Tag: donald trump

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The Silly Season Gets Ominous

Gee. It turns out that the president actually lied. Not that this is a total surprise given his history of being a liar, telling untruths, exaggerating facts, creating alternative facts, being 100% wrong, saying one thing and contradicting another, making stuff up, fibbing, retweeting fake news stories, lying to his wife, and getting his American History facts absolutely wrong. Now he got caught. And this is not going to go away so easily. It was always clear that Donald Trump had affairs, as anyone who read about him during his days as a New York personality in the 1980s and 90s. And I’m sure he paid off a number of women to stay silent or to simply go away. He also convinced himself that he could control his message and make sure that anything too embarrassing would get squashed before it hit the papers. The problem is that he brought these personality traits to the White House, and we know what happens to people who convince themselves of their own importance. Every president has flaws that become magnified once they are in the White House. Clinton had affairs, Nixon believed he could explain himself out of his own lies, GW Bush needed to please his dad, Obama was too detached. And on and on. Now we have Michael Cohen admitting in court that the president knew about the payments to silence Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal before the 2016 election, and that the president intended these payments to influence the election’s outcome. To the president, these are not crimes. To the rest of the legal, political and social world, these are serious enough that President Trump will have to answer for them. This is not anything to celebrate. If Cohen is telling the truth, then the president is lying, and Trump’s talk about a rigged election turns out to be accurate. The problem is that it was his campaign that was trying to influence it. Democrats running in close elections need to be careful about making too much of this issue too quickly. The news is damning enough, but the real concerns are health care, taxes, and local concerns. And if this is all happening in August, imagine the fun we can look forward to in the fall. For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
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Former Navy Admiral to Trump – Please Revoke My Security Clearance

William H. McRaven, a decorated Navy Admiral who oversaw the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, penned a letter to the national disgrace in the Oval Office, the national disgrace also know as Donald Trump.

Dear Mr. President:

Former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him.

Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.

Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs.

A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.

Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.

If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you would be.

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Democracy Featured

Whither Infrastructure?

What a great word. Infrastructure. People of all stripes and models use it earnestly despite its awkwardness. It means so much and is so difficult to romanticize.

I’ll stop.

Remember when infrastructure was going to be first on the new president’s agenda? It was going to be the issue that Democrats and Republicans could rally behind because, really, roads, bridges, the power grid, airports, public transportation systems, etc., in this country are dreck and need a massive infusion of money and attention at every level of government.

So what happened? My sense is that the issue is far too big and unsexy for a president who loves controversy and chaos and attention, but is short on policy knowledge. And it would take a whole bag of dough to get all of these projects going and the tax bill put a major hole in the federal budget. Add in the ideological opposition that Republicans have to spending taxpayer money in urban areas that voted Democratic and you have the kind of political blindness and ignorance that comes around once in a great while. Forget North Korea and dismantling the health care system. Neglecting infrastructure will cost lives if we don’t get going soon.

To be fair, the president did talk about infrastructure early in his administration and said that it would be great and that we would do it, but we haven’t. Meanwhile, the trains get worse, the roads get worse, airports get worse, bridges get worse, power outages get worse, and we don’t seem to be interested in moving forward on securing our economic lifeblood, roads and airports, or repairing and upgrading them anytime soon.

Wouldn’t this create jobs? Ensure safety? Allow us to compete more broadly with countries around the world that have functioning and improved infrastructure? Make us…you know, great? Of course it would, which is why it’s so low on the list of things this administration wants to do. My fear is that it’s going to take a great tragedy to get this administration to commit political capital to rebuilding these facilities. And even then, I can see them blaming everyone before they settle on a plan that will likely be less than what’s absolutely necessary.

They haven’t a plan, and they really haven’t a clue.

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Don’t Get Mad: Get Going

You knew there was going to be a point at which it gets worse. We might have reached it. The Supreme Court ruled that the president can order the borders closed to certain people because of their religion and that you should be protected by a union contract without having to pay for it. Of course, these were once ideas that were the stuff of bad dreams, mediocre comedy, and cranky uncles. Now rule the day.

And, yes, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement will almost certainly, no, certainly result in a more conservative court that will likely return more power to the states when it comes to abortion, marriage equality, and civil and religious rights. That is when they’re not outlawing some of those things and other cherished rights that we thought were fundamental, constitutional and just plain good ideas.

But I also think that we’ll be surprised that other events will conspire to frustrate and thwart the conservative minority government. Perhaps the new justice is not as conservative as everybody thinks. Or turns out to be another David Souter. Yes, I know, maybe I’m just being hopeful, but the real mistake most of us make is thinking that things will not change and that once set in motion, the ball will always roll in one direction.

Good things are happening in some states. California remains a hotbed of resistance to the outlandish requests of the federal government. New Jersey will pass a budget that raises revenue from people who can afford to pay more and who should be asked to pay more for the services they receive. But they should also contribute more so that other citizens can reap the benefit of excellent schools, safe neighborhoods, health care and a job that pays them enough on which to live. And in New York, the Democratic machine just received a gut punch in the form of a first-time candidate who had a positive message, a terrific organization, and the energy to carry a progressive message to a majority of the party’s voters.

When the Republicans were rebuked in 1964, they began to build an organization that reflected their message carried by their people. The Democrats have begun to do the same. It will take time. It will take money. It will take patience. It must be done non-violently.

But it will be done.

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Donny Dictator Defines Deviancy Down

I’m always amused when there’s a president in the White House with whom you don’t agree, and friends or others ask, “But you want the president to succeed, don’t you?” And I suppose, in the abstract, the answer always has to be yes because the success of the president is tied to the success of the country. If the president fails or does things that are detrimental to the country, then it hurts everyone, right? We all want prosperity for all and justice and equality and excellent education and affordable, comprehensive health care and clean air and water and for people to respect each others’ differences in the name of democracy and decency and humanity.

But now we have a president who does not represent those values or those hopes.  Over the past week he’s supported a lawsuit by 19 states that would allow health insurance companies to charge more for people with pre-existing conditions who want coverage.

He’s called law-abiding citizens who want to send a protest message to the country unpatriotic, and has raised the citizen soldiers who serve and protect the United States above others by giving them near-exclusive possession of the national anthem, as if the only ideas they were fighting for are to obey the president and be quiet in the face of injustice and racism. Last I knew, our military has been fighting to protect the rights we have and the democratic values that are attached to them, which include the right to protest publicly and unashamedly.

And just this weekend, the president has called for his good friends in Russia to be readmitted to the G-7 and has embraced his other good friend, Kim Jong-un, in Tuesday’s summit meeting, while simultaneously slapping tariffs on our allies and engaging in a trade war that will seriously harm American farmers. And he’s doing this under the delusion that the main sin a country can commit is to have a trade surplus with the United States.

Good thing we elected a businessman who has little clue about how international business and trade works.

But the biggest threat the president poses is that he just doesn’t seem to understand that he has a responsibility to the law and that presidents are not above it. Saying that he can end any investigation and that he can pardon himself might, according to some legal experts, be constitutional. The problem is that a responsible president wouldn’t even broach the subjects. They would allow the justice system to do its job without interference or threats. They would not see this as a personal attack, but a system that only survives when it seeks justice for all.

What the president is doing is defining deviancy down, making what should be outlandish, outrageous, immoral and illegal perfectly normal for him.

Our allies are the enemy and the undemocratic dictators of the world are great men.

Treaties are not binding, but can be changed on a whim.

Insults, bragging and lies are the stuff of official policy.

To oppose the man (not the office) is treason.

To reform Washington, appoint selfish, greedy, anti-science, anti-education know-nothings in every corner of government.

So do I want the president to succeed? Not if he is going to pursue an isolationist, obstructionist, reactionary, unjust, petty course while in office. These make him, and the country, seem small. It’s deviance from what we as a country have tried to accomplish up to this point.

That’s what we’ll get with Donny Dictator from now on.

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Democracy Featured

The Absolute Power Grab: Ignorance of the Law Becomes Trendy

There’s nothing like studying the Watergate scandal to remind you of what can happen when one person gets more power than they can handle. President Nixon thought he was above the law, but the Supreme Court said otherwise.

Now we have Nixon redux or more likely, Trump acid reflux, in the form of a president who believes that he too can ignore the law because he has “unfettered authority over all federal investigations.” If you’re not frightened by that statement, then you are either are too young to have lived through Watergate. And I’m sorry, but learning about it in school is not the same. You don’t really get to understand the fragile balance of power between the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government.

For the president to indulge in this power grab doesn’t surprise me, but it is disturbing. As Indiana Representative Samuel B. Pettingill said of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the debate on the court packing plan of 1937:

“This is more power than a good man should want and a bad man should have.”

Of course, President Trump came into office and was immediately frustrated by how much he could not do simply because he was president, but now that he has advisers who share his disdain of constitutional limits on the executive, he’s feeling untouchable and more secure. And while it is true that the president can terminate the investigation by firing the Special Prosecutor, that does not mean that Congress can’t step in and prosecute Trump for any crimes or misdemeanors the prosecutor uncovered. Then there’s public opinion, which, in Nixon’s case, was the undoing of his administration after he ordered the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, precipitating the Saturday Night Massacre.

Yes, President Trump could fire Robert Mueller, but that wouldn’t mean the end of the drama. If nothing else, the American people understand the importance of concluding an investigation and publicizing the results. Firing Mueller would necessitate suppressing the evidence, which would result in more lawsuits. And more suspicion. Because the more the president talks about how unfair the investigation is, the more guilty he looks.

What this all comes down to is the fact that the president believes he is untouchable and that he can control the news cycle with his juvenile tweets, empty threats and folksy phrases, all served up with a 6th grade vocabulary and lots of !!!!. The courts will have the final say and based on past decisions, and the constitution, the president will likely lose.

For the sake of the republic, I certainly hope so.

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Trump Calls His Wife By The Wrong Name

I can understand making this mistake when you’re talking about a friend. I can understand making this mistake when you’re talking about an acquaintance. But when you’re talking about your wife, the mother of your youngest child, making such a mistake deserve much condemnation!

After returning home from an almost week-long stay at the hospital for a kidney treatment, Donald Trump took to Twitter to welcome his wife home. He tweets;

“Great to have our incredible First Lady back home in the White House. Melanie is feeling and doing really well. Thank you for all of your prayers and best wishes!”

He quickly deleted the tweet and replaced it with another tweet welcoming his real wife Melania, not “Melanie.”

By now we all know that her name is Melania. Someone needs to tell her husband what her name is.

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured

One Word: Trumpflation!

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at an airport campaign rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S. October 30, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Yes, it’s here. Trumpflation: that combination of rising wages, rising interest rates, a border that’s closed to low wage labor, a trade war with China, tensions with our European allies over economic sanctions, and a dropping fertility rate. 

What’s it all add up to?

Well, it doesn’t really add up, but the result will be rising prices and wages that won’t keep pace. Add in the nice gotcha that will hit many people’s tax bills next April and you have a problem. This is what can happen when you govern by chaos, ignorance and a commitment to making the wealthy wealthier.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a rising, healthy economy where anyone who wants a job can get one. And the economic expansion that began under Obama will continue to provide more employment and more money in the economy. Corporations have lots of cash on hand and many have committed to either building factories or bringing production home from overseas. These are positive developments and a wise president would leave this all alone, especially one who has told us repeatedly that he is a fan of laissez-faire economics.

The problems creep in when you poison the well with ideology. Isolating the country, threatening a trade war, slapping tariffs on goods and stoking a labor shortage because of short-sighted immigration policies will, I fear, stomp on this growth and will lead to unintended but decidedly visible consequences.

Which we are already seeing. Gas prices are up. Food prices are up – even at my local warehouse store. Of course, the convenience of all of this is that when the government calculates inflation they exclude, you got it, gas and food prices. So while these are the components that affect people more directly, the real inflation rate will likely remain low while people scratch their head about why goods cost so much more.

As for wages, I am glad to see them rising somewhat. But they are not rising enough to cover the rising prices. The promise of the tax cut was that American corporations would create more high wage jobs and invest in new infrastructure. The reality is that most of the tax cut money is going into stock buybacks that do very little for workers.  The federal minimum wage remains the same and this Congress will probably not raise it. Add the rising interest rates on cars and homes etc., and the debt will cost that much more. Unless workers are going to get a 4-5% increase, at some point they will start losing money.

The labor supply is in real jeopardy because fewer people are coming to the United States. They’ve been barred or scared off by the administration’s intolerance and hatred. Simply put, our economy has grown over the years because of new workers who come to this country. The birthrate has slowed, even revered in the past year. Countries that cannot replace their populations run the real and documented risk of stifling economic growth.

But at least we’ll get to test that old adage that immigrants are taking low wage jobs from Americans. With fewer immigrants, we will finally see if Americans flock to the fields or to the meat-packing plants. If wages stay low, then I don’t see this happening. When farm and meat producers begin to pay higher wages, we will all pay more at the store.

If we had a real populist in charge, then perhaps we could look forward to working people getting ahead and a tax cut that didn’t penalize people who voted against him. But we don’t have a real populist in charge, we have a president who would rather rule chaotically and unpredictably, although his unpredictability is becoming far more predictable, which creates uncertainty, volatility, and inequality.

Which is exactly what this country can look forward to.

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Donald Trump Donald Trump

Donald Trump Repaid $100,000 in Hush Money To Porn Star

I’m trying to understand this. How can Donald Trump repay money his lawyer used to buy Porn Star Stormy Daniels’ silence about her sexual affair with the donald, when Trump swears he knew nothing about his lawyer’s payment?

You can only lie for so long before the truth catches up with you.

According to reporting in Yahoo News, Trump not only knew about the hush money, he actually repaid some of it. 

 

 

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Common Among Celebrities and People of Wealth

Any populist claims made by Donald Trump are heretofore considered fraudulent.

This man is no populist. He’s barely popular and his policies will not help his constituents as much as they think.

The economic numbers that came out Friday were encouraging and at this point it’s Trump’s economy. Unemployment is down for almost every demographic group and wages are starting to edge upwards. But there are also fewer people in the work force and his aggressive anti-immigrant screeds are causing labor shortages that could spread from less attractive jobs to jobs that make the economy work.

Then there’s the trade policy that focuses obsessively on trade deficits, which are not necessarily the big problem we have with other countries. Many of those countries, including China, provide us with less expensive goods that wage-challenged Americans need in their daily lives. Plus, many American companies like Boeing, are worried that steel and aluminum will cost more. And the Export-Import Bank, a real bugaboo for conservative Republicans, won’t be around to help them weather foreign competition.

Add to that the inflation that is already showing itself in gasoline and food prices. And the tax bill that will be a great surprise to filers come next April, especially in states like New Jersey and New York, and you have a mixture of economic news that is decidedly, well…mixed.

But the real outrage should be directed at the president’s remarks about the deepening scandal over the payments he authorized to Stormy Daniels – authorizations he denied just a few months ago.  His defense that using Non Disclosure Agreements is a useful tool for the wealthy to fend off and manipulate less fortunate people is the height of unrestrained privilege.

President Trump is just as removed from anything populist as the next oligarch. He has spent his whole professional life trying to escape Queens, trying to escape the middle and working class people who live there, including the immigrants that have made Queens the most multicultural borough in New York. Of course, those of us subjected to his tabloid escapades since the 1980s already knew this. His best sell-job was convincing the slim majorities of mid-westerners that he was on their side.

And he misused the word role in his tweets, using roll instead. Nails on the blackboard to this teacher.

In the end, it’s the women and the cover-up that will sink him. Ain’t it always so?

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Democracy Donald Trump Featured

Beware of Smiling Dictators

It’s on. The Kim Jong-un Redemption Tour is officially under way and like any other one-party, all-powerful, illiberal, murderous dictator, he is smiling all the way.

Hello. I had my uncle shot. (Smile)

Hello. I had my half-brother killed in one of the most unique, sinister plots I could think of. (Smile)

Hello. I’m going to make nice-nice with our brothers and sisters in South Korea and meet with President Trump, who thinks I’m going to give up all of my nuclear weapons in return for some food and maybe some cultural artifacts. (Smile)

I’ll believe it when I see it.

And here’s the funny thing: Kim has a far more experienced foreign policy team than the United States does now. The president, I fear, knows very little other than what’s in his gut, which at any given moment has come from McDonald’s. The new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has been on the job for a little over two days and is more infamous for his dislike of Muslims than what he knows about global politics.

OK, you’re right. Not funny at all.

Plus, I’m a bit unsure as to what “denuclearization” means. Are both Koreas supposed to give up their nuclear arsenals? Are the Chinese and the Russians supposed to give up anything? After all, North and South can’t sign a peace agreement to end the war without the US and other countries that were involved in the fighting. And what about the Japanese? Will we be asked to stop supporting Japan with our nuclear weapons?

Or is this like my kitchen? I won’t bomb my neighbor, but please don’t ask me to give up my microwave.

So many questions.

And then there’s that smiling Comrade Kim, knowing that he can go on killing, starving, harassing, jailing, intimidating, propagandizing, bankrupting and misleading his people because he probably watches FOX News and understands that the Trump Administration will not only turn a blind eye to human rights abuses, they’ll go all Oedipus on us and take a stick to their remaining oculars.

That’s the real payoff and Kim knows it. He will not be held to account for the truly terrible things he’s done to his people and he’ll extract something of value for his regime. The South might get a peace treaty, repatriation for citizens who were kidnapped by the North, reunification meetings for families, and a promise from Kim not to invade, which will help the government of President Moon Jae-in maintain its economy and security. The North will get pretty much everything else, including some food aid, which is great, but it certainly won’t be enough to turn around an economy that’s hovering about three inches above dirt level.

As for the United States? Kim will want something in return for his denuclearization, such as a promise that the US won’t invade, but it also might involve us weakening our alliance with Japan and South Korea. And I’m sure that Chinese President Xi will be involved as well. Many of the news reports talk about how China is sidelined or marginalized as Kim goes directly to the South and then will meet with President Trump. I don’t buy a word of it. President Xi, unlike the other bombasts who’ve taken to the world stage in the past two years, knows the value of silence. And loyalty. Kim is not acting alone.

When all is said and done, though, the smiling dictator will go back to his country and dictate. Everything. Nothing of any value will change.

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Trump Administration to Increase Rent For Poorest Americans

Another example of how Donald Trump and his administration is taking from the poor and giving to the rich!

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson on Wednesday will propose tripling the amount the poorest households are expected to pay for rent as well as encourage those receiving housing subsidies to work, according to the administration’s legislative proposal obtained by The Washington Post.

The move to overhaul how low-income rental subsidies are calculated would affect more than 4.5 million families relying on federal housing assistance. The proposed legislation would require congressional approval.

Currently, tenants generally pay 30 percent of their adjusted income toward rent or a public housing agency minimum rent not to exceed $50. The administration’s legislative proposal sets the family monthly rent contribution at 35 percent of gross income or 35 percent of their earnings by working 15 hours a week at the federal minimum wage — or approximately $150 a month, three times higher than the current minimum.

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