We have had two mass shootings in two days.  The following things strike me:

Politicians are all out there (once again) saying that they are saddened and devastated. I’m over it.  I’m over the sadness, and the expressions of devastation, the thoughts and the prayers.  These are hollow words now and I can’t believe that people like Kevin McCarthy can stand before a camera and mouth this garbage without choking while taking millions from the NRA.

I know everybody wants desperately to hang onto something positive in situations like this, but turning every mass shooting into an awards ceremony for first-responders and a national press conference for every local political figure is not only unhelpful it is insulting. And, it is a delusional act.

The fact that it took one minute for police to arrive in Ohio is irrelevant.  What’s relevant is that these shootings happened and keep happening and will happen.  All the praise in the world heaped on first responders doesn’t change the fact that we have created a society where there is so much hate, hate stoked by an entire administration, for political gain. And, this hate and resentment is being purposefully directed at brown and black people every day.  It must stop.

This cannot be allowed to be the “15 minutes of fame” for every local politician and law enforcement official congratulating themselves for response times.  It’s just not enough.

In addition, we have created a society in which a “well regulated militia” has been transformed by people who claim their respect for original intent into every half wit violent imbecile owning an AK-47.

The young man who did the shooting in El Paso left behind a Facebook page and photographs and published a manifesto just before the shooting. The media is already congratulating itself for not showing the face of this man, not releasing the manifesto in full, and not showing dead or wounded people.

The American public needs to see this depravity. They need to see the dead bodies and the struggling wounded.  Every time this happens, we spend hours and hours looking at ambulances with their lights flashing and law enforcement people talking to each other.  The media sees itself as denying the shooter publicity and sparing the public the sight of the violence.

In doing so, however, the media sanitizes the event.  When you think of Sandy Hook, you don’t remember the dead bodies of children because you never saw them. There are no dead bodies to any of these events, no wounded.  This presentation only further distances the populace from the reality of what is going on in this country.

We do not need the “manifesto” buried, or characterized in intellectual terms. We need the manifesto, read out, or printed so it can be read.  We need to absorb the hatred and violence in such a document.  We need to see this young man’s face so that people will realize he is someone we know, someone we live next door to, not some mythical monster easily spotted in everyday life.  People need to realize that their next-door neighbor, the “hunter,” the “gun collector,” the animal abuser, the racist, the wife beater can easily be the next terrorist.  People have to stop looking the other way when these guys talk hate.

Everybody I know now, avoids talking about politics. “You’re just depressing people.”  I am told.  “It upsets me.”  “You are ruining lunch.”  This is a country where people think, think they have the luxury of not talking politics.  That must change.

Every news outlet should be showing or publishing that photo of the shooters’ guns arranged to say “TRUMP.”  And, we must talk politics.  However divisive, upsetting, disturbing it is, WE MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS SOCIETY WE HAVE CREATED.

I found both Democratic Debates depressing and discouraging.

1. CNN should never again be allowed to conduct a debate. The set had the feel of a garish game show.  It cheapened the event.  The questions were also cheap, superficial and sometimes insulting.  All three moderators asked questions designed to provoke arguments between the candidates, not impart information.  And, because of the 1-minute time limit, the moderators were repeatedly interrupting and chiding the candidates.  The overall effect of these interruptions was to convey disrespect and trivialize the entire event.
2. In the first debate, the plan was obviously to pit the two progressive candidates against each other and also against the “moderate” candidates, further feeding into the lazy journalistic narrative of whether some in the party are too far to the left. This, plus the incendiary nature of the questions, gave entirely too much time to four candidates who had barely any support between them.
3. The first night, most of the questions were intended to portray Sanders in a bad light and ask the other candidates to criticize and disagree with him. I kept thinking about Lawrence Tribe who posted a tweet wishing that Bernie Sanders go “down in flames.”
4. The second night, the focus of the questioning was the same. It was all intended to get a rise out of one candidate and provoke the candidates into attacking one another.  It was intended to provoke a food fight and thus ratings, not intended to convey information.
5. Jake Tapper just needs to be honest and go over to Fox News. A few days before the Debate, he did an interview with Bernie Sanders in which he asked Sanders with an obvious smirk if Sanders really intended to call the CEOs of Big Pharma murderers.  Sanders, without missing a beat, said yes.  But, Tapper did what almost all of the establishment commentators and hosts on both CNN and MSNBC do, ridicule, dismiss and treat with disrespect one of the candidates for the nomination for president.  It’s as if Bernie Sanders has become the designated target for everybody’s most juvenile and contemptuous behavior.
6. I thought we had reached a low, but a few days before the debate Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor, supposedly paid by MSNBC for her professional expertise, sat on national television and rambled through a series of outrageous statements, based on nothing, trashing Sanders’ on behalf of women and which ended in a claim that Bernie Sanders made her “skin crawl.” She finished by saying that she couldn’t understand why young women supported Sanders.  She remained a commentator on MSNBC without apologizing, for this unkind, baseless, and extremely unprofessional personal attack.  Had she said that about another candidate, she would have been removed.  (Zerlina Maxwell sat beside her and nodded her head through the entire personal attack.)
7. Can you imagine a white man, sitting on MSNBC, going on and on about how he couldn’t understand why young men would support Kamala Harris. That they shouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris because she was just anti-men, that there was just something about her that made his “skin crawl.”  Really?
8. Chris Matthews, before his own town hall meeting on MSNBC, went into a little tirade on Nicolle Wallace’s program, telling the audience over and over again that nobody wanted to listen to Bernie Sanders’ ideas. Nobody wants this old stuff, he kept saying.  If I might, I would like to say that as far as I’m concerned, Chris Matthews is old stuff and I haven’t wanted to listen to him for years.  He is overbearing, obnoxious, interrupts his own guests to the point where there is no reason for him to have guests, if often ignorant and is a misogynist.
9. The progressive wing of the party will obviously not only have to fight the corporate Democrats, but the Republicans and the media.
10. Back at the debate, it was painful to listen to “moderates” including Joe Biden, use Republican talking points to attack his opponents on the stage. Biden has the unmitigated gall to say to Kamala Harris: Don’t be too tough on me kid,” when she came out on the stage. This comment was an attempt to beg for mercy while at the same time diminishing her.  What an ass.
11. After the debate the second night, I watched a little bit of CNN’s coverage. They were raving about Joe Biden. I don’t think they watched the same debate.  It is just so blatantly obvious that the establishment in the Democratic party and the establishment media, love Joe Biden.  Morning Joe has become Morning Joe Biden.  Mika interviews his wife and goes on endlessly about how “real” she is.  Biden is from their club.  He plays their game.
12. No matter what the pundits say, Biden was halting, awkward and spouting lines that could have come straight out of the 90s. He actually said that we were going to get us some educated immigrants, immigrants with Ph.D.s. In other words, our kind of immigrants – white and educated.  Why wasn’t that taken apart?  Because Biden is the darling of the establishment.
13. But, I think the most telling thing about Joe Biden is that he is actually wounded that the other candidates are taking him on about his former positions. How could they? He even said exactly that during the debate.  What happened to everybody?  He said.  I thought you guys were my friends.
14. It has been said by others that Biden thinks that politics is a matter of personal relationships. You get things done by befriending and glad handing and schmoozing with your opponents and then make compromises with them so they will vote with you. He said exactly this when he first started his campaign for office. He said that Trump was an aberration.  After we get Trump out, the Republicans will regain their sense, and everybody can go back to playing the game again.
15. One of the things that Biden was taken to task about was the immigration policy of the Obama administration. He and Obama thought they would get brownie points with Mitch McConnell by deporting people. I would like to remind Biden just how far this got him and Obama with Mitch McConnell.
16. I also think that it says everything that needs to be said about Biden that he is genuinely hurt that the other candidates are calling him out for his previous positions. This is a kind of entitlement that just boggles my mind.
17. Biden even dragged out his dead son in this regard, whining that Harris shouldn’t have pointed out his racist criminal justice bill because she “knew Beau.” She knew Beau? She knew his son so she couldn’t criticize his political judgement when he is running for the position of the most important person in the world.
18. The Clinton people were enraged (are still enraged, see Adrienne Elrod, Neera Tandem, Zerlina Maxwell) that Bernie Sanders had the audacity to run against Clinton. They were furious that Sanders dared to challenge her. This is one type of entitlement.  But, Biden is guilty of the same sense of entitlement only he is hurt, deeply hurt that his “friends” dare to challenge him.  Biden felt that Harris’ challenge of his position on busing and his whoring around with the most filthy white racists in the Congress was somehow unfair.  In what universe is pointing out a politician’s previous votes and positions and allies unfair?  In the tiny bubble that is official Washington.
19. Biden said today, while talking with reporters, that asking questions about events in the past was unfair and would result in giving Trump the election. Who thinks like this? What is wrong with this man? And I don’t think this is just some spinning narrative.  I think Joe Biden actually believes that his “friends” shouldn’t call him out for his racist and misogynist behavior.
20. While I’m on the subject of “giving Trump the election.” There is a mountain of evidence that the Russians interfered to a much greater extent in the 2016 election than we will ever be told. Just the number of states whose computer systems were breached has gone up steadily since the election.  When I tried years ago to tell this to “Lunch with Southern Ladies” they told me this was “fake news.” As everyone from Robert Mueller down says, this systems manipulation is happening “as we speak.”  But, the Democratic candidates and the media are acting like this is a normal election.
21. We spend hours and hours every night listening to one professional after the other prognosticate on polls, on strategy, on projected turn out. I hate to be the skunk in the room, but none of that has the least bit of relevance if the Russians (and Saudis and Iranians and Chinese and North Koreans) are hacking into computers, the Republicans are suppressing the vote, and also manipulating electoral systems (as in Georgia).
22. The dirty secret is that neither the politicians or the media or the political professional class of pollsters and pundits can afford to admit what is staring us in the face – none of this matters if there is cheating. Their expertise is irrelevant. All this time and energy that goes into endless discussions of how a particular tweet might help Trump is meaningless if there is cheating.
23. I have long felt that the Republicans wouldn’t be behaving as overtly racist and authoritarian as they are if they truly felt they were going to have to face the voters in a fair election. They do what all authoritarians do, they cannot keep themselves from rubbing our noses in the fact that they are going to win no matter what. And, if you think about it, they can’t afford to lose.
24. Trump is one example. He cannot afford to lose because he might well wind up in jail, and therefore, he is going to do anything and everything he can to win, cheating, stealing, lying, destroying democratic institutions and if nothing else works, just refusing to leave office. Mitch McConnell and others like Bill Barr will do the same.
25. So, while the Democrats debate health care, and the pundits wank on and on about polls and strategies and the possible effects of tweets, we are all going to engage in one wild delusional act – we are going to go to the polls and vote in what promises to be a completely unfair, manipulated election.
26. All this sound and fury is to cover up the fact that if we ADMIT THAT the electoral system IS A SHAM, WE MIGHT HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
27. What kind of people allow a man like Donald Trump to take office because of cheating and then destroy democratic institutions and install a collection of imbeciles and toadies and authoritarians without dragging him out of the White House by his heels.

 

Guess that about covers why I have found the past few days so depressing.

• John Paul Stevens has died.  Stevens said that the vote he most regretted was a vote not to abolish the death penalty.
• By the time he resigned in 2010 Stevens was considered to be the most liberal judge on the court.  He said that he hadn’t become more liberal, the country had become more conservative.
• Michael Mukasey was the Attorney General when the Epstein/Acosta deal was approved. Mukasey’s son resigned from a global law firm to open a boutique law practice whose first client was Donald Trump.  Mukasey made numerous public statements about how unfair the Trump/Russia investigation was.  He protected those who wrote the torture memos during the Bush Administration.
• Despite all the comments from pundits about the unusual nature of the Acosta plea deal in the Jeffrey Epstein case, this article about Cy Vance (who dropped a prosecution against the Trumps, and later argued for Epstein to be given the least serious categorization as a sex offender) spells out how common those decisions to allow wealthy, powerful people to escape responsibility for their actions are in just one DA’s office.  https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-didnt-manhattan-da-cyrus-vance-prosecute-the-trumps-or-harvey-weinstein

 

This article is about Mukasey’s moves to protect the Bush administration’s torture crew.https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/mukasey-calls-congress-subvert-constitution

 

Rick Sanchez is saying on The Ring of Fire, exactly what I said when information about the Justice Department’s Non Prosecution Agreement came out.  That is, Alex Acosta was inserted in the Jeffrey Epstein case to “quash” it.  Acosta didn’t “drop the ball” or “blink.” He was detailed by higher-ups in the Justice Department to put a lid on this case.  Now, the question is whether there are enough investigative reporters left with some integrity who will get to the bottom (or the top) of this story.

Read the Ring of Fire Interview:

Jeffrey Epstein Conspiracy Could Involve Many Top DC Officials

Quote of the Day

https://www.thedailybeast.com/robert-mueller-missed-the-crime-trumps-campaign-coordinated-with-russia

“Ever since the release of the Mueller Report, countless commentators have implored everyone to just #ReadtheReport. The problem is not who is reading it—the problem is the report itself, and its many errors.

Robert Mueller made a significant legal error and, based on the facts he found, he should have identified Trump campaign felonies. Mueller’s errors meant that, first, he failed to conclude that the Trump campaign criminally coordinated with Russia; second, he failed to indict campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates for felony campaign coordination (see in a concise timeline below); third, the 10 acts of felony obstruction in Volume II fell flat among the general public because it lacked compelling context of these underlying crimes between the campaign and Russia. On top of these errors, the former special counsel said he deliberately wrote the report to be unclear because it would be unfair to make clear criminal accusations against a president.”

 

Georgia, Growing up in the South, Death Penalty, Racism, Representation, Furman v. Georgia

Death Penalty

In 1951, I was born in the state of Georgia in a town so small my high school graduating class was composed of thirty students.  I started kindergarten with most of them.  We were 40 miles from Selma.  On the day John Lewis walked over the William Pettes bridge, I came home to find my mother sitting in front of the television, crying.  I had never seen my mother cry.  She said one thing: “I should have been there.”

I grew up keenly interested in the subject of justice. One reason for this was that growing up, I sat at a dinner table every night and listened to a raging debate over race relations and war.  Also, both my parents grew up poor.  When I say poor, I don’t mean they didn’t have the right clothes to wear to the prom.  I mean poor – mean, cold, scary poor during the Depression.  Neither of them ever got over it.

The lessons my parents taught us about inequality, about discrimination, about the hurt and cruelty of being poor, of being discriminated against, of being denied justice were not theoretical.  They were real and conveyed with passion.

Not surprisingly, I became a criminologist.  My entire adult life has been spent studying crime, law and social justice.  And, it’s not just an academic exercise for me.  Like my parents,  I feel it in my guts.  I feel injustice, unfairness and pain.  Somewhere along the line I started to think there were only two sorts of people in the world – those who saw pain and vulnerability and need and moved instinctively to do something about it and people who saw pain and vulnerability and need and couldn’t wait to take advantage of it.  I am glad my parents are not alive to see the second type of people in control of the country.

I am back in Georgia now after living a great many places.  I am ashamed to note that this month Georgia carried out the 1500th execution since the return of the death penalty in 1976.

The case that led the Supreme Court to put a temporary halt to the death penalty came from my state, Furman v. Georgia.  Furman was decided in 1976.  The court looked at the death penalty and decided that it was administered in an “arbitrary, discriminatory and capricious manner.”  Four years later, the state overcame the objections of the Supreme Court and the death penalty was reinstated.

But, the truth is that all these years later the administration of the death penalty is still characterized by wrongful convictions, inadequate representation, geographic disparity and socioeconomic and racial bias.  And, to top it off, it costs a great deal of money, much more than keeping dangerous people inside prisons for life.

I am ashamed of the state of Georgia.

Monday 10 June 2019

• If it’s Monday, Morning Joe has another former Clinton aide on to tell us that Bernie Sanders is falling behind and that during his career, Bernie hasn’t been successful at getting his policies enacted into law. THAT IS BECAUSE HIS IDEAS HAVE BEEN SO FAR IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY ELSE IN CONGRESS.
• “He’s talked about income inequality. He’s talked about breaking up the big banks…” but he hasn’t actually passed a lot of legislation,” says Adrienne Elrod.
• It never ceases to amaze me that the cable news world despises Bernie so much (try not only Brzezinski and Scarborough but Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, Jennifer Rubin just to note just three).
• The award for the worst article of the day has to go to the New York Times story: “People are trying to figure out William Barr.” (6/10/19)  Anybody who is still trying to figure out Barr is insane or a cable news commentator.  It didn’t take most of us any time to figure out Barr before he was even made Attorney General.  But again, cable news pundits (like Joyce Vance and Chuck Rosenberg) assured us that Barr was an “institutionalist” who would play fair.  He is, and always has been, a partisan hack.  If they didn’t know that, they are stupid or delusional.
• One of the worst “both sidesism quotes from the article: “An examination of his record, coupled with interviews of more than two dozen associates, suggests elements of both: He is neither as apolitical as his defenders claim, nor as partisan as his detractors fear. Instead, he is a complex figure whom the right cannot count on to be a Trumpland hero and whom the left cannot dismiss as nothing more than a political hack.”  This is what passes for journalist at the New York Times.  Another example:  “Is he the operator who spun the then-secret Mueller report? Or the straight shooter who later disclosed portions that were damaging to President Trump?”   (People Are Trying to Figure Out William Barr. He’s Busy Stockpiling Power, 6/10/19).
• The Morning Joe panel also genuflects over Biden’s change of position on the Hyde Amendment. Had Bernie Sanders done this, he would have been condemned as making a crassly political decision.
• Language that drives me crazy. “reached out” “Trump’s lawyer reached out to a lawyer for…Flynn.”  No, he didn’t reach out, he phoned.  Why not use the word that is more specific?
• In the article (NYT) about Trump’s lawyer “reaching out” in a phone call to Flynn’s attorney, Michael Schmidt writes: “…the president’s role, if any, remains a mystery…” Well, no, the president’s role doesn’t really remain a mystery to anybody with half a brain.  But, for journalists and evidently prosecutors, unless Dowd got on the phone and said “On (this date and time at this place) Donald Trump instructed me to phone and offer a pardon to Michael Flynn…,” we can’t be sure.  And even then, if we had such a recording, the authenticity of the message would be questioned and also what the true meaning of “instructed” is would be the subject of debate.  And, also endlessly discussed would be whether Dowd was lying when he said this.  I don’t think this is how mob investigations are conducted.  (NYT (6/9/19) Trump Lawyer’s Message was a Clue for Mueller, Who set it aside.”
• Also, it’s Monday and there is no investigation of Barr’s relations with people connected to the Mueller investigation. Newsweek reported in April that Barr worked for a law firm that represented Alfa Bank.  Another man who worked for the same law firm (Kirkland & Ellis) was appointed to the Justice Department’s criminal division.  Brian Benczkowski represented Alfa bank at Kirkland & Ellis and “supervised an investigation into suspicious online communications between the bank and servers belonging to the Trump organization.” Barr also received dividends from Vector Group which has financial ties to Russia.  The president of Vector Group brought Trump to Moscow in the 1990s to seek investment opportunities.  (Maza, Christina 4/15/19, Newsweek)
• The Democrats after threatening to hold Barr in contempt of Congress for not complying with a subpoena, have released a resolution by the Rules Committee which does not mention contempt. Instead it would authorize the House to petition a federal court to enforce committee requests for testimony and information related to the Mueller report.
• The truly dreadful Clarence Thomas’ wife, Virginia, has announced that she will form a pro-Trump group (according to the Intercept). Thomas announced that she was doing so to get the society to “focus on the arsonists who are right around us.”   The intent is to solicit undisclosed donations to a PAC.  It is inappropriate, to say the least, for the spouse of a Supreme Court Justice to take an overtly political stance or start an overtly political group.  This is not, however, the first time Thomas has inserted herself into politics.  She has been a long-time advocate of denying women a right to an abortion.

 

“Winter on Fire” is a moving Netflix Original documentary detailing the protests that shook Ukraine during the winter of 2013 and 2014.

Ukraine’s leader, Viktor Yanukovych, came to power promising to forge a relationship between Ukraine and the European Union.  After being elected to office, however, he made a deal with Putin and aligned Ukraine with Russia.

What began as a peaceful student protest turned into a mass demonstration involving a million people in the streets of Kiev for months.  Attacks on the students resulted not in people going home, cowering and hiding, but in people of all ages and nationalities and ethnic groups flooding into the streets of Kiev.  Within a short time, people were coming in from all over the country.  Protestors were confronted first with military police (the Berkut) and then with the Titushkys, criminal who were released from prison to help put down the demonstrations.  Some 100 people died in the protests which eventually ousted Yanukevych.  Yanukevych fled Ukraine in the middle of the night and was given sanctuary in Russia.

Paul Manafort worked for Yanukevych and helped return him to power after a previous election which Yanukevych won was found to be fraudulent.

This film is a must see.  It provides some of the political context necessary to understand Manafort’s eventual position in the Trump campaign and the Russian manipulation of the 2016 election.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80031666

 

Things We’re Thinking About This Afternoon

• BRAZIL.  Brazil’s Supreme Court has voted to make homophobia a crime like racism.  The decision comes amid fears that the country’s new right-wing president (Jair Bolsonaro) will roll back LGBT rights.  Brazil has a large evangelical movement, critical of LGBT rights.  One LGBT rights group, Grupo Gay da Bahia, reports that 420 LGBT people have been killed across Brazil in 2018.  (See https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/24/brazils-supreme-court-votes-make-homophobia-transphobia-crimes/)
• VENEZUELA.  John Bolton is still pursuing his goal of creating an armed conflict in Venezuela. Opposition leader Juan Guaido’s political challenge to President Nicolas Maduro resulted in an abortive uprising last month, an uprising the Trump administration supported.  The uprising was quashed by the same security forces that Guaido claimed were supporting him. (See https://www.newsweek.com/venezuela-war-talks-john-bolton-fighting-1432909)
• PELOSI: Elie Mystal, writing in The Nation Magazine: “I’m sorry, but when Pelosi goes on Jimmy Kimmel and gives him and the American people reasons for her position that are incredibly weak, I cannot just wave it all away as “Nancy Pelosi has a plan and I’m too stupid to understand it.” If she has a plan, I can’t see it. If she has a strategy, she’s not explaining it very well. What I’m hearing and seeing are weak arguments made to gaslight late-night viewers into thinking that everything is under control, even as more and more members of her own caucus manifestly break with her position on impeachment in public.” (See https://www.thenation.com/article/nancy-pelosi-trump-impeachment-jimmy-kimmel/).  If you haven’t discovered Elie Mystal, you should.  He’s a “no-miss” commentator.  He tells the truth, refuses to be gaslit, gets mad and isn’t afraid to question.
• CUBA.  At a time when Cuba has been forced once again to implement rationing of basic materials, the Trump administration is placing new restrictions on travel and remittances to the island. John Bolton, who some say will not be happy until every country he perceives as being an enemy of America is bombed out of existence, is publicly blaming the Obama administration for policies which have “enabled the Cuban colonization of Venezuela…”  The policies, according to Bolton are designed to “finally end the glamorization of socialism and communism.”  Bolton has accused the Cuban government of training Maduro’s military forces.  In a return to the language of the 70s, Bolton has termed Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua “the troika of tyranny.” “Capping remittances is mean-spirited, and can only be understood as the U.S. government’s attempt to create economic hardship among the Cuban people,” said Emily Mendrala, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas and former national security advisor under Obama. “Ambassador Bolton’s speech conflated Cuba with Venezuela, and he announced a policy approach that does the same. The two countries are different, living through very different moments, and to exploit events in Venezuela to settle Cold War scores with Cuba is a distraction from real needs in Venezuela.”
• Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article229341009.html#storylink=cpy (See https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nationworld/world/americas/cuba/article229341009.html)
• WHITE COLLAR CRIME.  Declining Prosecution of White Collar Crimes (See https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/process-of-prosecution-of-white-collar-crimes-40984)  If white collar and corporate crimes were prosecuted, we wouldn’t have to deal with Trump, Manafort, Kushner and others.  They would all be in jail.
• POLITICAL CRIMES.  Protestors in Prague are calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Andrej Babis after a European Commission audit found that he was improperly profiting from private trust funds. (See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48510029)

Authoritarians rise to power in part because establishment politicians overlook the warning signs and hand power over to them.  Mussolini was invited to take power.  A day after Hitler became chancellor, a prominent conservative who had helped him, said: “I have just committed the greatest stupidity of my life.  I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in world history.”  What Levitsky and Ziblatt (in their book “How Democracies Die”) describe as “a lethal mix of ambition fear, and miscalculation” conspire to lead the establishment in country after country to the same fateful mistake: “willingly handing over the keys of power to an autocrat-in-the-making.”

“The abdication of political responsibility by existing leaders often marks a nation’s first step toward authoritarianism.”

 

How Democracies Die.

Where, Elie Mystal asks are the heros?  “I mean Robert Mueller.”  We needed “batman” and what we got was a “perfectly nice and well-meaning functionary who thinks his job is to signal with the light and then wait quietly for help to arrive.”

“There’s every reason to believe that the Republicans have absolutely no problem” with what is going on in the Trump administration.  “There has been very little evidence that the Republicans are terribly concerned about democracy…”  When other countries look at us what they see is that “…there’s something fundamentally unstable about that country.”

Comments on Chris Hayes, MSNBC, 5/30/19

“If he were an honorable and forthright person, he wouldn’t have gotten the job in the first place.”  David Frum talking about Barr on Ari Melber, MSNBC.

 

 

In 2002, James Comey was appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Manhattan.  Early in his tenure he spoke to a gathering of his prosecutors.  “Who here,” he asked from the podium “has never had an acquittal…?”  Prosecutors proudly raised their hands.  Comey surveyed the room.  “My friends and I have a name for you,” he said.  “You are members of what we like to call the Chickenshit Club.”

Comey went on to make the point to his prosecutors that they weren’t there to advance their careers or rack up large settlements that looked good in the press.  They were there to do justice.  They were there, Comey continued, to right the biggest injustices, not go after the easiest targets.  But, as Jesse Eisinger argues in his book “The Chickenshit Club,” that’s exactly what prosecutors in the Justice Department did.  And, I would argue, continue to do.

With that shift in prosecutorial practice (aided by increasingly lenient interpretations of the law from the bench who were pressured by politicians representing big money interests), the system became almost incapable of holding powerful white collar and corporate criminals accountable.  I would add to that, holding powerful political criminals to account.

I invite everyone to look at the Mueller Report and the mumbly-mouthed statement of Robert Mueller today in that light.  As Eisinger points out, prosecutors who were settling cases instead of prosecuting wrongdoers, “lost potent investigative tools and softened their practices, changes that have made it harder to gather evidence and conduct even the most basic investigations.”

The Mueller Report is almost a text book case of what Eisinger is writing about.  Pursuing the indictment of criminals  has come to be seen as too difficult.  Again and again, Mueller says somebody lied, somebody withheld evidence, somebody destroyed evidence and so investigators couldn’t make the case.  I would hazard a guess that in every investigation people lie, destroy evidence and withhold evidence.  The job of the prosecutor is to overcome those obstructive tactics.  Prosecution should be the “nasty trench warfare” Eisinger describes, not a game of cards at the gentleman’s club.  But, Mueller played the gentleman’s game.  He is now too embarrassed to testify and answer questions about it.  He is hiding behind the argument that testifying would be too “political.”  But, what Mueller has done is one of the most significant political moves in this entire story.  He has helped Trump, et. al. absolve themselves of criminal responsibility and deny the collusive behavior they are so obviously guilty of.

It is completely obvious that Mueller, instead of arresting, jailing, pressuring wrongdoers, threw up his hands and whined that people obstructed the investigation.    Mueller was afraid of the “slog; nasty trench warfare” that carried the “risk of humiliation” if he lost.

Eisinger writes: “Today the justice system is broken.  Over the decade after Jim Comey’s speech, his words failed.  The Justice Department succumbed.  The department avoided the biggest cases.  It became fearful of losing and lost sight of its fundamental mission to make this country a just place.  James Comey would have no way of knowing it at the time, but his sermon to the Southern District prosecutors could have easily been a eulogy for the courage he hoped to muster.  The Chickenshit Club ranks in the years ahead would only grow.”

Robert Mueller is now clearly part of the Chickenshit Club.

But, after the corporate media spent a year weaving the fiction that Robert Mueller was a savior, knew everything, saw everything, would right every wrong, they will not permit this reality to be spoken.  They cannot admit to themselves that Robert Mueller is part of the problem he was investigating.  First of all, he so narrowly defined his mission that he couldn’t possibly have found wrongdoing. He timidly accepted an OLC directive that he need not have paid attention to.  He failed to make relevant parties to the investigation testify.  He ignored crucial areas of investigation like Trump’s finances.  His office recommended sentences for acts bordering on treason that were lighter than those for parking violations.

Mueller’s report, therefore, has become a crucial part of the consolidation of power of Trump and his cronies who are busily establishing a kleptocratic state.  The corporate media cheerfully has gone along with it.  Pundits still tie themselves in rhetorical knots trying to laud Robert Mueller while denying the reality that he protected himself and threw the country under the bus.

 

When you vote for a Republican, any Republican, this is what you’re voting for.   Trump and his entire administration are raking in the money made off public service.  This is not a case of a few grifters, this is plan.

Pierce, Charles P.  (5/28/19)  “The swamp isn’t drained…” Esquire.

For a short summary of just the past few days, read Charlie Pierce’s article in Esquire.  And, this is just what we know about.

• “Members of the administration have turned their offices into vehicles of greed.”
• Kushner Cos. Has received $800 million in federal backed debt to buy apartments.
• The man overseeing the Federal Housing Finance Agency which regulates Fannie and Freddie, was previously CEO of a bank founded by Treasury Secretary Mnuchin.
• Elaine Chao still owns stock in a company she promised to divest herself from over a year ago. She’s made an estimated $40,000 off the stock since she promised she would ditch them.  In case you don’ remember, Chao is the wife of Mitch McConnell.

This is an enlightening discussion on Democracy Now which includes a video made by Jeremy Skahill (author of the book about Eric Prince and Blackwater, and journalist on the Intercept) about the threat to journalism of the arrest of Julian Assange.

Skahill video

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/5/24/jeremy_scahill_new_indictment_of_assange