day she was in office? No? Then it’s a good thing I just reminded you because the hypocrisy is thick and steaming at the GOP lunch buffet. Now that the cement shoes are on the other feet, it’s amusing to hear the right wing complain about witch hunts. In all likelihood, there would still be eight Supreme Court Justices if she had won. You win, you get to investigate. You investigate, you find stuff.

Which brings us to the president’s love and respect for all things dictatorial, whether it’s Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Rodrigo Duterte or others. Last week’s winner was Kim Jong-un, who received the I Believe Him Because He Told Me It Was True Award from Trump over the case of Otto Warmbier. I’m not sure whether it’s because Trump wants others to implicitly believe him when he tells whoppers or that he wants to be liked or some other pathology, but saying these things is not helpful for the United States nor does it make us in any way a better country.

After all, this is a president who trafficked in conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama, denies climate science, and can’t come to terms with the fact that he’s just not as popular as he thinks he is as measured by his inauguration crowds and popular vote total. Plus, Trump was the one who asked Michael Cohen to do all of those wonderful deeds and then praised his loyalty.

Seems like an easy choice to me.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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The Taxing Tax Law

I have a foolproof way of figuring out if someone has done their income tax calculations.

If they walk around with a smile believing that tax cut bill and those who supported it are on the side of the middle class, then they have not done their taxes yet.

If they walk around with a dazed, angry, frustrated, my-God-what-have-I-done-to-deserve-this look, then they have done their taxes and have realized that they are getting a far lower refund than they expected or will owe money to the IRS come April 15.

Only the conservative crew in DC could mess up a tax cut this badly.

Yes, you probably paid less income tax last year on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis, and I’m sure the money came in handy. What most people didn’t do, though, was to adjust their W-4 to reflect the cut and perhaps to have more money taken out of their check.

Then came the absolute worst parts of the whole bill: Those of us who live in states where property and income taxes tend to be high are capped regarding the amount of money we can deduct on our returns at $10,000. Please raise your hand if you live in New Jersey and pay more than $10,000 in property taxes. Keep your hand up if you took out a home equity loan or line of credit and used the money exclusively to pay down debt such as credit card bills.

I thought so. Your arm must be tired. You can lower it now.

The result is that you can’t take as many deductions, so you’ll probably have to take the new, higher-but-not-as-high-as-it-would-be-if-I-could-deduct-what-I-deducted-lat-year Standard Deduction, which is $24,000.

And…

The new tax law eliminates the $4,050 exemption you could take for each of your dependents. For a family of four, that’s $16,200. That means that you will be paying taxes on $16,200 more in income without being able to deduct as much tax and interest as you had been.

That’s why it feels like Guiliani time when you sit down.

But don’t feel bad. Corporations got a whopping 15% tax cut and probably used that money to raise your pay buy back millions or billions in company stock, which enriched the pay of top executives and enabled it to pay higher dividends to stock holders. Which might help you a little, but not as much as before the tax cut.

There’s a reason why the GOP didn’t run on the bill last November, deciding that it would be wiser to paint ragged, scared, hungry women and children as terrorists and invaders ready to cross the border and wreak havoc on our country.

They knew how bad it would be. And for once, they were right.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Real Emergencies

Decline of the public schools and the country’s commitment to equitable education.

The threat to our world because of the warming climate.
Continued poverty.

The fact that people go hungry in America.
Racism
Sexis

Anti-anything related to ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or religion.
Massive inequality in wealth between the wealthy and not so wealthy, whites and non-whites, industrialized, technologically advanced nations and those that are still trying to move themselves into the 19th century, much less the 21st.

Drug and opioid addiction

Inequalities in the level of health care

Shooting at schools, malls, bars, schools, places of work, concerts, ballparks, houses of worship, schools, houses, back yards, elevators, city streets, schools, country lanes, sports arenas, and schools.

The care and treatment of the mentally ill

Alcoholism rates on Native American reservations and towns

Our eroding, collapsing, dangerous infrastructure

I’m sure there are some I’ve missed some, but these are the emergencies the president should be concerned about and these are the issues he should be funding through the constitutionally mandated process that Republicans have sworn to uphold. Oh, and if you want to build a wall or a fence or a barrier and support it with other border control initiatives that have some basis in reality, I am all for that. People should enter and stay in this country legally. Children who were brought by their parents and have led legal, productive lives should be able to stay. Pass an immigration law. Use the power of the executive to persuade Congress and the American people that what you want to do is necessary

But don’t do it like this

The president had his chance when he had a Republican Congress, but because of his own ineptitude when it came to actually getting things done, he didn’t have a plan, a structure, a staff, a coherent message or a negotiating strategy to get what he wanted. And if there was a real emergency at the border, then why not declare it two years ago and be done with it

Because this isn’t really about anything related to policy. It’s a campaign stunt to galvanize the base. It’s his fear that he won’t be reelected because he didn’t make good on his central promise; that Mexico would pay for the wall

Oh, wait. That’s not what’s happening. You and I are paying for the wall. And we’ll pay for the lawsuits that will wend their way through the local, state and federal courts in response to property takings, environmental concerns and, of course, the Constitution of the United States.
Remember the Constitution? This is a song about the Constitution.
I have zero confidence that the Trump Administration or the GOP will do anything except foul this up in their attempts to circumvent the laws and create a double-secret precedent that future presidents will use to declare emergencies, including more from Trump if he happens to win this gambit.

After all, why stop at the border wall? Why not an emergency over abortion? Arming teachers in schools? Kneeling during the anthem?
The biggest emergency? This presidency.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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I Will Never Be Governor

I slept with you (and you know who you are) and it was consensual).

I once dressed as Sandra Day O’Connor for Halloween. I understand that this is misappropriation on a a number of levels:

1. I am not a woman
2. I am not a Republican (one of my best features)
3. I have never sat on the Supreme Court
4. I would have ruled differently in Bush v. Gore, but I would concur in the other cases.
5. I never would have given up my seat if I knew it would go to Samuel Alito.

I occasionally adopted African-American idioms when in high school.

I have used the word “fag,” but only in the context of  Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

I have a Soviet flag on my desk and have since 1978. I also have several sets of Russian nesting dolls.

I have a friend who is African-American and he dressed up as Generic Man in college where he wore white-face. The party proceeded without incident.

I’m sure there are other examples and please remind me of them if you have a recollection

None of these keeps me up at night the way too much barbecue sauce does these days, but the issue is obviously a national social concern. Clearly, there are lines that no adult should cross and we should not tolerate reprehensible behavior related to harassment, assault, sexism, racism and other obnoxiousness.

But I am also a great fan of redemption, personal growth, reckonings, sincere apologies and, of course, context. And I also look at the direction a person’s life has taken. Doing something offensive early in life, but growing and learning and making up for it with words and/or deeds will, in my mind, earn you some redemption. Continuing to be offensive throughout your life shows you to be the unrepentant, ignorant person that you really are.

Which is why, and I’m really a broken record here (and obviously old because I’m using that reference), nobody should resign until the president does. He has shown himself to be growing as a racist, sexist, misogynist, Islamophobe, xenophobe, and homophobe rather than recognizing that his words and actions are harmful for this country’s reputation. When he is held accountable, then we will have made progress. But as long as he can spew his hatred and vitriol, then we can’t have justice.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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The NFL Has Its Day

I remember when the Super Bowl was played at 2:00 in the afternoon on a Sunday. Some people remember the game when it didn’t have a number attached to it. Others don’t care at all.

I think I might be moving into that third group.

The National Football League has become what our other national pastime, baseball, never really attempted: to be everything all at once. A sport, an institution, a media empire, a repository for the nation’s values, and an unquestioned source of correctness that has come back to cause serious trouble for its credibility. Baseball had a long, lazy season with plenty of games and no time limit. Football has a frenzied limit. George Carlin did a bit on that. Go watch it.

The Super Bowl is now, of course, an informal national holiday with all the trappings and fixin’s, and for the past 20 or so years the game has actually been pretty close near the end, as opposed to many of the games in the 80s and 90s that were over before halftime, instilling cold fear into the advertisers who paid exorbitant rates to reach drunk men. Don’t worry; we still watched.

But the NFL’s real-world problems, which it always had but decided to minimize or ignore, are now morbidly apparent.

Players trying to live day-to-day with the pain from their playing days are addicted to opioids.

CTE ravaging the brains of former players.

Ensuring that all players, not just the Hall of Famers, have health insurance, pensions, and benefits.

I know that unionized, highly paid professional athletes in all sports don’t elicit a great deal of sympathy from many Americans who earn less and live a productive, local life, but most athletes have a short professional existence and in the NFL’s case, play a brutally violent sport. And you simply can’t ignore the visuals that show an extraordinarily wealthy owner elite making billions, collectively, and a collective of players, many of whom are minorities, getting paid well while they play, but being ignored when they’re done.

The NFL needs to make a dramatic gesture concerning these players. The league is wealthy enough to afford it and the players have earned it.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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BLM Donald Trump Featured

The Waste of Time Presidency

You could probably see this coming from several miles away. I mean, why would the president put his presidency (shudder) on the line for a wall that he would have likely had if he pushed it harder when the Republicans controlled Congress? Why wait until a master politician like Nancy Pelosi is his adversary rather than trying to push the Human Marshmallow, Paul when he’s already oozing out the Congressional door?

Looks like the art of the deal is a crayon drawing that’s mostly outside the lines. And the great negotiator most of us knew we never had turned out to be the feckless blowhard that he really and truly is. And as is usual in these types of standoffs, the deal that came first, in December, was the deal that the two sides finally agreed to. And the collateral damage was the 800,000 public workers who have families, bills, lives, and dreams that the modern GOP sees as taxpaying suckers who do nothing useful. Like inspect our food. Or ensure our safety in the airports and the skies. Or gather key data for public use and the private sector. And keep our country beautiful. And secure.

The Republicans have been running against government for so long that they’ve forgotten that they benefit from it too, and that most Americans do not share their reactionary ideology that says the private sector and laissez-faire economics are the only systems worth protecting. Can you feel the air and water getting dirtier? No?

Just wait.

This short term deal is good for the country because the Democrats did not give anything back in return for the president agreeing to reopen the government. If they had, then Trump would have been emboldened to use it as a matter of Republican policy with the expectation that he could get what he wanted.

Let’s be clear: Both parties should pledge here and now that they will never, ever shut the government down. Both parties have their spending priorities and they should make them known in enough time for serious debate and public scrutiny. For the president to try and add money for a wall in response to right wing media condemnation is not governing.

It’s blackmail.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Donald Trump Featured

This Is Not What Dr. King Had in Mind

I suppose if you really want to bury a less-than-serious proposal that would attempt to solve the most vexing issue of the day, then you should announce it on the Saturday afternoon of a long holiday weekend. And you should make sure to propose something that gives you everything you want, but only three years and not cover everyone that the other side wants.

Such is what the president (shudder) proposed on Saturday. Perhaps it’s just an opening gambit, but history has shown that Donald Trump doesn’t favor protracted negotiations that don’t end with him getting his way. I suppose that Nancy Pelosi leaving town is the Democrats’ answer.

Education is also roaring back into the country’s news feed, what with the Los Angeles teachers on strike over working conditions, yes, but mostly about…Charter Schools. You know, those lovely places that are publicly funded, but privately run. It’s a setup that drains resources from public schools and aims to suppress union activism from teachers, and the research we have is that charters are really no better that public schools when it comes to student achievement and educational effectiveness.

Couple this with the walkouts in West Virginia, Oklahoma and other states last year, and you have a trend that will only get stronger. Plus, the new congress includes liberal members who not only support public education and teachers, but are also willing to point out that President Obama and Arne Duncan were both wrong to support the testing movement and faux teacher evaluation systems that did more harm than good. Most public school teachers are effective, and that has been substantiated by the fact that teachers have not been fired in large numbers, as proponents of the new system said would happen. And now, at least in New Jersey, the standardized tests that wrecked the curriculum are gone.

But just in case you thought that the purpose of education was to prepare students to live, think, and work in the modern world, we have the story of Karen Pence, wife of the Vice President, who went back to her teaching career this year at a school that, well, you have to read it.

And you thought that the right wing’s denial of science was limited to the climate.

Here we have an instance where the denial of human rights, human intelligence, human compassion, and human acceptance is the curriculum. I understand the right of religious people to live a religious life, but I do not understand, nor can I countenance, a school where children are taught that their neighbors should be disrespected, hated, marginalized, and emotionally harmed in the name of an ideology that blames rather than accepts.

Democrats need to be very careful about what they wish for when they want president Trump to go away. We have worse waiting in the wings.

Might I suggest that you take a moment and read/listen to or view some Martin Luther King this weekend. His words are everything we need now: uplifting, resonant, powerful, positive, human, moral, thrilling, emotionally-charged, and truthful.

We used to have that.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured

Trump’s Action Caused “Grave” Security Threats to Pelosi and Dems

The man who supposedly has the title of “president of the United States” is putting members of the government in grave danger! That was the message from Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, Drew after Trump childishly pulled Pelosi’s military flight to a war zone.

According to Hammill, after Trump grounded the military flight commissioned to take Pelosi and congressional Democrats to Afghanistan and Brussels, the House members were planning to fly commercial, but the White House disclosed that secret information, and in so doing, alerted the enemy of the plans, thus putting the lives of Pelosi and Congressional Democrats in danger.

In a fierce attack on Donald Trump, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, said the security of the trip has been compromised due to “grave threats caused by the President’s action.”

“In the middle of the night, the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service provided an updated threat assessment detailing that the President announcing this sensitive travel had significantly increased the danger to the delegation and to the troops, security, and other officials supporting the trip,” Hammill said in a statement. “This morning, we learned that the Administration had leaked the commercial travel plans as well.”

Hammill previously said the group of lawmakers was scheduled to depart Thursday evening, briefly stop in Brussels to meet with top NATO commanders, U.S. military leaders and “key allies–to affirm the United States’ ironclad commitment to the NATO alliance.” From there, the delegation planned to travel to Afghanistan to meet with troops. 

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The Wall Meets the Wall

President Trump made his case for building a wall on the Mexican border on Tuesday night, but there was just one problem: there is no case for building a big wall on the Mexican border. After all, illegal border crossings have been dropping for more than two decades and most illegal substances cross the border into the United States at legal ports such as airports. Plus, there is no verifiable crisis at the border save for the one the Trump Administration created by separating children from their parents. And to top it off, the president seems to have lost the argument.

In political terms, the president’s best chance for wall funding ended as soon as the Democrats won a majority in the House of Representatives in November. Prior to that, the Republicans controlled the government, and if they couldn’t cobble together funding for the wall, then it’s not going to happen now. Plus, prior to November was the optimal time to be able to blame Democrats for the lack of funding, since a filibuster would be the only way to stop it. Trump could have gone twitter-crazy blaming Chuck Schumer for foiling the popular will.

But instead, we have…this. The president proudly shut down the government thinking that he could bully Nancy Pelosi (bully Nancy Pelosi!) into giving up her power because, well, I’m not sure why he thought he could do that. After all, most Americans do not support the president’s agenda and voted against it in 2016 and 2018. He’s tried a number of different strategies to discredit the Democrats and blame the shutdown on them, but that’s not working well.

In the end, the president’s negotiating position seems to be that he wants the Democrats to fund the wall, then he will sign spending bills to reopen the government. That doesn’t seem like a great deal to the Democrats because they really get nothing in return except the status quo when it comes to their agenda. President Trump’s threat to declare an emergency to fund the wall also shows him to be a less committed deal-maker than he pretends to be because, in the end, he might just do whatever he thinks he can get away with rather than to negotiate seriously.

For now, though, the more important wall is the one the Democrats are constructing as a barrier to the president’s wishes.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Mitch McConnell Blocks Bill to Re-open Government

Since taking over the House of Representatives, Democrats have tried tirelessly to end Trump’s g Shutdown. But if nothing else, Republicans have demonstrated unwavering support of their dear leader, Donald Trump, and they are united in making sure Americans suffer so that Trump can get his wall.

Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.), surrounded by roughly two dozen of their Senate Democratic colleagues, tried to get consent to bring up a bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through Feb. 8, as well as a separate package that would fund the remaining agencies without current-year appropriations through Sept. 30.

But McConnell objected, arguing they would be “show votes” and saying that he and Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) made an “explicit commitment” to avoid such votes.

“The last thing we need to do right now is trade pointless – absolutely pointless – show votes back and forth across the aisle,” McConnell said. 

Under Senate rules, any senator can try to force a vote or pass a bill, but any one senator can block them.

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured

Another Trump Lie – Obama Supports My Border Wall – Video

It’s not my job to constantly point out Trump’s lies, that will be a full-time job with guaranteed overtime. No, I don’t have the time or the resources, or quite frankly the web-space on my server to point out all the lies coming from the Trump White House. My server is only capable of holding a few hundred thousand pages. I wouldn’t be able to keep up!

However, every once in a while, I am compelled to focus in on a lie, like when Trump said President Obama supports his border wall fantasy.

Before making the trip to the border on Thursday, Trump tweeted this: “President Obama, thank you for your great support – I have been saying this all along!“

Here are the facts:

THE FACTS: Obama’s remarks in the short video clip do not support Trump’s proposal for a border wall or endorse the path Trump is considering now: declaring a national emergency that might enable him to circumvent Congress and unilaterally spend money on the wall. Instead, Obama was asking Congress to approve an emergency appropriation to deal with a surge of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children and youth, mostly from Central American, trying to cross the border from Mexico.

“We now have an actual humanitarian crisis on the border,” Obama said at the time, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden. He was referring specifically to the surge of minors that year.

That crisis eventually eased as the U.S. stepped up border enforcement, surveillance and resources for the waves of unaccompanied children. Now, a sharp increase in the number of families at the border, coupled with the Trump administration’s hard-line stance, is overwhelming border resources, worsening a backlog in the asylum system and leaving migrants to live in abysmal conditions on the Mexican side.

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured

Another Trump Lie – I never Said Mexico Will Pay For The Wall – Video

Now I must admit, I am not a doctor nor do I hold any medical training or certificates. But there is something obviously mentally wrong with the leader of the Republican party and so-called President of the United States, Donald Trump.

While talking to the media about his beloved wall, Trump blurted out the truth that “during the campaign, I would say is going to pay for it.” His very next sentence was a lie and a contradiction, as Trump said he “never said this.”

So he admitted saying that Mexico was going to pay for the wall, then, before you exhale, Trump said he never said it.

I mean, who does that?

Insanity, thy name is Trump…

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