“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER.com
Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,”
A new Gilded Age has emerged in America — a 21st century version.
The wealth of the top 1% of
Americans has grown dramatically in the past four decades, squeezing both
the middle class and the poor. This is in sharp contrast to Europe and Asia,
where the wealth of the 1% has grown at a more constrained pace.
The Democrats’ opposition to Trump is not based on his imposition of austerity measures, or his vicious assault on immigrants. While they will not mount a serious challenge to a proposal that will literally take food out of the mouths of school children, they were complicit in passing the Republicans’ $1.3 trillion tax cuts in 2017 and the record $738 billion defense budget agreed to earlier this year.
The Lessons of Theodore Roosevelt
To get out of our Second Gilded Age, look no further than how we got out of the first one.
Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons
We’ve been rocked by scandals over the past year involving the nation’s most wealthy and powerful. We’ve learned that a twisted multimillionaire allegedly procured and raped girls in his Manhattan mansion and on his private Caribbean Island; entitled celebrities and corporate plutocrats paid millions of dollars in bribes to get their kids into elite universities; pillars of the Hollywood and media establishments have used their stature to sexually prey upon underlings; and, yes, our president was caught lying about possibly violating campaign finance laws with hush money payoffs to a porn star and Playboy bunny.
This moral corruption is accompanied by the regressive government policies of a scandal-stained administration. President Donald Trump is rolling back programs that protect consumers, voting rights, the environment, and competitive commerce faster than Congress can issue subpoenas. His cabinet includes 17 millionaires, two centimillionaires, and one billionaire with a combined worth of $3.2 billion, according to Forbes. He presides over the most corrupt administration in American history, one marked by nepotism and self-dealing. His so-called “A Team” of senior officials has undergone a record 75 percent turnover since he took office—most of whom resigned under pressure, often caught up in scandal.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose net worth is estimated at $600 million, reflected the arrogance and empathy deficit that typifies the Trump White House during last winter’s record-long government shutdown. He suggested that federal workers just take out loans until they got paid.
But nobody tops the swamp king, Trump himself. Forget the sleaze, forget the obstruction of justice, forget the constant dissing of Congress. His defying the Constitution’s emoluments clause alone would, in a normally functioning American democracy, make him the subject of impeachment. Instead, he flouts the rules as if they don’t apply to him. If he gets his way and hosts next year’s G-7 summit at Mar-a-Lago, we may as well send the Constitution to the shredder. And yet, as more recent controversies have shown us, including the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal and Jeffery Epstein’s sex trafficking racket, this kind of indifference to moral values is not confined to government grandees.
So, what gives? Is America drowning in a marsh of unchecked corruption and entitlement brought on by latter-day Louis XVI’s and Marie Antoinettes? Are the uber-wealthy out of control? There’s something rotten in America and, if we don’t fix it soon, we invite a new wave of national decline and social disintegration.
The good news is that we have faced similar challenges before. Some prescriptions from a previous era may provide a lodestar for a future Democratic president to steer the country in the right direction. As Mark Twain, who coined the term “the Gilded Age,” once said, “The external glitter of wealth conceals a corrupt political core that reflects the growing gap between the very few rich and the very many poor.” He was talking about the original Gilded Age, but that diagnosis could just as easily apply to our current American condition.
The first Gilded Age was marked by rapid economic growth, massive immigration, political corruption, and a high concentration of wealth in which the richest one percent owned 51 percent of property, while the bottom 44 percent had a mere one percent. The oligarchs at the top were popularly known as “robber barons.”
Theodore Roosevelt, who was president at the time, understood that economic inequality itself becomes a driver of a dysfunctional political system that benefits the wealthy but few others. As he once famously warned, “There can be no real political democracy unless there is something approaching economic democracy.”
His response to the inequities of his times, which came to define the Progressive Era, have much to teach us now about how to sensibly tackle economic inequality. It’s worthwhile to closely examine the Rooseveltian playbook. For instance, his “Square Deal” made bold changes in the American workplace, government regulation of industry, and consumer protection. These reforms included mandating safer conditions for miners and eliminating the spoils system in federal hiring; bringing forty-four antitrust suits against big business, resulting in the breakup of the largest railroad monopoly, and regulation of the nation’s largest oil company; and passing the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act, which created the FDA. He prosecuted more than twice as many antitrust suits against monopolistic businesses than his three predecessors combined, curbing the robber barons’ power. And he relentlessly cleaned up corruption in the federal government. One-hundred-forty-six indictments were brought against a bribery ring involving public timberlands, culminating in the conviction and imprisonment of a U.S. senator, and forty-four Postal Department employees were charged with fraud and bribery.
Now, we are in a Second Gilded Age, facing many of the same problems, and, in some ways, to an even greater degree. The gap between the rich and everyone else is even greater than it was during the late 19th Century, when the richest two percent of Americans owned more than a third of the nation’s wealth. Today, the top one percent owns almost 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, or more than the bottom 90 percent combined, according to the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research. The first Gilded Age saw the rise of hyper-rich dynastic families, such as the Rockefellers, Mellons, Carnegies, and DuPonts. Today, three individuals—Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett—own more wealth than the bottom half of the country combined. And three families—the Waltons, the Kochs, and the Mars—have enjoyed a nearly 6,000 percent rise in wealth since Ronald Reagan took the oath as president, while median U.S. household wealth over the same period has declined by three percent.
The consequences of this wealth gap are dire. Steve Brill explains in his book Tailspin that, by manipulating the tax and legal systems to their benefit, America’s most educated elite, the so-called meritocracy, have built a moat that excludes the working poor, limiting their upward mobility and increasing their sense of alienation, which then gives rise to the populist streak that allowed politicians like Trump to captivate enough of the American electorate.
Similarly, psychologist Dacher Keltner’s research shows that power in and of itself is a corrupting force. As he documents in The Power Paradox, powerful people lie more, drive more aggressively, are more likely to cheat on their spouses, act abusively toward subordinates, and even take candy from children. Too often, they simply do not respect the rules.
For example, in monitoring an urban traffic intersection, Keltner found that drivers of the least expensive vehicles virtually always yielded to pedestrians, whereas drivers of luxury cars yielded only about half of the time. He cites surveys covering 27 countries that show that rich people are more likely to admit that it’s acceptable to engage in unethical behavior, such as accepting bribes or cheating on taxes.“The experience of power might be thought of as having someone open up your skull and take out that part of your brain so critical to empathy and socially appropriate behavior,” says Keltner.
That’s why we need to reform our political system if we are to survive the rampant amorality and lawlessness of the Second Gilded Age. Simply put, so very few should not wield so much sway over so many.
One of the first priorities of an incoming administration should be to narrow the wealth and income gap. French economist Thomas Picketty favors a progressive annual wealth tax of up to two percent, along with a progressive income tax as high as 80 percent on the biggest earners to reduce inequality and avoid reverting to “patrimonial capitalism” in which inherited wealth controls much of the economy and could lead essentially to oligarchy.
The leading 2020 Democratic candidates favor raising taxes, as well. Elizabeth Warren has proposed something commensurate to Picketty’s two percent wealth tax for those worth more than $50 million, and a three percent annual tax on individuals with a net worth higher than $1 billion. She has also proposed closing corporate tax loopholes. Joe Biden wants to restore the top individual income tax rate to a pre-Trump 39.6 percent and raise capital gains taxes. Bernie Sanders has proposed an estate tax on the wealth of the top 0.2 percent of Americans.
Following Theodore Roosevelt’s example, we need to aggressively root out the tangle of corruption brought on by Trump and his minions. This has already begun with multiple and expanding investigations led by House Democrats into the metastasizing malfeasance within the Trump administration. Trump’s successor, however, should work with Congress to appoint a bipartisan anti-corruption task force to oversee prosecutions and draw up reform legislation to prevent future abuses.
“Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy,” Roosevelt once warned. The free market has made America the great success it is today. But history has shown that unconstrained capitalism and a growing wealth gap leads to an unhealthy concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. When the gap between the haves and the have-nots goes unchecked, populism takes hold, leading to the election of dangerous demagogues like Trump, and the disastrous politics they bring with them. It is not too late to reverse course. But first, we need to re-learn the lessons from our first Gilded Age if we are going to get out of the current one.
Economists:
America’s Elite Pay Lower Tax Rate Than All Other Americans
The wealthiest Americans are paying a lower
tax rate than all other Americans, groundbreaking analysis from a pair of
economists reveals.
Census Says U.S. Income Inequality
Grew ‘Significantly’ in 2018
The
Democrats’ opposition to Trump is not based on his imposition of austerity
measures, or his vicious assault on immigrants. While they will not mount a
serious challenge to a proposal that will literally take food out of the mouths
of school children, they were complicit in passing the Republicans’ $1.3
trillion tax cuts in 2017 and the record $738 billion defense budget agreed to
earlier this year.
Trump
proposal denies free school meals to half a million children
Economists:
America’s Elite Pay Lower Tax Rate Than All Other Americans
The wealthiest Americans are paying a lower
tax rate than all other Americans, groundbreaking analysis from a pair of
economists reveals.
For the first time on record, the
wealthiest 400 Americans in 2018 paid a lower tax rate than all of the income
groups in the United States, research highlighted by the New York Times from
University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel
Zucman finds.
The analysis concludes that the
country’s top economic elite are paying lower federal, state, and local tax
rates than the nation’s working and middle class. Overall, these top 400
wealthy Americans paid just a 23 percent tax rate, which the Times‘ op-ed
columnist David Leonhardt notes is a combined tax payment of “less than
one-quarter of their total income.”
This 23 percent tax rate for the
rich means their rate has been slashed by 47 percentage points since 1950 when
their tax rate was 70 percent.
(Screenshot
via the New York Times)
The analysis finds that the 23
percent tax rate for the wealthiest Americans is less than every other income
group in the U.S. — including those earning working and middle-class incomes,
as a Times graphic
shows.
Leonhardt writes:
For middle-class and poor families,
the picture is different. Federal income taxes have also declined
modestly for these families, but they haven’t benefited much if at all from the
decline in the corporate tax or estate tax. And they now pay more
in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than in
the past. Over all, their taxes have remained fairly flat. [Emphasis added]
The report comes as Americans
increasingly see a growing divide between the rich and working class, as the
Pew Research Center has found.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), the leading
economic nationalist in the Senate, has warned against the Left-Right
coalition’s consensus on open trade, open markets, and open borders, a plan
that he has called an economy that works solely for the elite.
“The same consensus says that we
need to pursue and embrace economic globalization and economic integration at
all costs — open markets, open borders, open trade, open everything no matter
whether it’s actually good for American national security or for American
workers or for American families or for American principles … this is the
elite consensus that has governed our politics for too long and what it has
produced is a politics of elite ambition,” Hawley said in an August speech in
the Senate.
That increasing worry of rapid
income inequality is only further justified by economic research showing a rise in servant-class
jobs, strong economic recovery for elite zip codes but not for
working-class regions, and skyrocketing wage growth for the billionaire class
at 15 times the rate of other Americans.
Census Says U.S. Income Inequality
Grew ‘Significantly’ in 2018
(Bloomberg) -- Income inequality in America widened
“significantly” last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report published
Thursday.
A measure of inequality known as the Gini index rose to 0.485
from 0.482 in 2017, according to the bureau’s survey of household finances. The
measure compares incomes at the top and bottom of the distribution, and a score
of 0 is perfect equality.
The 2018 reading is the first to incorporate the impact of
President Donald Trump’s end-2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many
economists to be skewed in favor of the wealthy.
But the distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. has been
worsening for decades, making America the most unequal country in the developed
world. The trend, which has persisted through recessions and recoveries, and
under administrations of both parties, has put inequality at the center of U.S.
politics.
Leading candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential
nomination, including senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, are
promising to rectify the tilt toward the rich with measures such as taxes on
wealth or financial transactions.
Just five states -- California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana
and New York, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico -- had Gini indexes
higher than the national level, while the reading was lower in 36 states.
The
Democrats’ opposition to Trump is not based on his imposition of austerity
measures, or his vicious assault on immigrants. While they will not mount a
serious challenge to a proposal that will literally take food out of the mouths
of school children, they were complicit in passing the Republicans’ $1.3
trillion tax cuts in 2017 and the record $738 billion defense budget agreed to
earlier this year.
Trump
proposal denies free school meals to half a million children
The Trump
administration has provided a new analysis of how proposed changes to
eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly
known as food stamps, will impact children who participate in the National
School Lunch and School Breakfast programs. By the White House’s own admission,
these changes mean that about a half-million children would become ineligible
for free school meals.
Secretary of
Agriculture Sonny Perdue has described the changes as a tightening up of
“loopholes” in the SNAP system. But those affected by the changes are not
corporate crooks or billionaires, but hundreds of thousands of children who
stand to lose access to free meals. For many American children, free school
breakfasts and lunches make up the bulk of their nutritional intake, and they stand
to suffer permanent physical and psychological damage as a result of the cuts.
Children receive a free
lunch at the Phoenix Day Central Park Youth Program in downtown Phoenix. (AP
Photo Matt York)
The sheer
vindictiveness of the proposed rule change is shown by the minimal savings that
would result—about $90 million a year beginning in fiscal year 2021, or a mere
0.012 percent of the estimated $74 billion annual SNAP budget. Put another way,
the savings would amount to two-thousandths of a percent of the $4.4 trillion
federal budget. But while this $90 million might appear as small change to the
oligarchs running and supporting the government, it will be directly felt as
hunger in the bellies of America’s poorest children.
SNAP provided benefits
to roughly 40 million Americans in 2018 and is the largest nutrition program of
the 15 administered by the federal Food and Nutrition Service. Along with
programs such as the Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children and
school breakfast and lunch programs, SNAP has been a major factor in making a
dent in the hunger of working-class families. But despite these programs’
successes, the Trump administration is seeking to claw them back, with the
ultimate aim of doing away with them altogether.
The US Department of
Agriculture (USDA), which administers the food stamp and school meal programs,
says that the new analysis presented last week is a more precise estimate of
the impact of rule changes in SNAP the USDA first announced in July. The main
component of the rule change is an end to “broad-based categorical eligibility”
for the food stamp program. Food stamps are cut off for households whose
incomes exceed 130 percent of the federal poverty line, or $33,475 per year for
a family of four, calculated after exemptions for certain expenses.
Under “broad-based
categorical eligibility,” which is currently used by over 40 states, households
can be eligible for food stamps based on their receiving assistance from other
anti-poverty programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Under
this rule, which has been in effect for about 20 years, states are allowed to
raise income eligibility and asset limits to promote SNAP eligibility. This
prevents many households from falling over the “benefit cliff,” which happens
when a small increase in income results in a complete cutoff of benefits,
leaving a family worse off than before the rise in income.
According to the USDA,
the rule change on broad-based eligibility would throw more than 680,000
households with children off SNAP. About 80 percent of these households have
school-age children, amounting to about 982,000 children. Of those, 55 percent,
or about 540,000, would no longer be eligible for free school meals, although
most would be eligible for reduced-price meals. About 40,000 would be required
to pay the full meal rate.
However, this does not
paint the full picture. Households thrown off SNAP would be required to apply
separately for access to free or reduced-price school meals. The USDA admits
that its cost estimates “do not account for potential state and local
administrative costs incurred due to collecting and processing household
applications … and also do not account for any increased responsibility placed
on the households to complete and submit a school meals application.”
While the Trump
administration claims that the proposed changes to SNAP eligibility are aimed
at closing up “loopholes” and stopping people from claiming benefits they’re
not entitled to, the reality is that there is no evidence that broad-based
eligibility has allowed significant numbers of people to supposedly “game the
system.” A 2012 Government Accountability Office investigation found that only
473,000 recipients, or just 2.6 percent of beneficiaries, received benefits
they would not have received without the broad-based eligibility offered by
many states.
There is consistent
evidence that SNAP contributes to a decrease in food insecurity, a condition
defined by the USDA as limited or uncertain access to adequate food. By one
estimate, SNAP benefits reduce the likelihood of food insecurity by about 30
percent and the likelihood of being very food insecure by 20 percent. Census
data has shown that SNAP also plays a critical role in reducing poverty, with
about 3.6 million Americans, including 1.5 million children, being lifted out
of poverty in 2016 as a result of the program.
The EconoFact Network
reports that SNAP has improved birth outcomes and infant health. When an
expectant mother has access to SNAP during pregnancy, particularly in the third
trimester, it decreases the likelihood that her baby will be born with low
birth weight. There is also evidence that the benefits of nutrition support can
persist well into adulthood when access to SNAP is provided before birth and
during early childhood. This can have a long-term impact on an individual’s
earnings, health and life expectancy. Conversely, food insecurity in childhood
correlates with greater risk of developing high blood pressure, diabetes,
obesity and cardiovascular disease later in life.
The proposed threat to
school lunches for half a million children has elicited little response from
Democrats in Congress, who are obsessively focused on the Trump impeachment
inquiry. Critical issues such as the health and nutrition of school children
are of little consequence to the Democratic Party, which instead gives voice to
those sections of the military intelligence apparatus that sees Trump’s
actions, particularly his sudden pullout from Syria, as endangering the global
interests of American imperialism.
The Democrats’
opposition to Trump is not based on his imposition of austerity measures, or
his vicious assault on immigrants. While they will not mount a serious
challenge to a proposal that will literally take food out of the mouths of
school children, they were complicit in passing the Republicans’ $1.3 trillion
tax cuts in 2017 and the record $738 billion defense budget agreed to earlier
this year. At $94.6 million, the cost of one of the US Air Force’s newest
and most technologically advanced fighter jets, the F-35A, would cover the $90
annual savings from depriving half a million US schoolchildren of free meals.
The Democrats’ opposition to
Trump is not based on his imposition of austerity measures, or his vicious
assault on immigrants. While they will not mount a serious challenge to a
proposal that will literally take food out of the mouths of school children, they
were complicit in passing the Republicans’ $1.3 trillion tax cuts in 2017 and
the record $738 billion defense budget agreed to earlier this year.
Is Trump the Worst President in History?
by Richard Striner
Field of
Anonymous Trump Donors Getting Crowded
The Kitchen-Table Case for Impeaching Trump
I. Abusing Power for
Political Gain
II. Mishandling
Classified Information
III. Undermining Duly
Enacted Federal Law
IV. Obstruction of
Congress
V. Obstruction of Justice
VI. Profiting From Office
VII. Fomenting Violence
Is Trump the Worst President in History?
by Richard Striner
Richard Striner, a professor of history at Washington College, is
the author of many books including Father
Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery and Lincoln’s
Way: How Six Great Presidents Created American Power.
As the
chance of getting rid of Donald Trump — through impeachment or by voting him
out — continues to dominate the headlines, the historical challenge
is compelling. No president has been a greater threat to the
qualities that make the United States of America worthy (at its best) of our
allegiance.
The rise of
Trump and his movement was so freakish that historians will analyze its nature
for a long time. From his origins as a real estate hustler, this
exhibitionist sought attention as a TV vulgarian. Susceptible
television viewers found his coarse behavior amusing. Then he announced that he
was running for the presidency and it looked for a while like just another
cheap publicity stunt.
But
his name-calling tactics struck a chord with a certain group of
voters. Our American scene began to darken. Before
long, he was hurling such vicious abuse that it ushered in a politics of
rage. As his egomania developed into full megalomania, the “alt-right”
gravitated toward him.
The
“movement” had started.
More
and more, to the horror of everyone with power to see and understand, he showed
a proto-fascist mentality. So alarms began to spread: mental health
professionals warned that he exemplifies “malignant narcissism.”
Never
before in American history has the presidential office passed into the hands of
a seditionist. And the use of this term is
appropriate. With no conception of principles or limits — “I want”
is his political creed —he mocks the rule of law at every turn.
At a
police convention in 2017, he urged the officers in attendance to ignore their own
regulations and brutalize the people they arrest. He pardoned
ex-Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt of
court. He appointed Scott Pruitt to head the EPA so he could wreck
the agency and let polluters have the spree of their lives.
Trump
is fascinated by powerful dictators with little regard to human rights or
democracy. He compliments Vladimir Putin and hopes to invite that murderer
to stay in the White House. He likes Rodrigo Duterte of the
Philippines, a tyrant who subverts that nation’s democracy.
So,
Trump certainly has the personality of a fascist. But he is not
quite as dangerous as other authoritarians in history.
In the
first place, he lacks the fanatical vision that drove the great tyrants like
Hitler and Stalin to pursue their sick versions of utopia. He is
nothing but a grubby opportunist. He has no ideas, only
appetites. The themes that pass for ideas in the mind of
Donald Trump begin as prompts that are fed to him by others — Stephen Miller,
Sean Hannity, and (once upon a time) Steve Bannon. To be sure, he would fit
right in among the despots who tyrannize banana-republics. But that
sort of a political outcome in America is hard to envision at the moment.
Second, American
traditions — though our current crisis shows some very deep flaws in our
constitutional system — are strong enough to place a limit on the damage Trump
can do. If he ordered troops to occupy the Capitol, disperse the
members of Congress, and impose martial law, the chance that commanders or
troops would carry out such orders is nil.
Third,
Americans have faced challenges before. Many say he is our very worst
president — bar none. And how tempting it is to
agree. But a short while ago, people said the same thing about
George W. Bush, who of course looks exemplary now when compared to our
presidential incumbent.
The
“worst president.”
“Worst,”
of course, is a value judgment that is totally dependent on our standards for
determining “badness.” And any number of our presidents were very
bad indeed — or so it could be argued.
Take
Andrew Jackson, with his belligerence, his simple-mindedness, his racism as
reflected in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Take all the
pro-slavery presidents before the Civil War who tried to make the enslavement
of American blacks perpetual: John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, James
Buchanan. Take James K. Polk and his squalid war of aggression against
Mexico. Take Andrew Johnson, who did everything he could to ruin the
lives of the newly-freed blacks after Lincoln’s murder.
The
list could go on indefinitely, depending on our individual standards for
identifying “badness.” Shall we continue? Consider
Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding, so clueless in regard to the
comparatively easy challenge of preventing corruption among their
associates. Or consider Grover Cleveland and Herbert Hoover, who
blinded themselves to the desperation of millions in economic
depressions. And Richard Nixon, the only president to date who has
resigned the office in disgrace.
Which
brings us to Trump.
However
incompetent or even malevolent some previous American presidents were, this one
is unique. The Trump presidency is a singular aberration, a defacement of norms
and ideals without precedent. However bad some other presidents were
all of them felt a certain basic obligation to maintain at least a semblance of
dignity and propriety in their actions.
Not
Trump.
Foul
beyond words, he lurches from one brutal whim to another, seeking gratification
in his never-ending quest to humiliate others. He spews insults in every
direction all day. He makes fun of the handicapped. He
discredits journalists in order to boost the credibility of crackpots and
psychopathic bigots. He accuses reporters of creating “fake news” so
he can generate fake news himself: spew a daily torrent of hallucinatory
lies to his gullible followers.
He
amuses himself — with the help of his money and the shyster lawyers that it
pays for — in getting away with a lifetime’s worth of compulsive frauds that
might very well lead to prosecutions (later) if the evidence has not been
destroyed and if the statute of limitations has not expired.
So
far, however, he is always too brazen to get what he deserves, too slippery for
anyone to foil.
Anyone
with half of ounce of decency can see this wretched man for what he
is. They know what’s going on, and yet there’s nothing they can do
to make it stop. And that adds to Trump’s dirty
satisfaction. Any chance to out-maneuver the decent — to infuriate them —
quickens his glee. It makes his victory all the more rotten, incites
him to keep on taunting his victims.
It’s
all a big joke to Donald Trump, and he can never, ever, get enough of
it.
The
question must be asked: when in our lifetimes — when in all the
years that our once-inspiring Republic has existed — have American institutions
been subjected to such treatment? How long can American morale and
cohesion survive this?
Nancy
Pelosi has said that in preference to seeing Trump impeached, she would like to
see him in jail. Current Justice Department policy — which forbids
the indictment of presidents — makes it possible for Trump to break our
nation’s laws with impunity. Impeachment is useless if the Senate’s
Republicans, united in their ruthlessness and denial, take the coward’s way
out.
So the
prospect of locking him up may have to wait. But the day of
reckoning for this fake — this imposter who will never have a glimmer of clue
as to how to measure up to his office — may come in due time. Then
the presidential fake who accuses his victims of fakery will live with some
things that are real: stone walls, iron bars, a nice prison haircut,
and the consequences of his actions.
Field of
Anonymous Trump Donors Getting Crowded
|
WASHINGTON
-- Last year, when a "senior administration official" wrote an
anonymous New York Times opinion piece -- "I Am Part of the Resistance
Inside the Trump Administration" -- the unknown author's essay prompted
praise and approbation.
Now, we
learn, it has spawned a book.
"The
dilemma -- which (Trump) does not fully grasp," Anonymous wrote in
September 2018, "is that many of the senior officials in his own
administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his
agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them."
Critics
on the right called the author a coward for penning a piece under the cloak of
anonymity. Critics on the left pounced on the author's failure to openly
denounce Trump -- the only act that they would consider courageous.
Trump
branded the piece "TREASON" and urged then-Attorney General Jeff
Sessions to find the dirty rat.
Journalists
did not miss the irony in the author's identification as a "senior administration
official." The Trump White House was indignant, even though the press
office routinely conducts briefings after directing reporters to identify the
briefers as "senior administration officials." Then Team Trump
denounced the press for relying on unnamed sources.
I saw
the piece as confirmation that good people worked in the administration out of
a sense of public service -- and that some stayed because they felt a duty to
curb Trump's worst instincts. The book deal, alas, suggests the unknown civil servant has
a hunger for self-promotion, as well as a poor sense of timing.
For one
thing, the Mueller report tells voters everything they need to know about
Trump. To wit: There was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. And
Trump frequently pushed those around him to do his dirty work, and they often
failed to do his bidding.
Former
campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, for example, chose not to tell Sessions to
"unrecuse" himself from the Russian probe, lest Trump fire him.
Instead, Lewandowski passed on the assignment to a White House aide, who also
chose not to act.
In
words that echoed the New York Times piece, special counsel Robert Mueller
wrote, "The president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly
unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the
president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests."
Trump
voters don't care. They believe the Russian probe was a witch hunt. Who can
blame them? Mueller allowed the investigation to slog on long past any
reasonable suspicion that Moscow was pulling Trump's strings. Federal officials
throwing everything they've got at Trump isn't really a good look right now.
The field
of anonymous Trump accusers is getting crowded. In August, an identity-shielded
whistleblower came forward with a complaint that "the president of the
United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a
foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." It was in reference to a July
25 phone call during which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
to look for political dirt that could be used in next year's presidential race.
The
unidentified whistleblower's lawyer said he represents another unidentified
whistleblower. Democrats argue these individuals must be shielded for their own
protection, but everyone knows they'll be feted as heroes when their identities
-- predictably -- are revealed.
Book
deals? You know it.
Perhaps
the anonymous New York Times author decided to cut a deal to beat the pack of
Ukraine scolds.
House
Democrats have even been holding impeachment hearings behind closed doors to
question known individuals. After releasing damning tidbits, they've yet to
release full testimony. In contrast, Trump made public a rough transcript of
the July 25 conversation.
If
there's something voters don't know that Anonymous thinks they need to, he or
she could pen another op-ed, not a bestseller -- or better yet, with an
election a year away, come forward and face the wrath of the right in the light
of day.
Of
course, Anonymous has an agent. Matt Latimer told CNN that the author of the
272-page "A Warning," published by Twelve, a division of Hachette,
"refused the chance at a seven-figure advance and intends to donate a
substantial amount of any royalties to the White House Correspondents
Association and other organizations that fight for a press that seeks the
truth."
As a
member of the association, I suppose I should be grateful and not at all
curious about how much of the proceeds will go to worthy causes. If only I knew
whom to thank.
Contact
Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow
@DebraJSaunders on Twitter.
The Kitchen-Table Case for Impeaching Trump
The president’s abuses of power are
materially hurting regular people.
After months of waiting,
the House Judiciary Committee has finally voted to open an impeachment inquiry
into President Donald Trump. With that tedious “will-they-or-won’t-they”
question out of the way, the logical next question is: can impeachment succeed?
The answer is a resounding yes. But getting there will require a strategic
reorientation away from a sluggish and legalistic examination of Trump’s
offenses via recalcitrant witnesses and toward a broader consideration of how
his systemic abuses of power have materially hurt regular people.
The
continued reticence of so many Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to
support impeachment is based on two premises. The first is that impeachment is
modestly unpopular, which is true, so far as it goes. The second is the conventional wisdom that
impeaching President Clinton backfired on House Republicans.
Look
a little closer at the second contention, however, and it quickly falls apart.
The case against Trump is vastly stronger than that against Clinton. While Clinton’s alleged crimes were largely
committed in the interest of avoiding embarrassment, Trump’s represent clear
abuses of power with malignant implications. The second flank of the
argument—that impeaching Clinton “backfired” on Republicans—is more myth than reality.
Republicans may have lost the House in the next election cycle, but Clinton’s
impeachment was a nontrivial factor in Al Gore’s 2000 loss. Therefore, we join
other observers in choosing to view this “example” as evidence in
support of impeaching Trump.
But
the polling argument is particularly short-sighted. Voters take cues from
political leaders about how to react to political events. For months, the
overwhelming cue on impeachment from Democratic leaders like Pelosi, Chuck
Schumer, and Joe Biden has been to stand down. This inhibition has created a
negative feedback loop in which impeachment-phobic lawmakers convince voters
not to support impeachment, and then point to lukewarm public support to
justify their passivity. Rinse and repeat.
Five
months after the release of the Mueller report, this message has pretty well
stuck. After all, if the special counsel’s findings were so serious, they
should have been acted on immediately, right? Much as a gourmet meal is never
as good reheated, Democrats cannot expect to ignore evidence of impeachable
conduct in the spring and have it be as fresh and tasty when zapped in the
autumn. Just take a gander at this week’s House Judiciary hearing with Corey
Lewandowski to see how unappetizing this fare has become.
While
the Mueller report surely provided enough evidence to justify impeaching Trump
on substantive grounds, hesitant lawmakers have largely drained it of much of
its political force (and impeachment is an inherently political process).
To
overcome this damage, impeachment backers will have to make opposition to
impeachment untenable with voters, thereby short-circuiting the aforementioned
negative feedback loop. That means focusing on the ways in which Trump’s
corruption has made life harder and more dangerous for millions of Americans.
In other words, impeachment should focus above all on his failure to carry out
his constitutional duty under Article II,
Section 1 of the Constitution “to take care that the laws be faithfully
executed.” By emphasizing how impeachment is relevant to the “kitchen-table”
issues that keep regular people up at night—like low wages or exorbitant
healthcare premiums—the House Judiciary Committee can inspire a swell of
grassroots pressure that will give reluctant legislators no choice but to back
the effort.
The issues tackled in
Mueller’s report, like obstruction of justice, are removed from people’s
day-to-day lives. Of course, there is nothing inherently insufficient with such
a basis for impeachment; were it not for the Democratic leadership’s
opposition, impeachment proceedings would have begun in April. Still, more
Americans agonize over how to pay back their student loans, or whether to incur
the costs of seeing a doctor when uninsured, than discuss “the role of law.”
The Mueller report, therefore. likely strikes most Americans as “political” and
is less likely to inspire new broad-based support for
impeachment.
The
same goes for the proposed lines of inquiry in Judiciary’s newly expanded investigations. The committee will reportedly examine
Trump’s alleged abuse of presidential pardons, hush-money payments, and use of
office for personal enrichment. While these scandals are undoubtedly important,
they don’t penetrate the lives of ordinary people.
That
doesn’t mean that Democrats should not pursue any of these alleged crimes; the
public deserves to know as much as possible about any president’s corruption,
and Congress is best suited to furnish those answers. But these matters should
not sit alone at the center of the Democrats’ case for impeachment. An
impeachment inquiry is a way to control the national conversation. While bills
passed by House Democrats predictably get little attention from most of the
media, an impeachment hearing is guaranteed to achieve the scarcest political
resource in 2019—the attention of voters.
Given
that platform, lawmakers have a lot to choose from. In light of recent
revelations that the number of uninsured people has risen for the first
time since 2009, lawmakers might want to start by investigating how
Trump has undermined the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
You
might say that Trump’s health care moves are reprehensible, but are they really
impeachable? Ask Thaddeus Stevens, the Pennsylvania representative who was the
catalyst behind Andrew Johnson’s impeachment and the author of an article of impeachment accusing Johnson of failing
to “take care” that the Tenure of Office Act be faithfully executed. Other
articles accused Johnson of offenses including insulting Congress and
unlawfully firing his Secretary of War, but this one got at his most serious
transgression: failing to honor and enforce the laws as Congress had
intended.
Trump
has made no secret of his disdain for Obama’s healthcare law, but whether he
likes it or not, it’s his duty to administer it unless and until Congress
passes a new one or repeals it. Rather than faithfully carrying out that
responsibility, Trump has sought to destroy the law. On his first day in
office, he signed an executive order directing
agencies to use all of the tools at their disposal to undermine the statute—and
they have faithfully complied. His administration also shortened the open enrollment period, cut ACA’s advertising budget, and slashed tax credits for enrollees. Trump is not coy about his
intentions. “I have just about ended Obamacare,” he once said. Congress should demonstrate its commitment
to improving Americans’ health care access by nailing Trump for his
considerable efforts to “end” a lawful program by executive action that he
could not repeal legislatively.
There
are other matters that need a deeper probe. Lawmakers should investigate
whether Trump’s administration has intentionally slowed the allocation of aid
to Puerto Rico. Last week, as Puerto Ricans braced for Hurricane Dorian’s
potential landfall, many did so without a proper
roof over
their heads, surrounded by many other reminders of Hurricane
Maria’s destruction. This hardly seems like an accident: two years after Maria,
the scandal-riddled Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) has only approved funding for nine projects out of 10,000 applications.
Meanwhile, in an unprecedented move, the executive branch is holding up a
Community Development Block Grant for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) headed for
the U.S. territory. The administration’s refusal to effectively administer this
recovery aid is not some distant problem. Puerto Ricans (including the diaspora
living in Florida and elsewhere on the U.S. mainland) feel it every day in the
way of destroyed roads, damaged schools, the lack of a proper roof over many of
their heads, or having been forced to leave the island altogether.
It
seems impossible to imagine that Trump’s failure “to take care” is unrelated to the animus he has
shown toward Latinx communities since the day he announced his presidential campaign. More broadly, it is even
harder to argue that a president can faithfully execute the law under our
Constitution when he openly views the government’s obligations to people as
dependent on their race or religion—as his “Muslim ban” makes evidently clear.
Lawmakers
should also look into Trump’s decision to allow three unconfirmed, unqualified,
Mar-a-Lago members to essentially run the Department of Veterans’ Affairs from the resort. Has
Trump’s reliance on his paying customers to run the VA in any way hurt the
millions of veterans who rely on the department’s services each year? The
public has a right to know. The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs opened an investigation into these puppeteers last winter, but
the administration’s stonewalling appears to have hindered meaningful progress.
Trump’s
appointees have harmed regular people in myriad other ways. Take, for example,
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ failure to administer loan forgiveness
programs, even after having been ordered by a court to do so. That has left thousands of people suffering
under the crushing yoke of student loans they were promised would be
discharged. At the same time, her department’s laughable oversight of loan servicers is delaying forgiveness for hundreds of thousands more. Given her
absolute disregard for her responsibilities as Education Secretary, why has she
not been removed? Quite clearly, Trump feels no compunction about running afoul
of his obligation to “take care” to execute the law, even if that means flat
out ignoring court orders.
House members must not
only persuade voters to embrace impeachment with the righteousness of their
case, but also with the urgency of their actions. That means issuing subpoenas
far more liberally—and suing when necessary to enforce them without delay.
Indeed, the fact that Trump admits “we are fighting all the subpoenas” reflects
acknowledgement that he is undermining Congressional oversight, which was
itself a key element of the third article of impeachment
against Richard Nixon.
Basic
political horse sense suggests that investigating how Trump’s team is hiding
evidence of their alleged lawlessness would help generate attention to the
actions they are covering up. If pursued effectively, such a probe can impose a
steep political cost.
Ultimately,
Congress should view its investigatory scope broadly. It should vigorously
examine as many instances of Trump’s corruption as possible. But his crimes
against the American people should sit at the center of their effort.
To
treat them as secondary, as lawmakers have done thus far, misses the larger
point. The intentional harm Trump has inflicted on Americans, whom he is tasked
with protecting, represents by far his most egregious violation of his
Constitutional oath of office. Lawmakers should respond accordingly.
The (Full) Case for
Impeachment
A menu of high crimes and misdemeanors.
The crimes for which impeachment is the prescribed punishment are notoriously undefined. And
that’s for a reason: Presidential powers are vast, and it’s impossible to
design laws to cover every possible abuse of the office’s authority. House
Democrats have calculated that an impeachment focused narrowly on the Ukraine
scandal will make the strongest legal case against President Trump. But that’s
not Trump’s only impeachable offense. A full accounting would include a wide
array of dangerous and authoritarian acts — 82, to be precise. His violations
fall into seven broad categories of potentially impeachable misconduct that
should be weighed, if not by the House, then at least by history.
I. Abusing Power for
Political Gain
Explanation: The single most
dangerous threat to any democratic system is that the ruling party will use its
governing powers to entrench itself illegitimately.
Evidence: (1) The Ukraine scandal is fundamentally about the president abusing his authority
by wielding his power over foreign policy as a cudgel against his domestic
opponents. The president is both implicitly and explicitly trading the U.S.
government’s favor for investigations intended to create adverse publicity for
Americans whom Trump wishes to discredit. (2) During his campaign, he threatened to
impose policies harmful to Amazon in retribution for critical coverage in
the Washington Post. (“If I become president, oh do they have problems.”) He has
since pushed the postmaster general to double rates on Amazon, and the Defense Department held up
a $10 billion contract with Amazon, almost certainly at
his behest. (3) He
has ordered his officials to block the AT&T–Time Warner
merger as punishment for CNN’s coverage of
him. (4) He
encouraged the NFL to blacklist Colin Kaepernick.
II. Mishandling
Classified Information
Explanation: As he does with
many other laws, the president enjoys broad immunity from regulations on the
proper handling of classified information, allowing him to take action that
would result in felony convictions for other federal employees. President
Trump’s mishandling of classified information is not merely careless but a
danger to national security.
Evidence: (5) Trump has habitually
communicated on a smartphone highly vulnerable to foreign espionage. (6–30) He has reversed 25 security-clearance
denials (including for his son-in-law, who has
conducted potentially compromising business with foreign interests). (31) He has turned
Mar-a-Lago into an unsecured second White House and even once handled news of North Korea’s
missile launch in public view. (32) He gave
Russian officials sensitive Israeli intelligence that blew “the most valuable source
of information on external plotting by [the] Islamic State,” the Wall Street Journal reported. (33) He tweeted a
high-resolution satellite image of an Iranian launch site for the sake of
boasting.
III. Undermining Duly
Enacted Federal Law
Explanation: President Trump has abused his authority either by distorting the
intent of laws passed by Congress or by flouting them. He has directly ordered
subordinates to violate the law and has promised pardons in advance, enabling
him and his staff to operate with impunity. In these actions, he has undermined
Congress’s constitutional authority to make laws.
Evidence: (34) Having failed to secure
funding authority for a border wall, President Trump unilaterally ordered funds to be moved from other budget accounts. (35) He has undermined regulations on
health insurance under the Affordable Care Act
preventing insurers from charging higher rates to customers with more expensive
risk profiles. (36) He
has abused emergency powers to impose tariffs, intended to protect the supply chain in case of war, to seize
from Congress its authority to negotiate international trade agreements. (37–38) He has ordered
border agents to illegally block asylum seekers from
entering the country and has ordered other aides to
violate eminent-domain laws and
contracting procedures in building the border wall, (39–40) both times
promising immunity from lawbreaking through presidential pardons.
IV. Obstruction of
Congress
Explanation: The executive branch
and Congress are co-equal, each intended to guard against usurpation of
authority by the other. Trump has refused to acknowledge any legitimate
oversight function of Congress, insisting that because Congress has political
motivations, it is disqualified from it. His actions and rationale strike at
the Constitution’s design of using the political ambitions of the elected
branches to check one another.
Evidence: (41) Trump has refused to abide by a
congressional demand to release his tax returns, despite an unambiguous law granting the House this authority.
His lawyers have flouted the law on the spurious grounds that subpoenas for his
tax returns “were issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage
through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses and the private
information of the president and his family, and to ferret about for any
material that might be used to cause him political damage.” Trump’s lawyers have
argued that Congress cannot investigate potentially illegal behavior by the
president because the authority to do so belongs to prosecutors. In other
litigation, those lawyers have argued that prosecutors cannot investigate the
president. These contradictory positions support an underlying stance that no
authority can investigate his misconduct. (42) He has defended his refusal to
accept oversight on the grounds that members of Congress “aren’t, like,
impartial people. The Democrats are trying to win 2020.” (43) The president has
also declared that impeachment is
illegal and should be stopped in the courts (though,
unlike with his other obstructive acts, he has not yet taken any legal action
toward this end).
V. Obstruction of Justice
Explanation: By virtue of his control over the federal government’s
investigative apparatus, the president (along with the attorney general) is
uniquely well positioned to cover up his own misconduct. Impeachment is the
sole available remedy for a president who uses his powers of office to hold
himself immune from legal accountability. In particular, the pardon power gives
the president almost unlimited authority to obstruct investigations by
providing him with a means to induce the silence of co-conspirators.
Evidence: (44–53) The Mueller report contains ten instances of President Trump engaging in
obstructive acts. While none of those succeeded in stopping the probe, Trump
dangled pardons and induced his co-conspirators to lie or withhold evidence
from investigators. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testified to
Congress that Trump had directed him to lie to it
about his negotiations with the Russian government during the campaign to
secure a lucrative building contract in Moscow. And when Cohen stated his
willingness to lie, Robert Costello, an attorney who had worked with Rudy
Giuliani, emailed Cohen assuring him he could “sleep well tonight” because he
had “friends in high places.” Trump has publicly praised witnesses in the
Russia investigation for refusing to cooperate, and he sent a private message
to former national-security adviser Michael Flynn urging him to “stay strong.”
He has reinforced this signal by repeatedly denouncing witnesses who cooperate
with investigators as “flippers.” (54–61) He
has exercised his pardon power for a series of Republican loyalists, sending a
message that at least some of his co-conspirators have received. The
president’s pardon of conservative pundit
Dinesh D’Souza “has to be a signal to Mike
Flynn and Paul Manafort and even Robert S. Mueller III: Indict people for
crimes that don’t pertain to Russian collusion and this is what could happen,”
Roger Stone told the Washington Post. “The special counsel has awesome powers, as you know, but the
president has even more awesome powers.”
VI. Profiting From Office
Explanation: Federal
employees must follow strict rules to prevent them from being influenced by any
financial conflict. Conflict-of-interest rules are less clear for a sitting
president because all presidential misconduct will be resolved by either
reelection or impeachment. If Trump held any position in the federal government
below the presidency, he would have been fired for his obvious conflicts. His violations are so gross and
blatant they merit impeachment.
Evidence: (62) He has
maintained a private business while holding office, (63) made decisions
that influence that business, (64) and
accepted payments from parties both domestic and foreign who have an interest
in his policies. (65) He
has openly signaled that these parties can gain his favor by doing so. (66) He has refused
even to disclose his interests, which would at least make public which parties
are paying him.
VII. Fomenting Violence
Explanation: One of the
unspoken roles of the president is to serve as a symbolic head of state.
Presidents have very wide latitude for their political rhetoric, but Trump has
violated its bounds, exceeding in his viciousness the rhetoric of Andrew
Johnson (who was impeached in part for
the same offense).
Evidence: (67) Trump called for locking
up his 2016 opponent after the election. (68–71) He has clamored for the deportation of
four women of color who are congressional representatives
of the opposite party. (72) He
has described a wide array of domestic political opponents as treasonous,
including the news media. (73–80) On
at least eight occasions, he has encouraged his supporters — including members
of the armed forces — to attack his political opponents. (“I have the support
of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump
— I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a
certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”) (81) He has threatened
journalists with violence if they fail to produce positive coverage. (“If the
media would write correctly and write accurately and write fairly, you’d have a
lot less violence in the country.”) (82) There
have been 36 criminal cases nationwide in which the defendant invoked Trump’s
name in connection with violence; 29 of these cited him as the inspiration for
an attack.
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