Is The Sky Falling?
Posted: April 12, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Constitution, Department of Homeland Security, Donald Trump, Historical Perspective, Mueller Report, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, United States Leave a comment…Don’t it always seem to go, That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone…
—– Joni Mitchell from the song Big Yellow Taxi
From time to time I try to do a self-evaluation as to my perspective on current events under this president’s administration. In a nod to Chicken Little, I wonder if things are really as bad as they seem or whether I am falling prey to the hype. Am I running around yelling that the sky is falling for no reason? In my view, there is less hype and more to be genuinely concerned about with this president as time goes by. I worry that the incremental destruction of our political norms and traditions is passing the notice of many of our fellow citizens and that one day we will wake up and realize that what we all assumed was right in these United States is now gone.
Consider the following:
- The president gutted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). We now have an Acting Secretary of Homeland Security and key department heads are missing or also have “acting” leaders including the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, the Undersecretary for Management, the Director of the Secret Service and the Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Any day, the Director of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will be empty as he becomes the Acting Secretary. Additionally in the DHS the FAA and FEMA are headed by acting directors. There are other key offices empty.
- When the president was asked who is in charge at DHS given all the vacancies, he replied, “Frankly there’s only one person that’s running it. You know who that is? It’s me.”
- There are 716 positions in the government that require Senate confirmation. Of those there are 140 with no nominee. Only six are awaiting confirmation. Positions without permanent leadership include the Secretary of Defense, the president’s Chief of Staff, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The other positions are generally department heads or at the Deputy and Assistant Secretary level across the government, in other words, the people that actually get things done.
- The president is trying to interfere with the work of the Federal Reserve, an institution previously thought for decades to be above political interference which is critical to its credibility and role in shaping the U.S. and world economy.
- The Attorney General of the United States is refusing to release the entire Mueller Report to the Congress. He alone (or will it be with help from the White House?) will determine what will be released. While it may be reasonable to withhold some of the report’s information from the general public, refusing to release it to Congress, who is authorized to deal with classified information and grand jury proceedings, makes it impossible to know whether the true story of the investigation will be known. Additionally this week, Attorney General Barr asserted that the government was spying on the Trump campaign. As he said, “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. I think spying did occur.” When asked to provide proof, he said he could not. How convenient. The man who controls what parts of the impartial investigation may be released can assert whatever he cares to and then not have to provide evidence.
- The Attorney General got his job by currying favor with Mr. Trump. His hiring is paying off for the president as Mr. Barr repeats many of the president’s talking points and provides further fodder for his assertions that he was “exonerated” (he wasn’t), that it was all a “hoax” (the entire intelligence community says it was not), and that it was an “attempted coup” (forgetting that the Special Counsel, Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, FBI Director, etc., etc., etc.) were all this president’s appointees. The president procured a personal attorney in Mr. Barr, and the United States lost an Attorney General. (One might ask Mr. Trump and his supporters how a corrupt, phony, political vendetta prone organization could “exonerate” him. A seemingly direct contradiction.)
- Additionally, the Attorney General refuses to support the law of the land — the Affordable Care Act twice upheld in the Supreme Court — primarily because that’s the president’s position. It’s kind of scary if a president can seek to overturn laws he doesn’t agree with by directing the Department of Justice to work to overturn it, even though it was twice deemed Constitutional.
- Speaking of not following the law, it appears that Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin will direct the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) not to turn over Mr. Trump’s tax returns. This in spite of the fact that under the law the Secretary is not to interfere in decisions made by the IRS and the fact that a law is on the books that says the IRS “shall” turn them over to Congress upon request (not “may”, “could”, “might” or any other modifier). The law is a 1924 statute enacted to uncover fraud within the Executive Branch following the Teapot Dome scandal.
- After declaring a National Emergency and sending additional troops to the border, there is no Senate confirmed Secretary of Defense and no Secretary of Homeland Security. Not even nominees. Where is the oversight? Mr. Trump professes that “I like acting. It gives me more flexibility.” In other words, he likes people to be unsure in their jobs because it gives him more control over them. Additionally, he does not have to worry about too many tough questions coming during Senate confirmation hearings.
- Frustrated by the asylum laws governing immigrants, the president wants to undo them all and in fact argues that we eliminate judges that adjudicate the laws about asylum. As he said this week, “And we have to do something about asylum. And to be honest with you, you have to get rid of the judges.”
- Among other measures being considered (again!) in the White House is an Executive Order ending birthright citizenship (anyone born on U.S. soil is considered a citizen). So apparently the president and his advisers think that the president can unilaterally overturn the Constitution. In this case, the 14th Amendment.
I could go on and on. I find it very troubling that the assaults on the rule of law continue unabated and indeed, seem to be increasingly frequent and harsh. On the other hand, the president is a known blowhard who continually speaks outrageously and without knowledge of nearly any subject. Should we worry about his pronouncements or is it just more sound and fury rather than substance? If during his presidency he has already told over 9,000 provable lies should we just dismiss most of his statements as more lies? Or is there something there?
I think that there is something there. The president does not seem constrained by any law from taking action, even though many of his most controversial policies have been consistently overruled in the courts. He and his administration willfully ignore attempts at oversight from the Democrats in the House of Representatives. Republicans in the Senate are too afraid of being “primaried” (when did that become a word?) to stand up to him. Where are the limits to his power as he continues to push the boundaries and in many cases break them? Or are these concerns of mine just a gut level reaction to his abominable personality and persistent bullying and belittling?
In my heart I know that Mr. Trump cares nothing about the people of the United States. He cares only of himself and arguably his family. Whatever helps him personally and allows for his family to continue to make money off of the presidency is all that keeps him focused.
My concern is that having rid himself of nearly everyone in his Cabinet and close advisers that stood up to him to point out that his actions were unlawful, immoral or unethical (and in some cases all three) is gone. Now he is surrounded by enablers. I fear that as time goes by he will become ever more autocratic in outlook and action. Reportedly, Mr. Trump models himself after President Andrew Jackson. Remember what President Jackson is said to have remarked about a decision made by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall, “John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it!” (President Jackson ignored the Supreme Court’s decision in Worcester v Georgia. The case involved the sovereignty of Native American tribal lands.)
Mr. Trump is headed in the same direction as Mr. Jackson. He sees no limits on his power and believes that he can ignore the law where it suits him. And why not? Throughout his entire life he has never been held accountable for his actions in any meaningful way. With A.G. Barr’s unilateral assertion that the president is exonerated under the Mueller investigation, what is to make him think that anything or anyone will get in his way?
Sometimes I do think that I am Chicken Little. Maybe I worry about the course of our nation a little too much. Unfortunately, I am also a student of history and current events. There are just too many examples throughout time where revolutions and the loss of freedoms did not happen overnight, but rather incrementally and slowly. Most people’s lives were not immediately or directly impacted and so they didn’t pay close attention or fret over it. And then one day, it was too late. They didn’t know what they had until it was gone.
One at a time Mr. Trump’s actions may be more annoying than substantive. Put them all together and it paints the picture of a man who knows no boundaries. A president who is slowly eliminating his opposition and consolidating power in his own hands.
An old U.S. Navy saying goes “Eternal vigilance is the price of safety.” We should all remain vigilant to the actions of our president.
White Nationalist Terrorism
Posted: March 18, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Extremism, Human Rights, Immigrants, Islamaphobia, Nature of Mankind, Terrorism, White Nationalism Leave a commentAnother mass shooting, this time in Christchurch New Zealand, left at least fifty people dead and many dozens wounded, proving yet again that white nationalism spreads hate and leads to the vilest of acts. Let’s call it what it is — terrorism. For some reason, when Muslim extremists attack a Western target, it is immediately condemned as an act of terrorism. But when a white man attacks two mosques and kills fifty Muslims, it is considered an isolated act of a mad man. While no one can be held accountable for these acts other than those that perpetrate these heinous crimes, let’s not fool ourselves that this is solely the random act of a nut job. He reportedly chose New Zealand precisely because it is arguably the safest country on earth. His attacks on two mosques where he ruthlessly gunned down children, women and men were not random. They were intended to send a message and to instill terror.
Western intelligence agencies work together world-wide to follow and thwart such acts by ISIS and al-Qaeda and other Muslim extremist groups. And well they should. But there is to date, no similar intelligence effort to follow and thwart acts by white nationalists. Make no mistake about it, the far right extremists work together via the dark web and other social media avenues to spread their ideology and to share ideas about how to carry out violence. As explained in a Washington Post article this weekend, white supremacists who are motivated by a right-wing political ideology committed more acts of violence in recent years than any other type of domestic extremist. It is time to recognize that these are not one time random events but rather that these extremists are connected in that they are motivated by and share the same websites, political views and understanding of world events. They feed off of each other. It is a movement, both here in the United States and increasingly in other Western nations around the world. They are connected in ways we may not truly understand. There was a reason this evil person left a 74 page manifesto and live streamed his attack on Facebook. He wanted to share with those like him and in a way, to brag about his ability to carry out with action what others only talk about.
Be aware of the language. Words matter and have meaning. Many experts start with the French writer Renaud Camus and his book “The Great Replacement” which is often referenced by the far right. Indeed, this shooter named his manifesto in homage to this book. In his book, Mr. Camus argues that whites in Europe are being replaced by immigrants from non-white countries and most of them are Muslims. He calls it “demographic colonization” and talks about a “counter revolt” to drive them away. Mr. Camus now has a second book along the same lines called “You Will Not Replace Us!” Remember that in 2017 the white supremacists in Charlottesville marched to the chant “Jews will not replace us!” Other words like “invasion” and depictions of non-white immigrants as criminals, and disease carriers and generally despicable non-human beings fills the pages of the writings and postings of these far right nationalists. They come from “shit hole” countries. They want to take away jobs. Sound familiar?
According to the ADL (formerly the Anti-Defamation League) in the United States from 2008 to 2017 there were 387 domestic extremist murders. Of those, they report that 71 percent of them were committed by right-wing extremists. 26 percent were by Islamic extremists and three percent were by left-wing extremists. Please don’t give me the “both sides” argument. It is time to be realistic about this danger to our citizens.
One might ask where the real “national emergency” is taking place. It may be that the real threat comes from those trying to “Make America White Again.”
We need to move beyond thinking of these incidents as isolated. They are not. Until our leadership realizes that this is a real and present danger these events will continue. When asked if he thought the rise of white nationalists around the world was a growing threat, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. It’s certainly a terrible thing.” To think as the president does about white nationalism is to either condone it, or it is the moral equivalent of having our collective heads in the sand. From Saturday morning to Sunday night, Mr. Trump put out 50 Tweets or retweets about everything from formulating the idea that the government should investigate Saturday Night Live for colluding with the Russians (?!) to attacking Senator John McCain. (Still.) Not one concerned the massacre in New Zealand.
Wake up USA.
No Pesos, Just A Hoax
Posted: February 16, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Article One of the Constitution, Autocracy, Border Wall, Constitution, Donald Trump, National Emergency Act, Supreme Court, United States Constitution 1 CommentYesterday’s announcement by Mr. Donald J. Trump that he is declaring a national emergency on the southern border is just one more step towards creating the autocracy that he so desperately wants to have. After two years of total Republican control, and no “big, beautiful wall,” and no money from Mexico, Mr. Trump puts our Constitution in danger in order to shore up his political standing with his base. An overblown statement on my part? I think not.
As I have written in this space before, one may believe that we do or do not need a border wall, but the facts remain the same. There is no crisis on the border and a wall is not going to stop the flow of people or drugs into this country. You can look it up as I did in my previous piece using the statistics from Mr. Trump’s own administration. Mr. Trump, as usual, makes up his own statistics in order to make a case that his own administration cannot make. But the Constitutional issue is bigger than Mr. Trump’s usual panoply of lies.
The law that the president is using to justify his declaration is known as the National Emergencies Act (NEA) signed into law by President Gerald Ford in September 1976. Ironically, it was intended to end the abuse of the presidential power to declare a national emergency for just any political purpose. Enacted as a reaction to the Watergate scandal the intent was to eliminate the opportunity for presidential abuse of power to protect themselves from political scandal. The law itself is quite complicated. Its originators tried to tie together the elements of presidential prerogative to specific situations covered under existing laws. Without going too far into the weeds, Mr. Trump is using Department of Defense funds for his wall because of an existing statute that allows for redistribution of funds for the protection of military personnel on assigned missions. There are military personnel on the border — ordered there by Mr. Trump but in purely supportive positions — and thus he argues that the wall will protect those troops. It is a complicated interpretation of the law, but as I am not a legislative assistant nor an attorney, I will leave it at that. The point is that the president cannot just wake up one morning and declare an emergency for the fun of it — or at least until now it was thought that they could not — rather, the actions taken under a national emergency must be justified on the basis of existing law.
The DOD funds are primarily from military construction funds and intended for use in improving military support infrastructure, restoring hurricane damage to bases in North Carolina and Florida and other projects. Ironically, some of the money will come from a fund used by DOD for counter-drug operations. In all he is misappropriating over six billion dollars of DOD funds.
The act has been used 59 times over the years by various presidents. Most instances were to impose sanctions on a bad actor overseas, such as to inhibit a dictator from killing his own people. One was declared after Iraq invaded Kuwait and another after the terrorist attacks of September 11th. It was these types of acts that the legislation envisioned giving the president the ability to act quickly in a crisis. Most importantly, none of those previous declarations directly or indirectly circumvented the intent of Congress. This one does. The president is directly challenging the power of Congress to control funding for the first time under this provision.
That is why I believe his declaration to be a threat to the Constitution. A bicameral and bipartisan committee came up with legislation to fund the government that included roughly 1.375 billion dollars for Mr. Trump’s wall. The bill passed with veto proof margins in both houses of Congress. That should be the end of the discussion for this year. If Mr. Trump wanted more money in the future, he could work with Congress to add more money in those spending bills. However, in a fit of pique that he got less money this year than he would have gotten if he had not shut down the government for 35 days — and way less than the 25 billion dollars that Congress was willing to give him a year ago in exchange for protecting the “Dreamers” — the “greatest deal maker in the world” declared a national emergency to build a monument to himself and to bolster his chances in the 2020 presidential election. But don’t take my word for it, take his. Besides having talked about a “national emergency” for months and trying to use it as a threat to get Congress to give him more money, yesterday in response to reporter’s questions about why he did not just continue to work with Congress under normal appropriation and authorization processes, he said, “I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.” Wow. So the president himself admitted that there is no national emergency, merely that he got tired of working with Congress and making slow progress, In other words he chose expediency over the national interest. He then went on to say, “And I don’t have to do it for the election. I’ve already done a lot of wall for the election. 2020. And the only reason we’re up here talking about this is because of the election…” Double wow.
So we have the President of the United States, invoking a national emergency, bypassing a bipartisan funding bill from the Congress, because he wants money to build a wall faster in order to appease his base for the 2020 election. That is one thing about Mr. Trump. He doesn’t hesitate to tell us when he is doing something shady.
In case you forgot, Article One, Section 9 of the Constitution says in part, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” Article One enumerates the powers vested in Congress. Section 9 is the “power of the purse” reference that is the strongest element of the power invested in the Congress. Since the president cannot spend money except for specific purposes, the Congress can exert its power as a co-equal branch of government. Without that power in Congress, the president and his Cabinet could spend money on any enterprise they see fit without over sight or other input from Congress.
Besides Mr. Trump’s Banana Republic shenanigans in creating a non-existent crisis to deploy troops and to build a wall to stop a non-existent “invasion” (Autocracy 101 Playbook), Constitutional experts consider his actions to be a direct threat to the Article One powers of the Congress. He would set a precedent that any time a president has a pet project that the Congress will not fund, he or she could declare a national emergency and take money from one authorized project and use it on an unauthorized one. It is an unabashed abuse of presidential power.
How to stop it? The NEA of 1976 provides that opportunity. A 1985 amendment allows for a joint resolution of Congress to end the emergency. Again, without going into the weeds, it requires a simple majority in both Houses to overturn it. Provisions require a speedy vote so that legislative legerdemain cannot bury the issue. They must address it if a bill is brought forward. The president may veto the resolution, in which case the Congress must over ride the veto with a two-thirds majority in both Houses to end the emergency.
It is widely expected that such a bill will come forward in the Democrat controlled House of Representatives where it is expected to pass. The chances of the bill passing are less certain in the Republican controlled Senate. Speculation is that it would pass on a majority, but that the Senate would not over ride a veto. Keep in mind that the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Trump-Ky) was against the president declaring an emergency before he was for it. Just a few days ago he was against it. Then on Thursday he took to the Senate floor to say that he supports it. So much for his reputation as an ardent supporter of the Constitution and the self-appointed protector of the Senate and their legislative powers. Perhaps he should re-label his position as the Senate Leading Enabler.
When the Congress fails to stop the madness, numerous court cases are likely to be filed. The basis of those cases will range from Constitutional separation of powers issues to eminent domain cases (it seems that most land owners along the border are not willing to give up their land for a meaningless wall). Whether or not the issue makes it to the Supreme Court is itself a question. The Supreme Court may consider this to be an issue between the other two branches of government, and they are historically loathe to make a decision that favors one or the other when it comes to delineated powers. They want them to solve it themselves, which seems logical since the Congress can pass laws to restrict or rescind the original Act, including the above voting procedure to end a national emergency. What is certain is that it will be working through the courts for months, possibly years, to come. The immediate question will be whether a court issues an injunction to stop any building of the wall using misappropriated funds while the court cases play out. And you can expect every brief opposing the action to begin with Mr. Trump’s statement that he didn’t need to do it.
In some ways this is an esoteric issue. In some ways it is a comedy of the absurd. It is hard to follow the nuances of the law and the Constitution. It gets complicated. Mr. Trump has a knack for putting things into black and white to try to make his points, even if he lies to do so. The country cannot afford to ignore him or to look away this time. To cut through the legalese, I’ll put it this way. The President of the United States is using a hoax to usurp the Constitution of the United States. He is making a pure power play that if allowed to stand will set a precedent for him, and future presidents, to act without restraint to achieve their purposes whether legitimate or not. It is the beginning of a president gaining unfettered power. This is not hyperbole on my part or an over reaction from those that are anti-Trump. Read up on your own, form your own opinion, but the consequences are not whether we build a wall. The issue is whether a president can skirt the law and get away with it. That should be of grave concern to anyone that believes that we should be a country of laws and that no one, not even the president, is above the Constitution.
Of M.I.C.E. And Men
Posted: February 6, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Donald Trump, Robert Mueller, Russia, Soviet Union, Special Counsel, Treason Leave a commentAs Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation continues, so far thirty-four people and three companies have been indicted or pleaded guilty to criminal charges. Five of the six advisers to Mr. Donald J. Trump that are on that list have submitted guilty pleas. Only time will tell how many more people close to Mr. Trump may be indicted as the investigation comes to a close. I will not venture a guess as to who, or when those indictments will come down (I thought it would have happened long before now) but I have no doubt that others — some very close to the president — will be charged.
Whether those charges are directly connected to working with the Russians to throw the election in Mr. Trump’s direction is hard to say for sure. However, of those indicted by Mr. Mueller to date, twenty-six are Russian nationals.
As the investigation continues to unfold, keep in the back of your mind the reasons why people spy on their own country or cooperate with foreign governments to undermine their home government. What could motivate a person to betray their country? There is an old acronym that summarizes those reasons. It is M.I.C.E. and breaks down as follows.
- M — Money. This can take many forms. Money to become rich. Money because the individual needs it for personal or family reasons. Money “owed” to them but because of “bad breaks” that they fault their own government for creating they never got what they felt they deserved. And so on.
- I — Ideology. This was the motivator for some in the early days of the Cold War or for those that cooperated with the Soviet Union in the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s. It is often an idealistic view of a particular ideology, such as communism being good for the poor and blue-collar workers.
- C– Compromised. This is otherwise known as good old-fashioned blackmail.
- E — Ego. This is one’s own sense of self-worth. It can be the result of trying to increase one’s own sense of self-importance or it can be a result of having the ability to sabotage someone else’s sense of self-importance for pure spite. Egos take many forms but the knowledge that you can do something and then did do something of great import is a significant motivator. It can also be the ego boost of doing something daring or forbidden that no one else has the nerve to do.
In the current era, the two biggest motivators are money and ego. And of course, some combination of two or more of these factors may play a part in getting someone to betray their fellow citizens. For example, having compromising information on a potential asset may not be enough to bring them over to your side. Sweetening the deal with substantial cash or some other fiduciary reward gets you there. It could be that the potential asset is severely in debt and about to be embarrassed or financially ruined should that information become known. That individual would be compromised by the release of that information. They are also further compromised if the “recruiter” offers to solve the indebtedness problem, which of course, further compromises the potential asset once they take the money or the debt is resolved.
Of those advisers to Mr. Trump indicted thus far, money and ego seem to be the driving factors. We will see what happens as the investigation continues. I for one will be curious as to their motivation.
What To Think?
Posted: January 17, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Donald Trump, Magnitsky Act, NATO, Russia, Russian Agent, Sanctions, United States Constitution, Vladimir Putin 1 CommentYou may have missed it with all of the theatrics surrounding the Trump Shutdown, but some potentially mind-blowing news came out last Friday and over the weekend.
Even as I suffer from Trump fatigue, and you know what I think of him as president, it is impossible to ignore this development. The FBI started a counter-intelligence investigation of the president in 2017. The President. Of the United States. It is unknown whether that investigation continues under the guidance of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but it is likely that it does. A counter-intelligence investigation is totally unlike a criminal investigation. It is a totally different ball game. It also puts the possibility of the president’s efforts at obstructing justice into an entirely different dimension. Perhaps instead of trying to protect himself from embarrassment or through some other motivation, his decision to fire then FBI Director James Comey “over this Russia thing” was with a different outcome in mind. Coupled with all of the subsequent efforts to stop or disrupt Mr. Mueller’s investigation, it appears he was trying to keep the discovery of conspiracy with a foreign power from becoming known. In other words, the obstruction was the conspiracy (or collusion as it is popularly, but wrongly, called.)
In this context, the Mueller investigation, and Mr. Trump’s actions as a candidate and as president form a continuum across time and are not a series of discreet events.
It is hard to adequately convey how difficult the decision to do this is. For the Department of Justice (DOJ), that would have to approve the FBI investigation at its highest level, to sign off on it, would indicate that there is or was extraordinary evidence that something was amiss. This would be no routine investigation.
Apparently, the FBI became so alarmed at Mr. Trump’s actions that it appeared he was acting on behalf of a foreign power. They knew that a “normal” president would not talk or act as he was, specifically with respect to Russia and Vladimir Putin, and could only explain it by the concern that he must be under the influence of a foreign power. In other words, they thought the president could be a Russian agent. No movie studio would make this movie. Too preposterous.
To be clear, to be a Russian agent does not necessarily mean that the individual was trained in Russia or by Russians, or even that he was directly controlled by a Russian case agent. As former CIA Director John Brennan said in testimony to Congress, such people can be “wittingly or unwittingly” agents of a foreign power. I do not know and cannot make a good guess as to whether Mr. Trump is or is not knowingly a Russian agent. But I do know that he is acting to further the Russian agenda over the best interests of the United States.
Keep in mind, Mr. Putin was a career KGB agent who attained the rank of Colonel before the end of the Cold War. He knows what he is doing.
This is scary, mind-blowing, and a conundrum. Our system of government is based on the premise that the president is above reproach when it comes to national security. One may disagree on specific policy decisions, but we must assume that presidents are doing what they believe are in the best interests of the United States, not a foreign adversary. The president is the final arbiter of military, intelligence, and foreign policy issues. How do intelligence agencies or law enforcement agencies or the counter intelligence arms of various government agencies deal with an individual who, while under investigation, can over turn, hinder or evade those investigations? And how should they be held to account? If by definition the president is the lead diplomat for our country, how can he be wrong? There are many implications and questions that arise when one starts thinking about our president as a Russian agent. My head hurts.
Keep in mind that counter intelligence agents are some of the most peculiar people one will ever meet. Thinking about their job, they are suspicious about everyone and everything that does not fit their mold of the “normal.” Conspiracies lurk everywhere. None-the-less, there must have been sufficient reasons to open this investigation or it would never have happened. They do not investigate the president for the fun of it or for political reasons. They just do not. Yes, paranoia runs deep. Into your life it will creep. (With apologies to Buffalo Springfield.) You are not paranoid if it is true.
The possibility gains traction through documented reports that Mr. Trump met one-on-one with Mr. Putin five different times over the last two years with only interpreters in the room. He then collected the interpreters notes and refused to share what was said with anyone else in the government. Two particularly troubling meetings were the one in Helsinki last summer and an unscheduled meeting at a G-20 dinner in Hamburg Germany where only the Russian interpreter was present. (I have written about these meetings before. I was especially alarmed by the meeting in Germany.) Rest assured the Russians know what was discussed and agreed to, but not those in the highest levels of our own government.
In my view, the most likely foundation to this arrangement rests on sanctions. The Russians want them lifted and so does the Trump Organization. The Russians were heavily sanctioned following their annexation of Crimea and it is hurting their economy. They want them gone. The sanctions were the genesis of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian representatives to get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. When you hear “Magnitsky Act” think sanctions. The Russians want them removed. Now. Mr. Trump wants them lifted because following his many bankruptcies, nearly all his money came from Russia. The banks that produced the loans are subject to the sanctions. Continued sanctions means no big money for Trump Org. Additionally, it is well know that Mr. Trump’s business Holy Grail is to put his name on a Trump Tower Moscow.
My view is that of many possible explanations, the simplest is that Mr. Trump wants to do business in Russia when he leaves office and is willing to bargain with Mr. Putin to get the access. What other evidence exists?
Let’s look at some of the president’s actions and words. This list is not exhaustive but representative.
- As the Republican nominee he had the Republican National Committee 2016 platform changed regarding Ukraine in order to mirror Russian claims and interests.
- At every opportunity he incessantly praises Mr. Putin which validates Mr. Putin’s self-proclaimed status, empowers him at home, and comes at the expense of our allies and friends.
- The primary goal of Mr. Putin is to splinter the Western Alliance so that Russia can fill the void and return to the glory days — as Mr. Putin sees it — of the Soviet Union. Mr Trump aids that goal in many ways.
- He launches personal and political attacks against the leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and others. He belittles lesser members of the European Union (EU) and NATO.
- He supports Brexit (The UK departure from the EU) which currently has the UK in turmoil. This weakens the EU and contributes to chaos in the internal affairs of a key ally. That internal chaos distracts a force for good and takes a staunch opponent of Russia off of the world stage.
- When asked in a 2018 interview to name the U.S. “biggest foe globally right now,” Mr. Trump responded “I think the European Union is a foe.” The EU contains our closest allies. The interview was just before he met with Mr. Putin in Helsinki.
- He continually belittles NATO in public. It is apparent he does not know how funding for NATO works. He apparently also does not know that the only time Article V of NATO was invoked (an attack on one nation is an attack on all) was following the terrorist attack in September 2001. NATO troops have been in Afghanistan from the beginning of the conflict and remain there. It has been widely reported that Mr. Trump continually pushed his senior aids throughout 2018 to have the U.S. withdraw from NATO. Such an action would be Mr. Putin’s wildest dream come true.
- He continually denies that Russia interfered with the U.S. 2016 election. He continually takes Mr. Putin’s word that Russia did not interfere over the facts presented by the entire U.S. intelligence community. Among his justification for taking Mr. Putin’s word is the newly reported reasoning for doing so, including this remarkable quote. Mr. Trump “said that he raised the election hacking three times and that Mr. Putin denied involvement. But he said Mr. Putin also told him that ‘if we did, we wouldn’t have gotten caught because we’re professionals.’ Mr. Trump said: ‘I thought that was a good point because they are some of the best in the world’ at hacking.”
- He pushed to have Russia rejoin the G-7 (it was previously the G-8). The Russians were expelled following their annexation of Crimea. Mr. Trump said that he thinks that the punishment is too severe for that act.
- At the 2018 G-7 summit Mr. Trump opined that of course Crimea belongs to Russia because “they all speak Russian.” This put fear into the hearts of our Baltic, and NATO, allies that were once part of the Soviet Union and have a large Russian ethnic population.
- Following the March 2018 poisoning in the UK of the Skirpals, former Russian agents that went over to the West, he said that there was no evidence to support the UK Prime Minister’s denunciations of Russia for an attack on British soil.
- Last December he called for U.S. troops to withdraw from Syria “now” and turn it over to the Russians. This is a long-standing goal of the Russians so that they can increase their influence in the Middle East and gain a military presence in the region.
- He often spouts Russian talking points (propaganda). The most recent instance was his spontaneous and out of the blue discourse on the Soviet Union, their presence in Afghanistan, and a revisionist history of their reasons for invading. (This was the subject of a recent post in this space, explaining how this promotes Mr. Putin’s view of the restoration of the Soviet empire.)
And so on. Some big, some small, but all consistent in their praise of Russia and in pushing the Russian agenda.
So, what to think? Is our president a Russian agent, whether wittingly or unwittingly? I sincerely hope that the Mueller investigation addresses this issue clearly, either to confirm it or to debunk it. From where I sit today, and from all that we have seen of Mr. Trump in the last three years, I think it likely. It is most likely in the nature of long-standing business and other money schemes between Russian oligarchs and Mr. Trump and his family. That would be in keeping with what we know about him and what he says himself. With him, no matter the subject, it is all about the money. Period.
Should this be true, I have no idea how it will be resolved. It is beyond comprehension. The President of the United States works for Russia. Incredible.
The only thing that is clear to me is that Mr. Mueller needs to get the results of his investigation into the open as soon as possible. I know that he is being meticulous, as he should be. However, if this is even only a little bit true, our nation is in danger. We need to know and we need to know before something truly awful happens. And if it isn’t true, we need to know that as well so that we can move on without distraction to addressing the complex issues that we know await us in 2019
A Change To This Blog
Posted: January 11, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentWith this post, you should see a change in the presentation of this blog. In reviewing recent posts, it seemed to me that the advertisements — for which I got no compensation — were overwhelming the content. That should change as of today.
You as a reader do not need to take any action. You should continue to receive new posts as before.
Thank you for reading and for your comments.
Where Are The Pesos?
Posted: January 9, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Asylum, Border Security, Border Wall, Congress, Constitution, Donald Trump, Immigration, Partisan, Politics Leave a comment(With a bow in the direction of Steve Schmidt, the former campaign manager for Senator John McCain’s presidential bid, for the title.)
Last night the president gave a speech to the nation about the alleged crisis on our southern border. Lots of figures and statistics continue to be thrown around to support the president’s desire to build a wall. Most are misleading or purposely distorted in order to support his campaign pledge. Whether you support the wall or not, here are the facts provided by Mr. Trump’s own administration and other independent sources. We can disagree on the best way to provide border security, but it should be a fact based discussion. With the emotion removed it becomes a different situation.
- Mexico will not pay for the wall. Claims that the new U.S., Mexico, Canada trade agreement (NAFTA by any other name with a few improvements) will result in Mexico “essentially” paying for it is false. Whether or not the new agreement changes the balance of trade between the U.S. and Mexico, that money does not go into the U.S. Treasury. And the U.S. Senate has yet to take up the new agreement so it is not in force. No time-table for ratification is set.
- 800,000 American federal workers are out of a pay check come Friday. There are hundreds of thousands of more American workers without pay checks that support the Federal government or that provide services to the government that are without pay checks and will not get back pay.
- Claims that the number of migrants crossing the border are unprecedented are wrong. According to the U.S. Border Patrol, there were 303,916 apprehensions at the border in 2017. That is the lowest in 45 years. In 2018 there were 396,579. A slight increase, but significantly lower than the 1.6 million apprehended in 2000.
- The southern border is not the primary way that undocumented immigrants enter the country. According to the Department of Homeland Security, in 2017, 606,926 people were in the country illegally by over staying their visas. That is roughly twice the number from the southern border. 101,281 of those who did not leave when their visa expired were from Canada.
- According to the U.S. State Department, “there was no credible evidence indicating that international terrorist groups have established bases in Mexico, worked with Mexican drug cartels, or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States.”
- According to the U.S. government, in 2017, 2,554 official encounters in the U.S. occurred with people on the terrorist watch list (which does not mean they are terrorists as it is often a case of mismatched names or other glitches). Of those, 2,170 attempted to enter through airports. NBC news reports, based on a DHS report to Congress, that the “roughly 4,000” terrorists cited by Trump Administration officials that were stopped were from around the world, not at the southern border. This includes stopping some before they get on an airplane overseas. Again this refers to people on the watch list, not necessarily actual terrorists. In the first half of 2018 exactly six immigrants were stopped at the southern border for being on the list. In the same time frame, forty-one were stopped at the Canadian border.
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel deported 5,872 suspected gang members in 2018. ICE does not break down which gangs these people belong to so it is impossible to know how many belong to MS-13. Additionally, some of those in the mix that were deported were not actually members of gangs. It is likely that the number of MS-13 gang-bangers arrested by ICE is in the hundreds. The total number of gang members deported in 2018 is less than one percent of those entering legally and then staying in the country illegally.
- Any murder or rape is a tragedy. Keep in mind that statistics consistently show that immigrants — legal or illegal — are far less likely to break the law than those born in the United States.
- According to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) about 90% of the heroin entering the U.S. comes through Mexico. Frankly, no one knows exactly how much enters the country each year. However, DEA reports that the very large majority of it comes through legal ports of entry by land, sea and air.
- The vast majority of non-U.S. citizens attempting to enter the U.S. do so at legal ports of entry. Under U.S. and international law, those seeking asylum must be taken at their word that they are in danger of their lives, or persecution in their native lands until a hearing is held to adjudicate their claim. Not everyone crossing the southern border seeking asylum is granted it. Current administrative processes at the border result in extremely long wait times (it could be months) to enter through a port of entry. This induces desperate people to try to cross illegally and then to turn themselves in to authorities. This happens quite often and in peaceful ways. Whether the individuals entered legally or illegally, if they ask for asylum, under the law, they must be heard.
Here is my opinion.
What is really at stake is Article I of the Constitution. In what is known as the “vesting”clause, all legislative authority is given to the Congress, including appropriations and authorizations to spend money. Note that it comes before Article II that gives executive power to the president. Article III creates the judiciary.
In his first two years, Mr. Trump did not have a Congress that would put a check on his whims, desires and plans. Now he does with Democrats controlling the House of Representatives. On their part, the House is exercising their Constitutional power of the purse to establish that they are a co-equal branch of government and do not have to give in to the president on every issue. Frankly, it is about time. Missing in action is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) who got burned by the president’s promises in December and refuses to get involved to end the shutdown. It is likely that in short order (a few days to a week) Republican Senators will start to come over to the Democrat’s plan and Mr. McConnell will have to bring the Democrats’ bills to the floor to again pass what they already did just before Christmas.
Remember that the bills passed by the House last week are exactly the same as those already passed by the Republican controlled Senate. Because a new Congress was installed last week, all bills not passed by both Houses need to start over.
The government shutdown over the wall has nothing to do with border security. All sober government officials, Republican or Democrat, support border security. They differ on how our money and resources should be spent to protect and regulate the border.
The wall is a political stunt. The president backed himself into a corner and when a bipartisan deal was presented to him (including the bill passed in the Senate just before Christmas), after agreeing to it, he caved to right-wing pundits and proudly proclaimed that he would own the shutdown. That he and many of his advisers did not understand that when a shutdown goes into effect it means the government shuts down, hurting countless thousands of people across the country, is a story for another day.
Warning! Warning!
It appears that there are three ways this situation can be resolved. Mr. Trump caves. The House and Senate get together and pass veto proof bills to fund the government. Finally, Mr. Trump may follow through on his threat to declare a National Emergency, mobilize the military and use Department of Defense funds to build his wall. This last move is that of an autocrat. It is Despot 101. Create a threat where one doesn’t exist, declare an emergency, mobilize the military, bypass the democratically elected legislature and take steps to curtail any opposition.
And all of it is based on a big lie. I cannot think of a more dangerous scenario.
Absurd
Posted: January 4, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Afghanistan, Brezhnev Doctrine, Donald Trump, Historical Perspective, Propaganda, Russia, Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin 1 CommentMr. Donald J. Trump held his first cabinet meeting of the year on 2 January. In keeping with his reality show background, the meeting was televised. The meeting was really a 90 minute monologue on just about everything that Mr. Trump stewed about over the holidays. There were many newsworthy elements to be found in the transcript ranging from the border wall to the economy. Many of the statements were provably wrong or misleading. The list of falsehoods is too long to go through here.
Among the many untruths from the meeting perhaps the most troubling, at least in terms of asking oneself “where the heck did that come from?” were his comments on Afghanistan. In a discussion about a continued U.S. military presence there, he launched into a bizarre statement full of previously unknown “facts”. In addition to slandering our allies that have fought and died alongside US troops there he said,
“Russia is there. Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia. So you take a look at other countries. Pakistan is there; they should be fighting. But Russia should be fighting.
The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight. And literally, they went bankrupt. They went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot of these places you’re reading about now are no longer a part of Russia because of Afghanistan.”
No one. No one, on the left, the right or the respective wing nuts of either side have ever said or believed that the Russians went into Afghanistan to fight terrorists or because they had a “right” to invade them. Bipartisan efforts during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush worked to isolate and punish the USSR for that invasion.
The real reason the Soviets invaded was the Brezhnev Doctrine. In 1968 Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union put forth as a basic tenet of Soviet foreign policy the right to interfere in the affairs of any communist country anywhere in the world. The Afghan government was communist when the Soviets invaded in 1979 and they occupied the country until their withdrawal in 1989. While true that the occupation was a drain on the Soviet military and the occupation became unpopular with the Soviet people, it did not bankrupt them or otherwise lead to the fall of the Iron Curtain. There were numerous reasons for the fall, but Afghanistan was more of a symptom of all that was wrong with the Soviet system rather than the cause. They definitely did not enter Afghanistan to fight “terrorists.”
Only one person is pushing the narrative that the Soviet Union had a “right” to invade Afghanistan to stop “terrorism.” That one person is Vladimir Putin. He is pushing a new revisionist history that is pure propaganda and is designed to restore his view of the glory of the Soviet empire in order to stoke nationalist sentiment in Russia, entrench his own power, and provide the basis for his adventurism in Ukraine, the Baltic states, and elsewhere in the hope of restoring that empire.
And now I guess there are two people pushing that line, one of which is the President of the United States.
As the Wall Street Journal put it in part in an editorial,
“Right to be there? We cannot recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an American President. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with three divisions in December 1979 to prop up a fellow communist government.
The invasion was condemned throughout the non-communist world. The Soviets justified the invasion as an extension of the Brezhnev Doctrine, asserting their right to prevent countries from leaving the communist sphere. They stayed until 1989.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a defining event in the Cold War, making clear to all serious people the reality of the communist Kremlin’s threat. Mr. Trump’s cracked history can’t alter that reality.”
Is the president ignorant of history or is someone feeding him propaganda that he willingly repeats? I am not a conspiracy theorist, but this should raise alarm bells. Either the president really is ignorant of important world events that continue to shape international relations today, or he is willingly repeating Mr. Putin’s revisionist history meant to restore the luster of the former Soviet Union. Either answer is deeply troubling.
What are we to make of this? In the continued chaos of this administration it is easy to lose track of the multitude of “absurd” statements and actions coming out of the White House. However, given the president’s propensity to support and defend all things Putin, one must ask again, “what is going on?” The answer may be even more troubling than we can imagine.
A Life Unfulfilled
Posted: December 28, 2018 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Christmas, Donald Trump, Nature of Mankind, Spirituality Leave a commentI hope that you all had a joyous holiday season and found time for renewal of body and spirit. We attended Mass on Christmas morning at our local parish and I found it to be an oasis of calm in an otherwise stressful world. The sense of community spirit and an appreciation that there are forces larger than all of us was the right formula for me on Christmas morning. I experience a sense of inner peace whenever I sing along with the entire congregation and we cover the old favorites such as Silent Night, O Come All Ye Faithful, and Joy to the World.
With that in mind, I write the following literally, without ulterior motives, a sense of superiority or criticism thinly veiled. I pity Donald J. Trump. I do not pity him in any sense other than its intended meaning. I feel sorry for him as a person. His seems to be a life unfulfilled without spiritual support.
As I pondered the spirituality of Christmas — or anyone’s personal understanding of spirituality in your own context — coupled with the sense of community I realized that Mr. Trump enjoys none of that. On Christmas Eve he filled the air waves with Tweets that ranged from plaintive, to mean, to just plain wrong. Included in those Tweets was this phrase, “I am all alone (poor me) in the White House.” To be sure, it was probably intended as a political slam to the Democrats in Congress who left town after Mr. Trump reneged on a deal brokered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky). However, I think that there was more to it than just that. I think he did feel lonely, alone, and bored. Rather than reveling in the spirit of the day and the time of the season, and perhaps taking stock of his life, family and place in the world as spiritual folks are wont to do from time to time, instead he blasts out mean and insulting Tweets. The poor man — literally in my view — has no spiritual light to guide him.
In case there was any doubt that Mr. Trump had little understanding of the moment, on Christmas morning he held a “press availability” in the Oval Office where he continued to disparage just about anyone he could think of that, in his view, was standing in his way. He finished by saying, “It’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country. But other than that, I wish everybody a very merry Christmas.” (You can’t make these things up.)
I pity him because it must be difficult to go through life without any joy. Without any sense of wonder. Without any idea that other people care about each other for who they are rather than for what they can do for you. There may be other people out there with the same life view, but since Mr. Trump is constantly in the bright lights of the cameras it is easy to read him.
His whole life seems to be a zero sum game. He must believe that whenever someone else gets what they want, it is at his loss. Therefore, one must be ruthless, never show compassion, and take what you want before others take it from you. It is almost too easy to make comparisons to literary and movie characters that embody this same spirit, but it was suggested to me that his world view seems to be epitomized by Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life.
Obviously I have no idea what Mr. Trump thinks or if he is a spiritual person. From observation I would say he is not. And that is sad. For him. Watching him at the service for President George H.W. Bush, Mr. Trump sang none of the hymns, read along with none of the prayers, and generally looked extremely uncomfortable in the setting of the National Cathedral. One does not have to sing church hymns or read standardized prayers to be spiritual, but I would be surprised if Mr. Trump gives glory to God or any other force of nature.
It must be sincerely sad for an individual to go through life with no sense of joy, no compassion, no empathy for the condition of others and no sense of the things that are bigger than all of us. To be constantly on the look out for someone trying to screw you over, trying to screw them over first, to not just “win” but to have to humiliate anyone that dares to stand in your way and on, and on, with the now well-known temperament of Mr. Trump, makes for a very sad person. Not sad by my judgement, but sad in that he must at heart be an individual that sees little to no good in others. And I would guess, he therefore lacks the self-confidence and inner fortitude that comes from knowing that you are at peace with yourself.
That is why I say I pity a man who cannot find joy in the Christmas spirit or find happiness in the small things in life that help to nourish our joy, celebrate the human spirit, and provide a sense of inner peace.
Tom
Into The Fray 
Recent Comments