Law, Power, and Justice

Join me in trying to make sense of a complicated world.

Recent Posts

  • The Most Dangerous Bulls in the Herd: Greg Sargent, William Barr and the Corporate Media

    sargent

    Yesterday, I spent hours reading about William Barr launching a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia probe.  What struck me most forcefully was the repeated dismissal of the action by various corporate media commentators.

    There is a squad of normalizers out there in the corporate news world, working overtime to convince us that we are not seeing what is right before our eyes, an authoritarian take-over of the state.

    The attitude was, “Oh well, this is just a distraction.”  “Don’t worry, there’s nothing there.”  “They don’t even know what they’re investigating.”  “The prosecutor (Durham from Connecticut) is a fine man.”  “Who could imagine that such a fine man would be participating in anything nefarious.”

    The Attorney General of the United States has launched a criminal investigation into the Justice Department’s own Russia investigation.  The effect of this investigation will be to harass, to target, and to punish members of the intelligence community and the FBI who dared, dared to follow up credible leads that the Trump Campaign was consorting with Russians in order to steal an election.

    As David Lohfman, head of the counterintelligence section at Justice at the time stated Thursday night on Rachael Maddow, “We would have been derelict” had an investigation not been initiated.

    But the Attorney General is now using a criminal investigation to punish and silence anyone who participated in this lawful investigation.  And, the normalizers tell us that there’s nothing to see here.

    They are tying themselves in knots trying to dismiss what has happened.  It reminds me of a Time Magazine cover during Watergate where all the principles were surrounded by audio tape, desperately pointing at each other.

    The normalizers shout that what Barr is doing is merely a “distraction.”

    But it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if it is.  It doesn’t make any difference at all why Barr is pursuing this investigation.  Once the Justice Department becomes an enforcement tool of the White House you have authoritarianism.

    The corporate media refuses, refuses to state what is obvious to anyone who has eyes and ears.  Instead, they work overtime to bring on the appeasers to tell us that what we are seeing are “stunts” “empty gestures,” nothing to worry about.

    I read a tweet from somebody yesterday wondering if the corporate media would have normalized the rise of Mussolini.  I think most definitely so.

    I had barely stumbled into my study this morning and turned on the computer before I was confronted with Greg Sargent in the Washington Post making his contribution to the to the normalizing.

    Under the headline “Explosive William Barr news points to Trump’s weakness and panic.” (WP 10/25/19), Sargent beings his article with the sentence: “Don’t freak out.”  What?  We’re not supposed to “freak out” over explosive news?

    Sargent proceeds to call Barr’s investigation “deeply worrying” a standard utterance widely used yesterday along with “concerning.”  (Concern used to be a noun.)

    Then Sargent tells his readers that even though “when we’re talking about Barr, the most nefarious designs imaginable must be treated as a serious possibility,” it’s possible “POSSIBLE” that Barr’s actions are NOT SERIOUS.  Well, hell, it’s POSSIBLE that my head is going to fly off into the goddamn air and become a spotted calf, but I’m not going to waste time talking about it, especially not in the goddamn Washington Post.

    Sargent, evidently realizing the utter imbecility of his case, drags in the help of the New York Times, saying that the Times comments that Barr’s actions may “raise alarms” that Trump “is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies.”  May?

    Both corporate news outlets refrain from saying what is obvious, that Trump and Barr ARE using the Justice Department go to after enemies.  No, The Washington Post and the New York Times must phrase it differently.  According to them, Barr’s actions MAY “raise alarms” that this is happening.  They don’t say this IS happening, or that we SHOULD BE alarmed, what they say (in all the courage of their convictions) is that these things might be happening, and might raise the alarms of a certain unidentified group of people that it might be happening.

    Sargent goes on to state that it is “at least possible” that Barr turning the Justice Department into an enforcement branch to silence Trump’s detractors isn’t “quite as serious as it seems.”  I suppose in some goddamn fictional world, that it’s possible that it’s not as serious as it seems, but I don’t know where that is.  In the world I inhabit, it is serious, goddamn serious.  It is using the investigative branch of the government in a blatant action to silence the President’s enemies.

    Sargant says it’s POSSIBLE that it’s not as serious as it seems because the investigation might just be an attempt to calm the president.

    Following this logic, it’s O.K. if the Justice Department is pursuing bogus criminal investigations if it’s just to calm the president.  WHAT MAKES THAT O.K.?  IN WHAT WORLD IS THAT ALRIGHT?

    Sargent sees it as reassuring that neither the Times nor the Post are “clear what potential crime Durham and Barr are investigating.”  No, that’s not reassuring.  That makes it even more terrifying.  The very fact that Barr managed to initiate a criminal investigation based on NOTHING, should be terrifying, not reassuring.

    Sargent drags the Cato Institute in and uses them to say that the criminal matter “could be something relatively less serious” say a leak from the Russia probe.  Again, this is supposed to make us feel better?  The Justice Department intends to drag government officials who were doing their jobs through years of investigation and possible prosecution, but if it’s for something relatively minor, we’re supposed to feel better?

    Sargent then adopts the Barbara McQuade idiotic statement of the day from yesterday, that this is merely a diversion from the impeachment probe.  Whether or not it is a diversion from the impeachment probe it is a criminal prosecution trumped up for no reason, to uncover no known crime which will chill investigations in the future.

    Again, this is said as if since the criminal investigation is a diversion, we should all relax and move on.  I just don’t understand that.

    After repeating McQuade’s ludicrous utterance, Sargent then manages to try to tie himself up in knots by stating: “I’m not saying Barr’s machinations aren’t deeply dangerous. They absolutely are.”

    Then why has he has just spent an entire article telling us why they AREN’T deeply dangerous?

    “Given Barr’s apparent willingness to place law enforcement at Trump’s political disposal, it’s very possible Barr’s designs are maximally nefarious. But one can also imagine the criminal probe is of some intermediate matter.”

    What “intermediate matter?”  What difference does that make?

    The very fact that Barr has managed to open this criminal investigation is the point.  What he intends to do, what crime he is targeting (if any), whether the investigation will “go anywhere” is not the goddamn point.

    Barr’s Justice Department tried to keep Trump’s Ukraine plot buried by advising against the transmission of the whistleblower complaint about it to Congress, and by successfully declining to investigate the referral within the Justice Department.  He has now successfully launched a criminal investigation targeting Trump’s foes.  This is serious.  Any attempt to portray it as otherwise is deeply subversive, that includes opinion pieces from the Washington Post.

    I’m beginning to believe that the corporate media is more dangerous than Trump and to borrow a phrase from ancient Rome about Crassus, William Barr is the most dangerous bull in the heard.

  • “I trust him.” Famous last words about Durham and Barr

    barr

    • The Bill Barr’s DOJ has initiated a criminal investigation into its own Russia investigation, clearly sending a message that there is reason to believe crimes were committed when the original investigation of the Russia connection was started.
    • This is exactly what Trump promised Hillary Clinton he would do, i.e., start criminal investigation and prosecution of his political enemies.
    • But, the usual corporate news media “our institutions will hold” chorus shrugs it off.
    • Barbara McCabe said it’s a “distraction” from the impeachment inquiry, a stunt.
    • Several commentators (including Sean Patrick Maloney, D-NY) dismissed the inquiry in interviews by saying who cares, there’s nothing to find. Chuck Rosenberg, interviewed on Rachael Maddow, said: “I have a feeling that this is going nowhere.”
    • In taking this position, these pundits ignore (n tot for the first time) the clear fact that this is a serious step towards authoritarianism.
    • The chorus of “our institutions will save us” commentators, including chief normalizer Chuck Rosenberg, are praising John Durham, Barr’s co-conspirator who is traveling the world trying not to “find evidence” as corporate media pundits describe it, but to find people who will manufacture evidence to fit their investigation.
    • In an interview Thursday night on Rachael Maddow, Rosenberg said of Durham: “I know, I like, and I admire John Durham. I trust him.”
    • You will remember that Rosenberg (whose podcast MSNBC advertises) also said that William Barr was an institutionalist, implying that Barr would never allow partisan politics to enter the hallowed halls of the Justice Department.
    • He was outrageously wrong then and he is wrong now.
    • Rosenberg pointed out that perhaps there were “discordant” notes sounded by the initiation of a criminal investigation. Dear, dear, discordant notes.
    • Rosenberg continued that if we want John Durham to “get to the bottom of this” we should welcome a grand jury. So, according to the “institutionalist chorus” we should just shrug our shoulders and wait and see.  Just like they advised us to do with Barr.
    • “John,” Rosenberg stressed to reassure, “needs some factual basis in order to open a grand jury.” When Maddow pointed out that Bill Barr was the official deciding what “factual basis” met the threshold, Rosenberg had no answer.  But, his faith in the integrity of the Justice Department was still there.
    • Mine is not.
    • In a ridiculously contradictory set of statements, Rosenberg pointed out that he worried about the “chilling effect” that the initiation of such an investigation would have. But, Durham, he said, was “a credible prosecutor.”
    • Interestingly, Rosenberg noted that Durham “has been asked to do things like this before and…has closed…investigations after several years without bringing charges.”
    • That makes Durham the perfect stooge to investigate, feed into the Republican narrative that it was the Trump Campaign that was wronged in the 2016 election, and then after two years of harassment, quietly drop the investigation.
    • Later in Thursday night’s Rachael Maddow show, David Lohfman, former head of the counterintelligence section inside the Justice Department said, “I have high regard for John Durham.” He is “a distinguished prosecutor.”  “It’s hard for me to imagine that John Durham would associate himself with the frivolous initiation of a criminal investigation.”
    • But, then a few seconds later, Lohfman noted that the people in the Justice department would have been “derelict if we had not pursued that line of investigation.” They would have been derelict not to pursue it, therefore there was no question in his mind that the investigation was appropriate.  But, the “distinguished prosecutor” is perfectly reasonable to lend his credibility to the initiation of an investigation that clearly targets those who started the initial investigation.  There are no people of courage any more.
    • Lohfman ended the interview by saying: “I have every confidence that John Durham will withstand any pressures that may buffet him to go down a road that he thinks is not supported by the facts and law.” But, he has just done that by joining this new criminal investigation.
    • If the investigation is unwarranted, and also will contribute to chilling future investigations, why didn’t Durham if he is such a hero, refuse to take part in it.
    • The job of a prosecutor is not to expend taxpayer money and harass people pursuing frivolous investigations when s/he thinks there’s nothing there. That is an abuse of office.
    • But none of the “our institutions will save us” chorus will say that. No, they just assure us that Bill Barr or Durham are great people of integrity.
    • Let’s not take too seriously the initiation of a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s political opponents. The institutions will save us.
    • I agree with people who have argued that Bill Barr is the most dangerous bull in the heard. He must be impeached, now.

  • The Supreme Court: This Isn’t William Barr’s First Rodeo

    via The Supreme Court: This Isn’t William Barr’s First Rodeo

  • The Supreme Court: This Isn’t William Barr’s First Rodeo

  • Something is Different: Fight or Get Out of the Way

    chris coons

    Rachael Maddow said tonight that she feels there is something different going on; that a corner has been turned.  I feel the same way although I can’t explain why.

     

    I have watched many Trump rallies, all the way through and taken notes, but tonight, I watched a murderous thug of a moron scream lies at other morons who were wildly cheering the lies he was screaming at them.  The man, the moron, has been allowed to displace 160,000 human beings and provoke the murder of countless men and women who used to be our allies.

     

    This must be the way it felt in Germany to stand and watch and listen to obscenity, unbelievable obscenity being swallowed whole by people who could be your neighbors.  It must be what it was like watching lunacy gathering steam, plowing ahead, taking over.

     

    It is like being in an earthquake.  The thing you depend on, the ground, is moving underneath you and you are completely disoriented.  In this case, the thing that I value and depend on most in the world, logic, reason, truth is moving underneath me.  The culture is being taken over by lies and deception, sham truth, blatant illogic and the people who have assumed authority are saying “get used to it.”

     

    Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel entitled “It Can’t Happen Here.”  Well, it is happening here, but the Democratic leadership is saying: “It’s not happening here.”  “We must be prayerful.”  “It’s not happening here.”  They keep repeating it over and over thinking that it will become the truth if they say it enough times.

     

    They abide by the norms, act with politeness, come to work every day (when they are not on recess) raise money, admonish the Trump administration, chat up donors, help fellow Republicans get unqualified judges appointed to the courts because their fellow Republicans helped them.  They talk about a return to normalcy when normalcy is what go us here.  It is mass delusion.

     

    The leadership of the Democratic Party, the corporate media, and the moneyed elite want to pretend this country has not been taken over by a Russian asset and his enablers who are involved in varying degrees with an international crime syndicate and allied with a radical religious quest for power.

     

    People like Bill Barr and Mitch McConnell have been waiting for, planning for a Donald Trump for decades.  They have their man and they are not going to give up.  They have cast their lot with Trump and they will tear the country apart to maintain and expand their power.

     

    Meanwhile, nice people, good people, like Joyce Vance will continue to tell everyone that our institutions will hold, that dedicated professionals in government will assure that justice vanquishes all.

    The time to be nice is over.  Those who don’t want to fight, who don’t understand that it  is essential to fight, need to get out of the way.

    chris coons

  • The Democrats Have a Politeness Problem says the New York Times

    frank bruni

    Frank Bruni published an opinion piece in the New York Times last week entitled: “The Democrats have a Politeness Problem.”

     

    In this article, Bruni argued that the Democratic candidates are too polite with each other, afraid to point out each other’s weaknesses when Donald Trump will certainly not do likewise.

     

    The article is a frustrating but illustrative example of how the corporate press, unable to think of anything constructive to do, pursues a “damned if you do, dammed if you don’t” argument when discussing the Democratic Party.

     

    Bruni criticizes the Democratic candidates for not calling each other out over accepting corporate donations (Warren) or a less than progressive career as a prosecutor (Harris) but then points out that Julian Castro’s comment in the debates about Biden’s memory (which I did not take as an “obvious insinuation…that Biden was in serious cognitive decline”) “…went too far.”  Jesus.

     

    Similarly, when Democratic candidates just talked about Medicare-for-All, the corporate media spent days accusing the Democrats of attacking themselves.  Advocacy for Medicare-for-all was treated in the corporate press as if it were a direct attack on Obama and everything he stood for.

     

    A similar schizoid worry/condemn theme runs through other coverage.  Is the Democratic candidate too left wing?  Are the Democrats going too far in the impeachment inquiry?  Are they going too fast?  Are they going to slow?  Are they being overly broad or overly narrow in the scope of the impeachment inquiry?

     

    All of this reminds me of what it’s like to be a woman.  Is the dress too long, too short, too dowdy, too sexy, to provocative?

     

    I’m sick of it.  The corporate media is full of this sort of coverage.  And, the Democrats are so afraid of provoking this condemnation, they can’t move.  They are like proverbial deer in the headlights.

     

    The Democrats as a Party do indeed have a politeness problem, but it does not involve their competition with each other or their advocacy of policy.  The politeness problem involves calling out the Trump Administration and its Republican enablers.

     

    On Friday, Rep. Steve Israel was asked by a reporter if the Democrat should get tougher on members of the administration who were openly flouting the law and defying subpoenas.  Should, the reporter asked, Democrats move to strategies like garnishing wages which the Congress can do for people who defy subpoenas.    Oh, not now, Israel responded.  We don’t want to do that, not when they have just started cooperating.

     

    Israel is probably playing a scenario in his mind where Frank Bruni comes out with an opinion piece accusing the Democrats of “going too far”  or being savage, or too aggressive, or something.

     

    Where is courage?  Where is righteous indignation? Where is moral certainty?  Where are the people who aren’t afraid of speaking the truth no matter what the goddamn New York Times might think?

  • Normalizing Genocide: The Corporate Media

    via Normalizing Genocide: The Corporate Media

  • Normalizing Genocide: The Corporate Media

    Afternoon Notes: The Media

    • I still can’t believe that we have allowed a moron to displace 100,000 people and provoke what Richard Engels calls “ethnic cleansing” and corporate news commentators continue to laugh and joke and normalize the political situation.
    • I like Chris Hayes. I was delighted to see him come from the Nation Magazine to host a major MSNBC news program.  I cheered for him on his first night when he was so uncomfortable and anxious, he could barely stay in his seat. But, I am now ashamed of him and for him. The nightly news is not a game show.  It is not a celebrity event.  This is true any time, but especially at the moment when democracy hangs in the balance in this country.
    • This is not a game. There’s nothing funny about a president who provokes genocide and an “opposition party” that is too cowardly to respond.
    • Chris Hayes running onto the set like a stand-up comic, to wild applause is undignified, inappropriate and offensive.
    • hayes studio

  • Syria: U. S. Forces “fell under artillery fire.”

    via Syria: U. S. Forces “fell under artillery fire.”

  • Syria: U. S. Forces “fell under artillery fire.”

    syria

    Newsweek is reporting that U.S. special forces near Kobani “fell under artillery fire” from Turkish forces.

    Pentagon officials commented that the Turkish forces should be aware of U.S. positions “down to the grid.”

     

     

  • Who Are the Kurds?

    via Who Are the Kurds?

  • Who Are the Kurds?

    syria

     

    Based on BBC News, 10/9/19 “Who Are the Kurds.”

    • After WWI the Western allies made a provision for a Kurdish state.
    • Treaty of Lausanne set the boundaries of modern Turkey and made no provision for a Kurdish state.  This left Kurds in a minority status in their respective countries.
    • Any time the Kurds tried in the subsequent 80 years to establish their own state, the movement was quashed.
    • The jihadist group Islamic State (IS) targeted three Kursish enclaves that bordered territory under its control in northern Syria.  It launched attacks that until 2014 were repelled by the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).
    • June 2014. IS advanced into northern Iraq and drew that country’s Kurds into the conflict.  The government of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region sent its Peshmerga forces into areas abandoned by the Iraq army.
    • August 2014. Jihadists launched a surprise offensive.  The Peshmerga withdrew from several areas.  In Sinjar, where the IS took over, militants killed or captured thousands of Yazidis.
    • A US-led multinational coalition launched air strikes in northers Iraq and sent military advisers to help the Peshmerga. The YPG and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which had fought for Kurdish autonomy in turkey for three decades, came to their aid.
    • September 2014. IS launched an assault on northern Syrian Kursish town of Kobane.  Tens of thousands of people had to flee across the nearby Turkish border.  Turkey refused to respond by attacking IS positions or allow Turkish Kurds to cross to defend the city.
    • January 2015. After a battle that left at least 1,600 dead, Kurdish forces regained Kobane.
    • The Kurds along with local Arab militias under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and helped by US-led coalition air trikes, weapons and advisers, drove IS out of territory innorth-eastern Syria and established control over large tretch of the border with Turkey.
    • October 2017. SDF fighters captured IS capital of Raqqa and destroyed the IS last major foothold in Syria.
    • March 2019. The last pocket of territory held by IS, around the village of Baghouz – fell.
    • There were thousands of suspected IS militants captured and tens of thousands of displaced women and children associated with these IS fighters.
    • Most of the home countries of these fighters refused to accept them back.
    • Turkey claims to want to set up a “safe zone.” This would be a stretch of land 20-miles deep inside north-eastern Syria.
    • They plan to settle 2 million Syrian refugees there.
    • The Kurds in Turkey constitute 20% of the population.
    • After uprisings in the 1920s and 1930s many Kurds were resettled, “Kurdish names and costumes were banned, the use of the Kurdish language was restricted, and even the existence of a Kurdish ethnic identity was denied, with people designated “Mountain Turks”.
    • “In 1978, Abdullah Ocalan established the PKK, which called for an independent state within Turkey. Six years later, the group began an armed struggle. Since then, more than 40,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.”
    • “In the 1990s the PKK rolled back on its demand for independence, calling instead for greater cultural and political autonomy, but continued to fight. In 2013, a ceasefire was agreed after secret talks were held.
    • The ceasefire collapsed in July 2015, after a suicide bombing blamed on IS killed 33 young activists in the mainly Kurdish town of Suruc, near the Syrian border. The PKK accused the authorities of complicity and attacked Turkish soldiers and police. The Turkish government subsequently launched what it called a “synchronised war on terror” against the PKK and IS.
    • Since then, several thousand people – including hundreds of civilians – have been killed in clashes in south-eastern Turkey.”
    • “Turkey has maintained a military presence in northern Syria since August 2016, when it sent troops and tanks over the border to support a Syrian rebel offensive against IS. Those forces captured the key border town of Jarablus, preventing the YPG-led SDF from seizing the territory itself and linking up with the Kurdish enclave of Afrin to the west.
    • In 2018, Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels launched an operation to expel YPG fighters from Afrin. Dozens of civilians were killed and tens of thousands displaced.
    • Turkey’s government says the YPG and the PYD are extensions of the PKK, share its goal of secession through armed struggle, and are terrorist organisations that must be eliminated.
    • Kurds make up between 7% and 10% of Syria’s population. Before the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011 most lived in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo, and in three, non-contiguous areas around Kobane, Afrin, and the north-eastern city of Qamishli
    • Syria’s Kurds have long been suppressed and denied basic rights. Some 300,000 have been denied citizenship since the 1960s, and Kurdish land has been confiscated and redistributed to Arabs in an attempt to “Arabize” Kurdish regions.
    • “In January 2014, Kurdish parties – including the dominant Democratic Union Party (PYD) – declared the creation of “autonomous administrations” in the three “cantons” of Afrin, Kobane and Jazira
    • In March 2016, they announced the establishment of a “federal system” that included mainly Arab and Turkmen areas captured from IS.
    • The declaration was rejected by the Syrian government, the Syrian opposition, Turkey and the US.”

  • Afternoon Notes: George W. Bush whipped for Kavanaugh, Turkey, Erdogan,Unnecessary Wars

    TUESDAY 8 OCTOBER 2019

    • The Acting DHS Secretary walked out of a public appearance yesterday in D.C. He evidently didn’t like being asked difficult questions.  There are other questions about why he has not become the permanent Secretary.
    • Trump has invited Erdogan to the White House. The last time he was in Washington (2017), Erdogan’s thugs physically attacked protesters while Erdogan watched from his car. Trump did nothing about it.
    • Lest we forget this tweet from the President of the country: “…if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey…” (Random capitalization is the President’s).
    • Those demanding that Trump be allowed to “confront his accuser” (now accusers) are demanding the protections that the Constitution affords defendants in a criminal trial. This is not a criminal trial.  Trump has no such protections.  People who are busily trying to tear the Constitution to shreds are also claiming its protections for their guys not anybody else’s guys.
    • A little over a year ago, George W. Bush was whipping votes for Bret Kavanaugh (http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/09/george-w-bush-is-whipping-votes-for-brett-kavanaugh.html?utm_source=nym&utm_medium=f1&utm_campaign=feed-part”
    • People who want regard Bush as some kind of genial nice guy should remember this along with the fact that he started an unnecessary war that cost an unknowable number of lives.

  • Graft, Greed and Corruption: Trump, Perry and Kelly

    • trump 4
    • According to Axois, Trump is now laying the 25 July phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, at the feet of Rick Perry. Trump told House Republicans that he made the phone call at the urging of Perry and claimed that he didn’t even want to make the call.
    • Perry has recently announced that he is leaving his position as Energy Secretary amid reports that while making steep cuts to the budget of the Energy Department he closed needed programs. He then created a program specifically to oversee Artificial Intelligence.  He allocated $119 million in funding for AI in 2020.  Perry’s wife owns stock in Verizon, AT&T and Splunk, companies that are prioritizing AI technology and likely to benefit from such an office.
    • Such an effort is much like (if on a smaller scale) Elaine Chao’s special pipelines for Kentucky grants that would be politically helpful for her husband, Mitch McConnell.
    • Politico has reported (10/1/19) that House Democratic members have been pressing Perry for information about his May trip to the inauguration of Ukraine’s President, Zelensky. The House sent a letter posing questions to Perry about Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate Biden.  A similar letter was sent to Pence.
    • Perry has also been a regular visitor to Saudi Arabia where he traveled in 2017 to convince the Saudis to partner with the U.S. in developing nuclear reactors.
    • In July, Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, described himself, Perry and Volker as the “three amigos” on Ukrainian issues.
    • On another front of graft and corruption: One of the supposed adults in the room with Trump was former Chief of Staff John Kelly. I cannot count the number of times I sat on front of the television and listened to commentator after commentator stress how Kelly was a man of integrity, blah, blah, blah.  Well, AP is pointing out in an article (10/3/19) that the Trump administration is directing more and more of the business of housing and detaining migrant children to private industry, specifically to a company, Caliburn, where Kelly sits on the board.
    • While Kelly was in the Trump administration, he backed the idea of taking children from their parents at the border, arguing that it would serve as a deterrent. He is now personally profiting off policies he helped craft.
    • When Kelly left the military, he served on an advisory council for the Obama Administration that studied ICE’s continued use of privately operated immigration detention facilities for adults. Later that year, the federal government announced plans to phase out privately run prisons. That would all change when Trump took office.
    • While Kelly was serving on this committee, he joined the board of DC Capital partners, a financial firm that would go on to found Caliburn.
    • CHS is owned by belt-way contractor Caliburn International Corp. CHS staffs a large Florida facility with 2,000 workers even though the last children left the facility in August.   The Trump administration maintains that CHS is keeping the facility in readiness in case it is needed.
    • In 2015, CHS was paid $1.3 million to shelter migrant children. So far this year, they have been paid almost $300 million.  The AP estimates that it costs the taxpayers $775 a day to house these migrant children.

  • “What America was selling to the world used to be the rule of law.” Zelensky, Ukraine, Kolomoisky, Corruption.

    • Ihor Kolomoisky and Zelensky
    • Sylvie Kauffmann, the editorial director of Le Monde, writes (NYT) that for Europeans the most embarrassing revelation in the July 25 conversation was Ukrainian President Zelensky’s “servility.” The attempt to ingratiate himself to Trump, revealed in the “transcript” released by the White House, was truly disappointing.
    • In addition, Zelensky told Trump that the new prosecutor general would be “100 percent my person.”  We are left to wonder what in the hell that means.  Zelensky also happily joined Trump in the Euro-bashing.  So, the promising reformer, at least if you can believe the Trump version of the conversation, turned servile politician.  It’s not a pretty sight.
    • To add to the questions about Zelensky, prominent in the circle of people surrounding him is one Ihor Kolomoisky, whose PrivatBank was nationalized three years ago after financial regulators found that $5.5 billion was missing from its accounts.
    • Kolomoisky returned from self-imposed exile just after Zelensky took office. He is now appealing to the government for $2 billion in “compensation” for the loss of PrivatBank.  For foreign experts, whether the government gives in will be a test of President Zelensky’s political strength.
    • Anti-corruption activist, Daria Kaleniuk: “The U.S. push for good governance in Ukraine is seriously undermined. What America was selling to the world used to be the rule of law.”